Tips & tricks - what would you like to see

BlackCloakGS

We want to know what are the most common tips and tricks you'd like to know - whether you are a new user or an experienced user.
Can you please answer this thread with two things

• 1) your experience level - new/intermediate/advanced
• 2) what topics you want to learn about.
  That's it.
  Thank you!

Braydon_SFX

I like to think of myself as an advanced user, but there are always aspects that others greatly accelerate in that I'm just not as experienced. I've never been great with sine and cosine. Using those functions inside GS is something I've always wanted to learn more about.

neoman

Some tips and tricks would be great from the masters! Here are my answers:

• 1) your experience level - I think I would be an intermediate user.
• 2) what topics you want to learn about - I would like to learn more about how to use functions in games like abs, cos, asin, atan, celi, cos ... etc

Thunder_Child

1. Intermediate User
2. EDIT...I'd like to be able to hold shift and click several on screen actors and move them at the same time to adjust them.

AngryBoi

Intermediate - Ive never really gotten deep into what GameSalad can do.. To be honest, I've never actually used tables. I just don't understand why to use them

sebmat86

Intermediate user. I get most of the things I want to do, done. But if I just could get the hang of all the fuctions - abs, cos, asin etc, and also understand tables a bit better, I could get things done easier, faster and better!

MarcMySalad

@neoman said:
Some tips and tricks would be great from the masters! Here are my answers:

• 1) your experience level - I think I would be an intermediate user.
• 2) what topics you want to learn about - I would like to learn more about how to use functions in games like abs, cos, asin, atan, celi, cos ... etc

+1

Approw

1 Intermediate
2 I still do not really understand table search.

KevinCross

Intermediate user.

I'd definitely like to have a better understanding of sin, cos, asin, and all of those other circular/angle type functions. I recently gave up on one project as I couldn't get the dragging of actors to work properly once the camera was rotated.

@neoman abs() is an easier one to understand, it just returns an absolute value of a number without it's negative sign so -4 becomes 4. I have used this before in GameSalad. I think I use it with rotation.

daaddd

Intermediate , I would like to learn more about networking with GS.

pHghost

Higher-intermediate, I would say.

Networking, using the online functionality to exchange game data. Using the new AI Pathfinding module.

Valan

Intermediate.
Retrieving and writing to external databases.

Thanks

jonmulcahy

@Valan said:
Intermediate.
Retrieving and writing to external databases.

Thanks

Check out the link in my signature

jonmulcahy

@pHghost said:
Higher-intermediate, I would say.

Networking, using the online functionality to exchange game data. Using the new AI Pathfinding module.

Sam here for the path finding. It's very intriguing but I haven't had the time to dive in.

Armelline

• Advanced
• Honestly, the thing I'd find most useful is a fairly technical and in-depth look at how GameSalad operates "under the hood". Does it work harder to save a table with 5 cells or a list of 5 attributes? How does it decide its order of execution? What strain is a constrain attribute really placing on it? Getting down to the nitty-gritty that would allow for really tight optimisation and deeper understanding of how things work.

@neoman said:

• 2) what topics you want to learn about - I would like to learn more about how to use functions in games like abs, cos, asin, atan, celi, cos ... etc

I've been a bit behind on everything the last few weeks due to illness, but I'm working on a Illustrated Guide to the functions. Quick teaser:

For sine and cosine, I did a very quick introduction to them here:

Plenty more to be explained though!

Edit: Are animated gifs not working on the forums any more? They don't seem to work for me recently

Chunkypixels

1) Intermediate/Advanced
2) Functions

As quite a few others have stated... more tips and tricks showing how the various mathematical functions can be used.

@Socks is my GS forum hero when it comes to his posts regarding the uses of things like Cos and Sin functions...

Socks

1) your experience level - new/intermediate/advanced
2) what topics you want to learn about.

1) Like Braydon said, with some aspects I'd say I was intermediate, some advanced, and others I'm completely clueless about.

2) Like @Armelline I'd like to learn more about optimising performance.

kganczak

Hello all
I think at this point i am an intermediate user. I would like to learn more about multiplayer and networking with gamesalad.

Socks

@Armelline said:
For sine and cosine, I did a very quick introduction to them here:

Attached is a sin/cos ruler to go with your video, grab the end of the angle line and drag it around to any angle you want and the cos and sin of that angle will be displayed.

Approw

@Armelline said:

• Honestly, the thing I'd find most useful is a fairly technical and in-depth look at how GameSalad operates "under the hood". Does it work harder to save a table with 5 cells or a list of 5 attributes? How does it decide its order of execution? What strain is a constrain attribute really placing on it? Getting down to the nitty-gritty that would allow for really tight optimisation and deeper understanding of how things work.

Yep I totally agree, I would love to know whats going on under the hood.

Socks

@Approw said:
Yep I totally agree, I would love to know whats going on under the hood.

Agreed - here's an example:

I was testing something - it was a magnitude check, measuring the distance between the actor itself and a second actor.

There was a second condition - mouse button down.

I made two versions, the first was arranged like this . . .

Rule
When Mouse button is down and When magnitude (blah blah blah) < 300
--Then do Something

. . . the second version of this was arranged like this . . .

Rule
When Mouse button is down
--Rule When magnitude (blah blah blah) < 300
----Then do Something

. . . and the second version massively outperformed the first version !?!? I'd duplicated the actor hundreds of times to show up even small differences in processor use/strain, the first version gave me around 32fps, the second version gave me 58fps, but on the surface they are essentially the same rule ? I'd love to know more about optimisations like this.

birdboy

I totally agree with @Armelline and @Socks. Anything about stuff that's going on under the hood would be really valuable. If I come up with any specific questions I'll post them.

Icebox

1) your experience level - intermediate
2) what topics you want to learn about. - using functions in game ( sin cos etc. )

Approw

@Socks said:
I was testing something - it was a magnitude check, measuring the distance between the actor itself and a second actor.

There was a second condition - mouse button down.

I made two versions, the first was arranged like this . . .

Rule
When Mouse button is down and When magnitude (blah blah blah) < 300
--Then do Something

. . . the second version of this was arranged like this . . .

Rule
When Mouse button is down
--Rule When magnitude (blah blah blah) < 300
----Then do Something

. . . and the second version massively outperformed the first version !?!? I'd duplicated the actor hundreds of times to show up even small differences in processor use/strain, the first version gave me around 32fps, the second version gave me 58fps, but on the surface they are essentially the same rule ? I'd love to know more about optimisations like this.

So theoretically, the first version was in terms of code optimization less complex, but you get lower fps out of it? That is very odd... Great example by the way.

Hopscotch

@Socks
. . . and the second version massively outperformed the first version

The first has to keep track of the mouse button AND a calculated math comparison all the time.

The second one only needs to check the mouse button every draw cycle, the calculated math comparison only comes into play when the first condition is met.

weblantis

1) Intermediate

2) Publishing to the MAC Appstore - I still struggling since 1 week

pHghost

@Hopscotch said:
The second one only needs to check the mouse button every draw cycle, the calculated math comparison only comes into play when the first condition is met.

Exactly. I almost exclusively use nested rules. It is usually is more snappy, and also for some reason, less prone to bugs.

Socks

..

Socks

@Approw said:
So theoretically, the first version was in terms of code optimization less complex, but you get lower fps out of it? That is very odd... Great example by the way.

Yes, it seems odd, I don't quite understand why, but I suspect knowing the reason and employing this kind of knowledge in your game may well turn a sluggish game into a snappy smooth running game ? Who knows maybe it was particular to what was going on in my situation ?

What I'd really like to see is a comprehensive overview of how GameSalad cycles around your code, I know all the basics, but not in any real detail.

@Hopscotch said:
The second one only needs to check the mouse button every draw cycle, the calculated math comparison only comes into play when the first condition is met.

You may well be right, if you are then the suggestion here is that if you have a number of conditions at the top of a single rule - let's say . . .

When mouse is down

• When attribute.A is 100
• When attribute.GO is true
• When self.position > magnitude( blah blah blah )
• When rotation < 1.48484*sin( some long and complex calculation)
• When attribute.X = ( some preposterously long and complex calculation)

. . . and you are not pressing the mouse - that GameSalad, after encountering the first condition (and seeing that the first condition is not being met) then needlessly continues to check all the other conditions and calculate all our hypothetical long and complex calculations !? Even though there would be no point - as even if all the other conditions were all met the rule would still not run ?

I can't believe that's the case, surely once GameSalad sees that the mouse button is not down it can skip everything else further down the chain of conditions, there would be no point continuing to check through all the other conditions ?

But who knows, maybe the conditions are processed in some other way, maybe they are somehow processed together rather than sequentially . . . . whatever the reason, and however the conditions are processed, this is exactly the kind of thing I think would be useful to know.

@pHghost said:
Exactly. I almost exclusively use nested rules. It is usually is more snappy, and also for some reason, less prone to bugs.

I'll have to do a load more tests on nested rules, but so far - and in quite a few situations (but not all) - it seems you are right.

Socks

@Hopscotch said:
The second one only needs to check the mouse button every draw cycle, the calculated math comparison only comes into play when the first condition is met.

The more I test this, the more it appears you may be right ! It seems that with a singular rule that has a number of conditions if the initial condition is failed GameSalad (needlessly) continues to check and calculate all the other conditions !

Need to do more checking, and don't want to turn this thread into a discussion about this example, but if I find anything interesting I might start a thread.

EDIT . . . . tests done . . . @Hopscotch - Yup ! You're right

Hopscotch

@Socks said:
Hopscotch - Yup ! You're right

Fancy that!