First user-created GameSalad game hits the App Store

October 8 2009, 12:55pm

Oh Nuts! - now on the iPhone App Store. A new version of the classic peg-jumping puzzle, Oh Nuts debuted yesterday on the iPhone App Store. We invited creator Jeff Haas (aka Jhaas) to share his experiences working on this project. Congratulations Jhaas, you’re officially the first GameSalad user to have a game accepted into the App Store! What can you tell us about Oh Nuts? I got the idea for the game while at a restaurant that had little golf tee puzzle games at the tables. I thought that would make a good, simple game for the iPhone. The game uses nut graphics instead of golf tees, but the concept is the same. Jump game pieces over each other “checkers” style until you’re only left with one. When I started to do the graphics I decided quickly that I wanted to do a top down view. Golf tees don’t read well top down, and to make the game 3/4 view would be difficult with such a small amount of screen real estate. I had the nut images so… “Oh Nuts” it is. This game coding wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. There’s no animation to speak of, but there are a lot of rules for determining legal and illegal moves and no matter what language or tool you have, it is a bit tedious to get that all in. I think for 14 pieces and 15 spaces there are around 40 legal moves that are possible. Not rocket science, but a lot of testing never the less. Oh Nuts is actually the third game I made. The first game has too many performance issues with the current version of Game Salad [beta v0.50], so I’ve had to delay it’s release until the software is a little further along. The second game is currently under review with Apple and I hope it will be approved shortly. Can you tell us about that second game? Since one can never be sure about the “black box” that is Apple’s vetting process, I prefer not to discuss games until they’re a done deal. I can say the second game is a sports-based game utilizing the physics engine. Oh Nuts! - and so it begins. So that’s one game published and another on the way, just two weeks after GameSalad opened up its Early Access Program. How were you able to complete these projects so quickly? Did you work with a team, or was it a solo effort? I’m a solo effort. I was able to get the games done so quickly because I started them after I joined up during the July 4th weekend this year. I basically had the three games ready to go before GameSalad went live. It was just a matter of getting them to work on the device. I’m also only doing games right now that can be completed in a couple of weeks or less. I need to be convinced that the App Store will be able to pay me back for $0.99 games before I put more effort into a more complex title. What’s been the most enjoyable part of developing these games? What’s been the most challenging part? I’d say the most enjoyable part is how quickly I can go from concept to prototype with GameSalad. It really is a good tool, especially for us “one man band” types. Remembering we are still working with beta software – I’ve got ideas for really good, more advanced games that GS just can’t handle – yet. That’s the most challenging part for now.
However, I believe that GameSalad is a potential game changer for software development. I think as the software matures the user base will just go through the roof. I like what I’ve seen so far and the Gendai Games crew seems like a pretty cool, creative group. What are your future plans for iPhone development with GameSalad? I come from an animation background (I have both a 2d animated film “The Chuck and Benny Show” and a 3d sci-fi feature “The Dalmarian Chronicles” available on Amazon and their video on demand service). My hope is to leverage a future version of GameSalad to be able to make games based on my films, and to create a “Ratchet & Clank”-like game at some point for the iPhone. But I really need to be able to run video cut scenes for that – wink, wink.
Thanks Jhaas, and best of luck with your future projects!