All You Need to Know about GameSalad!

GameSalad is a 2D Video Game Development Engine. The GameSalad Creator is a piece of software that you use to develop video games with. It streamlines the game design process by eliminating the need for extensive programming and instead takes a drag & drop approach to game design.

So if GameSalad doesn’t utilize extensive programming, how do you make games with it? Simple: the GameSalad creator breaks down your game into several major categories.

–        Scenes: These are your levels. You can keep adding more and more scenes to a project and each scene represents a new level. Using the Creator, you’re able to modify the details of your level, such as the background, the camera, the resolution, etc. The scene also holds information about your Actors and Behaviors.

–        Layers: Layers serve as the background images to your scene. Much like Photoshop or any other image editing software, you’re able to add background images and position them within your scene. You can change which images are in the foreground, midground, background, etc. You can also turn on or off certain layers. Layers basically serve to help get the visual aesthetic of your game across.

–        Actors: These are, essentially, the objects in your game that will be controlled, acted upon, reacted upon, etc. Most commonly, actors are used to create characters but they are also used to make things such as Missiles or Enemy characters or bullets. Basically, anything that can be interacted with in the game is an actor. Actors can have art assets applied to them as well as behaviors such as collision data and logical functions such as if-then statements.

–        Media: The GameSalad Creator allows you to load your own media files for use within your game. Media files can be dragged and dropped onto layers as well as actors to bring your game to life. GameSalad can import a wide variety of image file formats including JPEG, GIF, PSD, TIFF, PNG, etc. Every image that is imported into GameSalad will be converted to PNG to support transparency. GameSalad also imports a wide variety of audio files including MP3, WAV, M4A, and OGG.

–        Behaviors: These are essentially how you make your actors work within your game. This is where the logic of your game comes into play. You attach behaviors to your actors to give them function. Some examples of behaviors include Collision, Accelerate, Animate, Destroy, Move, Pause Game, Spawn Actor, and many more. You are able to apply Rules to your actors, which will cause something to happen when a certain condition is met; much like an if statement in most programming languages.

The key to making a game with GameSalad Creator is to understand how to utilize each of the above-mentioned items. The way the interface is setup makes it easy to manage all of your game’s assets and drag and drop them wherever necessary. There is no programming in GameSalad. While some programming logic may be used when adding behaviors and rules to actors, there is no direct coding involved. It is all done by the GameSalad Creator.

GameSalad has special offerings for the education market. So students and schools can take advantage of this great software at academic prices.

Some of the other features include:

–        Real-Time Editing: This allows users to edit their scene while the game is running.

–        Game Preview: This mode allows users to debug and test the performance of their game on different platforms.

–        Physics: GameSalad has a rigid-body physics system, which provides your game with realistic collision and movement. You can further control the physics by utilizing some of the behavior items within the creator.

–        GameSalad has an expression editor, which allows you to modify complex behavior using mathematical expressions and a library of functions. This is where you may actually get into some programming.

–        GameSalad Website: the website has a marketplace where you can buy and sell sprites, graphics, and other content that can be added to the interface of the Creator. They also offer in-depth tutorials and have an extensive wealth of knowledge in their forums. The website makes it incredibly easy to get help for a difficult question or to learn how to use the software very quickly.

Lastly, you are probably wondering what platforms GameSalad games can be developed for. You can publish games for Windows, Mac OS X, iOS (iPhone and iPad), HTML 5, and Android. GameSalad games are automatically cross-platform, which means that if you develop a game, you are able to publish it to all the platforms without having to do anything further. Of course, you will have to adhere to the rules of, say, the Apple AppStore or the Android AppStore, but as far as the game goes, it is cross-platform capable right off the bat.

The bottom line is this: if you want to create a functional 2D game that you can give to just about anybody who uses a computer or phone without having to learn the ins and outs of programming, then look no further than GameSalad. It’s a very powerful, easy to use program and it’s very cheap to get the pro version and start making your game.

Author: Mark Philipp