Game Salad: Can't merge scenes from different projects, BEWARE the program crashes!

My last entry dealt with migrating and merging. The team was about to migrate different projects (levels) from several computers into one computer in one main project, but we were having difficulty. We reviewed many times the video clip produced by Victor Leach (iDevices), where he explains the process, however in the end it proved ineffective because Game Salad DOES NOT merge different projects together well.

Why? For starters every project creates each actor with it's own ID tag number. You can't copy the actor into another project with its original tag number. The ID appears to be the number that links the actor to the rules and behaviors within its project and everything in that project. Thus, we've found that the only way to merge the projects is quite literally from scratch, starting over. Here are the steps we took to merge:

• We ultimately opened the two projects up side by side (the original next to the new main project).
• We created the number of scenes for each original project in the main project.
• We entered into the new scene in the main project and imported all the images we needed for the original project including audio clips. (HINT: Think Identical - Everything must be identical between the original project and its copy in the main project)
• We created each new actor in the main project and named it exactly as it was named in the original file. NOTE: It's very important that all actors be specifically named in relation to the particular project. By this I mean, say every level has a spawner. You can't just use the generic name "Spawner" if each level spawner does something different. So we named one Spawner - Baseball Spawner, while another spawner was named Basketball Spawner etc. What this means is that there cannot be the same names used in different scenes, UNLESS it acts the same way for every scene.
• We dragged each actor into the scene according to the way it was laid out in the original project.
• In each actor (not its prototype we didn't work with prototypes) we were able to copy and paste the rules and behaviors from one project into the main project. REMEMBER: You're building from scratch so you have to check all the actor attributes and make sure they are identical. 
• Your project needs to work just like the original so don't leave anything to chance. You'll have to add all the game attributes and check your layers as well. MAKE IT IDENTICAL.
• Each scene in the original must also be in proper order in the main project. 

The things we have left to do after we merge all the scenes together:

1. Create intro page to the game
2. Create the touch to start level over on the loser page.
3. Touch to save when leaving the game.

We have five levels in our game. Each one follows according to the other, so we are rebuilding the levels in the order that they would appear in the game. When I realized that merging was going to be a significant problem, I questioned how it was that people were able to do this. The advice I was given was to build a project with multiple levels on the same computer working each level after the other in succession.

I watched the various tutorials numerous times. I mentioned months ago that we were building levels of the game on various computers, yet nowhere was it mentioned that merging projects is next to impossible and that Game Salad does not recommend it. I cannot believe we are the first to encounter this problem or to suggest the idea of merging. Yet, nowhere is it explicitly mentioned that merging is not compatible in Game Salad. This is a huge oversight on the part of the Game Salad makers.

I would think people creating multi-level games would in fact work on different computers or on different projects with intention to merge later because it's efficient. Perhaps, a majority of designers build as one individual on one project at a time. We didn't and now we're learning the hard way.

Clearly, we weren't completely at a disadvantage because the original project does act as a map for the rebuilding process in the main project file. The time was obviously shorter building the level in the main project, but the merging issue wasn't expected thus we did not realize we would be dealing with the time to go through this process.

Another thing we discovered was that the ability to hyperlink comes with the pro version of Game Salad. I can live with putting the Web address at the end without hyperlinking the page, but I felt it should be mentioned here.

Also, since updating the latest version of Game Salad we have had numerous crashes. I had said that the program seemed more stable. Well, I have to eat my words. My first day merging I lost six hours of work when the program just wiped out all the work and left me looking at a white screen. It was so bad in fact that there was no way to recover the project and I had to start over. That day the program unexpectedly quite five times. We did start over and we made 12 renamed versions of the file so that if there was another hard crash we could recover something.

We are making progress merging the files. Jonathan Samn (from Game Salad) has been generous in offering to help us. We are closing in on finishing the game, but I have a small voice going off in my head. The size of our game. What is the size of the game ultimately going to be and is this going to kill our chances as an iPhone game app? We shall see.