How Limited is Gamesalad?

Rukiri

I normally work with Unity but I don't think I need it for my next project, what I'm planning to do is an action/adventure RPG.

Actors/Hero's are handled by an array or list (I think you call arrays tables in GS).
Not sure how I would handle Formation through the menu system, say you have a max of 4 actors per party, you want to change actor A to actor Ds slot on the menu and I'm sure simple If/Else would do that. In Unity/C# I would use a list which automatically creates an array and ID which I believe the lists have a swap command so changing ID 1 to 4 is pretty simple.

But I want to simply know what the limitations of Eventing/Coding are in GS.

Thanks.

AngryBoi

Just look this question up in the search bar above. I'm sure it has been asked many times

tatiang

You can change the index value that points to a specific table row. So for example in a tableCellValue(tableName,row,col) lookup, varying the value of "row" by using an attribute can allow you to retrieve cell data from different table rows.

Moik

Pretty much any branching or looping events are possible. It just requires unusual finessing of Attribute Rules & Booleans Values for branching, and the Attribute Rules & Timer behaviour for looping.

If you want a thing to happen when the player gets to a place no matter when it is or what else the player is doing, just have an invisible actor to define the zone, then set a collision rule.
If you want a thing happen at a time regardless of player location or actor presence, that's just a flat out Timer backed by Change Attribute or Create/Destroy Actor.
If you want a thing to happen upon contacting an actor regardless of time or place, that's generally just a Mouse/Touch or collision action backed by Change Attribute or Create/Destroy Actor.

Game Salad's "drawback" is the lack of option to insert APIs like Facebook, Flurry Analytics, GameSparks, or MoPub. But generally there's an alternative of some kind already integrated. It just ties you to a specific Game Salad partner.

For any given design, Game Salad is likely be able to reproduce 75% of the features you plan, and will hit 85% with some of the 14.x features. Probably the bulk of the remaining 15-25% isn't a necessity to make the app competitive (feature creep), and the comparative time savings of Game Salad's drag and drop styles will keep the cost in time down. Lets you get more apps out faster and roll the dice more often to see what clicks with the market.

I've run into a few points where a feature is being glitchy, or is confusing to set up. I just cut the feature then pivot the design until it makes sense without that feature. I spent a larger amount of time 're-designing' than I should, but that cut-to-ship mentality keeps me from getting blocked and I retain momentum and personal morale. That logic probably applies to any development though.