Well I had been looking into getting gamesalad but I heard that you cannot save in the games. I was reading through their website and it looks like once you finish creating your game in gamesalad, it is converted into xcode. Could you program the saving features into the game once it is in xcode format? It seems possible but since I have never used gamesalad I want to hear if this is possible from current users.
I'm an avid user of gamesalad, and I can tell you that you can't edit the xcode file after you make your game,so you cant really save yet, but I know they got something up their sleeve what with the macworld/gamesalad event happening soon.
GameSalad Saving Ktfright, Saving and loading behaviors will be available in Release 0.7.0 on Monday (12.18.2009). We decided to delay the release for testing and for the Christmas holiday. Cheers, Lexander
GameSalad 0.7.0 was just released, and it includes game saving: http://gamesalad.com/blog/2009/12/28/gamesalad-0-7-0-is-here/ w00t, I think I'll start playing with a lot more now. You still can't integrate with OpenFeint and other things like that (yet) but I don't think that's as big a deal as saving.
This is at least a step up in making a more sophisticated game, and you can still try to make a local leaderborad.
Actually, with your 30 days of code, a person could get a pretty good start. The way I learned to code was by tearing apart other engines and snippets. Where I really started to understand game engines is when I finally dug into the source for Quake and Quake 2, as well as Torque. While those structures are old by todays standards, I think they provide a good solid foundation. However, I already had a good understanding of programming and APIs by the time I tore into those engines. What was the iPhone programming book you recommended, KJY? I forgot already.
Got this book, along with "Learn Objective-C on the Mac" by Mark Dalrymple and Scott Knastner... I ordered them the day you recommended them to me, I got them today and will start reading soon
I agree that coding is a lot more versatile, and most types of games that do something particularly interesting aren't really possible in GameSalad at all, like if you want to make a more complicated physics game, or other things like that. But on the other hand, there are a couple of kinds of games that GameSalad looks pretty much made to make, and there's a GUI editor so it makes rapid prototyping a lot faster. With a larger game with a lot of content, it could end up being the difference between a single person spending 6 months on a game or 1 month on a game, which is a big difference since you don't get paid until the game is done. I just think it's important to recognize its limitations and to choose the appropriate tool for the game you're trying to build. I do wish GameSalad had a scripting language though. There's a GUI scripting-like-thing, that ends up translating to if/then/else statements and loops, and having your actors do specific actions in each code block. And there are variables with different scopes, and random numbers, and all that. So you can end up making pretty complicated things with it, including AI. But scripting would make that stuff faster, IMO.
Well I absolute agree that learning to code and creating your apps that way is far better long term and in just about all aspects. However if you want to get something going for now as your learn or something. GameSalad now supports save and loads features. It works well, check it out.
Being in high school, GS is amazing. I'd learn code, but I get home at 5, do homework 'til 9:30 (I've of course procrastinated a little), have an hour long chill session, then go nappers. Maybe over the summer I'll pick up a book.
Watch out for Gamesalad, I was curious so decided to test it out and had a kernel panic. I haven't bothered with it since then.
IDK, I know GS has to iron out some kinks, but overall, its a stable engine. as long as people don't start making crap-apps with it and try to make something cool or innovative instead, Its still usable and easy to use.
This. I hope when GameSalad launches out of beta, it will have a (relatively minor) scripting language that you can use along with the GUI. Maybe like Unity-script or something. (There is such thing as Unity-script, right? I forget what it's called .)
