Glossary: Terms | GameSalad Knowledge Base

Here is a list of terminology used in GameSalad, including behaviors & functions, and what these terms mean:

Accelerometer: Determines the angle and rate of movement of the device; useful for determining when a user rotates or tilts their device.
Actor: All the items (both visible and invisible) in your game are actors; they are governed by Behaviors that control how they interact with both other actors as well as with people playing your game. In other game engines, these would be known as sprites or game objects.
Actor Attributes / Instance Attributes: Attributes that belong to an actor. Actor attributes are only available to the actor itself and cannot be read by other actors. They are unique for each instance of the actor, so they're good tracking actor specific values.
Actor Mode: This is the default mode for the scene editor, and allows the actors to be placed, moved, rotated, and resized in the scene.
Actor Tag: Actor Tags are used to categorize actors; they can be added and removed through the Project Editor.
Alpha Color / Alpha Channel: Alpha represents the transparency of an actor, and can be set to any real number between 0 and 1, with 0 being completely transparent and 1 being completely opaque. "Alpha" comes from the mathematical concept of linear interpolation, which uses the Greek letter alpha (α) to represent the weighting factor between two values
Attribute: Attributes contain numeric or text values that govern various aspects of the game, scene, and actors.
Behavior Library: A list of all available behaviors which can be assigned to actors.
Camera Mode: An alternative mode while editing a scene, Camera mode allows the user to set the sensitivity and range of the camera’s movement.
Collision Shape: This option determines whether other objects will collide with this object as if it were round (or rounded), or square (or rectangular).
Custom Attributes: Attributes that are created by the game creator as opposed to ones build into the game engine.
Density: Density refers to the heaviness of the actor. A higher value will make the object harder to move by less dense actors. A value of 0 will make an object immovable but still affect other actors in the scene. Density can be set to any real positive number. (i.e.Density >= 0)
Devices: The Devices pane (under the “Game” tab in the Scene Editor) allows you to change various attributes relating to the device, including mouse, touch, accelerometer, screen, and audio.
Display Text (Behavior): Allows users to change the color, size, font, and other elements of text displayed in-game. Change “alpha” to 0 (found under color in the attributes list) to make all parts of the actor invisible other than the text.
Editor: Can refer to one of three editors: the Project Editor, the Scene Editor, or the Actor Editor.
1. The Project editor is used for editing overall detail about your game.
2. The Scene Editor is used for creating your scenes by placing actors, changing various attributes, setting tags, and more.
3. Actor editor is used for changing a variety of attributes about your actors.
Fixed Rotation: Selecting this option will prevent the object from rotating when it collides with other actors in the scene. Leaving this box unchecked means that the actor will rotate normally when it collides with other actors.
Friction: Increasing this number will slow this object down more when it interacts with other objects. Set to 0 for no friction (and hence no slowing).
Game Attribute: Attributes accessible to all actors in the game. These are, in effect, global variables.
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Gravity: Each scene can be set up with an X and Y gravity attribute.These are real numbers that affect all actors which are Movable.
Image Library: A repository of .png assets that have been imported into the GameSalad Creator.
Instance (actor): An instance is a unique example of an actor, with altered behaviors, attributes, or abilities from the prototype actor.
iOS: The operating system created by Apple, Inc. to run on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.
Layers: Layers allow you to prevent actors from interacting with each other – this can allow you to create backgrounds, scores, and more without having the player’s actors bump into them.
Logic: A term which refers to the combination of rules and behaviors that jointly define how a project operates.
Max Speed: This attribute controls the maximum speed an actor can reach through acceleration and gravity. Please note that some behaviors, such as Change Velocity and Interpolate, will override Max Speed.
Movable: Allows you to specify that an actors is able to move (or not able to move) when interacting with other actors. (Check the box to allow it to move)
Orientation: This determines whether your game runs in “up and down” mode (portrait) or “side to side” mode (landscape) on iDevices (iPhone, iTouch, iPad).
Otherwise: An optional component of a rule; behaviors placed under this heading will trigger whenever the conditions of the Rule are not valid.
Particles: Particles are small objects that move out from the actor in a defined way. See “Particles” Behavior for more information. In a game engine particles meant to be light weight graphics elements to allow the system to display a large number of them on the scene with minimal performance impact.
Platform: The devices or locations where your game will be able to run. Platforms that are currently available include iOS, Mac Desktop, Android, and HTML5.
Preview: Allows you to see how your game will look and run instantly! Can be done both in GameSalad and in a browser window. Use often to ensure that the rules and actions you are giving your actors are working properly.
Project Size: The current memory needs of your project can be found in the bottom-right corner of the GameSalad Creator. The recommended maximum size for GameSalad Arcade games is 20 MB
Publish: Publishing uploads your game to GameSalad’s servers, where it is turned into a binary that you can then submit directly to Apple, GameSalad Arcade, or an Android store.
Resolution Independence: Allows your game to be displayed in low or high resolution, depending upon the capabilities of the device
Bounciness / Restitution: Makes your actor bouncy – 0 is no bounciness; 2 is superball bouncy. Any real positive number from 0 to 2 can be used. In the physics engine this is the restitution value, the ratio of relative velocity between two objects after a collision compared to their relative velocity before the collision.
Scene Attributes: These are attributes that specifically affect a scene, rather than an actor or the entire game. They include Name, Time, Size, Wrap X, Wrap Y, Gravity, Color, Camera, and Autorotate.
Keyboard Input: Saves keyboard input text into a specified attribute.
Unpause Game (Behavior): This behavior removes the pause screen and resumes the paused scene.