Greetings, question about the MP and language...

TouchiMedia

Hello all,

I have been monitoring gamesalad for awhile now. The Async Multiplayer is like a dream come true for me, an indie developer trying to get into the iOS gaming business. I have experimented with other game making programs but none have the MP Async on the radar and that's a big deal to me.

So I'm seriously thinking about making the big switch over and experimenting around with Gamesalad.

Question - What language should I read up on or study to get more familar with the MP Async implementation?

I have really no coding background but quite familar with computer lingo - just not specific programming - but would like to think I have pretty good problem solving skills and logic to tackle coding.

JSON? Javascript? C? I'd like to be able to read some of the MP Async code and be able to interpret it - so what programming language would be best to study?

Cheers

Appreciate any help!

tatiang

Hi and welcome! I think you'll find GameSalad to be a powerful and relatively easy tool to use. As with the rest of GameSalad, the recently introduced multiplayer functionality requires no scripting ability or comprehension. There is JSON support for pushing/pulling website data but it's not required to create a multiplayer game. GameSalad runs on Lua but again, no experience with Lua is necessary to dive right in.

With the exception of the JSON functions, there is no "code" to read or interpret. It's all hidden from view. More important than any understanding of a specific code is a level of comfort with general programming ideas such as algorithms, procedures, functions, loops, conditional statements, variables, debugging, etc. And when I say "ideas," I really mean that. If you understand the logic behind how these things should work, you'll be much better off trying to structure and understand your GameSalad "code."

Multiplayer functionality relies heavily on tables, which are GameSalad's version of arrays and records but which most resemble a spreadsheet like you'd use with Excel. Becoming proficient with tables in GameSalad is a prerequisite for any multiplayer implementation.

I suggest you start by watching tutorials and reading the GameSalad Cookbook. In addition to the tutorials I offer in my signature, there are many people here who have very good resources for learning GameSalad, including:

GSHelper.com
DeepBlueApps.com
@jamie_c's YouTube channel (sorry, don't have the link at the moment)
@FryingBaconStudios' YouTube channel (sorry, don't have the link at the moment)

TouchiMedia

Yes I'm quite familar with general programming ideas / algorithms.. I made an iOS game with another program but I feel like this has a better future for my endeavors/ideas with MP Async gameplay - and the roadmap on future stuff looks interesting.

I'll take a look at the CookBook and maybe read a little bit on JSON just so I can have some comprehension as to what is going on and how it's used - though I already know JSON is user friendly when it comes to readability vs other languages.

Thanks and Appreciate the helpful insight. Look forward to working on a Gamesalad project or two!