This is how behaviors are used, the top section of the box is known as the ʻconditionsʼ, these need to be met within the game for the action to take place, for instance I have it set so when All condition are valid (when the S key is pressed down) it shall move downward at a speed of 300, this is set to be relative to the actor which means depending on where the actor is it will move in that relative direction.

These settings are vital for any actor, especially the physics, if you arenʼt careful you actor may start floating everywhere, I have the density at 500 meaning it is pretty much as dense as it can be, so it will not break, friction at 3 which, creates realistic feedback on movement, bounciness at 0 so the user has full control, it has a fixed rotation as I do not want it to rotate, it is moveable, collision shape at rectangle as the object is a rectangle, this decides on how it will collide with other objects, the ball would be set to circle.

Here you can see me using what is known as a ʻBooleanʼ value to set the serving for player 1, this has either one of two conditions, being either true or false. I have it set so if the space bar is pressed and it is player 1ʼs turn to server, it is true that player 1 is serving the ball will spawn on player 1ʼs side, this works almost the same as normal conditions but just a bit more complex in the way it works but a lot more effective for creating a good game.

These here are actors, they make the game up, anything you want to put into the game must be made as an actor so you can assign attributes and behaviors and so on.

To be able to start making your game you need a scene, here are some of the settings you can change for the scene, such as color, Wrap X and Y (meaning if something goes off the left of the screen itʼll come back on the right) and many other useful settings. The size I have left at default which is the iPhone landscape preset but I could change this at anytime depending on how I would like to publish the game.

These are the color settings, these enable you to change the color to what ever you would like, by default I have it set to black, or Alpha 1 (pretty much meaning only the Alpha channel is showing). Like many other aspects of GameSalad you can easily customize them and even use behaviors to change the color, color settings are also available for all actors and the scene you are using.

These are the settings for the overall size of the scene, but these settings are available on any actors to give you complete control over all size of anything in the game, this here is handy for if you wish to publish to a different platform.

The Constrain Attribute is a useful tool, using this I am able to assign the paddle to always start at a certain area, so this one is assigned to always start 20 pixels away from the far left of the screen, and the other paddle is 20 pixels away from the far right.

An easier way to make things collide with each other is setting up a group within the actors and name them ʻCollidableʼ which easily tells me what this group is, put all the actors in it that you want to collide and use this Collide attribute to make it bounce when it collides with an actor with the tag of ʻCollidableʼ. then repeat on all actors. This is a nice easy way to keep track of what actors are Collidable and what are not, making bug testing easier in the future.

Here we can starting being a bit more creative and abstract with our game, as you can see with the direction and speed of the ball on bothʼ Change Velocityʼ attributes I have set to random, for instance the direction is set to be random between -45 degrees and 45 degrees, the speed is random between 350 and 500. This brings a much more exciting gameplay to the player rather than having the same speed and direction each time, it changes on each turn. This is known as an ʻExpressionʼ there are many different expressions you can use within GameSalad to add a more creative element to your game.

This here is the simple part of GameSalad, the project settings, here you can change the title, select a preset for the platform you wish to develop for and the description and instructions of the game, these settings are rather useful for keeping track of which game you are working on if you are developing different games, and also the description and instructions and tags get uploaded to the GameSalad arcade if you wish to publish to there, which is rather neat and saves time.

Here is the more graphical part when it comes to making the game, you can just drag and drop Actors into this scene area and get the layout as you like it, here you can see I have Paddle Player 1 and 2, set to both sides so I can see what the game looks like, I have wall 1 and 2 which are the boundaries of the game, I decided to put these in a little bit to make them visible as I think this looks nice and adds a nice vintage feel to the game. You can easily see the safe area

and what is not, the grey area is the area which will not be included in the game.

Here is an example of the Rules and an example of using the ʻBooleanʼ value.

The top part of the box is known as the ʻConditionsʼ these conditions need to be met in order for the ʻActionʼ to take place, there is an ʻOtherwiseʼ box so another action may happen if these ʻConditionsʼ are not met. This section here is the ʻDoʼ part of

the Rules box, in the Conditions are met this action will happen, here it was spawn an Actor, specifically the ball.

This bottom part of the Rules box is the ʻOtherwiseʼ section, if the Conditions are not met in the Conditions box this action here will be initiated rather than the ʻDoʼ action.

As you can see this Rules box contains a Boolean attribute, which is a simple true or false, both the conditions in this box must be met, it must be player 1ʼs turn to serve and the space bar must be pressed also

Of course these attributes are fully customizable and you can make many different changes, in the Spawn Actor attribute you can change which Actor spawns, and where it spawns, I have it set to ʻin front of actorʼ, it is also relative to the actor in direction and position so where ever the actor is it will be relative to that position and direction rather than having itʼs own unique direction and position

In the Conditions section you can have it set so all conditions must be met (valid) or only certain ones, I currently have it set to All, but if I wanted I could have it set to just the space bar being pressed, again these sort of settings can make bug testing a lot easier later on, if a certain condition is messing things up

At the top left and right of the Rules box you can see a button that says ʻOnʼ, you can click this to turn off this rule temporally and to the left of that is an arrow to condense it to make more room in your work area, at the far right is an ʻxʼ which is used to completely delete this Rules box.These also make bug testing easier.