Another lost soul :P

Diegan

Hi, I am new here, just reading and watching tutorials and trying to get a feel for the place. Luckily, the community seems pretty lively which is great!

I have yet to get a good idea of what can and cannot be done with gamesalad, I've seen many promision games and templates and I believe if I put a little effort I could make a game and publish it in some months. I already have an iphone developer account so that part is covered.

I have a basic question regarding which types of games can be done with game salad. I believe 3d games are not do-able, but I don't care because I don't want to make those kind of games.

But, could I do a game that is rpg-ish, with inventory, and a deep story? Could I make conversations between characters? Or even a conversational game, mostly text?

Anyway, I hope to be around here a lot and hopefully become a valuable and helpful member and make some friends.

By the way, I am from sunny Barcelona, Spain, so forgive my english

Diegan

Diegan said:
Hi, I am new here, just reading and watching tutorials and trying to get a feel for the place. Luckily, the community seems pretty lively which is great!

I have yet to get a good idea of what can and cannot be done with gamesalad, I've seen many promision games and templates and I believe if I put a little effort I could make a game and publish it in some months. I already have an iphone developer account so that part is covered.

I have a basic question regarding which types of games can be done with game salad. I believe 3d games are not do-able, but I don't care because I don't want to make those kind of games.

But, could I do a game that is rpg-ish, with inventory, and a deep story? Could I make conversations between characters? Or even a conversational game, mostly text (text, not images with text, maybe capacity for the player to type his name and the game remembering it and stuff)?

Anyway, I hope to be around here a lot and hopefully become a valuable and helpful member and make some friends.

By the way, I am from sunny Barcelona, Spain, so forgive my english

jonmulcahy

welcome!
an rpg could be done as long as you watch performance as you develop it. we dont have access to the keyboard yet, but its due out this spring

calvin9403

jonmulcahy said:
welcome!
an rpg could be done as long as you watch performance as you develop it. we dont have access to the keyboard yet, but its due out this spring

but a rpg game will have a bad performance in GS

jonmulcahy

calvin9403 said:
but a rpg game will have a bad performance in GS

with proper planning / execution and knowledge of GS's limits, you could definitely make an RPG

calvin9403

jonmulcahy said:
with proper planning / execution and knowledge of GS's limits, you could definitely make an RPG

a good one?

Diegan

Everybody talks about performance. Could someone please explain the limitations that gamesalad's games have in regard of performance? What kind of games would have a good performance, and which ones would not? How can you tell?

quantumsheep

Welcome!

An RPG would be relatively simple to do. It's mainly the management of variables

Some limitations are that games take a while to load, as do different scenes.

There's also the issue of performance if too many things are on-screen at once. And there's no 'garbage collection', so a destroyed actor will not reduce memory.

There are a number of techniques people that have been using the software for a while have come up with to get round these issues.

Mainly, using a 'generic' actor for lots of things helps with memory. Rather than have a 'start' button and a 'levels' button and an 'achievements' button, for example, on your menu screen, you'd make one generic actor and then unlock it in the scene and put the button specific code into it.

So you'd have three buttons, but all are the same actor, slightly modified.

Another technique is to recycle actors. If an enemy is destroyed, take it off-screen till it's needed again (for example).

Oh the whole, the software is very powerful if you know what you're doing. Take a little time to work through some of the free examples/templates and see what you can learn!

Good luck!

QS

kapser

Making a conversation game seem like a better idea than any typical RPG. GameSalad doesn't yet have so many functions and making an RPG will require a lot of work-around. Not that it's not possible with GS, but seriously making a full featured RPG in drag and drop sounds like a really bad idea, especially if you're new.

GameSalad is really appropriated for small arcade games, especially physics games. I highly suggest to start in this direction.

Welcome here

Diegan

Thank you guys

So, will garbage collection and interaction with keyboard be implemented someday? Are the guys behind gamesalad active and working hard on it?

ozboybrian

If you want any help add me on Skype -
ozboybrian

Diegan

Thank you ozboybrian for your offer, and thank you all for your warm welcome guys! I hope I enter 'the game' at the right moment, and I really hope the garbage-collection BIG problem gets fixed soon :P