Chapter 24: Review and Resources
In This Chapter You Will:
•Review what you have learned
•See what additional resources are available
In this chapter, you’ll review everything you’ve learned about Gamesalad and game development. First, you’ll review all of the knowledge you have gathered during the last twenty-three hours. Afterwards, you will learn about some of the various resources that are available online for Gamesalad and game development.
Review
At this point, you’ve spent at least 23 hours learning how to develop games using Gamesalad. However, it may be helpful to look back and review some of the topics that were covered during that time.
•You learned what game development is and what some of the roles and requirements are for a successful game.
•You learned how to use Gamesalad and how to navigate its interface, including the Inspector and Library palettes.
•You learned how to add scenes to games and how to create multiple game levels and player interface screens.
•You learned about the 2D coordinate system used by Gamesalad to place and control all of the in-game elements.
•You learned how to create and control the appearance of actors using the actor editor.
•You learned the difference between Prototype and Instance actors and when to use each type.
•You learned how to import and use images.
•You learned how to design a game and establish its rules and requirements.
•You learned the importance of playtesting a game and learned some of the things to watch for during testing.
•You learned about the six attribute types that Gamesalad supports and when to use each.
•You learned how to create your own custom game, scene, and actor attributes.
•You learned how to use operators to manipulate attributes.
•You learned how to use Gamesalad's built-in Behaviors to control the actors and actions in a game.
•You learned how to use the Attributes Browser and Expression Editor to further customize Behaviors.
•You learned how to accept player input from the keyboard, the mouse, and touch events.
•You learned how to add music and sound effects to your projects.
•You learned how to add physical properties to actors so they can interact with each other in realistic ways.
•You learned how to control the camera of the game, giving the player a window to your game's world.
•You learned what a Graphical User Interface is and how to create some common GUI elements.
•You learned how to create animations.
•You learned how to create special effects using the Particles Behavior.
•You learned about Tables and what some practical uses of them are.
•You learned what game polish is and how to continually improve your projects.
•You learned about the specifics of developing and publishing a mobile game using Gamesalad.
•You learned how to use Gamesalad's publishing portal.
•You created four mobile games using Gamesalad!
During the course of this book, you have spent a lot of time learning about game development using Gamesalad. You should be proud that now you have the knowledge to create your own custom game projects.
Resources
There are a lot of online resources available to help you to continue learning about Gamesalad and game development.
Gamesalad Resources
Certainly, the first stop in your quest for additional Gamesalad knowledge should be Gamesalad's official website (http://gamesalad.com/). Their website contains a lot of information including a very active and helpful community (http://forums.gamesalad.com/) and detailed tutorials (https://help.gamesalad.com/hc).
There are a lot of other Gamesalad-focused websites as well. Some of the most active include:
•http://www.jamie-cross.net/: This is my personal site dedicated to Gamesalad tutorials and information.
•http://gshelper.com/: This site hosts a lot of free and paid content, from tutorials to full game templates.
•http://www.deepblueapps.com/: This site also hosts lots of free and paid content. They also support other game development platforms outside of Gamesalad.
Game Development Resources
As you have no doubt learned while reading this book, there is a lot more to game development than learning any single software package. The websites listed below offer great information about game development, from general game development articles to game creation tutorials.
•http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/
•http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/
Asset Creation Resources
Every game needs a lot of assets besides the rules and behaviors that make everything work. To create a successful game, you’ll also need to create lots of graphics and sounds. Below is a list of some common software used to create game assets.
•Adobe Photoshop (https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html): Commonly used for raster graphics creation, Photoshop is a professional program and its price reflects that.
•GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/): GIMP is a freeware equivalent of Adobe Photoshop. If you’re on a budget, this software is certainly worth trying.
•Adobe Illustrator (https://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator.html): Illustrator is a vector graphics program and like Photoshop, it is a professional illustration package.
•Inkscape (https://inkscape.org/): Inkscape is the equivalent of a free version of Illustrator for developers on a budget.
•Adobe Flash (https://www.adobe.com/products/flash.html): While frames of animation can be created in any of the above software packages, a lot of developers like to use a dedicated animation package to create animations. Like the other Adobe products, Flash is a professional level software package.
•FlipBook Lite (http://www.digicelinc.com/flipbook.htm):, FlipBook is not free like some of the above packages; however, it is an inexpensive animation package worth checking out.
•Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/): This is a free, open source, audio recorder and editor.
•GarageBand (https://www.apple.com/mac/garageband/): Apple's GarageBand is a great tool for creating your own sound effects, soundtracks, and music loops.
•as3sfxr (http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/): This is an awesome online sound editor for creating classic 8-bit sound effects.
Pre-made Assets
It’s nice to learn how to create your own graphics and sounds, but not everyone is an artist or has the time to create all of the assets for their games themselves. Luckily, there are a lot of websites online where you can purchase or even download free assets.
Note–Asset Usage Rights: Before downloading purchased or free assets from any online sites, make sure you have read and understood the usage rights for each asset. Every site offers different rights; don’t assume an asset from one site has the same usage rights as a similar asset from a different site.
•http://marketplace.gamesalad.com/: This is the official Gamesalad Marketplace that contains images, animations, audio files, and full game templates.
•http://opengameart.org/: This site offers a collection of image, animation, and audio files for use in games.
•http://www.freesound.org/: This site offers a searchable database of audio files for use as sound effects and soundtracks.
•http://cgtextures.com/: This site has a lot of files that can be used to create 2D or 3D images.
•http://www.dreamstime.com/, http://www.bigstockphoto.com/ and http://www. fotolia.com/: All offer many stock photos and illustrations for sale.
•http://www.shockwave-sound.com/: This site offers a library of searchable audio files.
•http://audionautix.com/: This site has a nice library of free music files that are searchable by genre and mood.
Summary
In this chapter you reviewed what you have learned about Gamesalad and game development so far. Afterwards, you were introduced to some online resources that can be used to continue your Gamesalad education. Then you were introduced to many online game development related resources including software packages for creating images and sounds. Finally, you reviewed some online resources where you can find pre-made game assets.