Getting To Know You - May 2010

Yodapollo

Hey, everybody!

We were looking through our archives and realized it's been far too long since our last community survey. So, we put together this short little form (only 13 questions) to help us better serve our community as to their wants and needs. If you have a couple of minutes, please follow the link and help us out.

Getting To Know You - May 2010

Thanks, everyone, this will be a big help!

--Yodapollo

design219

You should change that thread title to something more accurate... maybe include the word "survey". There is already a "getting to know you" thread: http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=4834#post-29776 (and it should be a sticky)

This is a good idea, however, and I see how this could help. I'll take the survey in a minute.

*edit*
Also, your first question should be "how often", or else you need to change your answers.

*edit2*
Will we get to see the results when you have a good sample?

JCFord

Just left my feedback on the form, but I think even this could be made a little easier to understand!

Photics

Heh... yeah... the questions were strangely worded.

Here's my answer for question #11...

LOADING TIMES!
The splash screen stays on too long and the user should be able to skip it. I don't think it helps Gendai Games to have a GameSalad splash screen displayed for more than 3-5 seconds. I probably wouldn't mind the GameSalad load screen if I could add my own splash screen and the GameSalad splash screen was less annoying. Splash screens are quite common with professional video games... but they're usually able to be skipped and they don't stay on the screen for too long.

Made with GameSalad... fade... Created by the Developer... fade... Title Screen... fade... Fun!
(That's the way I think it should work!)

Performance
If there are too many actors on the screen, the game performance drops a lot. This seems unusual for a 2D game.

Controls
It's tough making on-screen controls, especially with multiple touch points.

Pricing
Not being able to create links to my games hurts sales, but $2000 a year for pro seems way too expensive for me. I don't think multiple versions of GameSalad helps Gendai Games. I think one version for $299 is a better idea. It seems as this would lead to more sales.

I'm not making a lot of money on the App Store, far less than I've made with the Android Market. I think iAds, Game Center and App Purchases could help a lot.

Web Publishing
I don't like the current setup. It should work more like a Flash file. I'd rather host the files on my website. Plus, the browser support is lacking. those two reasons are why I don't use Web Publishing.

In general, I don't like the way 0.8.6 was handled. I think GameSalad developers should know when to expect updates. Plus, it seems that 0.8.6 made a lot of things worse... yet, a fix still has not been released.

...and I think QuantumSheep would be happy to learn that I selected "Pause". I hate Facebook and leaderboards is silly. Just support Apple's Game Center.

Cap

Thanks for this great survey! It's great to see you care what we think.

Basically I'd like to see...

a, more stability (have to quit & restart every few minutes because of lag)
b, loop, array, index
c, pause
d, price drop ;-)

Of course it would be great to have some options to use Plus+ or OpenFeint. Or a similar service from Gendai maybe?! ;-)

What's really important: please (and I mean PLEASE) don't display the GS logo for an endless time on the launch of an app made with GS Express. If I buy and play a game made with GS Express, I'd like to think of the originality of the game, the great work of the author and maybe even of the fantastic tool he used to design it (GS)! I don't want to think "Oh my god, now I have to wait and can't do nothing until this logo disappears. And that basically takes... forever."
The GameSalad logo should stand for creativity and not for infinity. ;-)

Keep up the good work, you're great! :-)

Photics

The focus on the client doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, I have to restart the GameSalad software frequently... SO WHAT?! The real issue should be game performance. It takes me like 10 seconds to restart my game... but it takes like 20 seconds for someone to play my game. It should be obvious which is the greater issue. If not... here's some math.

I have to reset and force quit GameSalad about 20 times a day. That's a little over three minutes. Overall, I'm still producing games faster than with Flash or other game development tools. So even though I'm losing three minutes, I'm gaining months... possibly years... with the game creation speed. Meanwhile, scitunes had a game downloaded about a quarter of a million times. With a 20 second load time, that's 57 days of life wasted if they all played the game just once.

With all the games out there, with all the games being played daily, the time equivalent of entire lives are lost.

JoshKahane

Thanks for taking interest in us, hehe. Glad to see you want some feedback. As Photics said, having to quit GameSalad is a drag and to see the back of that would be great (as well as leaderboards!) Good luck with whatever your working on now. Hope all is going well.

design219

Photics said:
The focus on the client doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, I have to restart the GameSalad software frequently... SO WHAT?! The real issue should be game performance.

Right 100%. It's no big deal to relaunch GS when it starts to slow. But the game performance is VERY important. The long load is awful.

nulo

I got a little worried about some of the questions there.

I Bought Gamesalad CREATOR. Focus on that.

I didn't buy training on how to create games, or creating art assets or a distribution site.
A want a tool that can create pro level games. Not a tool where I can open a template, use some art and sound assets that comes with the package, and hit publish.

If I want to learn hot to create games, all I need to do is google it. Many articles are all around the internet.
If I want art for my game? Create it! If you cant, get someone to do it for you. Or buy assets on one of the million sites out there.
Music? The same as art assets.

Gendai, don't waste your time with stuff thats 1 million times less important than some features that the software totally lacks..

Photics

I think they're interested in building a gaming community. The thing is, let the community do that. There's zero encouragement to post on the wiki. Maybe if they gave away some pro licenses, that might happen. If they want quality tutorials, they should do a better job of encouraging that. Otherwise, people are likely to keep working on their games.

Also, not being able to post attachments on the forums... or send private messages... is a significant hindrance. I think their choice of software wasn't great. WordPress is cool, but the blog is hardly used... and why should it be? If I want chit-chat or the latest info, I read the forums. Yet, I think bbPress is an awful choice for forum software. Maybe one day it will be great, but right now there are so many better alternatives for a community like this.

fmarkus

Game performance and product awareness through Facebook!

rebump

Stability and then money making features (ad integration, in-app sales, online leaderboards) are tops on my list.

Dhondon

PAUSE!
And maybe change the loading screen text to: "Powered by GameSalad"(sound a bit more professional).

The pricing is also interesting. Do you thing Gendai Would and it´s users be better of with an 500 dollar pricetag? I´m not paying 2000 bucks for an custom loading screen:)

JoshKahane

I remember what I should have included! Pixel collision! Pleeaase! This would open up options for sooo many kinds of games and improvements and enhancements rather than having rickety invisible walls everywhere.

For example: I have an actor with alpha in (invisible bits) and in the actors attributes panel there is a tick box (boolean attribute) that lets us tick to have pixel collision on the actor or not. If ticked then actors won't collide into invisible spots.

Pleeaase! This comes over everything like leaderboards and facebook/twitter integration. They are merely additions, this is a true feature which opens up more creative possibilities as a whole rather than adds optional additions.

Hope you agree with me.

CodeCode

It would be great to have windows when open the actors, sometimes when i am working on an actor and i want to compare the actor with another i have to go back to the scene open the other actor write down the information i need for the other actor go back again to the scene and select again the first actor. Its a waste of time and sometimes it takes even more time when you are using GS for a long time and GS becomes slow.

quantumsheep

I just want to thank those that voted for 'Pause'

Brings a tear to this old sheep's eyes, I can tell thee!

Cheers!

QS

JoshKahane

Just had another thought! Easier to use actor transform tools! I know they are so simple right now and easy to use, but when you have small actors you cant grab the transform buttons, so please makes the transform square surround the actors as opposed to get squeezed onto it.