I've seen you around for a long time on here Beefy, and you've answered some questions for me before. Have you had much luck making money? (Sorry this thread is getting way off topic from the heading).
What are the games you've made? Do you find it best to focus on fairly "simple" games?
What do you think Game Salad is well suited for, and what sorts of games or features do you think should be avoided?
I feel like, anything requiring a large map that needs to be persistently kept track of, and needs to react to physics - definitely do not do with Game Salad. There's just no good way to store that amount and sort of data, all at once. ??? A big tile based thing... maybe.
Have you had much luck making money? - I easily make my yearly costs back several times over annually.
What are the games you've made? - These are my best;
Do you find it best to focus on fairly "simple" games? - Nope. Just have an idea and get to working on it, I have a pretty good idea of the limitations after using GS for 3 years now.
What do you think Game Salad is well suited for, and what sorts of games or features do you think should be avoided? - GS was always best suited to puzzle games, having said that, with its improvements, you see soo many different types of games made now! Admittedly, massive mapped games and actors are not its strong points. I'm sure you could now work around this however ...
So you have a map, in say each corner, you could have a spawner which puts relevant actors in place. When out of range, these are destroyed. You could do this in all corners so at any given time, instead of say having 100 actors, you only have 25. You could use magnitude to calculate the distance between the main actor and the spawner, when a distance is reached, spawn away ... when actors fall out of the magnitude distance destroy away! I've not actually tested this by the way, just an idea! You could use tables to setup the positioning etc of the actors spawned.
Spawning and destroying was always frowned upon and recycling was the better method .. With GS improvements and some testing done by @socks there is no evidence to show it is any better. In a large game, recycling can actually be worse as you are always keeping those actors on screen and rendered in memory when they may not actually be called upon for a long time!
SSS. I only posted what I posted in defense of those who obviously have the right to make justified queries. Granted everything you said is true and logically sound. But that doesnt stop a pro user from making a inquiry into things of this nature. It isnt wrong to see 1 example of how something is working but yet we as pros do not have it yet. It is not wrong to ask. " Hey I see you were able to do this...... why do we not have that now? Any idea when we will? Not all of us are able to read every freaking post and topic and know that a certain subject has been discussed over and over. I stand by my previous post. Because the premise of my post was in defense of being able to ask questions without scrutiny from others and being deemed a worthy or non worthy question. I say this...... if you see a question being asked... and you dont have a productive response to make...... dont make one at all... and allow someone else to answer the question. This "Who are you.. to be asking this question?" attitude is childish.
Thanks for the ideas Beefy, and all the best on your future games, too.
I have been focussing more towards levels that spawn and recycle enemies around the player, and clean them up when further away. It's a different approach than what I was intending, but hopefully I can strike a balance that works.
I was working on a big project where GameSalad could have been awesome. The only problem... the HTML5 export is awful. I had to scale back the project and use Hype. Now that's what HTML5 exporting should be like with GameSalad!
You are your own silver bullet.
I worked for six months on a GameSalad game, so you're not going to convince me of the virtues of hard work. I wrote a book with lots of workaround for GameSalad. The reality is that there's a glass ceiling with GameSalad.
Will there be truly professional features?
-- Create custom behaviors? -- Communicate with an online database? -- Control my own advertisers, like AdMob?
It doesn't seem like those features will arrive soon... if at all. GameSalad is what it is. It's not meant to do certain things. This limits the projects I can create, which ultimately limits the money I can make.
Do I blame GameSalad? No. Like a good carpenter, I'm not limited to one tool. GameSalad is great for lots of different projects.
But with web publishing, I find "Project Masala" to be disappointing.
We're working on HTML5 optimizations. It's on the roadmap. A good example of a proof-in-concept, though it was a custom job, is Shred Neffland ft. deadmau5 on Facebook. While I don't have an ETA on when you might see something like that, it's in the pipe... and yes, it would likely be a Pro only optimization as it has a significant development cost associated.
Good, I'm glad to see that GameSalad is working on fixing this problem. I've been watching to see if three issues get resolved...
-- Custom sizes (480x320 is not sufficient) -- No branding (Pro means no GameSalad branding, so why is it on HTML5 projects?) -- No tethering to GameSalad.com (I got my own website.)
It's just like Hype. Before version 1.6, it was simply unusable for me. No matter what creative thinking was tried, the software didn't meet the requirements of the job. But with one good update, I could instantly feel the difference. I didn't even need to load up the software. I read the update notes and knew that they released a winner.
So, I watch GameSalad's progress. I look for reasons to upgrade to Pro. So far, I don't see it. This thread is a prime example. Instead of writing so many words about why the community is wrong for feeling the way they do, how about putting that energy into making this community a more pleasant place?
Example - Why does a whole community have to lose Forum Signatures because a few people were abusing them? I visit lots of Internet forums. Many are on vBulletin and seem to have less trouble with Forum moderation. Why are posts deleted without notification or justification?
I feel as if GameSalad could do so much better... as if one day the pieces of the puzzle could all fall into place... maybe one day GameSalad will have their equivalent of Hype 1.6?
I don't know if it is answered because I don't want to read through every post here that is off topic >:) But the answer to can I get rid of lose the GS skin is yes. Look at www.lumpapps.com that is how I did it. The way is to make an iframe that is 480x500px with the HTML from the arcade game inside. Then make another iframe around this iframe that is 480x320px, eh voilah! Sorry if I am not clear but I am on my iPad now. You can check my site if you understand a bit of HTML/CSS if I am it clear or look up my earlier posts.
He discussion here is totally legit btw, I was just kidding (and am a lazy reader).
Recently I have come across the ability to scale the content of an iframe to any size desired using JavaScript. I used this to generate thumbnails and I scaled an entire web page within an iframe down to 50 by 100 pixels. You can also use this technique to scale upwards as well. I haven't yet tried this using an arcade published title. But theoretically using the technique mentioned above along with this:
You should be able to scale an html5 project to whatever size you'd like. Once again I haven't personally tried this with an arcade title so there could be image pixelization and so forth.
I'll test it out within the week to let you know. Or if anyone else would like to take a stab at it and update the community, that would be great.
We make children's apps so the feature that would make my day would be access to the camera roll. I have literally hundreds of ideas written down that would be easy to do with gs but are left a bit wounded without that feature.
@saladstraightshooter can you provide any insight as to whether this is something that will be coming down the pipeline?
I think my life would be complete with just a few basic additions that can be found within many apps today. @sss sorry for the questions but would audio recording ever be possible? Record your own storybooks are all the hype these days.
We love gs. I can see it getting better all the time!
Just to reiterate my own feelings (as a Pro user)...
It seems a real shame to not be able to just embed my finished game, at whatever size I'm choosing to make my game resolution, into a website for people to play.
Currently, it feels like an entire format that I just can't use for anything useful. It may as well not exist at all, in it's current implementation.
Just to reiterate my own feelings (as a Pro user)...
It seems a real shame to not be able to just embed my finished game, at whatever size I'm choosing to make my game resolution, into a website for people to play.
Currently, it feels like an entire format that I just can't use for anything useful. It may as well not exist at all, in it's current implementation.
Seconded. Its a terrible way to present a game, and as a paying user the last thing I want to do is be forced to advertise for GS.
@PixelMetal Why don't you just go try Construct or Stencyl? HTML5 doesn't appear to be high on GS priority list (which saddens me), so maybe go explore an engine that does have a more robust HTML system?
HTML5 is a nice to have, not a requirement., for me. I also thought that's what I was paying for when I purchased GS, but unfortunately that hasn't ended up being the case.
I just can't imagine it would be that difficult to let us export at our own resolution And host our own files. It already works - and nobody is asking for anything complex. There was also mention last year of an HTML5 update that has yet to materialize.
Melon.js would be better than either of those other options anyway.
It's already been done for one game, so I don't think we see why it would be very hard or costly to add the feature for all pros.
I feel like every time there is an update GS has to pay a big, hairy toll man a large sum of money, which is processed using a Windows '98 computer. ) (Joking of course)
I think we can take that as a clear sign that developers may as well ignore Game Salad as a way to create HTML5 / web games. It's just not gonna happen properly.
Comments
What are the games you've made? - These are my best;
LAD;
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lad/id530968042?mt=8
http://blackchairgames.com/?page_id=35
Star Serum;
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-serum/id493875097?mt=8
http://blackchairgames.com/?page_id=1179
Line Ar(X)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/line-ar-x/id442161245?mt=8
http://blackchairgames.com/?page_id=1192
Helmet Hero!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/helmet-hero/id456088394?mt=8
http://blackchairgames.com/?page_id=1199
Do you find it best to focus on fairly "simple" games? - Nope. Just have an idea and get to working on it, I have a pretty good idea of the limitations after using GS for 3 years now.
What do you think Game Salad is well suited for, and what sorts of games or features do you think should be avoided? - GS was always best suited to puzzle games, having said that, with its improvements, you see soo many different types of games made now! Admittedly, massive mapped games and actors are not its strong points. I'm sure you could now work around this however ...
So you have a map, in say each corner, you could have a spawner which puts relevant actors in place. When out of range, these are destroyed. You could do this in all corners so at any given time, instead of say having 100 actors, you only have 25. You could use magnitude to calculate the distance between the main actor and the spawner, when a distance is reached, spawn away ... when actors fall out of the magnitude distance destroy away! I've not actually tested this by the way, just an idea! You could use tables to setup the positioning etc of the actors spawned.
Spawning and destroying was always frowned upon and recycling was the better method .. With GS improvements and some testing done by @socks there is no evidence to show it is any better. In a large game, recycling can actually be worse as you are always keeping those actors on screen and rendered in memory when they may not actually be called upon for a long time!
I have been focussing more towards levels that spawn and recycle enemies around the player, and clean them up when further away. It's a different approach than what I was intending, but hopefully I can strike a balance that works.
Will there be truly professional features?
-- Create custom behaviors?
-- Communicate with an online database?
-- Control my own advertisers, like AdMob?
It doesn't seem like those features will arrive soon... if at all. GameSalad is what it is. It's not meant to do certain things. This limits the projects I can create, which ultimately limits the money I can make.
Do I blame GameSalad? No. Like a good carpenter, I'm not limited to one tool. GameSalad is great for lots of different projects.
But with web publishing, I find "Project Masala" to be disappointing. Good, I'm glad to see that GameSalad is working on fixing this problem. I've been watching to see if three issues get resolved...
-- Custom sizes (480x320 is not sufficient)
-- No branding (Pro means no GameSalad branding, so why is it on HTML5 projects?)
-- No tethering to GameSalad.com (I got my own website.)
It's just like Hype. Before version 1.6, it was simply unusable for me. No matter what creative thinking was tried, the software didn't meet the requirements of the job. But with one good update, I could instantly feel the difference. I didn't even need to load up the software. I read the update notes and knew that they released a winner.
So, I watch GameSalad's progress. I look for reasons to upgrade to Pro. So far, I don't see it. This thread is a prime example. Instead of writing so many words about why the community is wrong for feeling the way they do, how about putting that energy into making this community a more pleasant place?
Example - Why does a whole community have to lose Forum Signatures because a few people were abusing them? I visit lots of Internet forums. Many are on vBulletin and seem to have less trouble with Forum moderation. Why are posts deleted without notification or justification?
I feel as if GameSalad could do so much better... as if one day the pieces of the puzzle could all fall into place... maybe one day GameSalad will have their equivalent of Hype 1.6?
But the answer to can I get rid of lose the GS skin is yes. Look at www.lumpapps.com that is how I did it.
The way is to make an iframe that is 480x500px with the HTML from the arcade game inside. Then make another iframe around this iframe that is 480x320px, eh voilah!
Sorry if I am not clear but I am on my iPad now. You can check my site if you understand a bit of HTML/CSS if I am it clear or look up my earlier posts.
He discussion here is totally legit btw, I was just kidding (and am a lazy reader).
Lump Apps and My Assets
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/166160/how-can-i-scale-the-content-of-an-iframe
You should be able to scale an html5 project to whatever size you'd like. Once again I haven't personally tried this with an arcade title so there could be image pixelization and so forth.
I'll test it out within the week to let you know. Or if anyone else would like to take a stab at it and update the community, that would be great.
We make children's apps so the feature that would make my day would be access to the camera roll. I have literally hundreds of ideas written down that would be easy to do with gs but are left a bit wounded without that feature.
@saladstraightshooter can you provide any insight as to whether this is something that will be coming down the pipeline?
I think my life would be complete with just a few basic additions that can be found within many apps today. @sss sorry for the questions but would audio recording ever be possible? Record your own storybooks are all the hype these days.
We love gs. I can see it getting better all the time!
It seems a real shame to not be able to just embed my finished game, at whatever size I'm choosing to make my game resolution, into a website for people to play.
Currently, it feels like an entire format that I just can't use for anything useful. It may as well not exist at all, in it's current implementation.
http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/54325/it-is-100-possible-to-change-the-size-of-your-html5-arcade-game#latest
I don't really want my projects hosted on GS servers, either. Might look into ripping the code to try hosting it on my own server.
I'd be interested in hearing the legal argument that says I can't host my own game files.
I just can't imagine it would be that difficult to let us export at our own resolution And host our own files. It already works - and nobody is asking for anything complex. There was also mention last year of an HTML5 update that has yet to materialize.
Melon.js would be better than either of those other options anyway.
It's already been done for one game, so I don't think we see why it would be very hard or costly to add the feature for all pros.
I feel like every time there is an update GS has to pay a big, hairy toll man a large sum of money, which is processed using a Windows '98 computer.
- Thomas
Oh well.