Is my hatred of GameSalad still justified?

Discussion in 'General Game Discussion and Questions' started by MasterChief3624, Jan 15, 2013.

  1. MasterChief3624

    MasterChief3624 Well-Known Member

    Oct 11, 2009
    2,530
    0
    0
    Okay, so long story short, back when I was a regular here and was here every day for like a year and a half, I obviously came across many apps and games. Well through these discoveries, I had a revelation: GameSalad was absolutely atrocious, and it was a scientific fact that if the game was made with GameSalad, it would suck immensely.

    There was one exception. It was a 2D sidescrolling shooter with 8-bit graphics. I'm not sure what the name is anymore, but that was a good one. Actually, wait, I think a name just popped up: Max Vector? Who knows if that holds any significance.

    Aaaaanyways, I was wondering if my hatred of GameSalad still holds true and is still justified nowadays. Or are there more apps coming out that demonstrate GameSalad in a more positive and competent light?
     
  2. Tannorexic

    Tannorexic Well-Known Member

    Dec 5, 2011
    602
    0
    0
    Student
    Somewhere in the spiritual realm
    Your first instinct is usually correct.
    I steer clear from anything labeled gamesalad. I used to make games when I was like 13 with this engine called game maker.. I'd make the most pathetic "games" things like penises having to collect tacos. Gamesalad reminds me of that. Your not a developer if you have to use gamesalad, end of story. And there's only so many templates, doesn't matter what is released by who, it's all the same template, just with different sprites.
     
  3. lord-sam

    lord-sam Well-Known Member

    Feb 25, 2009
    2,482
    0
    0
    United Kingdom
    I haven't seen a GameSalad game in aaaages. Pretty sure they only lasted a year or so, in the first wave of iPhone games. Then came all the big boys like a more serious EA, and Gameloft, and blew it out of the water. Good riddence!
     
  4. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
    12,741
    535
    113
    England
    Just replied in that other thread

    I used to dislike Gamesalad games, BUT they must have upgraded the Gamesalad software as theres been a few games (have to find the names of them) of games i enjoyed and i couldnt believe they were gamesalad games (as to me they all looked roughly the same, same basic gameplay etc).

    I'm not as negative about GS games as i used to be
     
  5. Primoz

    Primoz Well-Known Member

    Aug 14, 2012
    2,075
    0
    0
    Gamesalad is a game engine, not a developer.

    And as pj said, gamesalad has been updated and if a game is made well, you won't even notice it's made with gamesalad anymore.
     
  6. bramblett05

    bramblett05 Well-Known Member

    Aug 29, 2012
    5,682
    0
    0
    Mazes and monster ran on game salad engine didn't it not. Now there's another game that might have the engine ill look up the name
     
  7. undeadcow

    undeadcow Well-Known Member

    Dec 4, 2010
    9,493
    2
    36
    Houston, TX
    The developer of Mazes and Monsters, Monster Robot Studios, has done some masterful stuff with GameSalad like BeyondDead. I think there are still some limitations (awkward loading time) due to GameSalad but hatred is such a strong word.
     
  8. bramblett05

    bramblett05 Well-Known Member

    Aug 29, 2012
    5,682
    0
    0
    Loading times killed both of those games with me I had to delete them.
     
  9. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
    12,741
    535
    113
    England
    You youngsters ;) (gets out the violin) back in my day we had to wait 5 minutes for a game to load ! Now a game takes 10 secs and people delete them ! ;)

    Agree about BeyondDead, had tons of potential but didnt enjoy that as much as i thought i would. Mazes and monsters isnt too slow, theres lots of premier priced games which take a while to load up and between levels
     
  10. JBRUU

    JBRUU Well-Known Member

    May 9, 2012
    6,758
    0
    36
    USA
    Five minutes? You're serious?
     
  11. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
    12,741
    535
    113
    England
    Yeah back in the 80's you had games on tape (i mean you dont even get music on tape now !), so in the 8 bit years of the 80's, in the UK you had the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad and in the US the Commodore 64 ruled supreme.

    As games were on tape you had to load them up and they took about 4 minutes minimum, some famous games took 8 minutes ! You kinda got used to it though, its like when i used the internet in the mid 90's on a 28.8k modem and had to wait a minute for a page to load up

    So you got used to loading a game, you would start the tape up, then go off and do something else and come back to it.

    One 'good' thing was you tended to play games much more, if you loaded up a game after 7 minutes you wouldnt switch games a few minutes later. Even if a game was quite rubbish you would perservere much more. Nowadays you simply exit and load up another one in a nanosecond.

    As kids in the 80's you didnt get much pocket money, many games averaged £7.95 (about 12 dollars), you had a cheap budget range at £1.99 (say 4 dollars) which were often rubbish but you could afford one a week or so. So thats why i get a bit stressed when people moan about the price of some app all these years later at 2 dollars and i'm sure they get a lot of pocket money nowadays !!

    Anyway as games were on tape the best xmas present you could ever get was a tape-to-tape player, so you could easily tape games from your friends. Home taping was huge in the 80's as like i say kids didnt have enough money to buy all these new exciting games. You thought copying was bad now, back in the 80's a bunch of blank C90 tapes full of games taped was common place in every kids bedroom !

    Tomorrows history lesson talks about having only 4 channels for most of my childhood until satellite arrived in the UK in 1990. Imagine tv without cable ! ;)
     
  12. undeadcow

    undeadcow Well-Known Member

    Dec 4, 2010
    9,493
    2
    36
    Houston, TX
    There was another GameSalad game that was a world exploration focused "rpg" with a red robot that had a sword. I never got around to playing it but I remember it getting some positive feedback. Either the game or the developer was called Psi-Bot or something.

    The GameSalad discussion is sort of a moot point because the Game Salad engine is relatively unpopular among developers so there are not many iOS games deveoped with it.
     
  13. bramblett05

    bramblett05 Well-Known Member

    Aug 29, 2012
    5,682
    0
    0
    I remember the Atari it was quick load. The old PC games though good god I could make a pot of coffee and it would still be loading. Loading isn't bad but after every screen it gets old.
     
  14. leonard_dabinski

    leonard_dabinski Well-Known Member

    Jan 7, 2013
    244
    0
    0
    Some interesting stuff there mate. 4/8 minute loading time seems insane. I get worked up over anything more than 30 seconds!

    Also, you mention copying from tape-to-tape. Is that not some form of piracy?
     
  15. JBRUU

    JBRUU Well-Known Member

    May 9, 2012
    6,758
    0
    36
    USA
    Are you sure you didn't grow up on Mars? ;) :p :D
     
  16. Platyrrhine

    Platyrrhine Well-Known Member

    Jan 6, 2012
    624
    0
    0
    Dial up Internet was the greatest. The sound you got to listen to... absolutely priceless. Should make it my ringtone.
     
  17. Psiufoxx

    Psiufoxx Well-Known Member

    May 25, 2011
    421
    0
    16
    sustainability consulting
    paris (yeah, the one in france)
    Okay, I'm intrigued. Now you must find the name of this game.
     
  18. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
    12,741
    535
    113
    England
    Totally, as a kid i would buy as many games as i could but with so many games coming out and with friends having those you did tend to use up your C90's.

    That was 30 years ago so i dont feel too bad talking about it now !

    Ha ha you wait ! In 20 years time when your kids ask you stuff i'm sure they'll think you grew up on mars as well !

    Believe it or not there was a life before the internet and 1000 cable channels ;)
     
  19. CygnetSeven

    CygnetSeven Well-Known Member

    Feb 6, 2010
    7,580
    27
    48
    I see this brought up often as a knock on GameSalad and I don't understand it because Unity and Unreal both have longer load times than GS and they are considered the best out there. The loading time on Chaos Rings is huge. Anyone care to elaborate?
     
  20. JBRUU

    JBRUU Well-Known Member

    May 9, 2012
    6,758
    0
    36
    USA
    #20 JBRUU, Jan 15, 2013
    Last edited: Jan 15, 2013
    I never thought Unity had very long loading times at all. Or UE3 for that matter, even on my ancient iPod 4.


    Ahh, now this I can relate to for once. I was born in the 90s and remember dial up...we used Juno (I know, you've never heard of it...well I haven't heard of it since we stopped using it) and the thing took forever to connect, disconnected when a call was received (which was a real pet peeve of mine when I was trying to download one of those god-awful game demos from download.com back then, on a sub 256kb/s connection if I recall correctly!) and didn't even connect half the time.


    Hard to believe. You wonder where we'll be in 20 years at the rate things are progressing. Amazing times to live in. Just think about living 1000s of years ago, the great inventions were the wheel and the printing press, those only occurred every few centuries! Now we're having breakthroughs seemingly daily.
     

Share This Page