As I start today's entry, I acknowledge it's been a while since I updated my app building progress. My app is a game for marketing purposes, but I actually like playing my level. When I do play it my heart races as I try against the clock to make points. I love it!!!!!
When I started this journey I was working with the Apple SDK - Xcode point-of-entry into game designing that ate up at least half the time it's taken the entire journey to get here and the only thing I had accomplished with Xcode was reading the HIG, learning a little Objective C, and how to build the infamous "Hello World!" program. Oh, how far I've come with tech help and GameSalad software.
That leads me to discuss the newly released version of GameSalad. I haven't identified much in it that has improved. I believe that the touch rule can be applied and previewed by using the mouse to see if it will work properly. That's a nice change because I had to use a rule like “spacebar” before without knowing if it will work using the touch feature for the iPhone.
I did discover a repeatable crash in the program. If you add a "Play Sound" behavior to two different actors for two different scenes and you go to preview the game the game will crash as it transitions to the next scene. I found that I had to add a sound cue to one actor and one scene, then save a new version and add the sound cue to the next actor and scene and save that new version. Now in the new version the game transitions and cues sounds without crashing.
My team also experienced something strange. One member couldn't get anything to show up that she imported into a new project in either the old or new version of GameSalad. Yes, she brought in PNGs and she placed them into the scene, but when she went to preview nothing would appear. No one had experienced this and we couldn't isolate what was different with her work from our own. Ultimately, she open the Canon template cleared all the information, actors, rules and such to create a shell in which she could work. And it did work. I have no idea what caused this.
As aesthetics are concerned, I found that simple, bright, and clean graphics work well when building a level. At first, I tried to create a crowd scene that initially darkened and cluttered up the scene. I removed the crowd and completely overhauled my set. It's so much nicer to have simple sets with clean objects when building for a 480 x 320 screen. Sound FXs add to the ambience and help to create the illusion of a crowd without having to see one. I believe the psychology behind designing for small screens includes the art of illusion with use of color and sound. It's rather fascinating really. The ergonomic design of the virtual space is compelling. Simplicity is best. When identifying where actors fit with spawners nothing beats iDevices iPhone app.
Recently, I was contacted by Victor Leach, administrator for Vlmweb, the producers of iDevices. He'd seen my blog and earlier reference to iDevices and just wanted to say hello. Great guy! I'm a big fan of their work with iDevices. I love that app because it really helps orient the designer with the coordinates of X, Y, and Zed (a Brit term) both for the screen and the accelerometer. I highly recommend it. Victor offered his help and assistance should I need it.
I've written this before and I'll write it again. Game designers are a nice bunch of people. Full stop. I have been provided a lot of generous advice as I have fumbled through this process. Vlmweb admin, Victor Leach, is no exception. There seems to be a general sense that people are learning, most far ahead of me, and we're in this together because we share something in common, namely GameSalad and the desire to build games for iPhone. There is a community out there of nice, intelligent, and helpful people. It's wonderful.
I'm getting seriously close to having to stitch the five levels together into one game. My team of five (including me) built our own individual levels on different computers so we are getting to that stage where we need to put it together. Victor generously offered to help us with that next step and he's in the UK! Gotta love technology. I'll likely take him up on his offer, but the team feels we need to learn the steps for ourselves. Game building is such an intriguing problem solving activity that not doing the work feels like you cheat yourself of the learning the process. No doubt we'll search out the information on how to bring it all together.
It's exciting to be at this stage of the journey. We've come exceedingly far in a relatively short period of time. I don't want to jinx the project, but it feels good. I still hold firmly to the opinion that GameSalad, for all its issues, did help expedite our process. And yes, it gets easier the more you use it. I'm still focusing my sights on Unity. I want to wade in its waters and see what I can soak up. Game designing and building is addictive. Seeing and playing with something you built has so much intrinsic worth that exceeds the sole goal of making the almighty dollar.
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