Question about gamesalad
Pixelateddaddy
Member Posts: 20
in Help Wanted
Is gamesalad free to use until you are ready to publish your game? I thought you could download and make a game for free but had to pay once it's done? Or am I wrong?
Comments
it used to be free, now it costs $19 a month to use it, and $29 a month when you decide to publish.
with the new education model, who knows if it will change again
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Me being someone completely new to this would you say I'd be able to figure out how gamesalad truly works within the first month and is the 19 a month worth it?
It's free for 5 days, used to be 15 days. You don't have to use those 5 days back to back. Make sure you can spare a lot of time on the days you use it. If you only use it for 10 minutes one day then that's a whole day of your trial wasted.
It is easy to pick up and learn though.
What about the future of gamesal........lots of posts saying it's going under....
I was always worried about the doom-mongers putting off new users like this, people often fail to realise their panicked posts of doom and disaster have a real world effect, this is the very basis of a self-fulfilling prophecy, people run around posting that the forum is closing and GameSalad has run out of money and GameSalad will be gone in three months (a prediction made three months ago) and everyone is going to die in a tsunami of flames, and new users read these posts, and so decide to avoid a 'sinking ship' which has a real effect on GameSalad's bottom line.
You can certainly get a good feel of the basics in a month (depending on how much time you dedicate to learning), you should be able to throw together some small games within that time - and the forums are great for any questions you might have.
@Pixelateddaddy I would recommend you to go to youtube first , watch few tutorial before you even download it , you will love how easily you understand things , look into basic tutorials like how to create a platform game. Then download it and try to play with it , you will easily pick it up. It doesnt require hard programming skills , when I started I didnt know the word " programming " i thought games were done in animations only
silly me. But using game salad i was able to create things easily , its all logical and easy to use. The interface is easy too , its clear and organized compared to other engines. In the beginning, you might have questions but once you understand the basics everything will open up. You will feel like you can do any 2d game with it. The community here is also helpful , usually you get your questions answered in a short time.
About your concerns on reading certain posts here , dont worry about it. You will find these posts every where in almost every program forums. Its hard to please everyone. But in the end everything works well , you can look at the old/recent games created with GS you will find many good games out there. I cant guarantee that you will understand everything in gamesalad within a month , it might take less time or more , but im sure you will be able to create a short game really quick , even if you dont understand everything.
I teach game development at the college level (both graduate and undergraduate courses). Most of my students are education majors and/or instructional design majors (and not programming/CS majors). I can tell you that learning GameSalad is not about how many months you spend at it. Its more about how many hours you spend!
Its all about 'seat time' or time on task. Over the next month, if you will put in about 2 hours a day (give or take 30 minutes) each and every day, I am confident that you will "figure out how gamesalad truly works." At about 25-30 hours of 'seat time' most student take off and really get it! After about 60 hours, they can reproduce just about any 2D game that has ever been created in GameSalad.
Honestly -- I have read that same thing, in this very forum, every month (actually almost every week) for the past 6 years! GameSalad is a great little product -- I don't worry about it "going under" at all. And even if it did (but it won't), you will still be better off because every skill you learn with GameSalad is directly transferable to any another development kit.
Jump in! The water is fine!