1. Making visual assets for Gamesalad
Digital Right Management (DRM)
What DRM does it make it so you cannot use other peoples graphics, for instance you
could not create a Mickey Mouse game because Mickey Mouse belongs to Disney, but if
you were to go and ask Disney for permission to use their character you may do as long
as you credit them, this basically stops people from making unauthorized games
containing characters they donʼt have the rights to use.
Dimensions
For the dimensions the x and y of an asset must be in a multiple of 4, if not Gamesalad will
stretch it and make it look horrible, so if your asset was 12x7 it would stretch out to 12x8
and look horrible, whereas if you make your graphic at 12x8 it will look a lot nicer and not
be resized. Also itʼs impossible to create any other shape than a rectangle, even if you
make the graphic as a circle it will still be a rectangle, so this is something I need to be
aware of while importing and creating graphics for the game.
Resolution
All assets must be rendered at 72 pixels per inch, this is because this is the maximum that
monitors can output, itʼd take up precocious memory if you rendered them at 300 pixels
per inch, which is more suited for printing out rather than computer graphics. Rendering it
at 72x72 will make the game smoother as itʼs working with smaller assets rather than
bigger and unnecessary assets which will lag the game and make it bad to play.
File Format
There are two different formats you may use for Gamesalad, these are JPG and PNG.
There is one big difference between these two and that is that one can use transparency
while the other cannot.
PNG - Transparency - Use this format if you want to create sprites or anything else that
would need to use transparency, itʼs best to just limit to only transparent elements though
JPG - No Transparency - Itʼs easier to optimize a JPG to a smaller size, which makes it
good for things such as the background image and platforms, as they will not need to be
transparent and you can make the image size smaller this way.
Optimization
An iOS device saves assets at the following sizes:
16x16
32x32
64x64
128x128
256x256
512x512
1024x1024
It is best to use these as guidelines for when you are making assets for a video game, if
you have an asset at 60x68 itʼd be best to try resize it down to something like 56x64,
because if you donʼt the image will be saved as 128x128 and take up a whole lot more
memory than a 64x64 would take up, 56x64 will not be stretched when being saved to
64x64 as it is a multiple of 4 and it is equal or less than 64x64 so it will be saved as 64x64
but it will keep the same quality and not be stretched out.