The document evaluates the strengths and difficulties of the game development platform Gamesalad. Some key strengths include the intuitive drag-and-drop interface, visual programming approach, and helpful community tutorials. Some difficulties include the inability to zoom in scenes, incompatibilities between the PC and Mac versions, and bugs appearing during the publishing process when rules turned off in development were reactivated.

1. Gamesalad
Evaluation
Strengths
The
drag
and
drop
principal
of
Gamesalad
works
very
well
and
is
extremely
helpful.
The
overall
layout
is
also
very
helpful,
and
can
easily
be
learnt;
by
the
end
of
the
project
I
pretty
much
knew
what
all
the
behaviors
available
could
do.
I
also
really
appreciate
the
user
interface
and
how
visual
the
software
is.
The
idea
of
keeping
all
the
elements
and
assets
in
boxes
on
the
left,
and
then
dragging
them
into
different
work
areas
on
the
right
is
very
intuitive,
and
helped
my
keep
track
of
what
exactly
I
was
doing
in
the
program.
The
visual
element
also
helped
me
get
my
head
around
programming
principles,
which
I
have
always
struggled
with
when
thinking
of
it
as
code.
The
way
each
rule
had
a
condition
and
action
slot,
helped
be
to
very
simply
see
what
the
process
was,
and
how
it
would
affect
the
game.
Gamesalad
has
a
very
good
and
very
helpful
community,
that
provide
many
helpful
tutorials,
as
well
as
responding
to
specific
problems.
Without
the
video
tutorials
found
on
Youtube
we
wouldn’t
have
been
able
to
make
the
game
as
it
is
now,
with
tutorials
helping
us
implement
features
such
as
the
main
character
jumping,
and
sticking
to
moving
platforms.
After
being
stuck
on
something
in
our
game
glitching
for
a
few
days,
we
posted
the
issue
on
the
Gamesalad
forums,
and
very
quickly
got
a
problem
solve.
Difficulties
One
small
detail
I
might
pick
out
is
the
inability
to
zoom
in
or
out
when
in
scenes.
This
makes
it
hard
to
move
really
small
actors,
or
get
an
overview
of
the
whole
scene
design.
Some
actors
need
to
be
so
small
that
it’s
impossible
to
drag
them,
as
their
handles
cover
the
area
of
the
actor.
Any
attempt
to
drag
it
to
a
different
position
just
shrinks
or
grows
it,
so
the
only
way
to
move
it
is
with
the
arrow
keys.
This
is
a
slow
and
tedious
process.
In
the
process
of
making
our
game
we
had
both
home
PCs
and
college
Macbooks
to
use.
Whilst
Gamesalad
does
offer
both
Mac
and
PC
versions,
the
two
have
very
big
differences
that
took
a
while
to
get
used
too.
There
is
also
no
way
to
use
one
file
in
both
versions,
which
became
a
nuisance
during
our
game
production,
as
we
created
the
game
as
a
PC
file,
so
it
could
only
be
used
on
PC.
Publishing
the
final
game
turned
out
to
be
quite
a
major
problem
in
Gamesalad.
Upon
publishing
a
lot
of
glitches
turned
up
in
the
game
that
were
not
present
when
we
play
tested
the
game
within
the
software.
It
turned
out
the
cause
of
this
was
that,
when
publishing
Gamesalad
ignores
the
“Off”
tab
on
rules,
meaning
rules
we
had
turned
off
in
the
program
were
now
active.
All
this
old
rules
turning
back
on
really
messed
up
our
game,
and
we
had
to
go
through
and
delete
them
from
the
program.
This
seems
like
quite
a
big
flaw
in
the
publishing
process.