Experience of using the game designer Game salad

This review is experience gained through trial and error. A few months ago, I myself was looking for such information, but in vain. Therefore, I hasten to share with future seekers of easy ways to create mobile games, lovers of “simple solutions” and boxed products. I am analyzing the visual designer of Game Game games.

I acted in this project as a “manager” and author of the project, but the programmer had to figure it out. Below is the text.

GameSalad is a constructor. Scenes are built from actors, inside of which rules are drawn up for behavior in different conditions and attributes are added at will. There is a specific set of blocks for changing the state and behavior of an actor. So, on the whole, the system provides quite a lot of freedom to manipulate the actors themselves. But the biggest disadvantage is connected with this: there are some insurmountable restrictions for controlling one actor to another. More specifically, for actors who spawn during the game (rather than manually added in advance), there are no opportunities to influence them from the outside, only by the rules established within them. This inconvenience becomes a problem as the game becomes more complex.
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Another drawback that could significantly compensate for the previous one is the lack of inheritance. Actors could inherit rules from an ancestor and, in addition, have their own, it would be very convenient. And when building the stage actors could invest in each other, this would provide much more opportunities for interaction between the actors. In general, I was surprised to find that the scene does not consist of a hierarchy of actors, but simply of their list (divided into layers).

GS - the system is completely closed. It does not support plugins or extensions. It has no import / export mechanisms. If something does not suit you in the functional, you will have to put up with no options, there is no way to expand it.

Documentation also deserves mention. In addition to the documentation, there is a collection of tutorials describing individual functions. Of course, the articles describe general cases, so nothing is explained in detail, the options are mostly not described. Another way to get information is the forum. The method is very effective, developers and users are responsible in essence, discuss, give links. The forum has a huge amount of information that is not found anywhere else in the documentation. So you have to use the search, it often bears fruit. But still, looking for information that is often needed, and for many, this is somehow wild . Could collect FAQ or popular topics. Ideally, include in the documentation information that is most often needed by users, judging by the forum.

As for the game in general: GameSalad has only one method to share the result in the game - TweetSheet (send a message via Twitter) - and it is only for iOS. Several integrated advertising systems, but no banner management options . All controls are in the ad systems themselves and there are no quick start tutorials with GS anywhere.



Summarizing the essence of the program. Suitable for creating simple games with simple mechanics. Scalability is low, a large and complex game will not work. On the other hand, the program does not require any initial knowledge and skills. All blocks have a clear description and clear action. So for people who are not familiar with programming, a good option. Programmers need a strong reason to use it (for example, speed of development).

Summarizing my attitude. I appreciate the fact that the program gives you the opportunity to create games, having only a desire for this, you don't need any special knowledge, skills, even talent. But if the structure of the program was a little more complicated, not so straightforward, it could offer much more possibilities without complicating the process. But I will not hope for a quick development of the project, given its age and the degree of development at the moment.
I think that it is necessary to choose a program based on its functionality. Bugs - business coming and leaving. They can usually be circumvented, waiting for the next update, where they will be corrected.

For those who decide to use the GS, here is a list of technical flaws

GS has a version for Windows and for OSX. For Windows, the current stable version is major 0.9, for poppy it is 0.12. Not because they have their own numbering, but precisely because the Windows version lags behind in functionality by 2 versions. This is a lot: there are blocks that are long obsolete and already excluded in the Mac version, and some of the Mac version are missing. Now in nightly builds (requiring testing and detecting bugs), the Win-version has the number 0.12.1, while the version for the Mac is already testing the next version - 0.13.2.

In addition, there are bugs in the wine version. Many bugs. In the interface, in saving some blocks, in the preview, in opening projects created on another computer, crashes and stuff. They are simply too many to list. But they are enough to solve: it is absolutely impossible to use the wine version . If you want to use this program because of its advantages, the only option is the Mac version.

The only positive thing about the Windows version is that for my taste, the interface logic is better organized there.
Mac version problems : in the formula editor, text strings are enclosed in quotes, but the editor itself does not allow typing spaces. It is necessary to replace hyphens, or underscores, or invent something more cunning, if you really need it.

A more serious problem is that the GS is crookedly signing Androids apk. I used the certificate store created earlier in Windows, and the signed file refuses to install (without a clear error message. Just “the application is not installed”), even from the market, on devices with an OS version lower than 4.4. I decided to sign the file from under Windows with the same certificate. So maybe it's in the android-sdk mac version. Here I can only say that the SDK in both versions of the latest version.

Signing an android-apk-file using GS directly from a browser is only possible on a Mac. Why, I do not understand, but the web page gives a warning. Although the GS version of the wine version has an apk-signer, but I have not had a chance to use it.

The end of the quote.



I will add from myself, as from "manager":

• It was wild and painful to understand that we are throwing out from the conceived functional one by one feature. At this editor's forum, people for 2-3 years are waiting for developers to implement the function of “share”, social decisions and other vital decisions for the game.
• We did not set a goal to thoroughly analyze all the pros and cons, but only share our observations.
• Advertising management mechanisms and their wretchedness have given us a choice: to spoil the game for people or to refuse advertising. We didn’t spoil the game, but this moment killed all hope of making cross-platform games quickly and efficiently.

In total, we spent a month and a half of work, 17 thousand rubles for the editor (bought in dollars at the wild course of the fall of 2014) and created 2 games. Not to say that the products fail, but without the necessary elements and without advertising. Further prospects for using this solution are vague.