Apps with gamesalad

Diegan

Hi, I want to know your opinion. I would like to develop a simple app that when you open it, it would have several buttons, and each button would take you to a different category of pictures. Te pictures would all have the same size and occupy most of the screen, and with a swipe you could navigate through them.

I have 2 questions:

- Would apple reject it because gamesalad is "for games" and they want devs to use standard controls and xcode for such an app?

- Being new and all, I don't really know how to accomplish what I want, performance-wise. I believe each picture being a different actor may be a bad choice, anybody can propose a better way for me to have an app with about 600 pictures that can be navigated through with a swipe?

calvin9403

1. no GS is not for only games

2.use the change image behavior

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http://www.gamesaladforum.com/
http://gshelper.com/

old_kipper

The type of app you are talking about is perhaps best done as an ebook with an index. The 600 images will be a real problem with memory and loading in GS unless you break down the chapters/groups of images so they load faster. An interface is not so much of a problem in GS. This can be done. If you did use GS for your app, then I don't think Apple would have a problem with it being an app done with game dev software. Their criteria is more that is useful/entertaining and not just marketing.

Hope that helps

kipper

Diegan

Thank you guys for the input. How does the 'break down the chapters/groups of images so they load faster' could be achieved? I don't really undertsnd yet how does Gamesalad manage the memory and loading.

For example, the format could be:

- Loading screen
- Home screen, with link to categories
- category 1: 100 pictures
- category 2: 100 pictures
- category 3: 100 pictures
- category ...

old_kipper

GS loads all items for a scene, and you can use an image or menu to switch to another scene. There are discussions as to if it is possible to use tricks to get gradual loading but though some use them there was a recent post from GS saying not to use them as updates that address load times and memory management may be effected by workarounds.

The load times will be constant for any load of image based on how large a file it is, but you can reduce the waiting at any one point by having sub groups, as there would be less images in those scenes it will not take so long to load as if you were loading everything. Perhaps if you have smaller preview images in an index it would help but I am not sure that is the effect you are after.

If I was going to try this I would use a structure along the lines of-

start screen as a scene

menu with sections as another scene

6 sub menus, each as a separate scene with perhaps 10 images in a single png image and 10 of those set up to scroll and areas on each that brought up...

a subset of all the full screen images, each as a separate scene, each as a pause scene (search on this option). It would take a long time to set up but would perhaps give the best performance.

It would not be elegant and would take hours to set up and but others may know of a better method...

kipper

Diegan

You mean I could put 10 big images, each image composed of 10 images pasted one after the other in horizontal, and scroll through that image?

old_kipper

yes. Have a image of the 10 images and have ten of those as a menu for that full screen images. You can produce catalogue images in adobe cs bridge and if you resized those it might be a quick way of making up these 'menu group images'.

edit; p.m me if you want me to talk you through it. I have skype and don't charge...