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GameSalad Windows Manual

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1. Once your unsigned apk is ready you ll receive both a pop up notification and in window notification that includes a link to start the signing process In addition the Download and Sign App buttons should now be clickable Congratulations Your app is ready Please check the Action menu for new options Congratulations Your app is ready You asked us to build it on May 17 at 04 19 UTC To start the app the signing process click here At this point in the process you ll be able to use the Download button to download the unsigned apk For the most part you ll need a signed apk to do things like test your application on a device or submit it for third party app store distribution However this isn t true for all cases For example Amazon requires that you submit an unsigned apk as they prefer to sign the file on their end Signing an apk is a more involved process than creating an unsigned apk so at this point this walk through we rec ommend that you set up your PC environment using the steps outlined in the Cookbook entry Preparing Your PC for Android Development Part 1 and Part 2 Once you ve followed the steps outlined in the above link click Sign App which will ask to launch through the GameSalad Creator 38 P Launch Application x This link needs to be opened with an application Send to GameSalad Choose an Application Choose Remember my choice for g
2. Publishing for Android Pro users can take Windows Creator even further by publishing signed and unsigned apks that can then be submit ted to app distributors allowing you to earn revenue off your hard work and talent Unlike HTMLS publishing your Android publishes will not be made publicly available on the GameSalad Arcade preserving exclusivity for you and any application distributors you choose to use That said publishing for Android is significantly more complicated than HTMLS publishing due to a number of configuration and set up requirements that are specific to the platform Don t let that throw you off though since this next section will provide you with the fundamentals for successfully generating your apk file First fill out the blank fields under the Main Settings header using the formatting guidelines provided by the tool tips which appear when you mouse over the book icons E7 37 Main Settings ex com mystudio mygame Oo Android Package Name FF Display Name Android Version Code EF Publicly Visible Version fy Once you ve filled in these fields you ll notice that Generate APP has become selectable Click this button to queue the generation of an unsigned apk which should become available within a couple minutes Your app was queued for generation It may take a couple of minutes why not go brush up on your knowledge with GameSalad Cookbook while you wait
3. Download and Remove Options There are two other options on this page that are worth highlighting The first one is the Download button located directly under the progress bar while in the General Info tab g_ Download If you own or have access to multiple PCs you can use this feature to upload your project on one computer and then download a copy of the originating project file on to another To access this page without having to go through the 39 first portion of the upload process log in to your account on the website then go to http publish gamesalad com games From there simply click the icon of the game you d like to download and then click the Download button Simple and handy Please note that the Download button located in the General Info tab is different from the Download button found in the Android Tab which will provide a signed apk to Pro users The second option is the Remove button located just the right of the Download button Remove You will no longer have access to manage this Game and any Arcade listings will be removed Are you sure OK Cancel Clicking this will bring up a removal confirmation prompt Clicking OK will remove your project from the Ar cade which will in turn break any links embedded or otherwise that point towards your game You will receive no further warnings or opportunities to change your mind after you confirm so consider carefully a
4. dJ o W Scenes Ea Initial Scene Scenes are the primary way of dividing up your project and are often thought of and used as Lev els or Stages Different scenes are able to have unique configurations including Scene Attributes such as size gravity and X Y wrap and actor placement Changing between scenes is not something that happens automatically with GameSalad but is in stead triggered by a Behavior appropriately named Change Scene We ll come back what Behav lors are how they work and where they can be found later on but for the moment go ahead and click on the Actors tab in the Library panel Tip The two main factors you ll want to weigh when considering adding a new scene are Am I okay with the player encountering a brief pause while the next scene is loading and Am I comfortable with a poten tial performance decrease if I make the current scene larger by continuing to add actors and behaviors Actors are the primary agents in all projects everything from your game s central protagonist to the platforms he or she might run across to the countless shots fired throughout their epic journey Ac tors can be tailored to fulfill diverse roles depending on your game s genre and needs You might even have a non moveable invisible actor that you make responsible for spawning all enemy actors into the scene You ll find every actor that currently exists in your project in the
5. GameSalad Creator Windows Version 0 9 92 Written by Jack Reed Layout by Anne Austin Table of Contents Windows Creator Walkthrough i ee a ee eee ee ee re ee ee 3 Getting Started 3 System Requirements ee eee a ee ee er re eee er ee a a a aa a 3 Intro 3 First Look i a a ee ee eer rr ea 3 The Library 4 The Backstage ee ee ee a ee ee a ee ee ee eaa a a aa aa a a a a 6 The Stage 9 Making a Game a ea ee er eee ae ae EEE AA EEEE EEE EEEL AE EEEE LAELAE ELEELE 10 Scenes 22 Scene Attributes rr ee ee ee eee ee ee ee eee a aa a aaa a a a 22 Actors 24 General Attributes rr i a ee ee ee re ee ee ee er ee 25 Graphics Related Attributes 25 Motion Related Attributes corre eee eee e eee eee tennessee ee eee see eee eens es eee eens eeees 26 Physics Related Attributes Non Motion Physics 26 Behaviors ceccoccoooocooocooooosococooocoooocooooooccooooooococooooocoooooocococococooooooocoooocooooooooooocoococooooooo 27 Attributes 31 Tables rr i a ee ee ee ee ee ee ee 32 Creating a Table 32 Editing a Table i ee a ee ee er rr ee a 33 Using Data in a Table 33 Additional Table Functions re a a ee are ae er ee ee ee ee 33 Publishing With GameSalad rr ee a ee ee ee ee re ee ea 34 Tips and Best Practices i a ee a eee ee re ee ea 40 Frequently Asked Questions rr i re a eee ee ee ee re ee 40 Troubleshooting ceccoccoococooooooooosocoocococoooococoooocooooooocoosococooooocoocoooocoooooocoococcoococoooooooococoococooooooo 42 Further Assistance ee a a ee er ae r
6. Play button to allow for working in rapid iterations This means making a change and then having the ability to im mediately see how that change affects your project giving you real time information on how your project is shaping up Tip Working with a particularly large scene or using a monitor that has a lower resolution You can use the Toggle Backstage button to temporarily give you more room to work with for the Stage Now that we ve established some of the fundamental aspects of GameSalad Creator let s go over how to make a simple project Tip At this point you should have enough information to begin experimenting with Game Salad Creator if you learn better by doing than by reading Of course this is not meant to discourage you from continuing to read on There s a lot more to cover and we re happy to have you Making a Game There are plenty of menus options and features that we haven t gotten a chance to cover but rather than attempting to memorize everything about Creator this very moment let s make a game instead Wel start by using a template project so that we have some art and sound assets available though Head over to the Cookbook and download the Basic Shoot Em Up template then follow the instruc tions provided for opening it in Creator We ll leave the actors as they are for added convenience later in this tutorial but let s go ahead and delete the scene titled Initial Sc
7. These two functions are very helpful for pulling random data from the table allowing the range of values to be highly customizable 33 Publishing With GameSalad Whether you re just putting the finishing touches on your latest amazing project and are ready to share your game with the world or you re still hard at work making it great and would like to ad hoc test it on an Android device you ll first need to publish your handiwork through the GameSalad Creator Tip It s important to test publish your project prior to your scheduled due date This gives you the opportunity to ad hoc test your project and also gives you time to address any issues that might be preventing you from pub lishing should you encounter any Most App Stores require at least 2 weeks of time before you want to release your application so plan accordingly For those of you who are familiar with the Mac version of Creator please note that this process will be different in key areas So we encourage you to give this section a careful read through If you are one of the many new users who are working with GameSalad now that it s available on the PC wel come Below we ll be going step by step through the process of publishing your project for HTMLS through the GameSalad Arcade In addition to HTMLS publishing which is available to all users Professional users also have the option to publish for Android devices for both testing and distribution purposes To
8. and alpha integer values from 0 to 1 You can edit any of these individual values or you can select a color from a color picker Image the image displayed for the actor if any This is not manually editable but you can modify this by dragging an image from your artwork sprites on to the actor instance within the stage tags tags given to the actor Graphics Related Attributes visible determines if an actor will be seen by the player If checked the actor will be seen This attribute cannot change during gameplay Unchecking this attribute will improve the performance of your game if the actor never needs to be seen One reason you might have an actor who which doesn t need to be visible is if it only contains logic for playing sounds or music blending mode determines how the actor s graphics will be drawn with respect to its back ground normal overlays the actor over the background This 1s the default blending mode When in doubt use this one Opaque copies the actor s pixels exactly replacing the background and ignoring transparen cy Opaque mode is the cheapest blending mode so using it may improve the performance of your game especially for large background images additive adds the color value of each pixel of the image to the color value of the image be hind it This has an intense brightening effect and is commonly used to draw emissive light sources fire sparks explosions lasers
9. Actors tab not just those used in a specific scene This is also where you will be able to create new prototype actors or delete existing actors When a prototype actor is dragged into the scene found in the Stage section of the Creator it creates an instance actor which 1s essentially a copy of the prototype actor To clarify the prototype instance relationship further new instance actors include all logic and most attribute settings of the prototype actor that created them and initially start out as locked to the originating prototype While the in stance actor is in locked state any change with a few exceptions to the prototype actor will also af fect every instance actor locked to it In this way you can create many instance actors all tied to a single prototype This allows you to save an enormous amount of effort by only needing to edit one prototype instead of manually making changes to every instance actor individually which can be prohibitively time consuming The Backstage From the Backstage you can access Game Attributes Scene Attributes actor configuration logic and Self Attributes and the content of any Tables you ve set up For this reason it s also where the ma jority of your design implementation will be accomplished F My Great Project Yj lnitial Scene When we talk about logic we re for the most part we re talking about Rules and Behaviors Rules are at their simplest direct if then
10. The pixel dimensions width and height of the current scene wrap x when enabled actors that exit the left side of the scene will re enter from the right side of the scene and vice versa When disabled actors continue moving indefinitely off screen unless they are explicitly destroyed via behaviors you ve set wrap y similar to wrap x but in the up down direction when enabled actors that exit the top of the scene will re enter from the bottom of the scene and vice versa when disabled actors continue moving indefinitely off screen unless explicitly destroyed via behaviors you ve set 22 gravity the strength of gravity in the scene The default value is 0 Using a value between 100 and 1000 will provide approximately normal gravity We caution against using any values significantly above 10 000 Please note that gravity can be directed in both the X and Y directions negative values will cause items to go in the opposite direction Gravity affects all movable objects in the scene color the background color of the scene represented via red green blue and alpha integer values between 0 and 1 You can edit any of these individual values or you can select a color from a color picker camera a compound attribute with the following sub categories origin the starting x and y position of the lower left corner of the camera relative to the scene size this sets the width and height des
11. all parts of the actor invisible other then the text 44 exp Function The exponential function e x where e is approximately 2 71828182818 For more information check out http en wikipedia org wiki Exponential function Fixed Rotation Selecting this option will prevent the object from rotating when it collides with other actors in the scene Leaving this box unchecked means that the actor will rotate normally when it collides with other actors Friction Increasing this number will slow this object down more when it interacts with other objects Set to 0 for no friction and hence no slowing Function Functions are various mathematical formulas available through the expression editor that allow you to have the Creator calculate sines cosines logs and much more floor Function The integer when you round down a value For instance floor 1 5 1 floor 9 2850 9 and floor 3 5 4 Gravity Each scene can be set up with an X and Y gravity attribute These are real numbers that affect all actors which are Movable Group Behavior Creates a group container that holds a set of Rules or Behaviors GameSalad Creator The best software in the world for making games with no coding Image Library A repository of png assets that have been imported into the GameSalad Creator Instance actor An instance is a unique example of an actor with altered Behaviors attributes or abilities from the
12. and a website will open walking you through the password reset process iis GameSalad Login Please Login Don t have a profile Create a profile Email Password Forgot password 35 After saving your Project your project will begin uploading to the GameSalad servers Once this is complete your default browser will bring up the second part of the publishing process which is managed through the GameSalad website You ll also be asked to sign into the website as well if you weren t already If this is your first time publishing with Windows GameSalad Creator go ahead and select the option to create a new game Later you can use the Update Existing option to swap out an older out of date version of your project file with a version that has the latest features improvements and bug fixes rather than creating a new entry for each step forward your game takes Keep in mind that updating an existing game will write over the existing file on the GameSalad server so make sure you keep local copies of the various versions of your game Uploading Are you creating anew game or updating an existing game Create New Update Existing Publishing for HTMLS The General Info tab contains several fields which allow you to provide important information about your project title description instructions tags etc as well as upload screenshots and an icon Providing these details and assets about this project will gradually f
13. can be confident that we want the player to be able to control the movement of the ship and also the discharging of its weapon In addition let s introduce a danger element so that the player s ship can potentially be destroyed if it becomes too damaged We ll focus on movement first and for simplicity we will create a rule that considers keyboard in put rather than accelerometer or touch screen input Tip For some examples on how you might set up a movement user interface for touch screen devices check out the Official Cross Platform Controller Template in the GameSalad Cookbook Be sure youre on the Player Ship Prototype tab and create a new Rule using either dragging it from the Blocks category in the Browser panel or by clicking the icon and selecting Rule from the dropdown menu After creating the new rule drag a Key Behavior found under Conditions into the When section and a Move behavior into the do section After a few quick adjustments it should look like this 13 When All of the following are happening receives a key press right is down X move in direction relative to actor in a n additive way at a speed of 150 4 Halt when behavior stops Tip Next time you re creating a rule try taking advantage of the auto complete feature For example in the When section type key and press enter and under do type move
14. drag this gradually slows the rotation of an actor if there are no other forces rota tion Behaviors modifying the motion of the actor New actor attributes may be created and removed using the and buttons of the Attributes pan el The newly created attribute will appear highlighted near the bottom of the attributes list These attributes can accessed from the Attributes tab of the Backstage Browser and be changed via the Change Attribute behavior unless otherwise noted As mentioned earlier modifying a prototype actor affects all corresponding locked instances of this actor You can customize specific instance actors by double clicking an instance actor that is an ac tor placed in a scene If you select an instance actor the Rules editor will initially be locked so that you do not accidentally modify the logic of your instance actor to differ from its prototype However you can simply click on the lock icon to unlock the actor and allow editing You can revert to the prototype s rules by pressing the Revert to Prototype button at the top of the Rules editor If you do unlock an actor instance any further changes to the prototype actor will not affect the specific in Stance Actors can be added to your scene in a couple of different ways First you can have your actors start in the scene To do this simply load up the desired scene in the scene and drag your actor to where you want it Second you could have your acto
15. if game Boss Health lt 0 spawn actor big explosion v in the direction 0 relative to actor m from position 50 relative to actor v place lin front of actor destroy this actor While certainly not a finished game the above gives you an idea of some of the steps you would take when building out your scenes Click the Play button in the Stage to see what we came up with From here you could add depth and replayability by adding power ups various enemy types an alternate ammo system score tracking additional scenes that scale in difficulty and a great deal more Now that you have a better understanding of the fundamentals of the GameSalad Creator you should try out some of your own ideas and experiment See what you can come up with and remember to check out the other templates for inspiration 21 At this point the sky is the limit Rules are capable of making any number of adjustments to your game Animations can fire off actors ordered to move around the scene music or sounds played ad ditional actors spawned the player s perspective can be shifted or the value of any number of attrib utes can be changed Then those attributes might cause other rules to trigger and so on until before you know it you ve made a game Thanks again for following along Tip The remainder of this Creator Walkthrough goes further in depth on information regarding the features and functionality o
16. might create a ghost prototype specifying some visual attributes of the ghosts and how the ghosts would behave in the game Each ghost that actually appears in each scene level of the game is a specific instance based on this ghost prototype and would therefore inherit all the attrib utes and behaviors of the prototype If you make a change to the ghost prototype all locked ghost instances within the game would also be changed Instance actors are the building blocks of a scene To create an instance actor simply drag a proto type actor into a scene Any changes you now make to this specific actor within the scene will only affect that instance actor not the prototype itself General Attributes 24 name a descriptive way for you to refer to an actor within your game time the number of seconds an actor has been active or alive in the scene This attribute can be read and incorporated into your rules and behaviors but not changed position the x and y position of the actor in the current scene This property is relevant for instance actors within a scene not prototype actors size the pixel dimensions width and height of the current actor rotation specifies the angle or rotation at which the actor appears initially in the scene For example if the value is 90 then the actor appears rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise color the background color of the actor represented by red green blue
17. symbol since it s only instance actors that are locked to prototypes rather than the other way around In just a short while we will be adding rules and behaviors to this actor which is a big step towards letting our game know how to operate But let s first take a moment to change this actor from a ge neric white box to a ship art asset Open the Images tab in the Library expand the All category and drag the PNG file titled Ship over to the white box representing Player Ship in the Stage then let go Much better However its current dimensions of 100 Width by 100 Height are making our ship look a little squished Find the attributes that control these dimensions by expanding the Size category in the Attributes panel of the Backstage and then change the width to 75 and the height to 50 If you didn t notice a change in size for the ship image in the scene you most likely made this ad justment to the prototype actor rather than the instance actor Updating the prototype actor will result in all future instance actors created from this prototype to have that size but all already existing in stance actors will have to be changed manually since the Self Attribute size is not affected by the prototype instance lock 12 As for adding rules and behaviors to this prototype first we need to decide on what we d like it to do Since this ship will be representing the player as the primary protagonist we
18. that it may take up to several days for access to be granted while check clearance is pending Q Why does my project run differently in Creator Preview Mode than on other devices A Each environment has a unique hardware and software configuration whether PC Mac 10S or Android Device which can affect how your project will perform We recommend ad hoc testing your project on all devices you intend to distribute for since this is the most accurate form of testing Q Can I use my own supplementary code in my project to add in new features or customize to customize existing features 41 A GameSalad s philosophy is Game development for everyone and so we re focusing our own internal development efforts to provide features to users that don t require coding That said we are always interested in hearing your feedback ideas and feature requests These comments can and do factor into our scheduling process and you can share your thoughts with us on our forums at forums gamesalad com categories new features For full details on what uses are permitted with GameSalad software please refer to the Terms of Service at gamesalad com terms Q I m looking for art and sound assets for my project Do you have any advice A There are many different places both physical locations and internet sites to obtain assets for your project The important thing is to have confidence that you have the legal right to include t
19. will not reset the underlying paused scene Rotate Causes the actor to spin clockwise or counter clockwise at the speed specified in the expression editor The rotate to angle and rotate to position Behaviors perform similar but unique tasks Rotate to Angle Causes the actor to spin clockwise or counter clockwise at the speed speci fied until it reaches a particular angle at which point rotation will cease Unchecking stops on destination will cause this Behavior to act similarly to the rotate Behavior Rotate to Position Causes the actor to spin clockwise or counter clockwise at the speed specified until it reaches the designated X Y coordinate at which point rotation will cease Unchecking stops on destination will cause this Behavior to act similarly to the rotate Behavior Use Offset Angle to rotate to a position a designated number of degrees from the specified X Y coordinate Rule Creates a condition or set of conditions to check before activating an enclosed Behav ior These conditions include player input mouse clicks touches key presses and attribute values Rule also includes an otherwise section Behaviors placed here will trigger when ever the conditions in the Rule are not true Save Attribute Stores the value of an attribute with a custom key name Any key name can be used inputting the key name in the Load Attribute Behavior will yield the stored v
20. your game Attributes exist for your game your scenes and your actors Game attributes can be accessed by all prototype actors and instance actors so that they can be seen in any scene Scene attributes can only be accessed in a particular scene but all instance actors in that scene can individually be edited to view use and modify those scene attributes Actor attributes can only be accessed by an instance actor but can be initially defined and used in an prototype actor so that all instance of that prototype can have predefined behaviors 31 There are six different types of attributes Boolean these are true false values One example use for this could the status of a button or door where true would be open on and false would be closed off All Actors start with at least one boolean attribute by default under physics in their attribute list to toggle wheth er or not the actor is movable Boolean attributes can be changed to true or false with the change attribute Behavior Text letter and number values These are primarily used in conjunction with the display text Behaviors to display scene titles actor names and much more Integer whole number values such as 15 0 42 and 5801 Integer is one of the more versa tile attributes A few of the many possible uses are storing the game s score specifying the number of units to spawn or keeping track of how many reward objects are left in a s
21. 8 Collide This Behavior controls which actors or groups of actors will collide with each oth er A group of actors may be created by using a tag in the project editor Constrain Attribute This Behavior continuously updates the value of one attribute to match another attribute This is particularly useful to keep two objects moving in sync or to keep an actor tied to the movement of the mouse or touch Control Camera Add this Behavior to an actor and the scene s camera will scroll to follow The tracking area for the camera can be changed in the Stage using Camera Edit mode Only one instance actor per scene can have this Behavior actors in non scrollable layers cannot use the Control Camera Behavior Destroy Immediately removes the actor from the scene Display Text This Behavior will show the text entered in the box and includes controls over the color alignment font wrapping and size of the text displayed Wrapping will cause line breaks in order to keep all of the text inside the actor Group This is an organizational Behavior which allows you to group certain Behaviors and Rules together easily and clearly It can also be created by selecting the Create Group but ton Interpolate This Behavior allows you to change attributes from their existing value to a new value over a set period of time Interpolate will use a constant rate of change over the desig nated time period This Behavior can affe
22. This can save you lots of time Now whenever the right arrow on the keyboard is pressed the Player Ship actor will move to the right of its current position Rather than manually create three more of these for the other directions select the rule and use copy paste to create three copies of it This will create an exact reproduction of the logic selected and any other logic contained within it Now just edit the condition key and movement direction for this new logic and you re all set Hit the green Play button in the Stage panel and give it a test Notice that while you can move the ship around using the keyboard it s also possible to fly it out of the viewable zone where the player can no longer see it If you ll open up the prototype actor ship not Player Ship which is the one we created you can see how this problem was addressed in the original template Rule Move Right When All Z of the following are happening receives a key press Tight is down X if Selfpositionx lt 440 move in direction relative to actor in a n additive way at a speed of 300 7 Halt when behavior stops 14 Tip If you re having a hard time seeing as much of the logic stack as you d like to try undocking the Backstage using the icon on the Backstage title bar To re dock it simply hit the button again The original ship actor has an additional condition which must be true a
23. alue Saving a new attribute value with a previously used key name will result in overwriting any 30 existing saved data Values stored using Save Attribute will remain accessible even if the game or device is turned off Spawn Actor Creates a new actor instance in the scene Specify which actor to spawn and the directional and position of that actor relative to the scene or spawning actor This allows any actor in a scene to spawn additional actors anywhere else in the same scene Newly spawned actors will immediately begin following any movement or other Behaviors associat ed with them Stop Music This Behavior stops the current music track Unlike the pause music Behav ior this Behavior resets the track so that a play music Behavior acting afterwards will start the music track from the beginning Timer This Behavior allows you to activate Behaviors or Rules at specified intervals All timer values are in seconds After triggers the Behavior or Rule once after the given time period every triggers the Behavior repeatedly with a given delay between each trigger for keeps a Behavior active for the duration of the time Unpause Game If the Pause Game Behavior has activated and opened the pause scene this Behavior will remove the pause scene and resume the underlying paused scene Attributes Attributes are one of the most powerful aspects of GameSalad They are essentially valu
24. amesalad links Cancel This will bring up the Android Package Signer which is divided in to four parts Signing tools location Keystore Key and Package to sign For Signing tools location use the browse icon next to each field to locate the appropriate exe While the specific location of each of these files may differ from computer to computer you ll likely find these files in the following locations after you ve prepped your PC for Android development of course eis Android Package Signer Signing tools location keytool C Program Files Java jdk1 6 0_30 bin keytool exe jarsigner C Program Files Java jdk1 6 0_30 bin jarsigner exe zipalign C Program Files x86 Android android sdk tools zipalign exe Now hit the New button to begin creating your first PC Keystore Choose an easy to find and hard to forget location for your Keystore Now simply fill out all the remaining fields Your Keystore and Key passwords can match but both most be at least 6 characters in length The final section s Package to sign field should automatically be populated with the address of the file to be signed Hit the Sign button and choose a safe spot to save your signed apk Now you re ready to test your game on an Android device prior to submitting the signed apk to app distributors For more information on how to go about this process check out the Cookbook entry titled Prepping Your Device
25. and other things that are awesome screen similar to additive Instead of adding the actor and background colors screen adds the actor color to the inverse of the background color This results in a more realistic bright ening effect with less overexposure of the image 25 multiply multiplies the color values of the actor s pixels with the background This tints or darkens the background image and 1s useful for gradient overlays tinted windows shadow effects or masking Using transparency combined with multiply will have strange results and should usually be avoided horizontal wrap vertical wrap which has three options stretch the image will be stretched or compressed to fit within the boundaries of the actor fixed the actor will show its image at the size resolution of the file The image will be centered to the actor and the actor can be made smaller or bigger than the image resolution without changing the look of the image tile the image will be repeated 1f the actor is larger than the image resolution Motion Related Attributes linear velocity the speed of an actor in a specific direction specified in the X and Y direc tions angular velocity the speed at which the actor rotates Values greater than 0 cause the actor to rotate counter clockwise Negative values cause clockwise rotation max speed the value of the maximum speed the actor can go if Apply Max Speed has been sel
26. cene Real allows for decimal values such as 3 582 0 882 and 2 5 Obviously integers can work here as well Real attributes allow developers to include fractional events such as time tick ing down or up pouring a volume of liquid or hit point damage records where fractions of a point can be dealt Angles allows for values from 0 to 359 representing the degrees of a circle You can use decimal values here as well within this range Angle attributes are primarily used with objects that rotate or have some sort of angular movement including launchers such as the cannon in our cannon physics template Index positive whole numbers such as 0 1 58 2804 Index attributes can fulfill many of the same roles as Integers but have the interesting feature of being unable to store a negative number For instance an index attribute with a value of 4 that was told to subtract 6 would then have a value of 0 not 2 These will primarily be useful once GameSalad supports ad vanced features such as Arrays and Tables Existing attributes in your game can be viewed in the Attributes panel located the Backstage after selecting the appropriate tab These existing attributes record data about your game scene and ac tors such as their size location color and more However custom attributes contain data that is unique to your game how fast your racecar is moving or how many blocks remain in a puzzle Simply click the b
27. cribing how much of the scene will be shown when the game is played These values are set depending on the resolution selected in the Project Editor and cannot be modified manually To adjust a scene size click the home button select the Project Info tab and use the drop down Platform menu Selecting any of these options will automatically resize all of the scenes in the game to match that platform s screen size tracking area you can give actors within your scene a Control Camera behavior which ensures that the camera will follow the actor as they move through a scene This tracking area sets the boundaries width and height for when to begin scrolling a scene if possible based on the position of an actor with the Control Camera behav ior The camera will snap to the actor with that behavior unless it would force the camera to move beyond the edge of a scene rotation The rotation of the camera which changes based on auto rotation autorotate Rotates the scene to adapt to a player turning their device For example if a player turns their device upside down you may want the game to autorotate to por trait or landscape upside down to adjust to this new view In contrast 1f you are cre ating a maze or tilt game you would not want the scene to rotate as the player tilts the device to navigate the ball or whatever object around the maze Attributes are the values numeric or text relating to an obje
28. ct a rapid or gradual change in any game attribute and cannot be obstructed or stopped by any other Behavior Load Attribute Loads the value stored with a custom key name using the Save Attribute Behavior A key is basically a storage location for a specific attribute Use any key you want when saving an attribute and then use the same key to load that same information later Move Use to move in a particular direction relative to the actor or the scene at a specified velocity Additive movement allows multiple move Behaviors to stack or act on an actor simultaneously Stacked movement causes only the most recent active movement Behavior to control the actor Move to Use to move towards a specific X Y coordinate relative to the actor or to the sce ne This movement will stop upon arrival at the designated coordinates unless the controlling conditions are no longer valid and run to completion is not checked in which case the movement Behavior will cease as soon as the controlling conditions are no longer valid Note This Behavior allows the developer to record reference notes explaining a Rule Be havior group or other aspect of the game These will not be visible in or affect the operation of the game Particles Spawns a designated number of particles from behind the actor This Behavior in cludes options for color size lifetime velocity images and more 29 Pause Game This Behavior will pause the cu
29. ct that are easily and rapidly changed at any point For instance the positioning of the camera in a scene can be changed by altering the camera origin attributes while the background color of the scene is alterable with the color at tribute Several key behaviors affect which scene is currently active in your game The foremost of these 1s the Change Scene behavior Select any scene in your game from the drop down menu in this Behavior Generally you ll want this behavior in a rule stating some sort of precondition for changing the scene such as an actor 23 reaching a goal or achieving a certain score When this behavior triggers it Il change the focus of the game to the selected scene and reset the scene you were just in You can also use the Change Scene behavior to return to a previous scene The Pause Game behavior functions similarly but also has a few key differences Instead of resetting the current scene it simply pauses everything in it and opens the selected scene Use the Unpause Game behavior in the scene you selected in the Pause Game behavior to return to the original scene Typically you ll want to place this behavior in a rule stating that a button Un pause or Resume Game has been pressed or something similar Finally we have the Reset Scene and Reset Game behaviors The former will reset just the cur rent scene and that scene s attributes while the latter will reset a
30. d to actors Behaviors Behaviors are actions or states of being that apply to actors they can change how actors move look sound and act Camera Mode An alternative mode while editing a scene Camera mode allows the user to set the sensitivity of the camera s movement Change Attribute Behavior Allows user to set or change a game scene or actor attribute For instance users can create score keeping systems instructing the game to add points or remove points to a specific actor or remove health life from a player or actor Change Image Behavior Change an actor s image to a new image useful for showing damage or other changes to an actor without having to create multiple actors Change Scene Behavior Goes to a specific scene useful for moving to the next level a credits scene or the game menu Change Size Behavior Grows or shrinks an actor use a negative number to shrink Insert a timer container to control how long the growth or shrink should take Change Velocity Behavior Specify movement changes relative to another actor or to the scene Collide Behavior Use this Behavior in conjunction with a tag to control which actor or groups of actors the pri mary actor will bounce against Collision Shape This option determines whether other objects will collide with this object as if it were round or rounded or square or rectangular Constrain Attribute Behavior Conti
31. download the GameSalad Creator itself To download Creator for Windows head over to http gamesalad com get windows creator to get the most recent version Afterwards just install it and you re good to go Tip Though you will be able to download and use the Creator without registering for a GameSalad account you will not be able to publish without logging in We highly recommend going ahead and taking the time to register at this point in the process if you haven t already created an account First Look Whether this is your first time using the GameSalad Creator or you re a long time user of the Mac Creator as soon as you run the Windows Creator you Il be presented with the following screen where you Il see numerous buttons fields and tabs lt My Great Pri File Edit Layout View Tools Help amp My Great Project Wilnitial Scene While it may seem like a lot to take in at first don t worry Keep in mind that everything you see is intended to give you control over the creation of your game and even better you re reading this manual which will walk you through everything you need to get started For now let s jump right into a new project our word for unpublished games which 1s automatically brought up the moment you run Creator The Library You are now officially using the Creator One of the first things you II notice is that the Creator s us er interface is divided into three primary sections L
32. e holders or variables they re designed to store numerical or text values to be used for different situations They can easily be used for anything from the angle at which a cannonball is launched to displaying the name of a character in a game to recording a rapidly changing score Understanding how to use at tributes properly 1s crucial to unlocking the full power of GameSalad Any time you need to record a number or an angle or a piece of text creating a new attribute is probably the best way to do it If you re struggling with this concept focus on the numeric aspect of attributes For instance say you are building a racing game Creating an attribute to record the speed of your racer gives you the flexibility to easily change that speed in a way that can be referenced in a variety of situations such as accelerating braking and collisions Similarly another attribute might be used to record the amount of time it takes to go around the track or your final score GameSalad comes with a large number of existing attributes in every game project storing infor mation about actors scenes and the game itself This preset list of attributes controls certain base activities such as scene size actor motion and game time There are also options for creating custom attributes for any information you may wish to store as the developer We ll touch on existing attrib utes briefly and then discuss how to use custom attributes for anything in
33. e if your post is in a positive tone and comprehensively explains the situation Frequently Asked Questions Q Can I publish to iOS from Windows Creator A Apple currently requires app binaries to be published on a Mac using developer certificates At present 1OS projects must still be built through GameSalad Creator for Mac and then submitted 40 through your iTunes Connect Developer Account using your developer certificates We re currently exploring alternatives to provide a solution for Windows users and will have more information in the coming weeks and months Q How do I transfer a project from Windows Creator to Mac Creator A You can freely do this transition without having to worry about version numbers All Windows projects should open up on a Mac To transfer your project from Windows to Mac Open your project in Windows Creator Select the export option in the file menu Take your exported project over to a Mac computer Open the project in Mac Creator PRE Q I m still on Windows XP do I have to update Windows A GameSalad Creator for Windows is not currently supported on Windows XP We understand that many PC users still actively use XP as their OS of choice We are working to provide XP compatibil ity and hope to provide that supports in a future update Q Do I own the rights to my project if I made it using the GameSalad Creator A Yes From the Terms of Service As between you and GameSalad you retain o
34. ected apply max speed 1f checked the actor will be limited to the speed set in Max Speed Oth erwise the actor will continue to increase in speed Physics Related Attributes Non Motion Physics density the heaviness of the actor A higher value will make the object harder to move by less dense actors A value of 0 will make an object immovable but still affect other actors in the scene Density can be set to any real positive number i e Density gt 0 friction specify how much the actor gets slowed down each time it contacts another actor 0 is smooth larger numbers make the actor slow down more quickly Friction can be set to any real positive number i e Friction gt 0 restitution number that describes the bounciness of the actor 0 is no bounciness Restitution can be set to any real positive number between 0 and 2 fixed rotation specify whether or not the actor rotates when it collides with other actors in the scene movable this determines if the actor can be moved including collision from another actor and gravity 26 collision shape an actor can have a rectangular or circular collision area For a circular col lision area it is the largest circle that can fit entirely in the dimensions of the actor drag this gives an actor linear drag It will gradually slow down movement for an actor if there are no other forces movement behaviors modifying the motion of the actor angular
35. elected a column attribute type as well as set a number of rows you would like to utilize Simply click on the cell and begin typing To Import a csv file into GameSalad navigate to the table you would like to import information to and open it Click the icon that has two arrows pointing in opposite directions located on the right side of the window Select the CSV you would like to import and click Open Select the type of information you re importing and click Import Using Data in a Table Navigate to the actor you would like to reference the data and give it a behavior or rule that utilizes the expression editor Click on the e to open the expression editor Click the Insert Function drop down menu Click the TableCell Value function Within the function tableCell Value table row col you can now enter the information accordingly Navigate to the Game Attributes Browser and speci fy which of your tables to use in the first table coordinate Specify the row and column coordinates Please note that these can be modified and randomized by using additional functions and attribute references Additional Table Functions There are two additional table functions that can be used to gather table information TableCol Count is used to get the maximum number of columns in the specified table field TableRow Count is used to get the maximum number of rows in the specified table field
36. ene by selecting it in the Scenes tab of the Library panel then hit ting the icon Tip You can always re download the original version of the template so don t worry about making your own changes to these projects After all experimenting and making mistakes is a great way to learn That said save often and to multiple files A common issue reported by users is getting into trouble when saving to a single file Now we ll click the to create the new scene which will serve as our starting point Double click the default name Scene 1 and let s name it something that reflects what is planned for this scene Aerial Combat Scene minus quotes Also drag the new scene it to the top of the Scenes list so that later when we try our game were sure it s playing the right scene Click the scene in the list to bring it into focus in the Backstage and you I l be looking at this 10 Backstage ft Basic Shoot Em Up i Aerial Combat Scene Attributes Rules name Aerial Combat Scene time 0 0000 gt size wrapX E wrapY E gt gravity v Browser Behaviors Now click the Actors tab in the Library panel Again let s not delete the pre made actors hidden under the All category but we won t be using them for the moment either Instead click to cre ate a new actor You ll notice that Actor 1 is now at the very bottom of the Actors tab list Double c
37. f the GameSalad Creator While we recommend that over time you read through this entire document you should feel free to hop around to areas that specifically address what you are currently working on rather than feeling that you must read it in a beginning to end fashion Scenes Scenes are the building blocks of your game They contain the objects of your game and provide an essential way to organize different sections of your game For example you may create a scene for the initial menu for the game another for an individual game level another to end the game etc You can use scenes to design and build your game in segments Scenes are containers for the actors in your game You can split each scene into layers similar to many design programs such as Photoshop or Illustrator Layers provide another level of visual organization for your game and they allow you to group objects within your scene and arrange them in front of or behind other layers objects For example one layer may contain your background an other may contain all your labels and yet another may be for actors in your scene with which the player may interact Scene Attributes The following attributes define each scene and are modifiable name A descriptive way for you to refer to different scenes within your game time The number of seconds a scene has been active This attribute can be read and incor porated into your Rules Behaviors but not set size
38. he assets into your project such as permission from the copyright holder Some of our users choose to create their own assets while others commission work specifically for their project or purchase assets directly off the GameSalad Marketplace Q How can I recover a project file that ve previously published A Locate the previously published project on our website at http publish gamesalad com games requires a login click the edit button and use the Download button while the General Info tab is selected Please note that this 1s only applicable to Windows Creator publishes at this time Troubleshooting Issue A Rule is successfully triggering once but then never again Possible Resolution For this situation it helps to think as Rules as mousetraps Once triggered they need to be told by the Creator to ready themselves again This happens as soon as the Rule s condi tions are no longer valid For example if you have a Rule that triggers when an integer attribute is 1 3 or 5 the Rule will note that its conditions are no longer valid when that attribute 1s 2 or 4 and so it will ready itself to trigger again However should the attribute jump from 1 straight to 3 skipping 2 as far as the Rule knows it has already successfully triggered as intended and will take no further action until readied again We recommend adjusting your Rule s conditions so that this situation can not be encountered or creating l
39. ibrary Stage and Backstage Let s focus on the Library for the moment which can be found in the upper left hand corner of the window The Library panel will help you stay organized by placing various key components of your game into separate but easily accessible tabs Since we re looking at a brand new project these tabs will be mostly empty for the moment but will quickly populate as you make progress Library i wl I Game FEA Game Title My Great Project Project Info gt Tables The organization tabs found in the Library panel include Game Scenes Layers Actors Im ages and Audio As mentioned above these tabs are where you ll find most of the fundamental components for your project For example you can give your project a title in the Game tab and image files can be imported into your project using the icon in the Images tab Tip Image files can be in png Jpg Jpeg gif tiff wdp or bmp format Acceptable sound formats include ogg for sounds and m4a for music Select the Scenes tab and you ll see a single scene with the title of Initial Scene which you can edit by double clicking It s defined by some default scene attributes in the Backstage section of the Creator which we ll go over in more detail further on in the manual You can create additional scenes by pressing the icon a process similar to the importing images and sounds
40. ill up the progress bar in the upper right hand corner of the window Once this bar reaches 78 you ll be able to list your game on the GameSalad Arcade 73 M_a While we encourage users to fill out the entire form for presentation reasons you actually only have to provide the following items to get your game included in the Arcade game title icon and a screenshot Once you ve filled out the above items click on the HTMLS tab under Platforms on the left side of the page The Publishing button on the right hand side should now be intractable since you hit the 78 threshold p gt pubiish Your app was queued for generation It may take a couple of minutes why not go brush up on your knowledge with GameSalad Cookbook while you wait 36 Congratulations In a few minutes your game will be playable worldwide on the GameSalad Arcade If you d like to take it a step further and embed your game into a website or allow others to do so you can enable Allow Game Embed under Main Settings Main Settings W Allow Game Embed Allow anyone to embed this game within a web page View terms of Service Once your Arcade game goes live you ll receive both a pop up notification and in window notification that includes a link In addition the Play Game button should now be clickable g pjaycame Congratulations Your app is ready Please check the Action menu for new options You have published your game Play It
41. ing window Statements can be attribute val ues for error checking or text entry to flag an event when your game is running for testing purposes log10 Function The base 10 logarithm of a value For instance log10 10 1 log10 100 2 For more infor mation check out http en wikipedia org wiki Logarithm Max Speed This attribute controls the maximum speed an actor can reach through acceleration and gravity Please note that some Behaviors such as Change Velocity and Interpolate will override Max Speed 45 Movable Allows you to specify that an actors is able to move or not able to move when interacting with other actors Check the box to allow it to move Move Behavior Specifies movement in a particular direction relative to the actor or scene Movement is perpetu al unless stopped by some other Rule or object Move To Behavior Specify movement towards a particular X amp Y coordinate upon arrival stops magnitude Function Finds the length of a line segment drawn directly from the origin 0 0 to the given point You can also include an offset to find the length between two points for example magnitude x x yy Say you have one actor at 100 240 and another at 25 30 To find the distance between them use magnitude 25 100 30 240 max Function Returns the higher value of the two numbers or variable units This can be very useful for deter mining if a new score 1s higher than an existing
42. ions of a second e Checking to see if there is any logic that might be unintentionally contradicting other logic Further Assistance Want to dig in and read up further We re constantly adding additional resources for our users on the official GameSalad website in the form of updates to the Cookbook cookbook gamesalad com as well as posts in the Salad Solutions section of the forums forums gamesalad com categories Salad Solutions Should you find yourself in need of technical assistance please feel free to reach out to our helpful Customer Service Team using the contact form at arcade gamesalad com feedback Definitions Accelerometer Determines the angle and rate of movement of the device useful for determining when a user ro tates or tilts their device Accelerate Behavior Specifies the speed and direction of acceleration for an actor Actors will continue to accel erate unless drag is applied or another movement Behavior takes precedence Accelerate Toward Behavior Allows user to specify the precise location an actor will accelerate toward Action These are Behaviors that are not meant to fire continuously such as movement changing image color or size or accepting keyboard input they are best used when governed by a Rule Actor All the items both visible and invisible in your game are actors they are governed by Behaviors that con trol how they interact with both other actors as
43. its name implies the Attributes tab has ties directly back to the Attrib utes panel You ll often find yourself creating logic that needs to reference game scene or actor at tributes In cases like this simply click the field in the Rule or Behavior you want to add the refer ence to and find the relevant attribute in the Attributes tab Functions are potent tools for ensuring that the math behind your game is working for you rather than against you For example the function prec short for precision allows you to decide the max imum number of decimal places you want a value to be able to go out to Pa v Display Text display prec game time 1 in the following style Arial 30 A Zl 5 E wrap text inside actor This screenshot incorporates elements from all three tabs It has a Behavior Display Text an attrib ute reference game time and a function prec or precision When this actor is placed into a scene and that scene is previewed using Play it will now display the amount of time that the project has been running for to the tenths decimal place There are countless other possibilities we could delve into but let s move on to the Creator s third primary user interface section the Stage The Stage The Stage is where you ll place your newly created actors to give them life and to allow them inter act with each other You can also preview your project from here using the green
44. l and name it Boss Ship Before dragging this actor into the scene drag the image boss from the Images tab onto the prototype actor s image section the grey and white checkered area in the Attributes panel In addition change the size attribute of the prototype to 200 width by 100 height P Basic Shoot Em Up fi Aerial Combat Scene Boss Ship Prototype Attributes sa Rules name Boss Ship time 0 0000 Now place it in the scene and move the Boss Ship actor so that it is just outside of the visible sce ne This is so we can have it fly into the viewable area after the scene starts for a more dramatic ef fect Your stage for the Aerial Combat Scene should now look something like this 15 Stage Aerial Combat Scene To give these two actors the capacity to keep track of their current health create two new integer Game Attributes in the Attributes panel while the Basic Shoot Em Up tab is selected and name them Player Health and Boss Health Set their default value to 100 P Basic Shoot Em Up fi Aerial Combat Scene es Boss Ship Prototype Attributes Rules name default name time 0 0000 displaySize actorlags Enemy Targets Player X 0 0000 Player Y 0 0000 Game Over Boss Survived 7j Score C Player Health 100 Boss Health 100 Up next is our goal of adding a background Drag the image titled sunset directly into the scene which is actual
45. lable in clude 10S Mac Desktop Android and HTMLS Play Music Behavior Triggers a music file to play can play once or loop Play Sound Behavior Triggers a sound file to play can play once or loop Preview Allows you to see how your game will look and run instantly Can be done both in GameSalad and in a browser window Use often to ensure that the Rules and actions you are giving your actors are working properly Project Size The current memory needs of your project can be found in the bottom right corner of the Game Salad Creator The recommended maximum size for GameSalad Arcade games is 20 MB Prototype Actor A prototype actor is an actor that possesses all the overall governing Behaviors but does not possess some of the specifics that an Instance Actor possess such as spawning location Publish Publishing uploads your game to GameSalad s servers where it is turned into a binary that you can then submit directly to Apple GameSalad Arcade or an Android store 46 Pause Game Behavior This Behavior will pause the scene by freezing all activity in a given scene and opening another scene that you specify Use this to open up in game menus or simply pause the action Use unpause to resume the scene Playhaven PlayHaven 1s a creative new ad network that provides an interstitial app referral immediately before gameplay Pro accounts will have the option to include the inters
46. le tableRowCount Function Returns the number of rows in the selected table tan Function The trigonometric tangent function For more information check out http en wikipedia org wiki Trigonometric functions Unpause Game Behavior This Behavior removes the pause screen and resumes the paused scene vectorToAngle Function Finds the angle relative to the origin 0 0 given an X and Y coordinate For instance vectorloAngle 100 200 63 435 You can also find the angle relative to an offset for instance vectorToAngle x x y y VectorToAngle 100 200 150 250 will find the angle between the points 100 150 and 200 250 or 135 degrees 48
47. le v type or drag in a condition vY do v Change Attribute game Player Health game Player Health 10 type or drag in a behavior or blo gt else Tip While actors can reference their own Self Attributes they cannot directly reference other actors Self At tributes To work around this create a Game Attribute and have it be updated using a Change Attribute or Con strain Attribute Behavior by the reporting actor Then have the referencing actor check and react to that newly created Game Attribute Additionally we have a rule that states that pressing spacebar fires the player s laser by spawning the laser actor simple enough One item Pd like to specifically call out is the use of the mathematical equations and functions which opens up countless possibilities for game design In this situation I used a very straightfor ward equation to decrease the Player Health game attribute by 10 each time Player Ship is struck by a missile And of course when the player s health runs out their ship is destroyed When All x of the following are happening if game Player Health lt 0 type or drag in a condition vY do destroy this actor type or drag in a behavior or bloc gt else 19 Now for the Boss Ship For our game the Boss Ship acts independently of the player s actions by firing a missile once a second The Move behavior paired with the Timer behavior allows fo
48. lick Actor 1 rename it to Player Ship and then drag it from its list on the left side of the screen to the scene in the Stage It s not much to look at right now but give us a few more minutes and you ll see us turn into a core component of our new game What we have in front of us is a lone instance actor that has been dropped into a scene and that instance actor is still locked to a prototype actor of the same name ff Basic Shoot Em Up Wi Aerial Combat Scene 5 Player Ship Prototype Player Ship Instance Attributes 7 Rules Player Ship 0 0000 i we z Click the lock to modify rules for this specific actor Tip If we dropped a second Player Ship actor into the scene they would have the same name and essentially be identical in every way except for their position in the scene These X and Y positions are tracked by two Self Attributes which are included in every actor by default Self Attributes are unique from Game Attributes in that each instance actor independently keeps track of their own Self Attributes This means that if we added the Self Attribute Current Health to a prototype actor representing enemy ships each new instance actor spawned based on that prototype would keep track of the value of their own version of that Self Attribute If we attempted to do this with a Game Attribute hurting one enemy would affect all enemies By using Self Attribute each enemy
49. ll scenes and attributes in the game It is also useful to be aware of the Camera controls By clicking the camera image we can adjust the camera zone The camera zone is the movement leeway an actor has before causing the camera to move In other words suppose we have an actor that controls the camera s movement Generally as the actor moved through the scene the camera would follow But if the actor turned around and headed in the opposite direction we would want it to move a small distance before the camera started to follow That distance is the movement leeway which is controlled with the camera zone Use the handles to reduce or increase this margin basically the actor controlling the camera will be able to move freely in the central black area before bumping into the camera zone and moving the camera along with the actor To return to scene editing mode simply click the arrow to the left of the camera image Actors Actors can represent the character that the player 1s controlling or they can be the surrounding ob jects characters that your player talks to collides with jumps over or generally interacts with during gameplay Game designers often begin their process in Creator by creating the set of actors that they will need in their game across different scenes These are known as prototypes or models of the actual ac tors characters instances that your players will interact with within your scenes For example in Pac Man you
50. ly a short cut for creating a new actor which you should go ahead and rename Back ground We ll also use another short cut by editing this new actor s size directly from stage by us ing the options in the upper right hand corner 16 Stage Aerial Combat Scene a Actori X 236 v 158 w 122 S H 120 2 RJo With the sunset actor selected change the W width field to 480 and the H height field to 320 Unfortunately now our Background actor is covering up our Player Ship actor This is easy to fix though by simply right clicking on the Background actor in the Stage and select the Send to Back option Stage Aerial Combat Scene X 0 From here we ll be using a few of the previously created actors for convenience rather than having you recreate logic that already exists However we will be making a few tweaks to make it suite our needs Open up the actor missile and adjust the Collide Destroy Rule so that the actor will properly explode when it hits the player by exchanging ship with Player Ship Make a similar change with the laser actor by scrolling down to the bottom rule and changing actor with tag with ac tor of type and then set the actor to Boss Ship We have a few more pieces of logic to place in our Player Ship and Boss Ship actors which can be seen in the below screenshots First let s go
51. me rate of the animation up to 30 frames per se cond whether or not the animation loops stops at the last frame or returns to the last image used before the animate Behavior started Change Attribute This Behavior allows you to set change or increment a game scene or actor attribute It can be used to change a numerical value color size movement accelera tion or any other value determined by an attribute Change Image Specify an image to replace the current image on an actor You can either drag the new image to this Behavior or specify an image from the drop down menu Change Scene This Behavior will stop the current scene and immediately move to the des ignated scene It s best to place this Behavior inside a Rule that changes to the game credits scene menu scene or to a new game level after certain objectives are met Change Size This Behavior changes an actor s size by a scale factor use a negative number to shrink an actor Note the actor s original size will still determine its collision volume to change this use change attribute or interpolate instead Use a timer to specify the amount of time that the transformation should take to occur Change Velocity Specify the direction of movement for the actor at a constant designated speed Once the direction 1s specified other influences on movement will begin to affect the actor such as drag gravity or other movement Behaviors 2
52. n a rule whose conditions become false and then true again These are indicated by an A next to the be havior name There are currently 36 standard behaviors they re listed below for your reference You can also see each of these behaviors listed in the dictionary at cookbook gamesalad com definitions along with other terms Accelerate Use Accelerate to specify the rate and direction of acceleration for an actor If the drag attribute or gravity 1s not also applied to an actor acceleration will be continuously applied increasing the actor s speed until it reaches the maximum defined speed if any See also the Accelerate Toward Behavior Accelerate Toward Use Accelerate Toward to specify the rate of acceleration and the tar geted location of an actor Use the expression editor to specify a static or moving target posi tion If the drag attribute or gravity is not also applied to an actor acceleration will be contin uously applied increasing the actor s speed until it reaches the maximum defined speed if any The actor will continue accelerating past the target location along the existing trajectory unless slowed through other Behaviors or attributes See also the Accelerate Behavior Animate Drag and drop a sequence of images into this Behavior from your project library Once added images can be reordered and additional images can be inserted The controls in this Behavior allow you to specify the fra
53. nd be sure to dou ble check that you an up to date copy of the project file backed up locally Tips and Best Practices e Save early and often In addition be sure to use some form of versioning saving multiple files of your project and to also keep copies of your project in separate storage devices such as a flash drive or a second computer This will allow you to be prepared against hardware failure data corruption or unintended alterations to your project Should the worst come to pass and you find that you can no longer access your project you may be able retrieve a ver sion of it from the GameSalad servers if you ve successfully published it at some point in the past This recovery process is covered in more detail in the FAQ section of this manual e Keep notes and detailed documentation While often overlooked this can save you a lot of head scratching and confusion down the line especially if your project deals with a large number complex interdependencies amongst actors and attributes e Don t get frustrated Roadblocks happen to all of us from time to time When confronted with a problem that doesn t appear to have a straightforward resolution tackle it from multi ple angles You might also consider searching the forums to see if other GameSalad users have already found a solution to your issue Should you decide to create a post with your question please keep in mind that you re more likely to receive a helpful respons
54. ne the Actor 1 Prototype also has a Graphics category since actors and scenes are distinct from each other which is reflected by some unique attributes Attributes are one of the most powerful aspects of Creator and are essentially value placeholders They are divided into three main categories Scene Attributes Game Attributes and Actor Attributes also known as Self Attributes If you hit the icon in the Attributes panel Creator will prompt you to pick a type for your new Attribute for the Backstage tab that is currently selected Boolean Text Integer Real or Angle the differences between these are covered in the Attributes section on page 31 While you ll be using some of these types more frequently than others each of them are incredibly powerful due to the fact that actors can reference change and react to these values Attributes are how actors in your project will know when to spawn new enemies how much life or ammo the hero has left cause the game to show the Game Over screen tell the player they have ob tained a new high score and much more Later I recommend going through these more thoroughly but for now let s move on to the Browser section of the Backstage The Browser section is divided into three tabs Behaviors Attributes and Functions We ve already briefly covered Behaviors but we ll go into even more detail soon so go ahead and click the Attributes tab As
55. nuously updates an attribute for instance constraining the actor s location to that of the mouse Essentially ties two attributes together Control Camera Behavior Allows users to cause the camera to follow an actor keeping it in view ceil Function The integer when you round up a value For instance ceil 0 3095 1 ceil 9 2850 10 and ceil 3 5 3 cos Function This is the trigonometric cosine function cos 0 1 For more information on sine and cosine check out http en wikipedia org wiki Trigonometric functions Density Density refers to the heaviness of the actor A higher value will make the object harder to move by less dense actors A value of 0 will make an object immovable but still affect other actors in the scene Density can be set to any real positive number i e Density gt 0 Destroy Behavior Removes the ACTOR from the scene apply this Rule to objects that can be destroyed like the blocks in Breakout or the bricks in Mario Best used with a Rule for instance contact with the ball in Breakout Devices The Devices pane under the Attributes tab in the Browser allows you to reference various attributes relating to the device including mouse touch accelerometer screen and audio Display Text Behavior Allows users to change the color size font and other elements of text displayed in game Change alpha to 0 found under color in the attributes list to make
56. ogic such that once the Rule triggers it automatically readies itself Issue I m encountering an error when attempting to publish my project Possible Resolution This can be caused by any one of several issues from improper configura tions on the publishing computer to firewall antivirus software interference to publishing server congestion We recommend that you contacting GameSalad Customer Support and provide as much detail as possible including The version of GameSalad Creator you are publishing with the specific text of the error and what platform you re publishing for Issue What are some ways that I might improve the performance of my project Possible Resolution Performance is impacted by the hardware configuration of the device used any other software simultaneously running alongside the project the size of the project and the logic configuration of the project We recognize how important it 1s to our users to be able to create games that run as smoothly as possible and are consistently working behind the scenes on further optimiza tion improvements In addition we recommend that users streamline their logic whenever possible This might mean e Reducing the number of actors active at one time 42 e Ensure you re not spawning new actors into the scene faster than you destroy existing actors e Using fewer Timers and Constrain Attribute Behaviors e Avoiding use of Every X seconds Timers that are set to fract
57. over Player Ship To summarize by using the two Constrain Attribute behaviors the actor Player Ship is constantly reporting its position to the game by way of two Game Attributes These attributes are both real attributes and we didn t need to cre ate them since they were already part of this particular template Now other actors can use and react to these two Game Attributes values such as the heat seeking missiles the Boss Ship will be firing 17 Tip If an actor is suppose to be gone forever once off the visible portion of the scene an enemy that was suc cessfully dodged such as a missile then make sure to set specific behaviors to destroy these actors Otherwise your game might begin to experience performance slow downs In addition actors that move too far beyond the boundaries of the scene itself will be automatically destroyed y Constrain Attribute constrain game Player X to self position x y Constrain Attribute constrain game Player Y to self position y When of the following are happening receives a key press Space is type or drag in a condition Y do v Spawn Actor spawn actor in the direction 0 relative to from position 0 relative to place in front of actor type or drag in a behavior or block gt else 18 When All 7 of the following are happening actor overlaps or collides with actor of type missi
58. prototype actor Interpolate Behavior Allows you to cause an attribute location value to go from A to B in a set amount of time for instance from 100 to 1 a countdown or from position X to position Y for pre programmed movement 1OS The operating system created by Apple Inc to run on the iPhone iPad and iPod Touch In Function The natural logarithm of a value The natural logarithm is the logarithm to the base e where e is ap proximately 2 71828182818 For more information check out http en wikipedia org wiki Natural_ logarithm Keyboard Input Saves keyboard input text into a specified attribute Kiip Kiip is a system to provide real world rewards when players complete an achievement in your game Pro account holders will have the option to integrate Kiip Rewards into their games and will receive a revenue share when players accept a real world reward offer Layers Layers allow you to prevent actors from interacting with each other this can allow you to create back grounds scores and more without having the player s actors bump into them Load Attribute Behavior Loads the value stored by a custom key name from persistent storage Allows users to change an attribute upon specific input or events Logic A term which refers to the combination of Rules and Behaviors that jointly define how a project operates Log Debugging Statement Behavior Logs a statement in the debugg
59. publish to 10S you will need to utilize Mac Creator because Apple requires the Mac platform for the signing process Once you re ready to publish whether your game is finished or still a work in progress the first step is to bring up the project file you ve been hard at work on in the GameSalad Creator While on the Game tab in the Library panel of the Creator you Il see the option to publish in the form of a Upload Game button just above the Sign In Sign Out button dJ o W g Game Frat Game Title My Great Project Project Info gt Tables Clicking Upload Game will prompt you to confirm the upload after which you ll be asked where you would like to save a copy of your GameSalad Project file on your local machine Choose a file name and hit Save to continue on 34 iis UploadNewGameWindow Uploading My Great Project Organize v New folder Favorites am Date modified Type E Desktop J Downloads gt Recent Places No items match your search Libraries _ Documents Music Pictures amp Videos a Homearoup r File name v Save as type Game Salad Project bd Hide Folders Note that if you were not already logged in to your account at time of upload attempt you Il be asked to sign in which is a requirement for publishing If you ve forgotten your password don t worry Just click the Forgot pass word option
60. r a 43 Definitions CCC eee meee ee eee eee eee eee eee eee H EEE HEE EOE OO EEE O EEE EE EEE EE EEE SHEE EE HED EO HEED EEE E EEE EEE EEE EEE EEE OOO EOE DEES 43 Windows Creator Walkthrough Getting Started System Requirements Windows 7 or Windows Vista Intro GameSalad Creator is a 2D object oriented tool that allows you to create completely original games using a drag and drop interface enabling you the user to create applications for 10S Android HTMLS and even for the Mac Platform without typing a single line of code Tip Currently Windows Creator supports Android and HTMLS publishing while Mac Creator supports 10S Android HTMLS and Mac Platform A single Professional GameSalad Membership subscription for Windows and Mac is required for Android publishing This is possible by using Creator s unique design and powerful features to turn logic and assets into finished high quality products For our purposes logic refers to the combination of Rules Behav iors and Attributes that jointly define how a project operates and assets are the images and sounds imported into your project Tip Throughout this manual we ll be introducing many new terms that we have identified in bold For defini tions please refer to page 43 Over the next several pages we ll cover what to do first as well as some essential background infor mation so you can begin to experiment and create on your own Before that you ll need to
61. r start off scene but enter the scene at some point during gameplay You ll notice that if your scene size is larger than the camera size dictated by the platform you ve chosen there will be areas of your scene that are outside the scope of the camera You can place actors here and have them move into the scene using a variety of movement behav iors which are discussed later in this document Finally you can spawn actors using the Spawn Actor behavior This will place the actor at a designated location and velocity in your scene Behaviors Behaviors are actions that you can assign to actors to control how they interact move and change appearance Behaviors are used to add logic to your game to control what happens when some event occurs such as when an actor collides with an object to make the actor take some action such as changing its speed or to change an actor s appearance such as its size image color or transparency There are four types of behaviors Blocks Behaviors whose primary purpose is contain or consider other behaviors Conditions Primarily inputs such as key board presses touches collision detection and mouse clicks 21 Persistent Behaviors that continue to act on an actor continuously unless placed in a rule whose conditions are no longer true These are indicated by a B next to the behavior name Actions Behaviors that occur once and only repeat themselves 1f placed i
62. r the Boss Ship to slowly en ter the scene before eventually coming to a full stop In the same way that Player Ship is damaged by missile collision the Boss Ship is damaged by laser collision which will eventually cause it to be destroyed just after spawning the actor big ex plosion which has both an Animate behavior and a Play Sound behavior Tip It is important to note that rules and behaviors fire off in a top down order This means that if you put two Change Scene Behaviors in the same Rule the second Change Scene Behavior will never get a chance to exe cute even if the Rule itself is valid and properly triggering If you like this effect on the boss there s also a Small Explosion actor that you go back and add in Player Ship s logic as a Spawn Actor behavior just before the Player Ship is destroyed seconds v Run to Completion v Spawn Actor spawn actor missile in the direction 0 relative to actor v from position 50 relative to actor a place in front of actor v For 10 seconds F Run to Completion relative to actor v in a n additive way at a speed of 20 4 Halt when behavior stops 20 When All x of the following are happening actor overlaps or collides with actor of type laser v Change Attribute set game Boss Health to game Boss Health 10 When All of the following are happening
63. rrent scene and display the scene selected in the Behavior over the current scene Using the Unpause Game Behavior removes the scene and resumes the original scene Pause Music This Behavior will pause the currently music track if one is playing Use the play music Behavior to resume the track Play Music This Behavior causes the selected music file to start playing Select loop to cause the selected music to begin again once it has played through to the end Play Sound This Behavior causes the selected sound file to start playing Select loop to cause the selected sound file to repeat each time it completes select run to completion to prevent other Behaviors from interrupting the sound before it has played through to the end Positional Sound and Velocity Shift will affect the volume and pitch of the sound as the actor controlling the sound effect moves through the scene Replicate This creates duplicates of an actor without actually spawning additional actors in to a scene based on the value of an attribute It is most commonly used to display the number of lives a player has left Reset Game Resets the game and all the scenes 1n it This will restore all attribute values to their original state but will not delete keys saved using the Save Attribute Behavior Reset Scene Resets the current scene and all the actors in it If placed in the scene that ap pears during a pause
64. score or for other similar comparisons For example max 12 35 35 min Function Returns the smaller value of the two numbers or variable units For example min 12 35 12 Note Behavior Allows users to write a note to self or other creators about a particular Behavior Rule actor or group useful or explaining why something is done a particular way Open URL Pro Behaviors Only available to individuals with a Professional level membership this option allows the developer to specify a specific URL to open when a certain action takes place we recommend a button being clicked or pressed The URL will open in the user s default browser Orientation This determines whether your game runs in up and down mode portrait or side to side mode landscape on iDevices iPhone iTouch iPad Otherwise An optional component of a Rule Behaviors placed under this heading will trigger whenever the condi tions of the Rule are not valid Particles Particles are small objects that move out from the actor in a defined way See Particles Behavior for more information Particles Behavior Create an explosion Radial or fountain of particles can also set an image color lifetime and other parameters Pause Music Behavior Pauses a currently playing music file upon a particular event Platform The devices or locations where your game will be able to run Platforms that are currently avai
65. ship s health is separately tracked so it s possible to severely damage one ship while leaving another untouched There are several items worth highlighting about this particular actor s tab in the Backstage panel Locked instance actors have been mentioned a few times early on in this manual actors whose logic and attributes are informed by the prototype actor that created them but here we see the hard to 11 miss notification that lets us know we are looking at an instance actor who is still locked to its proto type Backstage G Revert To Prototype aac Click the lock to modify rules for this specific actor By clicking the lock symbol we can now make changes to this instance actor that will not affect the prototype actor Likewise while unlocked changes to the prototype will no longer affect the instance actor To re lock the instance actor select the Revert to Prototype option Tip While locked actors are in most ways exact duplicates of their prototype its important to note that they are not exactly identical For example each instance actor can have a unique X and Y position attributes as well as width and height attributes for size Changing these and comparable attribute values in the instance actor will not break the prototype instance lock For now let s leave this Player Ship instance actor locked and instead click the prototype tab Player Ship Prototype Notice that there s no lock
66. should appear in under the organizational header All Click Actor 1 and a new tab named Actor 1 Prototype will automatically appear and become the focus of the Backstage P My Great Project H initial Scene Actor 1 Prototype Attributes s Rules name Actor 1 time 0 0000 AA gt position gt size rotation 0 00 color v Browser Behaviors Functions Tip You know you re editing a prototype actor when you see Prototype in its Backstage tab name Similarly you know you are editing an instance actor when you see Instance instead While editing an unlocked Instance actor press the Revert to Prototype button to revert back any logic that differs from the prototype actor This will also re lock the instance actor to its prototype As you can tell from the blank Rules section this newly created actor has no logic and is ready for you to tell it how to behave We ll be using the Browser Attributes and Rules sections of the Backstage to achieve this The Attributes panel will give you access to some of the core configuration settings of the tab you currently have selected So clicking on the tab Actor 1 Prototype when you were previously had tab Initial Scene selected will result in different attributes being listed as well as different values for those attributes Note that both these tabs have a name and size attribute but unlike Initial Sce
67. solution Independence Allows your game to be displayed in low or high resolution depending upon the capa bilities of the device Restitution Makes your actor bouncy 0 is no bounciness 2 1s superball bouncy Any real positive number from 0 to 2 can be used Rotate Behavior Alone this causes consistent clockwise or counter clockwise rotation Can also cause an item to only rotate when an event happens such as pressing a keyboard key or collision with another actor Rotate to Angle Behavior Causes rotation to an angle relative to another actor or to a scene Rotate to Position Behavior Causes rotation to a specific XY coordinate on the screen or relative to actor Rule Rules create a condition or set of conditions that when met cause actors to act in specific ways Rule Behavior Creates a condition or set of conditions to check for player input or an attribute change random Function Returns a random integer equal to or between the first integer and the second For instance random 1 5 could return any of the following values 1 2 3 4 5 Save Attribute Behavior Save a particular value into persistent storage with a custom name Allows users to save games see Load Attribute for information on loading saved information Scene Attributes These are attributes that specifically affect a scene rather than an actor or the entire game They include Name Time Size Wrap X Wrap Y Gravit
68. statements in that they will consider whether a given condition is true or valid and based on the answer to this question they will then take one or a series of pre determined actions known as Behaviors To illustrate imagine a Rule that states than an actor should destroy its self when it overlaps or col lides with cannon fire v Rule When All X of the following are happening actor overlaps or collides with actor of type cannon fire Y do v Destroy destroy this actor We ll walk through the specific steps for setting up actors to accomplish a specific tasks or design objects in the Making a Game section of this manual but the above should give you a general con cept of how Creator is able to bring your ideas to life without requiring you to learn and type out code If you re looking at a new and so almost entirely empty project you ve most likely noticed that the only two tabs currently available in the Backstage are My Great Project and Initial Scene Using the Library panel click the Actors tab and press the button to create a new actor Tip Note that only instance actors exist within a scene For example dragging a prototype actor into a scene will create a new instance of that actor A list of all instance actors for the currently selected scene can be found under the Layers tab while all actors listed in the Actors tab are prototypes A new actor named Actor 1
69. t the same time as the right arrow key is pressed for the Move Behavior to be triggered notice the When All of the following are happening requirement at the top of the rule Essentially when taken in context of the other 3 Move rules it means that actor Ship cannot move outside of the viewable part of the zone Feel free to make this rule supplement on your own actor if you like but don t worry about it too much This manual s goal is to provide you with the core concepts of Creator so we wont be going too in depth into best practices Tip Notice that the rule we created is simply named Rule while the template s rule is named Rule Move Right Double clicking the title bar of any rule or behavior allows you to rename it Using an appropriately de scriptive name allows you or your co creators to immediately have an idea of what that portion of logic controls or affects which can save a great deal of time when going over past work This is a good time to take a step back and review what s left to do Also if you haven t already been doing so be sure to save from time to time Since this is only an example project we won t be spending too much time on it but some basic additions might include a background the ability to shoot an enemy to shoot at and to shoot back at you a win condition and a lose condition The next step on this path would be to create a new prototype actor using the Library pane
70. titial or not Pro account holders will also re ceive a revenue share for completed referrals in their games PlayHaven is also the first partner in GameSalad s game referral system included on all games published under a Basic account padInt Function Displays an integer with the specified number of digits For instance padInt 32 5 will display 00032 However padInt 38025 2 will display 38025 It will always display at least the minimum number of digits needed to retain the value of x padReal Function Displays a floating point with padding and precision For instance padReal 9 1234 15 6 will display 9 1234 with at least 15 total digits including the decimal and at most 6 digits to the right of the decimal 00000009 123400 pow Function Returns the value of x to the power of y For example pow 2 3 2 2 2 8 precision Function Displays a floating point number with the specified number of decimal places For in stance prec 1234 234 2 will display 1234 23 Replicate Behavior Creates copies of an actor based on an attribute or integer Useful for displaying the number of lives a player has left having an item duplicate itself and much more Reset Game Behavior Resets the game and all scenes best used with a Rule to specify WHEN or HOW this happens Reset Scene Behavior Resets the current scene and all actors in it best used with a Rule to specify WHEN or HOW this happens Re
71. utton at the top of the list of attributes and rename as desired Because you ll be accessing the value held by this attribute from actor behaviors you may want to rename it something that makes sense to you and you ll be able to remember later such as race car speed or blocks remaining At times you ll want to record the location of an actor you can do this through attributes as well and these attributes might be named something like PlayerX and PlayerY to record the X and Y coordinates of the player 32 Tables Creating a Table Select the Game tab in the Library panel and click the button located beside the Tables category to create a new table Editing a Table Click on the table you just created in the Game tab and youll notice that a new tab is now brought up in the Backstage To the left of the words Rows and Columns there is a numerical value in an editable field Click the box to change the value and enter the number of Rows or Columns you d like to have You ll see each column in your table has a drop down menu where you can select an attribute type To change the type of column select the drop down arrow and click on the type of attribute you d like If you start with one type of data and change it later GameSalad will attempt to convert all of the cells in that column to the new attribute data type To add information to a cell make sure you ve s
72. well as with people playing your game Actor Mode This is the default mode for the Stage and allows the actors to be placed moved rotated and resized in the scene Actor Tag Actor Tags are used to categorize actors they can be added and removed through the Project Editor Alpha Color Alpha controls the transparency of an actor and can be set to any real number between 0 and 1 with 0 being completely transparent and 1 being completely opaque Animate Behavior Displays a series of images in rapid succession to create animation Attribute Attributes contain numeric or text values that govern various aspects of the game scene and actors abs Function This provides the absolute value of a number In other words it will make a negative number into a positive number For example abs 5 23 5 23 acos Function This is the trigonometric arccosine inverse cosine function Values for x should range from 1 to 1 with results from 180 to 0 respectively Any other input values will result in nan 43 asin Function This is the trigonometric arcsine inverse sine function Values for x should range from 1 to 1 with results from 90 to 90 respectively Any other input values will result in nan atan Function This is the trigonometric arctangent inverse tangent function Results will range from 90 to 90 Behavior Library A list of all available Behaviors which can be assigne
73. wnership of all your copyright and or other intellectual property rights applicable to or embodied in your submis sions That said please take the time to familiarize yourself with all your rights and obligations as defined by the Terms of Service By visiting or using the GameSalad website Creator or associated services you agreed to the Terms of Service as detailed at gamesalad com terms Q What are the benefits of subscribing up for a GameSalad Professional Membership A Professional developers have access to innovative methods of monetizing their apps additional advanced Behaviors such as Game Center Leaderboards and Open URL are able to publish for Android and can expect a faster response when reaching out to Customer Service Full details of the se benefits can be found at gamesalad com membership pricing Q How do I access Pro Behaviors once I subscribe as a member A After signing up for Pro membership log out of and then back into GameSalad Creator Pro Be haviors are located inside in the Behaviors tab in the Backstage under the Pro section just to the below of the Actions and Custom tabs If these options aren t appearing please wait a couple hours and try again If at this point the Pro Behaviors still appear to be inaccessible we recommend contacting GameSalad Customer Support for additional assistance at arcade gamesal ad com feedback Please note that if you ve opted to pay by e check
74. y Color Camera and Autorotate 47 Show Ad Pro Behaviors Shows an ad at designated location if one is available requires additional configuration Spawn Actor Behavior Creates a new actor instance in the scene useful for projectiles dropping items etc Stop Music Behavior Causes a music file to stop playing sin Function The trigonometric sine function This is similar to the cosine function but is offset by one quarter of a wave cycle For more information see http en wikipedia org wiki Trigonometric_ functions Tip if you use the sine function and start your incrementing variable at 0 your actor s movement does not start at the middle point between the minimum and maximum points of the wave sqrt Function Provides the square root of a value Input values less than 0 will result in nan Timer Behavior Timer allows you to perform Behaviors or Rules at specified intervals These intervals are de fined as after a certain number of seconds every couple of seconds or for a certain number of seconds tableCell Value Function Returns the value of a cell of a selected table at a certain row and column Tables are numbered starting at 1 You can also use the row or column name as an input for this function For example tableCell Value game Data 1 15 will return the value in table Data at row 1 and column 15 tableColCount Function Returns the number of columns in the selected tab

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