Here is my TAN video.

This was not posted for the blog so you can watch if you like, but it is for my job at school.  Please disregard.  Thanks!

We're back in business!!!! I used the menu of tshirtbooth... it wurkt!

So the one that I mentioned in last post where I said I couldn't possibly get help from because he seemed like such a busy dude... well he helped... inadvertently.  I had his menu first, but like a doh doh bird I didn't use it, I tried every other menu under the sun... to no avail.  After I left this blog today I was ready to give up!  This evening I said I can't give up I have to do it... I promised myself and everyone that may or may not be reading that I was going to do it.

SO... I pulled out his menu and... lo and behold.  The smoothest transition into my game!  To those of you out there that may be looking to use GAMESALAD and you need a template or just to learn how to use the site... YOU MUST GO TO TSHITRBOOTH'S SITE! If you can't click links... it's http://www.gshelper.com  I have learned so much from this dude, you have no idea.  Now he may not talk to you or answer any of your questions right away, but if you are just starting out and you need a GOOD easy to follow and understand template.  That is your guy!  Point blank!  I tried FOUR different menu's before trying his (why?  I HAVE NO FRIGGIN CLUE why I didn't try his first!!!).  Maybe it's because I'm a girl... they say we tend to think differently (I got the whole VENUS thing going I guess).

Anyhoo, I am as excited as ever to get back to the game now!!!!  No need for inspiration in this one for me, but I'll give you something to listen to... Let's see what can I find that is fun...

I chose this one because, there are some irreplaceable people on GS and some of us just wouldn't make it without them!  (I would be prime example!)

Enjoy... Off to finish level 7.

Well, so much for the menu idea!

So I decide I want to put a sleek menu into my game.  I want the user to be able to play a level then once they are finished the next level is unlocked on the menu and they select the level they want to play next from the menu.  I find this nice sleek looking snap to grid menu that I want to use.  There are three versions of the same one and the person that developed it is giving it away!  I think, wow that is awfully cool of them.  They say on their video that hey we offer support for it so if you need anything, basically 'holla at us'... so I'm like cool!  Wow what nice people.. this will be a great learning tool for me.  I download the file and get started trying to replicate the code to add into my already halfway complete game.

Come to find out, it looks nice... but won't work past what they have it set for... AND I could probably make it work but I would have to rebuild my game!  WTH?  Hell to the NAW I won't.  I'd rather have a cheesy blank screen that says congrats... shows the score and keeps it movin.

I guess I am just frustrated because there are some really great people over at GameSalad for instance, there is this one guy tshirtbooth.  Seems cool as doo doo, but I think the guy is so busy there is no way you can EVER get a response from him because I think he works for GS and he does ALL the tutorials and there are probably about a million people trying to get his help.  So unless you got a few $$ or are a customer of his, you'd probably never get a response from him :-(   (I don't blame him though... you gotta pick and choose your battles and when you have so many people asking questions if you answered every one, you'd never get anything done).  I just can't afford to pay for anything right now.  Probably won't be able to for a while so I guess Im just stuck.

tshirtbooth does have a website and I found another menu from him...  so I am gonna give it a try, but his... #1) it looks waaay too complicated to incorporate into a game that has already been made and #2 even if I could get it in I don't have 16 levels... I was thinking more along the lines of 7-10 at the MOST (to start with).  I can't even imagine going in and changing his menu to work with my game.  PLUS I still have to add on screen controls for the game so that it can be played on ipad and iphone have no clue how to do that either... so even though i thought this would be easier than I expected... it won't.  Get it done before January I said... make sure it's in the store by the time I start school I said... welp... it's not looking like it's gunna happen.

The designing levels, even though I am not an artist, is about the easiest part now.  BOY do i need some inspiration... but first, I did this with Pixelmator... pretty neat huh?  I like it :-)

TI ... I used this vid because that is what I feel like is happening with the menu... too good to be true... LOL!

Have you seen his show, btw?  He is one cool @ss dude.  Seems like the perfect husband and father.  SMH!  #AMAZED  (Tiny is one lucky broad!)  Okay back to work.

Level Four WOES!

BLAM IT!  BLAMIT TO HE double hockey sticks!  I dont have Adobe Photoshop (takes too much room on my computer), so I use a combination of GIMP, Open Office Draw and Pixelmator. I'll tell you what, that crap is getting on my nerves.  I have to make the scene in one, then save it and open it in another to extract any background noise in the picture, then save and open it again in another to put the finishing touches on it.  Then STILL have to open it after all that in PREVIEW to shrink or enlarge it... ALL BEFORE I even add the pic to the GameSalad SDK to put into the level.

(Since I am NOT a graphic designer and have no clue how to use these, it makes this process that much more difficult.  Maybe there is a way that I could use just one of the three and save some time, but who knows where I can learn this stuff?  -Any feedback on how to use any of these would be greatly appreciated btw.)

So I decide to take a shortcut this time and do all the parts to the level first then do them all at once from start to finish to "SAVE TIME", yet alas... Preview won't do one of the scenes right and on top of that they aren't stretching correctly so the scene doesn't look clean!  I am so peaved I want to just chuck my friggin computer across the room!  It took me hours to get the scene how I wanted it, and after hours of trying to work around it, I have found that it won't work!!!  I have to do the darn thing over AGAIN!!!

So frustrating!

I need some serious motivation today...

Here we go!!!!!

That's what I'm talkin bout!!!!!  Til the roof comes off, til the lights go out, til my legs go out... yes... I need to hear more...  

Hold on a second...  Here we go...  That is what I need to do, pick the world up.... (level 4)  lol.

Alright enough motivation for me... Back to work.

xoxo

So I've been working pretty hard and getting into the swing of how to make a game to publish to the mac, iphone and ipad stores respectively, using GameSalad (aka GS).  Just finding out what I wanted to do was rough enough.  I went through trying to make my first "app" with GS, and although I still have a great idea for an app... the tools just aren't really equipped for what I want to do.  So I decided to go back to the drawing board and change up my strategy.  Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  I did just that and started working on making a game.

At first I was like, "There is NO WAY that I can do this... "just NO WAY"!  It turns out, it was easier than I thought!  They have templates that are meant to show you what exactly you can do with the system and they use them so much in examples, so I said to myself... I said "SELF!  YOU GOTTA GET YOUR S@%T together and just DO IT!"  So I started picking one of the templates apart and come to find out... it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  Yes there are a few questions I have and would love to have some "one on one" guidance with, like making my background character move separately from my main character and the scene itself (I'll tell you my adventure with that below) and a few other little things.  For the most part however, I have been able to put together a functioning game with most of the bells and whistles.  Needless to say, even though my art kinda stinks, I am pretty impressed with myself (and GS for making it possible).

I finished with part of level three yesterday and started messing with the GS creator and I think I accidentally published my VERY UNFINISHED game to the website.  I may post it here later today.  I am not sure if I should do that so soon or not.  I am a little cautious because I am a beginner at this and it may take me a little longer to finish my game than someone experienced. So I kinda don't want to post it, then have some jerk off come along and say 'o seems like a neat game... let me tweak it and get it to the app store in a day or two' (LOL just my kinda luck).

ANYHOO... so back to the background... I have these little clouds and I want them to move separately from the rest of the scene in the game.  I want them to spawn on their own and come through the scene on their own time, some slow, some a little faster and all coming from different xy points in the game. It took about an hour and I finally got the cloud to move on its own, so that was cool.  Only problem with that was, it started out right but eventually it was dropping slowly out of the picture.  I just wanted them to go straight through, and either loop back around or respawn.  It took a while to get it to work, but it worked... for a hot second... but I changed something and they started dropping again.  For the life of me I could not figure out what I needed to do to make it happen.  So then I stared watching tutorial videos, next thing you know it was a long time passed so I said forget it I need to finish the levels first, then I can worry about the bells and whistles.

NOW IT'S ON TO LEVEL FOUR!

Either way, I'm excited!

Let's see... what is my inspiration today?  Not what you would think... I need a real inspirational video!
One that was designed specifically for motivation, cuz I'm only three levels in... I need like 11 more.

Ah  It's puny, but it still does what it is supposed to!

Until next time!

xoxo

Back to the drawing board!! UGH!

Okay so here's the deal!  I started on my "APP"  on GameSalad.  Someone talked me out of it... and I am glad they did!  I decided to do some more research and see if my idea was on the app store... it's not... still!  So that is at least good, the the down side, if I do this app with no experience I won't get it out there anyway because the design would be horrible.  So I am doing a game.

I AM NO ARTIST AT ALL!  :-( So building this game is gonna be difficult for me.   I can't pay an artist or designer.. (HELLO... STUDENT HERE) so I have to design each level ON MY OWN... So far the design is crappy but the game is kinda cute and a little fun (to me... but my opinion could be a little biased). Either way I like it, and I'd definitely let my little nieces and nephews play it.  Plus their moms wouldn't mind because there is no dying and no shooting in this game.  It's Just good old fashioned fun so far, plus I got some kick butt songs for the soundtrack for the game.

This is the extent  of my art skills for the game (below).  That is a picture of the first part of what is hopefully gonna be level three.  I know... it needs work... some stars or flowers or something... but it's a learning process.

You think that is bad... you should see the level one background.   Either way every day I am finding that GameSalad is pretty darn cool!

Speaking of SDK's I did come across another one in my research that I like.  StencylWorks.  To me this is even simpler than Gamesalad, you really just point and click, they both have their advantages.  As far as suggesting which... I couldn't do it, I like em both.  Although I will say using some of the stencylworks tutorials somehow gave me a better understanding of  how to use GameSald.  Go figure!


Well back off to the races! Today I am building the rest of the monstrosity you see above... hopefully making it look better... and then moving on to level four.  What I am most concerned with is getting the structure and levels together, then I guess I can go back through and fix the overall looks of each level.

Whoa, I am so NOT an artist, they should make a song about it (procrastination becomes her).  Like to hear it... here it goes...

LOL!  (I actually like Lady Gaga, but I thought this was funny anyway).  51 million views wow!

Okay enough break time... Til next time!

XOXO

OMG!!! I can't believe how well this is going!

This is like day three or four for me on GameSalad and I am already 1/3rd of the way through with my app!!! I am so please with the turn out of the first few screens!!! I had to take a break to report in here... The anticipation to getting it done is KILLING ME! Now to figure out how to get $99 to post the doggone thing is "a Whole Nuther Issue" altogether.

So far there's been some pretty nice people on that site! I haven't seen anything but cordiality (if that's a word). I have spoken to a few here and there, all wonderful and supportive too! I had a small kink where I couldn't get the touch areas to redirect where I wanted them to, and that took over a day and a half to figure out, but once I got it... it has been smooth sailing so far.

These guys and girls at GameSalad have posted so many neat games! I wish I could link you to them all and show you every one, but alas... I can't. I may just start doing a review every now and then.

Geez I'm excited as H E double hockey sticks!

I need some motivation...

I think that was a cool vid!!! I think it had the most views or something and it was listed in the add screen so... why not...

Well I bid you adieu, until tomorrow!