GameSalad SDK?

kwhinnery

Thus far I am enjoying GameSalad quite a bit - I understand the object model and how to compose a scene reasonably well. My only real frustration at this point is the fact that I have to do everything through the GUI! Changing an attribute on an actor is a five click, eight second process in some cases - whereas if I had an editable text file open, I could make the same change in a half a second. The delay of the GUI adds up quite a bit when pushing pixels.

As a software developer, I could definitely use Corona or a Cocos2D - but I actually like the object model, preview tool, and engine of GameSalad very well. I just wish I didn't have to do *everything* through the GUI.

Also, I'm not certain how I'd collaborate with another person on a larger project, due to the dynamic nature of a .gameproj package. Opening up the package contents, I can see the various XML files exported by GameSalad, but I'm not sure how I'd version control them or how much gets clobbered by the GameSalad UI when I make a change.

Anyway, this is all to say that I think it would be really cool if there were some "power tools" made available to developers. Are there any plans to go beyond the "no code" UI? Maybe a DSL which generates actors, scenes, and describes behaviors? Are the "gameproj" package format, and the associated XML schemas, documented anywhere, so a community contribution could be made to generate those artifacts from a DSL?

The object model and engine have been pretty flexible, but the slowness of the dev cycles (in terms of drilling down to instances of objects and editing instance variables) is kinda killing me right now.

All in all though - wow, really strong work. Great tool, great experience overall.

Asymptoteell

One thing I've heard people have done to speed up work is to have multiple windows open at a time: One for testing, one for scene editing, and one on your main actor, or actor you're working on. As you switch between scenes, you'd have to remember to save first, then revert to save on the new window. While this isn't ideal, it definitely can speed up the process, and keep your work moving faster.

kwhinnery

@Asymptoteell that's a good thought, I will try and explore that. It might be worth the effort to hack something to actually work with the .gameproj package, but I'm sure that would "void the warranty" as it were.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Gamesalad is working out a new UI design in the comming months.