Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
With its friendly interface, its very intuitive workflow, the abundant documentation,
several easy-to-follow tutorials, a large community ready to help behind it and its
cheap price, GameMaker is definitely the best tool to learn how to develop a game
for anyone interested in approaching this line of work.
GameSalad
GameSalad is another user-friendly engine developed by GameSalad Inc. which is
perfect for beginners, as it doesn't require any coding thanks to a fully implemen-
ted drag-and-drop interface that allows users to create games for all mobile plat-
forms such as iOS, Android, HTML5, and Windows Phone. Similar to GameMaker,
GameSalad is usually used for educational purposes or by artists and designers to
quickly prototype their gameplay ideas.
The implementation of gameplay is based on the creation of behaviors for game act-
ors based on sets of rules, which define how the actor reacts to various events hap-
pening in the game. Everything is managed through a clean and clear visual inter-
face, and tutorials, help boards, and forums are abundant, as well as the extensive
and easily available documentation.
The GameSalad editor, called Creator, can be downloaded for free, as the $299\year
license is only required to publish your games for Android or Windows 8, or to imple-
ment features such as In-App Purchase, iAds, or GameCenter. For the full feature
list of the engine you can check the GameSalad Inc. site at
http://gamesalad.com/
Though it has been used for thousands of games, some of which made a score on
the App Store, GameSalad is considered a tool for starters to get a grip on how
things interact with each other in a game environment and for designers and artists
without any coding knowledge to quickly prototype gameplay ideas. Again, it is very
likely that at some point, as you get more proficient with the subject, you will turn to-
wards something more professional and evolved than GameSalad.
For a full list of tutorials to begin creating games with GameSalad, you can refer
