FOR JUNE: Which of these new features would be more important for you?
osalzano
Member, PRO Posts: 136
Gamesalad is a community and we all want to help make the platform even better.
But I think we can do it in a more organized way.
There are many new features in iOS4 to be implemented and I believe Gendai team could prioritize at least one of them in to be launched IN JUNE.
In your opinion, what is more important?
Just vote. Surely this will help give a direction to them.
But I think we can do it in a more organized way.
There are many new features in iOS4 to be implemented and I believe Gendai team could prioritize at least one of them in to be launched IN JUNE.
In your opinion, what is more important?
Just vote. Surely this will help give a direction to them.
Comments
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
I'm also willing pause, I forgot! :P
I'm assuming (very bad of me) that multi-tasking will necessitate the inclusion of a pause function. So even if Gendai don't get us an in-game pause, at least Apple kinda provide it with multi-tasking.
That's my hope. I'd settle for that.
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Good point, I agree!
My vote is on Game Center, followed very closely by In-App purchases.
Game Center - This is a gaming platform, designed to intuitively create games in a fast, efficient and fun way! What is the most important feature to a gaming platform? Well the ones that directly relate to gaming! Game Center takes the cake. A streamlined universal social gaming platform complete with gamer tags, gamer scores, achievements, voice chat and leader boards is by far the MOST important feature for our games, hands down! Just look at the success of xbox live and tell me the many gamers present in the iDevice world are not drooling over the idea of this in their completely mobile games.
Now that it is available, it will become THE standard for iDevice games. We need it, more than anything else FIRST!
However, that does not mean In-App purchases fall behind. In this race, this feature takes a close second. All I have to say is this - D(own) L(oadable) C(ontent) is HUGE among any and all gaming communities, mobile or not!
iAd's would be great, but honestly its not what our GAMES (thats right, we make GAMES!) need first!
Facebook/Twitter - Meh
@QS
I'm with you, PAUSE IS A MUST RIGHT NOW! It no longer needs to be discussed! This is just plain and simple, in your face, FACT!
-Kyle
I'd like to see better editor features, so we can create richer, more complicated games without it being a complete nightmare if you build a level, place everyhthing, then realise you need to modify it.
To me, everything else is secondary. If were not given the tools to build great games, the rest really isnt going to make much difference.
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
The other stuff is just gravy to me.
In all seriousness, it's so hard to pick just one feature. I agree with ChunkyPixels in that we need a more robust engine, but asking which features we want is like shopping for cars, only they ask you if you want: A steering wheel, a gas pedal, or brakes, we need all of them!
...otherwise Apple will get bored of it....plus all the crash reports GS generates which Apple probably filters out by know
First iPad post after one of the most intense days work of my little life!
I was hesitant to even submit my game
There are over 200 prototype actors and load was close to 45 seconds!!
New version came out and it is now about 4 seconds
I'll take that over anything else on that list.
The biggest complaint on reviews was always load times with no global scores a close second.
I really dontn care about iads. Sure ill use it if we have it but, it just sounds like people want to pump out free crap to make a buck. I dont mean anyone specifically here but, the in general i get that vibe.
It wont work that way. You still have to make your game popular and the free market is competitive.
To give an idea i have a free game in the lower part of the overall top 50 and and category top tens. that takes close to 10k downloads everyday. Which is a lot. It will take at least that to make a few bucks with i-ads.
Sure it's crappy but it was my first game. It was not slapped together to put i-ads into.
I just think we are going the wrong direction. Apple wants money for adds at any cost and I dont know if i like what it will spawn. Just my opinion.
I think a GOOD free game with some in app purchases could go a lot further and offer a better experience to players.
There will always be those types of devs that will pump out crappy games just to make a buck, iAds or not.
I think that using iAds could be advantageous with some apps. I don't plan on making every single one of my applications free, but I will utilize iAds within some games or apps which I feel would do much better in the "Free" market rather than the paid.
I think if you know the market, and analyze which apps may do better as free versus paid, and you're not putting shovelware out there, I think it could be great in terms of earnings.
I'm not holding my breath.... but we'll see
I don't mean this to post sound overly critical, but frankly, I have been extremely excited about the potential product GameSalad could become... and consistently disappointed with the quality of the creation tool and the stiflingly limited set of actions. GS has the potential to become *the* essential game dev tool for iOS, but until the GS people get their priorities right I just don't see it being adopted by most iOS developers as a serious tool.
I may have a somewhat unique opinion on this (though I suspect MANY GS customers likely agree with me) since I have been a professional software developer, architect, and project lead for more than 15 years, and I do realize that the product is targeted at amateur developers, non-programmers, and the like. Regardless, I'm sure the GS dev team clearly ARE experienced software developers so they should understand exactly what I am trying to say.
Before wasting any further dev cycles on adding new features of dubious utility, the GS team should seriously examine my following list of suggestions:
1. GS Creator Stability - The creator is a buggy mess. It consistently slows down, has problems rendering an actor edit mode for long/complex actor behaviors, tends to crash more often than a drunk, blind, NASCAR driver with no hands, and a long list of GS customers have reported issues with GS Creator completely deleting/losing many hours of their hard work. These issues hamper the workflow of your primary customer base, and I've read many messages in the forums from game developers with stalled or corrupted projects. GS's primary customer is the game developer, and your income model is based on developers registering the product. Simply consider how many abandoned registrations you guys are getting from devs that download the trial but abandon the product and look elsewhere due to stability issues and I'm sure you'll see why I think new iOS features are a waste of your time at the moment. I can tell you from experience, it's absolutely MADDENING when Creator crashes randomly about every 30-60 minutes!
2. Limited "Language" features - Although the current set of Actions/Behaviors/Rules provide enough power to create a wide variety of genre games, the creative DEPTH of those games is rather limited. I see there is a "My Behaviors" folder, but it looks like an unimplemented feature. Adding more "language" features would allow GS to help unlock the creative potential of both GS game developers and the iOS platform itself! More below:
3. Learn from other projects - Take a look at the MIT Scratch project, which is a game development tool (with a web player to publish games online) available for free, and is targeted as a tool to teach young children the basics of programming. It also has a rather limited feature set, but the Scratch editor already provides enough flexibility that games of considerable depth can be created.
4. Integrate a scripting languge, as an option - Look at integrating a JavaScript engine into GS Creator as well as the runtime while keeping the original action/behavior/rule model. This way, more experienced developers can use JavaScript to create custom behaviors/actions and/or more advanced game logic if they need to. Provide a method for the advanced devs to share their custom actions/behaviors with the rest of the GS community.
5. Consider a "DOM"-style object tree - Add a new attribute to game objects (sprites, etc) called "ID" or "Name" that is blank by default. If, say, a sprite prototype or instance has the ID attribute set to a unique string value, then expose that sprites attributes in the expression editor for any other game objects/sprites. That way, one sprite can directly control another without the confusing and error prone method currently in place (relay info between sprites using Game or Scene attributes). This would allow a much more flexible way to generate richer scenes at runtime with dynamically generated objects.
6. Add useful datatypes - Attributes currently can only contain scalar values or strings, which makes it extremely difficult (near impossible) to use more complex or dynamic game data. Specifically, add a "List" datatype, which acts as a single dimensional array of values of matched type. Provide actions/behaviors/etc to index elements stored in the list by numeric index. This would allow us to use GS to, for example, build a new "ToneMatrix"-style music composition application, or allow the user to enter arbitrary values like the name of an RPG character, or allow us to store level data and generate a scene dynamically from map data stored in a list... the uses are endless.
7. If you have a list datatype, it should be nontrivial to add the ability to index characters in a string attribute. Add actions/behaviors/expression editor functions for string operations like: "CharAt", "IndexOf", etc.
8. Add more graphics features: Sprite engines are great and GS certainly makes working with sprites easier, but I feel it sorely basic lacks vector or raster graphics functions. It would be immediately useful if you added the ability for GS developers to perform basic drawing functions, like: Line, Circle, Rectangle, Fills (and gradients), etc. Useful for special effects, and UI and it would be great if we could draw lines between two points or objects without implementing a ridiculous kludge.
9. Add simple custom "events" or "messaging": Right now, if we want to trigger some kind of action based on some other action, we must use a game attribute as a kind of flag, then add rule logic to both objects to check the flag state and change state accordingly. While that is effective in many cases, it would be even better to abstract that out into a "broadcast/subscribe" model. For example, create an action called "Broadcast" that takes a user-defined string as a message to send to any listening objects, and extend the Rule panel with a clause to fire if an event occurs like: If (actor) receives message -> "PauseClicked" This would greatly simplify a lot of code and it seems much more intuitive to me.
I'm sure I have more items but I'm now too tired to see sharp images and my brain feels like tapioca pudding. Please consider making some of the suggestions a priority, as it will only serve to make GS a better product with happier customers...
Thanks!
Pranakhan
thankyou Pranakhan...
#5 on his list is already possible, all actor instances can access and change any attribute of any other actor instance in the scene.