

Easy iOS game development with GameSalad - brisance
http://gamesalad.com/products/creator

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Groxx
Why do they have the video set to 720p when they explicitly make the container
340px tall?

    
    
      <object width="560" height="340">...</object>
    

That's just annoying. And makes me drop it down so my internet connection can
stream it. And _beyond_ worthless, becoming wasteful, because even 480p is
more than it can display but you're draining my battery more with increased
CPU use.

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kylecordes
They probably did this expecting that many users would use the full-screen
capability of the video player, and lacked either the technology in hand or
the time to set up a means to have it use a different file for low- vs high-
res playback.

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minalecs
There was major uproar from apple about quality issues if they were to allow
flash games as standalone apps(not browser). Meaning a major influx of low
quality games or apps. I'm surprised a framework like this doesnt bring up the
same concerns from apple.

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statictype
Well, didn't they relent and allow the Flash-to-ObjectiveC compiler through?

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seltzered
Yes, they did: <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/packagerforiphone/>

I would think the market should be responsible for judging quality, not a sole
company. On the app store you can request a refund, or give a review as well.

~~~
dk
See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983)

Nintendo revived the industry in part by exerting quality control over every
game released for the NES, and this has been standard practice for console
manufacturers ever since.

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chipsy
I've toyed with doing an "easy game maker" but have always ended up leaning
towards making high-powered "real" tools (whatever those are) instead.

My current goal is to make a game IDE that resembles a Smalltalk or perhaps
Emacs-esque system - highly reflective, image-based, extensible, but more
specifically game-focused, with the core features and main loop hardcoded, but
everything else being part of the same system. The current state of the art in
these tools(Game Maker, Unity, UDK) tends to stop just a little bit short of
this "build tool and game very closely together" idea, but the way I see it,
that's nearly the last major win for iteration times, within our current
understanding of the development proces.

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kylecordes
I've been tinkering with Corona <http://www.anscamobile.com/> which is not
point-clicky like Gamesalad, but rather a framework/mechanism for implementing
apps/games on mobile devices in Lua, with various support for physics and so
on in the box. I think the idea is to be somewhere between Gamesalad and
Objective C, in terms of:

* effort * amount of code you need to write * flexibility

I've no idea if it's actually good; I've just been tinkering. But it seems
worth a look.

~~~
rlander
<http://jonbeebe.tumblr.com/post/1119939987/corona-sdk-review>

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Ogre
Very interesting. I think "No coding. Ever." is a little disingenuous, some of
the screenshots sure look like coding disguised as rules systems, which I
would expect to break down into an awful mess for anything complex. But I
still like seeing things like this, and it does look very slick. I think
things like this are a great way to get kids into game development, for one
thing.

Reminds me of The Arcade Construction Set from when I was a kid. I was already
programming stuff in Basic by the time I got that, but it was still a blast to
drag a few things around and see instant results. You're not going to make the
next Quake or Angry Birds that way, but it's a great first step.

I even hope I'm wrong and someone does make the next Angry Birds with this
thing. The lower the barrier to entry on game design is, the more great games
we all get to play that would've otherwise existed only in someone's head
(Just as long as someone else filters out the corresponding increase in awful
games before they get to me :)

~~~
anant
Although I cannot speak for Gamesalad in particular, don't underestimate the
ability of tools to be able to create some great games, even in the absence of
raw programming power.

At Blizzard, rumor has it that the programming team calls it a day long before
any game is released (sometimes a year in advance) because their map editors
are so powerful that the game designers don't really need anything else.

There are 3rd party "maps" out there for games like Warcraft or Starcraft that
implement an entirely different genre of games. I fondly remember playing a
racing game inside Warcraft 3.

Rules are expressed in a manner similar to what I've seen of Gamesalad -- they
can indeed be quite powerful.

~~~
Ogre
Speaking as a Blizzard programmer, I can tell you there is no basis to that
rumor.

Edit: just to be clear, I'm not discounting the rest of your points. It is
indeed possible to do very sophisticated things with triggers, rules, or what
have you, you just tend, in my experience, to wind up with something
significantly harder to read and maintain than something written more
traditionally. Which is probably why Blizzard's RTS's include actual scripting
languages as well.

"Probably" as in I am a Blizzard programmer, but I'm not on the RTS team and
haven't worked on any of those games directly other than a tiny bit of
Battle.net code for SC2. It's possible, even likely, you know more about
SC2/WC3 modding than I do :)

~~~
MrJagil
Blizzard feels like the Apple of the gaming world- slowly, but consistently
dishing out great products which you can trust to be fun and exciting.

And yes, the editors are very powerful. Look no further than "DotA" which has
spawned no less than THREE spinoff games:

League of Legends, Heroes of Newearth and now the main developer(IceFrog) of
DotA has gone on to develop DotA 2 for Valve.

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Xuzz
For kids (likely the target audience of this), the $99 developer program fee
would be quite high (let alone the fact they have to register under a parent's
name) -- I don't think this will really make an impact on the App Store.

~~~
dpcan
I'm 31 and it looks like something I'll definitely be trying - especially to
help convert some of my Android apps for release in the App store.

~~~
Xuzz
Interesting. I would assume that the Mac+dev-program+testing-device combo
would convince people to either go for a full-fledged port or not go through
with the idea. (Do note that iOS users aren't accustomed to anything non-
native, even just an alternative-styled button can throw them off, although
this is less of a restriction in games.)

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nhangen
I'd be more interested in something like this if it acted as training wheels
for my Objective C learning experience, rather than a complete replacement.

The mechanics seem solid, and there's plenty of room to play, but I'm not sure
there's room to be unique.

Are there any success stories of app store rankings or new businesses being
built as a result of this engine?

~~~
dpcan
It looks like, from the game library, you can be as unique as you allow your
imagination to allow.

If you just jump in and tweak one of their tutorials, you won't get far, but
if you take your time, design great graphics, write a fun story, etc, why
couldn't you be a huge success with this?

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angrycoder
My initial reaction was that there is no way this thing works, but over 3,000
games have been made with this thing:

<http://gamesalad.com/games>

Thats not to say anything about the quality of the games, but that is still an
impressive number. Much like Game Maker, I am sure there are some gems in
there.

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maushu
An explanation or more details of each feature that PRO differs from Basic in
the pricing page would be nice. Specially the "iAd Functionality".

And the plugin is just for safari? You are ignoring a huge slice of potential
users. No idea if it's worth it developing the plugin for other browsers
though.

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bascule
They have iOS development for iOS now? Awesome. What will Apple think of next?

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brisance
Sorry about that, and thanks for pointing it out. Fixed.

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belhassen
do we own the app after ? or should we share royalties with Gamesalad? someone
knows?

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tehgawdo
Building frameworks like this for game developers is similar to building
handicapped escalators for people who compete in running marathons.

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brisance
That 14 year old Kuwaiti boy who developed Doodle Destroy over 3 days with
900K downloads and being featured on CNN would strongly disagree.

[http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/10/05/kuwait.iphone.teen...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/10/05/kuwait.iphone.teenager/)

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kevingailey
Cool but what about easy iOS game development for Android..?

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FiddlerClamp
Google App Inventor, of course...

