I’ve been using Mac computers for about 17 years. In those early days, it never occurred to me that I would be making Mac applications. It just slowly happened. First I started making maps for Bungie’s Marathon — the precursor to Halo, then I started messing around with Adobe Flash. And now with GameSalad, it’s ridiculously easy to make apps. With the recent update to GameSalad, it’s even simple to sell / distribute those games. Support for the Mac App Store was added.
Here’s the official announcement about the GameSalad 0.9.1
Features
- Publishing support for the Mac App Store
- Pause Game behavior behavior added to render a designated scene over the paused scene. The paused scene will not be affected by physics of the overlaid scene.
- Unpause Game behavior added to return to and resume the paused scene and clear the pause scene overlay from memory.
- Warning added when launching GameSalad on an unsupported OS
- Users can create screenshots while in the middle of publishing and no longer need to quit the process to go back to the game and create them.
- Undo functionality added to undo changes to target platforms and orientation
- Undo functionality added to undo the following actions for actors and scenes in the project editor: new, reorder, rename, tag, untag (and delete, copy, paste?)
- Undo functionality added to undo creating new layers, reordering layers, deleting layers, and rearranging layers
- Undo functionality added to undo unlocking the instance behavior in the actor editor
Fixes
- Fixed an issue preventing custom load screens from being shown for legacy Pro Members
- Fixed an issue causing the GameSalad loading movie to be delayed
- Fixed several issues preventing users’ actors from appearing and/or behaving correctly
- Publishing process will no longer leave screenshots in the project and will not need to be removed manually
- Fixed an issue preventing Replicate behavior from working consistently
- Fixed a bug causing crashes during the running of the Preview Player
- Fixed an issue causing session logout and failure of publishing errors.
While the free version of GameSalad now supports Mac App Publishing, I’m not sure what to create. I have some ideas, but nothing that shouts, “What are you waiting for Mike?!” There’s a $99 developer registration fee for the Mac App Store. That’s not exactly a huge hurdle, but it’s enough to make me pause.
Heh, pause is another feature that was added to GameSalad. Now a scene can be frozen, and another scene can be placed on top.
While trying to figure out an intelligent strategy, I updated The Unofficial GameSalad Textbook app. It now includes information for 0.9.1 and a new Index feature. Here’s a preview…
By clicking the magnifying glass icon, the Index can be displayed. Before the update appears on the iTunes App Store, Apple has to review and approve the app. I’m thinking that should happen soon.