Why i would stop using Gamesalad ?

nadhim

I'm using gamesalad (mac and pc versions) for more than year, unfortunately the app suffers from many issues making it impractical and very limited, and i just want to attract developers attention to them.

1. the PC and Mac version suffers from unpredictable freezes and crashes all the time which makes it untruthful when creating your game especially when you do a long and complicated behaviours.

2. the Pro version price is too hight for an indie mobile developer.

3. the software UI is a nightmare and lets give some examples:

   • you cannot organize your actors and art in folders or assets other than the tags for actors only.
   • if you want to change an actor behaviour your need to go back and forth between the scene and the actor behaviours page which makes it very frustrating when tuning and testing actors.
   • the layers system and the whole side menu are not good especially in MAC, look at unity for example, where UI is user friendly.

4. you cannot create large games as the software cannot hold them.

5. you need a long time to do small functions like changing actor pivot point and many things.

6. the app limited to square and circular collision areas makes it useless for most games.

7.the app doesn't support sprites and you need to do animations instead which is acting like a huge clutter when importing 20 pictures to do 4 sec movement.

8.It suffers from performace issues and gradual memory drain when you keep editing and testing for long time and you need to becareful not to freez your computer.

9. Pc version cannot edit any project info after creation.

10. you cannot test directely (when camera in place) instade you need to launch the project every time.

gamesalad is a good engine but with these issues (especially the collision area limitation) is a wast of time.

Ed_Perkin

agreed , poly-customisable , to edit collision shapes round objects should be the priority , being pro and paid quite a lot of money i would expect the GS guys to be working on this?

Thunder_Child

My spidey senses tell me you will be directed to the request feature bug reporting site...

Braydon_SFX

@Thunder_Child said:
My spidey senses tell me you will be directed to the request feature bug reporting site...

You smart.

@nadhim‌ - A lot of the things you've mentioned have been already submitted as a feature. The GS Team is aware of these wants and are working on some now as well as a Cross Platform creator which should be faster, freeze less (I hope) etc.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Like most things in life if you don't like something don't use it. Life can be simple if you view it that way. GS is aware of the issues and are working on them and new solutions. I've been using GS for years and have been happy with it. To each his own. I believe the future is bright for GS.

Moogus

These are all valid points... and good case to use something else, but in terms of costs I checked out Unity3D and they are even steeper for an indie dev.

Remember GS doesn't pretend to be high end. Its a great application and if it wasn't for this application I certainly would not have started dev'ing basic games.

Hope they manage to implement some of the features it would greatly improve GS. I would very much welcome these

M

BigDave

i love gamesalad with all its issues.
Some times it makes my angry sometimes it surprises me.
It is for sure a hell of a relationship.

nadhim

thanks for your reaction guys, I love gamesalad and this was the reason I wrote this post. Unity is pricey but it deserves the money because it supports all platforms and it is a strong tool and many cutting edge games made through it. Gamesalad can nail all 2D engines if they fix these small issues and i can guarantee