ACTORS

An important part of the actorsʼ attributes is the physics section. Here you can control the physics of the actor, how it interacts with the world and other actors.ʻDensityʼ will control how dense the actor is, so heaviness. Then thereʼs Friction, basically how much contact with other actors will slow the movement down. And Bounciness, which sets how much the actor will bounce when colliding with things.You can also use a tick box to choose if the actor is moveable or not, if set to not the actor is fixed to the spot.Theres also a Collision Shape, which sets up the shape around the Actor, used to determine if itʼs colliding with something.

ATTRIBUTE

In the colour you can set the actors basic colour. You can also control itʼs opacity by changing the value of the ʻAlphaʼ attribute.

Everything that appears in a Gamesalad scene is an actor. Each actor is controlled with attributes. Here is an example of one of the actors in the Pong game I made.

Opening up an Actors settings will show some of default the attributes. Here there are attributes set up for size, colour, physics, graphics, name and motion, all the things needed to set up the actor for the game.

ʻRealʼ attributes control the size of the Actor, one for both the Width and Height.

Attributes are basically values or variables, so you can use them to record conditions and data. The types are ʻBooleanʼ, ʻIntegerʼ, ʻRealʼ, ʻAngleʼ and ʻTextʼ. Each kind of attribute records different things; A ʻBooleanʼ is a simple true or false represented by a tick box, so is this something happening or not. ʻAngleʼ will record a degree on a circle, and an ʻIntegerʼ records numbers that arenʼt decimals. As well as the default attributes in the actor settings, you can create new ones of any kind for actors and for the game as a whole, and name them.

BEHAVIORS

Here iʼve used a ʻKeyʼ condition, meaning that the condition is that a certain key is pressed, here the ʻWʼ key. You can also set if the rule activates when the key is down or if it starts when its up, so if itʼs being pressed or not.

another options for the condition is ʻOverlaps or Collidesʼ, which looks if the actor is colliding with another set actor.

Theres a little box to select ʻAllʼ or ʻAnyʼ. This means you can choose if all the conditions must be being met to activate the rule, or if the rule will start if any one of them is met.

The top section of a rule is the Conditions section. Basically this section asks “what needs to be happening for this rule activate?”

The bottom half is the ʻActionsʼ section. Here you drag in the actions you want to happen once the conditions are met.

Lastly, at the bottom of the rule, thereʼs an ʻOtherwiseʼ section. This part of the rule dictates what the actor should if the conditions arenʼt being met.

Behaviors are the logic of an Actor. Here is a Rule set up for the Paddle Player 1 actor. Ruleʼs are blocks that contain first conditions and behaviors. These rules tell the Actor what they are supposed to do when certain conditions occur.

Here you can set if the condition is when the actor receives an event, or if itʼs based on an attribute. A received event is

something like a key being pressed or a collision with another actor. If itʼs based on an attribute then you can set which attribute the condition looks at, and then it tell it to check itʼs state. E.g. the condition could be, this boolean I created must be true.

There are different actions or ʻBehaviorsʼ that can be selected from a list and dragged into the Actions section of a rule. The example here is a ʻMoveʼ behavior, which moves the actor in a set direction, at a set speed when the conditions of the rule are met. You can drag as many behaviors as you like into the actions section of a rule, and they will all be executed with the rule activates.

The one/off button you can switch the rule off

without deleting it. This can be useful for tracking down bugs in the game.