Interactive Picture Book - Questions and Helpful ideas
I thought it would be nice to make a thread for everybody trying to make a picture book to post questions and helpful ideas.
I've been playing around with the @DeepBlueApps template (http://www.deepblueapps.com/story-book-ipad-template/), which sadly has some issues - beware of the page flip animation! It is a great template though to learn about how things could be achieved and yeah it's free! If you open it you will see there is one interactive animation actor (a lovely squeeky pig) but since it has a "Simple one scene setup" this pig shows up on every page.
My question is:
I wanted to do the same "Simple one scene setup" but using the awesome tables solution from @tshirtbooth (
), the thing is I have lots of interactive animation actors that are page specific, is there a way to make this happen?
I feel a little overwhelmed because I guess I would have to make a lot of game attributes to call all my actions. There is also the text (would be lovely to be able to use different languages via tables) plus all the spoken word + sound files.
My idea and set up so far is 22 scenes:
-Home/Menu Page
-Back/Forward/Home/Pages Overview navigation via touch buttons
-Pages Overview Page (direct navigation to specific scenes)
-20 scenes/pages including text, audio & sounds and touch activated animations
with scenes my navigation is already working and I used tables to show the text for each scene.
Without any animations just the BG pictures + text in the scenes I already have 12 Mb.
I think scenes are maybe the better solution because when the scenes change I don't have to destroy my actors, right?
Or would it be better to change this set up to a "Simple one scene setup" triggered by a table to use less memory or loading time? But then how do I make my animation actors appear at the right times and places when the BG changes?
And wouldn't these animations stay in memory like the "Flip Pages" of the DeepBlueApps Template and cause the app to crash?
I figure the animations would be always on this one scene but needing their alpha to be triggered (but since they are touch interactive, they also would have to be trigger by a boolean (?) to stop the animations from running even though they are invisible,no? kind of makes my head spin only thinking about it...
Any suggestions? Would be lovely if somebody could give me some advice before I do something that is unusable, which is highly likely since I am a beginner at thinking logically. Thanks already!
Hope some of you are also interested in sharing their experience trying to make an interactive picture book.
Looking forward to meet fellow picture book and comic lovers
I've been playing around with the @DeepBlueApps template (http://www.deepblueapps.com/story-book-ipad-template/), which sadly has some issues - beware of the page flip animation! It is a great template though to learn about how things could be achieved and yeah it's free! If you open it you will see there is one interactive animation actor (a lovely squeeky pig) but since it has a "Simple one scene setup" this pig shows up on every page.
My question is:
I wanted to do the same "Simple one scene setup" but using the awesome tables solution from @tshirtbooth (
), the thing is I have lots of interactive animation actors that are page specific, is there a way to make this happen?I feel a little overwhelmed because I guess I would have to make a lot of game attributes to call all my actions. There is also the text (would be lovely to be able to use different languages via tables) plus all the spoken word + sound files.
My idea and set up so far is 22 scenes:
-Home/Menu Page
-Back/Forward/Home/Pages Overview navigation via touch buttons
-Pages Overview Page (direct navigation to specific scenes)
-20 scenes/pages including text, audio & sounds and touch activated animations
with scenes my navigation is already working and I used tables to show the text for each scene.
Without any animations just the BG pictures + text in the scenes I already have 12 Mb.
I think scenes are maybe the better solution because when the scenes change I don't have to destroy my actors, right?
Or would it be better to change this set up to a "Simple one scene setup" triggered by a table to use less memory or loading time? But then how do I make my animation actors appear at the right times and places when the BG changes?
And wouldn't these animations stay in memory like the "Flip Pages" of the DeepBlueApps Template and cause the app to crash?
I figure the animations would be always on this one scene but needing their alpha to be triggered (but since they are touch interactive, they also would have to be trigger by a boolean (?) to stop the animations from running even though they are invisible,no? kind of makes my head spin only thinking about it...
Any suggestions? Would be lovely if somebody could give me some advice before I do something that is unusable, which is highly likely since I am a beginner at thinking logically. Thanks already!
Hope some of you are also interested in sharing their experience trying to make an interactive picture book.
Looking forward to meet fellow picture book and comic lovers
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Hi krustelkram,
I am new to GameSalad as I see that you were when you posted about making picture books in GameSalad. I am wondering if you have progressed with your books and if so would you be willing to share the "template" that you have created?
My wife and I have spent nine years producing seven children's books called The Karma Bus. This is an official TradeMark. Essentially they are about a positive and a negative karma bus, which depending on the actions of the characters in the books, either a positive or a negative Karma Bus appears.
They are fully illustrated and narrated. I am putting in sound-effects to compliment the narration as we speak.
Due to having no money left, I have to do all of the production myself; therefore, a head start with someone like yourself who has done a template would be awesome...
You may email me direct at: appdevelopment@anahatakarma.com
Thanks for your time, hoping to hear from you.
Brent
I used GS to make this story book, its all pretty simple stuff but your welcome to ask me questions.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flower-shop-fred-pet-animal/id705700749?mt=8
cheers.
my first gamesalad app was a children's book called loopy lost his lettuce (www.woolizoo.com).
My original idea was to do it in one scene with flip pages but there is no way gamesalad could handle it. So i created each page as a totally separate scene.
I have a few animations on each page. Each scene is on average around 120mb in memory. I tried to keep it below this mark for performance.
Once you get the hang of gamesalad you will easily be able to do what you want. Just working out a way to be past some of its limitations can take time.
Let me know if you have any questions.
I just completed a picture book/game/point & click adventure and after thought like yours I decided to go for scenes. Too much was happening in my "scenes" and it would have been a nightmarish mess to do it all in just one scene. Sure the loading time is a problem but my hopes is that when the new graphic system is released this will be improved. I just couldn't kill enough darlings for the sake of load time..