Ever get frustrated enough to just quit?
Free templates...crap...bought templates...not much better...cookbook...youtube...3rd party video tutorials....How do you learn when all of these dont get a simple function done...doesnt teach you? Do you struggle and fumble your way until you get it? Do you just pay someone to do it? I made the dumbest, most simple app and used the behaviora to just post a damn score in leaderboards and one easy achievement. Im absolutely certain Ive done what all the sources tell me to do. Why the heck does it not work. I know Im less than a GS year old but its drag and drop...type a stupid identifier for leaderboards. Create the test user account...all the stuff Im suppose to do. I create a thread. Learn templates a POS...horribly pathetically terrible even quoted. Im about to give up making games. I dont know how Im suppose to be learning. I feel like Im taking a course that required 5 previous prerequisite classes. I see people asking the same questions over and over. I search the forums only to find the majority of answers vague or un answered. Only to see they ask it again in a different thread because that thread gets buried in no where GS land. Im so frustrated Im about to just go back to PC and game. I gave up so much to turn mobile app and game design....all based on a friend saying that GS and the forums was the shiznit. That there was nothing better for non code app building. I still can get a simple task done.
Comments
It sounds like you have made up your mind.
Maybe the Universe was trying to tell you something all along..sometimes it takes time to receive the message.
GameSalad is all about compromise, managing frustration and patience...then there are small rewards and pleasures that appear after all the hard work and then it is back to the same cycle. Some people enjoy this kind of process and see an ultimate reward for their investment - they believe in the destination, the promised land it offers and more importantly the journey. (it is not pseudo-religious it is just how it is IMO).
You do not sound like one of these people - so it may well be time to give up.
No malice or ill intent towards you. Good luck if you do decide to leave and I hope you find something fulfilling.
Me I am staying.
Ha Ha Ha
You think your frustrated now? I've Been using GS for 2 years, and trying to develop for 3. And What do I have to show for it? 0. Zip. Nothing. Nada. So I get What you mean. It's Like Trying to Break down a wall with your head. Dude, all I Can say As Advice For both of us is to keep trying. But seriously, this is the hardest thing I've Ever tried to Do, and I'm Not Having success, So... Really what can I say? "Just Keep trying" is not really useful to anyone. I guess Whats kept me Motivated For all this time is the Vision In my head of what I could do, sort of like "the Dream". My reason For Striving through all of the crap, failure, and disappointment. You've probably heard "inspiring" Sayings before. But the one that inspires me is by the iconoclastic, Steve Jobs:
http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-here-s-to-the-crazy-ones-the-misfits-the-rebels-the-troublemakers-the-round-pegs-in-the-square-steve-jobs-283977.jpg
Dedication -- that's what required and you've put in some dedication, that's for sure. I know that you've been trying to get Leaderboards to work -- are you sure it's not a GameSalad bug with leaderboards?
The video tutorials are actually very clear on what you need to do. Granted, they are about a year old (for my vids on game center) but the idea is exactly the same. I'm not sure what else to tell you.
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@lycettebros wow your a real ego booster...lol.
@gamestudent you kind of make me feel I want to/should stick with it.
@Braydon_SFX I surely feel at this point it should be working. It totally does not. I it is a bug with GS then that just would piss me off because if the base doesnt work. Everything falls. I dont know how to troubleshoot software I am expecting to function. That makes it impossible for someone like me to advance a single step forward.
What is so hard is I put in effort and find the code is not correct...I make changes according to advise...I then make it so simple I dont know how it could be wrong and then its suggested it could be a bug. The Gigo Effect really sucks. Lol.
Just like I gave up on a joystick..just like I gave up on a universal build...Ill give up on Game Center because...I cant figure it out. I dont just know it. Where and how am I suppose to learn it? I cant learn it without good guidance to follow. I dont want to pay someone to do it because I wont be learning anything but if I offered to pay it would be fixed within hours.
Anyways. Im done for the night. Have a great evening ya'll. peace out yo.
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Its always interesting to see what motivates people to keep going.
Some designers focus on enmity -- some look to amity.
I'm not saying one way is superior to the other. Both ways lead to creation -- and destruction.
What brings you satisfaction? When you are done, what will you have accomplished? Do you want to beat GameSalad into submission (despite all its quirks)? Or do you want to work in unison with GameSalad (in spite of all its quirks)?
Is GameSalad an enemy? Or is GameSalad a friend?
Are you trying to beat an opponent into creating something with you? Or are trying to cooperate with a friend to achieve something great?
Motivation -- what an interesting thing.
Ok I guess Im not done for the night.
What I want is...to learn what value to put into GS...I want to know where to learn how to put in that value and when I input a correct value, that it work.
When I see a joystick is the GS templates I want that in my game. I have to start with that template if I want one because I dont know how to code it. Id like to know how to do a correct universal build...so would a huge huge number of people. "Heres a template, just merge it with the other with this nifty 3rd party app"....joystick malfunctions after previewing correctly...adhoc does not function properly...go to forums...no answers available...toss that one...no joystick...no universal build. Make game with leaderboards...use these rules...rules are incorrect...do this...do that...doesnt work. Use latest nightly build. Cant publish...use new GS release...no longer supports merging of files because they dont care or support 3rd party. Use the cookbook...oh supports iOS4...scratch that...watch these 3 videos to use Game Salad and post scores....oh it only tells you how to use in app purchases....time wasted. How do I do this? "Well I cant tell you because the forums dont allow it because I would have to refer to a 3rd party and thats not allowed...thread closed. Im not working against GS...Im pretty sure at this point its working against me. It is not the drag and drop as advertised before I bought it. GS is 3rd Party to Apple...Apple and everything else out there people try to create to help GS is 3rd Party and not allowed. Not Supported. GS is working against itself IMO...even the guy who spent a year creating a new master class to help people...GS become better had his thread closed. They should have hired the guy. The "Veterans" know what to do....nearly everyone else I see in the forums (daily) are lost. Apparently the forums have absolutely nothing to do with GS and how to make it better. They should be working together and its obvious they do not so how...is it suppose to be working for me? Selfish statement I know...but I didnt buy GS but for anyone else but me. Its just now I have come to realize I think its a select few that know what to do and noobs like myself cant seem to find the resources...the correct ones to do some of the simplest things. By Monday Ill probably just keep trying...when I do figure it out...which has been the case everytime for me...Ill be all like "geez...that was it...so simple". And then Ill be like..."why could I not find that out when I asked the forums...looked in the cookbook...watched that video?"
Blah ! Im tired. 12:30am. 16hr work day....2 more to go ! GS? I ant got time fo dat!
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It can take years to learn how to build games. Even though this is drag and drop it is still logic based coding kinda like the old basic program. It still requires knowledge of logic trees and computer knowledge. You need to know about pixels and graphic formats. How a device functions in theory at it's base level. Yeah we don't have to know processor functions or OpenGL for graphics but you still need an above average knowledge of computers. One needs to know math for doing vectors and expressions.
We try upfront to advice new users game development is a tough business that requires time heck years to learn. You need patience dedication and passion. Most people are in too much of a rush. After your first few attempts at doing gamecenter and it didn't work you should have submitted a bug report.
Game development isn't for everyone. Just because one like games and plays them isn't enough for game development. You need the mind for design, concepts, creativity, math and logic et... It's not for everyone. Hope you figure out if it's for you.
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Chin up, little Gipper..
I've got news for you, my friend - making games is like making Sausage. It's totally disgusting and often butt-backwards in the creation, but when it's done right, it's heavenly.
Now I could tell you all about how in my 20+ years experience working in the industry making games at developers (NovaLogic, BlackOps, Genuine Games, etc.) and at Publishers (Activision, 3DO, THQ, etc.) that there's really some kind of magical secret handshake or technique in wiggling the code and tools to work so you get HALO, CALL OF DUTY, GUITAR HERO, etc. each and every time you sit at your desk but I'd be lying to you..
Without going and either taking multiple years of technical schooling at a Game Dev institution (i.e. USC, DigiPen, Full Sail, etc.) or self-teaching yourself Java, C++, Zbrush, and Maya before jumping into Unity or the Unreal Engine, GameSalad is probably one of the best stand-alone game development packages for Indies. (Hell, Professionals use it too.. )
But the secret sauce is this - it's no different than any other SDK out there - it's perpetually evolving, being updated by the Salad-meisters, and being tweaked by Apple and Google.
What separates the goobers from the real game devs is being able to take this pulsating mass of protoplasm code and forming it into something that works for you. Sure, you might grab a template or watch a cool tutorial vid, but those are simply examples of what other people have done with THEIR efforts - it's YOUR job to study that example and TWEAK it to make it work for what you're building.
So is it easy? Nope...never has been.. Otherwise we'd all be making Angry Birds (or was that Flappy Bird..) and dancing our way to the bank in diamond-studded solid gold platform shoes..
(..and if it makes you feel any better, I've seen my fair share of devs literally jump outta their desks and run out of their offices while screaming obscenities from sheer frustration.. We've all felt your pain...it's part of the "fun".)
-- J
@gamestudent I salute you.
@Thunder_Child joystick template is hard to figure out and adapt it to new projects.
and all the things you said and done, I think we experienced them all before.
Never give up.
Can you post you GC code? It's 100x easier to help if we see the code, or a video of what doesn't work.
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I started with gamesalad in September last year.
So far I have gotten extremely far in game development. (Well, it's how I see myself so far, others may think different of me)
Sometimes I get very frustrated when making my projects, this is when I will take about a weeks break and work on a different project to clear my mind.
If you can't figure something out, then step away from the computer and have a think about how you can make this work.
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Too many people want to make an epic killer game for their first release. Bad idea.
Make something small and simple but spend lots of time on it and get it right. Too many people here biting off more than they can chew.
@Thunder_Child
I suspect a simple lack of attention to detail is often the cause of so many issues to do with GameSalad. As you probably know, if after building a joystick controller or scoring system (or whatever) with dozens of rules and attributes and behaviours, you only have to miss a single bracket in an equation somewhere for the whole thing to grind to a halt (I'm sure we've all experienced those wasted 2 hours trying to track down a rouge zero or comma
) . . . so an attention to detail, the ability to be reasonably methodical, is crucial.
I suspect that this is, at least partially, the difference between people who manage to get on just fine with GameSalad - and those who struggle getting things to work. There's no enormous skill gap, no great insight or profound talent others have that these struggling people might be lacking, it may well be just the patience to sit down and methodically go through everything.
This might not be a great example, but check your posts in this thread - and the post by gamestudent - both of you admit to struggling with GameSalad to some extent, now check the posts by people like RThurman and Braydon_SFX who seem to get on fine with GameSalad, whereas your posts are littered with errors, spelling and general grammar mistakes, I struggle to spot a single one in posts by RThurman and Braydon_SFX. And yet I suspect your grasp of the English language is every bit as good as RThurman and Braydon_SFX's, you certainly have no issue conveying ideas perfectly clearly.
This is not a criticism of you, or your grammar, you may well be the brightest person in the world for all I know, plenty of very very clever people are very sloppy when it comes to things like the written word - but I often find this lack of attention to detail translates to GameSalad.
And of course I may well be wrong and you are just incredibly stupid, but I doubt that
Hi man
Stick with it...
I've been developing for just about 3 years now and just gone Pro last month. I admit it's hard to come up with a good idea, spend multiple hours sweating stuff into your app but I know it will pay off soon...it just has too.
My next app is probably my best and generally universally viable so looking forward to seeing how it goes, oh and it will be my first step into Android too.
I think GS is an amazing product and we forget its free for the most part, so I'm grateful to the team as I cannot code at all but I'm a good graphic artist so it works for me.
Use the forums like Braydon says as the videos are superb and if you still can't get it going, then ask in the forums as the community is great.
Best of luck Thunder child
It takes a Zombie to know a Zombie!!!
I've gotten to a love hate balance with GS. It's quirky but in the end I know I just have to figure out what GS likes and dislikes. And sometimes there's a problem on the side of the GS dev team. Remember, you're working with GS. It never works with you.
I think what happens here is a trade off because you're not just dealing with your errors in conjunction with Apple's new submission process, but you're also dealing with the errors of the middle man who's made it possible to trade having to learn raw basic coding for a drag and drop solution. Lets go into a fun and unnecessary analogy:
Coding on your own is like going into the wild and having endless flexibility, being able to run around and do anything, but it's dark outside. The more you learn the higher the sun rises and the more you see there is to do.
GameSalad is like an untidy padded room filled with gadgets and tools put there by, lets say, a code wizard. And that's all you've got to build something. And in order for you to see you have to wire the lighting yourself (and you're no electrician) So at certain points, while you're walking through the room, the lights cut out (because you're a terrible electrician or the room doesn't like what you're doing). You have to step all over everything, stub your toes, trip and fall, and sometimes faceplant onto random objects to figure out where everything is, and how you're going to safely use the tools and maneuver through the room so you can find that faulty wiring.
But then at the end of the day, when you think you've figured it all out, and the wizard stopped by to finally tidy up a little and make things a little easier, an Apple employee breaks in and sets a line of thumbtacks at the door.
Vent it out thunder man, vent it out.
I feel your pain and I live it..........
I remember my first head scratcher. Loading Xcode and there was problems in the "get registry". I remember thinking what the heck is a "get registry?" And why do I have to use the command line tool to run Xcode?? Hard start..................
I had no idea until I started trying to make an ios App. Things that you think should be so easy are buried or over complicated. Fix something and carry on until it breaks again.
I was thinking of this exact thing the other day. Programmers and game makers SHOULD be the best with the ladies. Its ironic that a geek like myself couldn't pick up a girl if my life depended on it. In programming we face rejection and problems and we just keep on going trying again and again only to be frustrated over and over. No matter how many times we fail we just dredge on.
If we applied this to woman computer geeks would rule the world!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ohh you are good, you are very good.
?
Not sure what you are saying ? I'm saying that often the only difference between someone struggling with an issue and someone who can make things work first time (or even eventually) can often be attention to detail rather than a gulf in skills or creativity or maths (or whatever). And this lack of attention to detail can often be reflected in our posts - and like I say this isn't a comment on the quality of their grammar (making a great game is not a spelling competition), just that I suspect those who rattle off a post full of spelling errors may well be the same people who rattle off a piece of code with a missing bracket or comma here and there.
Im at "work"
Moving between towns. I will respond to you all later. I appreciate the feedback. I will make a video of my example. I did post some pics of my leaderboard issue in a past thread. People did answer but I didnt find a solution. Ill get back at cha's later.
Yes I understand english...my online grammar is a mess.
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No one has said you don't understand English (capital 'E',
lol), my post was a comment about how a lack of attention to detail, while perfectly practicable in the real world, can trip you up in an unforgiving environment like GameSalad.
@Gattoman, you speak with much profoundness...
"profundity"
[joking / runs for cover !
]
Weird how I chose to work in a different manner. For my first game with GameSalad, or ever for that matter, I'm going all out with this. Spending 12 hours a day, every day of the week. I've implemented 3D graphics & lighting into the game, the menu's are all animated slightly to give better appearance, I've got overlayed layers everywhere, I've used custom font for the game and numbers, etc. It's a "simple" game, turned extremely eye-candy happy.
However, this may be because I have 10 years prior experience in graphic design and 2 years in 3D modelling/animation.
To each their own!
@JodyMitoma Sounds just like me.
I don't have professional experience but I've always been an artist and went to school for animation. The problem is I live in Tennessee and it's a creativity desert. My options? Learn coding or GameSalad. It's my masterplan to escape the 9-5.
@Thunder_Child Don't worry, we feel you. We've all been there. But if you're really not enjoying GameSalad, then don't worry about exhausting your other options.
I have a feeling there will be points where I'll get frustrated. I had gotten stuck at least once so far. But, I posted the question and the first four responses had two variations of the code I needed written out and two others posted actual completed files.
The ability to communicate clearly with the other developers, so they know the current state of your progress and what the end goal is, probably has the most control in how well and how easily developers can get assistance.
But, I've been in that position before where no one can tell what I'm doing wrong, and no matter how much help I got I couldn't fix it. In those cases, I was actually doing some basic setup incorrectly, and no one was checking my basic setup. For example, I was making a Java program, and all the math was concatenating.
In retrospect, I bet I wasn't including the standard input/output library, or I had it mis-spelled. The point Socks brought up about eye-for-detail and missing brackets and stuff was 95% of why I couldn't do real programming and came to Game Salad. To bring it back to the issue of Leaderboard not working, I haven't looked into them myself, but I would suggest double checking what variables are declared in the Game tab, to make sure they're all present and have no typos, and that they match what's used on the Leaderboard actors.
When I started learning Game Salad, I had tried to do things in sequence, starting with menus and controls, and encountered no problems. I switched to working on some of the core engine functions, to demo my game for prospective team members, and then I started finding the challenging bits that will frustrate me. Like, I can't find an 'on launch' behavior, loops aren't in the PC kit yet which I use, I can't tell if I can increment a variable name, et cetera.
The more I dig in, the more I find what Game Salad can't seem to do, but just given that initial response to my first request for help, I'm cautiously optimistic that work-arounds will become available if I can express my need accurately and wait it out. I'm already waiting for Droid IAP and Project Obfuscation, so I feel like I have time to fill anyways before I would want to release something.
No
Shadows Peak is an atmospheric psychological horror that explores the dark side of a player.
No, as @imGua said, I just wish my ideas book and my cute mechanics directory wouldn't fill up faster than my finished projects folder.
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There have been more than one occasion that I've been extremely frustrated with GameSalad Windows Creator. Many times due to not knowing how to do something correctly, many other times due to Windows Creator being way too buggy to be able to develop at a quick pace.
It's nothing to fret over, and I suggest you just search for whatever it is you are looking for either on these very forums, or on YouTube.
There are tons of "beginner" videos that you could watch, to learn the basics of GameSalad, and once you've got that down, you're well on your way.
The way I learned GameSalad, was by thinking up a game that I really would of loved to see on the App/Play Store. I sketched up some ideas, and while at work, I'd continually add to my thoughts on my phone or a mini notepad.
Once my thoughts were all on paper, I got to work on designing my very first game - ever.
Before attempting GameSalad, I was in the process of learning Java. I bought two heavy books, and got about halfway through both of them. Programming is just not my thing, and it never will be. Although I've learned a lot, and I'm sure it has helped me as I continue to learn GameSalad, it is just not where I see myself going in the future.
I'm incredibly thankful for GameSalad's existence, and I think every one of us should be too. It is indeed one incredible piece of software!
I've been using GameSalad since April 27th of this year, and have spent over 10 hours every single day since. The rate that my game is coming to life, is absolutely absurd, and I would of never imagined being able to take my talent in graphic / 3d design, and being able to create a GAME!
I mean come on... We're making games for heaven's sake... and at a cost of a few hundred bucks, I'm damn well pleased.
Good luck in your future endeavours!
I'm constantly frustrated with GameSalad but I have 37 apps on Nook, 10ish on Google Play, 15ish on iTunes, 10ish on Amazon. Only started learning it late January. I am constantly hitting walls, breaking them down, and finding new walls. But if you're passionate about it you'll bust down every wall you need to towards you goal. It's def a love hate relationship. Keep at it and keep thinking of why you're making games in the first place. If you get stuck ask for help. I've gotten so much help when I've been stuck from great members here.
@dreichelt - we'll said. I'm mostly past the point of hitting walls in terms of learning the engine, but I occasionally hit my head against the wall due to a stupid logic mistake I make early in the morning.
Woah! 37 apps!?
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