It's too bad I really don't see any data layer integration - ability to call JSON from a url and do a simple parsing or anything. Hopefully LUA will allow this. I hope. As it is I've already left gamesalad for most of my dev. I had no choice.
Just give the server folks more money and pass it on to us. It seems you said before the hold up is over data tracking well the only reason for them to haggle over that is they must make money on selling the info. It always comes down to money in business period. Everyone has a price. So just offer them a higher premium and let's get on with it.
This is why you never let lawyers do the actual negotiations. In my family's firm we handle the terms and had the Lawyers validate the contract language and report to us. And we would infor the other party to rework the language. Lawyers are too competitive and it's always an ego contest between them. We would constantly remind our lawyers " you work for us not the other way around," lawyers are a dime a dozen and can always be replaced and we let them know that if they started their lawyering crap. Sounds to me like your lawyers need a lesson on who is calling the shots. They always need to be kept on a short leash.
As it is I've already left gamesalad for most of my dev. I had no choice.
Unfortunately, it looks like I'll have to give up on GameSalad too. Maybe things will get better in the future, as it's been looking better around here lately. But unfortunately, it's just not enough to get my projects done right now.
As for Asynchronous-Multiplayer — through a third party — is not a feature that I'm looking for. I prefer Apple's Game Center than a third-party. If GameSalad apps were customizable, I might have been able to get that last 10% done myself. Sure, cross-platform is cool, but not at the expense of a standard feature from Apple.
I think the real solution for GameSalad is to walk away from the third-party and setup their own multiplayer server system. That way, GameSalad wouldn't have to share any of the profit with the third party and then maybe I could actually justify to the client why player data is being sent to GameSalad. Although, I'm thinking it would be cheaper for me to simply use Game Center... or setup my own multiplayer system.
Logging out now. Maybe things will look better in a few months.
Game Center isn't the same as this async multiplayer solution. Unless I'm missing something.
It's really frustrating for us too to have this drag on so long. It's not a tracking issue that's holding this up. It's a contract terms issue that's being banged out. They want X and we don't want it. So we counter with Y, etc.
Hoping it may get wrapped up soon. The ball's in their court right now.
The Apple developer guide has instructions for "Real-Time" and "Turn-Based" matches. Apple's already done the heavy lifting. GameSalad only needs to plug it in.
Also, there are lots of other options out there. Here are three...
My thinking is that GameSalad could do hosting for developers that can't, or don't want to, manage their own servers. That way, GameSalad caters to high-end developers, while giving beginners/hobbyists a great starting point. My suggestion — Give the developers choice. If you want to make more money with developers, then provide them with a service they can use. Don't make a "third-party" the only option for GameSalad multiplayer when Apple already has a standard.
Photics has a few good valid points... but he's gone now so we can talk about him (...joke), it seems GameCentre does have async multiplayer capabilities... don't think I've played a game that's used it... (though that probably says more about the sort of games I play).
I'm all for the rumoured 3rd party that your going with and happy to pay extra for it (ideally the same monthly tiers they charge on their site). If it can get nicely implemented, their servers have 100% up time and without having to give away revenue share or impact our games in any way with adverts or links.
Hopefully we'll be able to use it without having to advertise other peoples games and control the look of its implementation ( ? ... ), and have the options for people to play/invite Facebook friends (far better than with GameCentre friends), random players (found on through the 3rd party multiplayer network) and invite players from our contacts.
... Hope you all get the legal stuff sorted soon... though no rush here as I'm still tinkering away with game mechanics that I hope to put to use in a multiplayer game.
When you turn it on... I'll very happily throw money back into the GameSalad pot for another Pro membership and if it falls away I'll have made a very nice prototype.
Fingers crossed it gets released to nightlys this year...
gamesalad is going to be a pretty serious tool, will it be possible to integrate Deep Facebook Integration, i guess it's in Engine Extensibility,
I would really like to hear some news about Facebook integration as if we can add features for our users to be able to recommend our apps to their friends it can massively reduce our cost per install.
We cannot truly compete with apps such as Candy Crush without such functionality.
Is this actually on the roadmap but not yet listed?
I've said it before and I'll say it again. social features & async multiplayer are great tools, but first and foremost your game has to be awesome enough for people to want to post about it, want to compete against their friends. They need to want to keep playing for these things to help.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. social features & async multiplayer are great tools, but first and foremost your game has to be awesome enough for people to want to post about it, want to compete against their friends. They need to want to keep playing for these things to help.
We can make awesome games already. To keep making awesome games we need to be better equipped to make money.
just to be clear, what I mean is that with 20,000 new apps PER MONTH on the app store, we need to solve the discovery issue. Paid advertising is fine, but only if a developer can bring his cost per install to a value lower than the revenue that a user generates.
Facebook advertising is the no1 way to do this. If you take a look at the blog for chart-boost (which of course we will soon have in GameSalad and this is great) there is a workshop video in there which explains this quite clearly.
You can make the best game in the world, but if no one can find it, it won't make money.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. social features & async multiplayer are great tools, but first and foremost your game has to be awesome enough for people to want to post about it, want to compete against their friends. They need to want to keep playing for these things to help.
I personally agree with both points of view in these recent postings. Yes you need an awesome game but how can you test competing with friends without the tool?
And if one of us makes an absolutely top game (hopefully it'll be me ), we do need the important tools like Facebook to MAXIMISE the longevity, coverage...
Of course. I agree that we need to make great games, but making great games take a lot of time and resource.
There has to be effective discovery vectors that we can employ to make our top games a success otherwise the first game you create as a labor of love may well be the last...
Ive worked in the games industry for over 25 years now, and worked with big companies such as Microsoft, Activision, Sony, Sega to name but a few, and I can tell you that GameSalad has a far higher functionality than many of the tools I have worked with in professional AAA software houses throughout the years.. I have always been a believer of making the best of the tools I have, and I know you can do a hell of a lot with a few core tools.
The Apple developer guide has instructions for "Real-Time" and "Turn-Based" matches. Apple's already done the heavy lifting. GameSalad only needs to plug it in.
Also, there are lots of other options out there. Here are three...
My thinking is that GameSalad could do hosting for developers that can't, or don't want to, manage their own servers. That way, GameSalad caters to high-end developers, while giving beginners/hobbyists a great starting point. My suggestion — Give the developers choice. If you want to make more money with developers, then provide them with a service they can use. Don't make a "third-party" the only option for GameSalad multiplayer when Apple already has a standard.
So... wait. I thought GameCenter just helped connect people to your server, but apparently they handle everything for you. Sweet!
Maybe they can keep the contract in their court... indefinitely?
I agree, but we need the complete suite of features to really maximize our games potential.
Making a great game will encourage people to download and keep our games. Revenue streams such as advertising will let us make money from the users that we get. I see a gap in the discovery piece of the puzzle really. It's a huge challenge and it's getting harder and harder to be honest.
Facebook advertising is a great way to market your app, however for a free app (such as Totem's Free Quiz) it's can be expensive and not actually viable to spend money this. If we can maximize the amount of users basically by giving existing users incentives to recommend our games to their friends, then this will really help.
You are absolutely right jonmulcahy, it's not the be all and end all, however the other aspects of creating a successful app are seem to be covered or at least on the road map. 'Discoverability' however is not and I have read many app developers state that this is the single hardest aspect of app development today.
Have you read the nightly thread? They are adding a behavior that will allow people to post to any social network from in game similar to the tweet sheet behavior.
It's important to keep up with the major threads. This is where the info is. The nightly build thread is where the Pros discuss the issues and such for the future builds. This is where blackcloakgs talks about what being worked on for testing and such.
please add a search bar for the actors menu on game salad! when working with really large games it gets a bit redundant have to scroll from the top every time when i want to edit an actor that is on the bottom lol
Comments
The roadmap has been updated again...
Chakku
This is why you never let lawyers do the actual negotiations. In my family's firm we handle the terms and had the Lawyers validate the contract language and report to us. And we would infor the other party to rework the language. Lawyers are too competitive and it's always an ego contest between them. We would constantly remind our lawyers " you work for us not the other way around," lawyers are a dime a dozen and can always be replaced and we let them know that if they started their lawyering crap. Sounds to me like your lawyers need a lesson on who is calling the shots. They always need to be kept on a short leash.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
As for Asynchronous-Multiplayer — through a third party — is not a feature that I'm looking for. I prefer Apple's Game Center than a third-party. If GameSalad apps were customizable, I might have been able to get that last 10% done myself. Sure, cross-platform is cool, but not at the expense of a standard feature from Apple.
I think the real solution for GameSalad is to walk away from the third-party and setup their own multiplayer server system. That way, GameSalad wouldn't have to share any of the profit with the third party and then maybe I could actually justify to the client why player data is being sent to GameSalad. Although, I'm thinking it would be cheaper for me to simply use Game Center... or setup my own multiplayer system.
Logging out now. Maybe things will look better in a few months.
It's really frustrating for us too to have this drag on so long. It's not a tracking issue that's holding this up. It's a contract terms issue that's being banged out. They want X and we don't want it. So we counter with Y, etc.
Hoping it may get wrapped up soon. The ball's in their court right now.
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/GameKit_Guide/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008304-CH1-SW1
The Apple developer guide has instructions for "Real-Time" and "Turn-Based" matches. Apple's already done the heavy lifting. GameSalad only needs to plug it in.
Also, there are lots of other options out there. Here are three...
http://www.electrotank.com/es5.html
http://www.red5.org/
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/
My thinking is that GameSalad could do hosting for developers that can't, or don't want to, manage their own servers. That way, GameSalad caters to high-end developers, while giving beginners/hobbyists a great starting point. My suggestion — Give the developers choice. If you want to make more money with developers, then provide them with a service they can use. Don't make a "third-party" the only option for GameSalad multiplayer when Apple already has a standard.
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Photics has a few good valid points... but he's gone now so we can talk about him (...joke), it seems GameCentre does have async multiplayer capabilities... don't think I've played a game that's used it... (though that probably says more about the sort of games I play).
I'm all for the rumoured 3rd party that your going with and happy to pay extra for it (ideally the same monthly tiers they charge on their site). If it can get nicely implemented, their servers have 100% up time and without having to give away revenue share or impact our games in any way with adverts or links.
Hopefully we'll be able to use it without having to advertise other peoples games and control the look of its implementation ( ? ... ), and have the options for people to play/invite Facebook friends (far better than with GameCentre friends), random players (found on through the 3rd party multiplayer network) and invite players from our contacts.
... Hope you all get the legal stuff sorted soon... though no rush here as I'm still tinkering away with game mechanics that I hope to put to use in a multiplayer game.
When you turn it on... I'll very happily throw money back into the GameSalad pot for another Pro membership and if it falls away I'll have made a very nice prototype.
Fingers crossed it gets released to nightlys this year...
We cannot truly compete with apps such as Candy Crush without such functionality.
Is this actually on the roadmap but not yet listed?
Send and Receive Data using your own Server Tutorial! | Vote for A Long Way Home on Steam Greenlight! | Ten Years Left
Facebook advertising is the no1 way to do this. If you take a look at the blog for chart-boost (which of course we will soon have in GameSalad and this is great) there is a workshop video in there which explains this quite clearly.
You can make the best game in the world, but if no one can find it, it won't make money.
Thanks!
And if one of us makes an absolutely top game (hopefully it'll be me
There has to be effective discovery vectors that we can employ to make our top games a success otherwise the first game you create as a labor of love may well be the last...
Ive worked in the games industry for over 25 years now, and worked with big companies such as Microsoft, Activision, Sony, Sega to name but a few, and I can tell you that GameSalad has a far higher functionality than many of the tools I have worked with in professional AAA software houses throughout the years.. I have always been a believer of making the best of the tools I have, and I know you can do a hell of a lot with a few core tools.
Game salad is well equipped to make a great game.
Maybe they can keep the contract in their court... indefinitely?
http://blog.chartboost.com/chartboost-u-building-sustainable-games/
but I think a huge number of people think those features are the fast track to lots of dollars. it aint gonna happen
Send and Receive Data using your own Server Tutorial! | Vote for A Long Way Home on Steam Greenlight! | Ten Years Left
Making a great game will encourage people to download and keep our games.
Revenue streams such as advertising will let us make money from the users that we get.
I see a gap in the discovery piece of the puzzle really. It's a huge challenge and it's getting harder and harder to be honest.
Facebook advertising is a great way to market your app, however for a free app (such as Totem's Free Quiz) it's can be expensive and not actually viable to spend money this. If we can maximize the amount of users basically by giving existing users incentives to recommend our games to their friends, then this will really help.
You are absolutely right jonmulcahy, it's not the be all and end all, however the other aspects of creating a successful app are seem to be covered or at least on the road map. 'Discoverability' however is not and I have read many app developers state that this is the single hardest aspect of app development today.
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS