Application Creation 101

Written by Veezon from HackForums.net

(uid=2435078)

First of all, I’d like to thank you for purchasing my E-Book and
before we get started, I’d like to make a promise from me to
you; that is that you will not regret your purchase.

Introduction
Applications have changed the world as we know it and are continuing to
do so. As of now, almost everything you do consists of using a
smartphone application and the creators are getting filthy rich, so why
don’t you join the rich club? The most common excuses I hear are “I don’t
have any good ideas” or “I don’t have enough time” but both of those
excuses are complete and utter nonsense. Everybody has free time and
everybody is capable of creating the next big thing if you set your mind
to it and this E-Book will not only assist you in doing so, but it will guide you
all the way. This E-Book will teach you how to create your own apps for
iDevices, Androids and HTML5.

About the author

My name is Ellis or some of you may know me as Veezon. Right now, all
my focus is on applications and I am have developed an app for both
iOS and Android called NavChat. I won’t go into the idea here but you
can feel free to PM me on HF to talk about it. I hope that NavChat can be
a part of my success story as it has the potential to be worth billions of
dollars. As of 24/10/2014, I have not released NavChat to the app store
as I believe that like me, you should do the same of not releasing your
app until it is completely bug free or else if a user tries it whilst it has
bugs, it will set a bad representation in stone for them and they will avoid
trying it again. I also believe that like me, you can have an idea that you
really believe in like NavChat and hopefully make it a huge success.
Taking the first step
To start off, we are going to want to download the software that we will
be using; the software is free but also has a paid version that costs quite
a fee so we will avoid going over the ‘PRO’ features in this E-book but
there are a few videos on YouTube (I will not link as they may expire
soon) that can show you how to get it for free. The software we will be
using is called ‘GameSalad’ and not only is this E-Book here to help you,
but there is a TON of videos on YouTube that can help you with the stuff
you want to know that unfortunately wasn’t covered in this E-Book. The
link to download this software is: http://gamesalad.com/creator and this
E-Book will cover the basics and get you to know your way around this
software. GameSalad is the perfect software for someone with no
programming knowledge to make a successful application with as it is
extremely simple to navigate around and mostly drag and drop.

Apps that have been created in GameSalad have made it to the #1 spot
on the app store in many countries, including the US and the app that did
was a paid app and it cost $0.99 which equates to you getting $0.70
and the app was getting thousands of downloads per day! I recommend
you make your app free as it will then have a much higher chance of
success and you can monetize it with in-app purchases or placing
advertisements on your app. Here are some success stories from the
creators at GameSalad: http://www.gamesalad.com/creator/stories

When creating a game application, the chances of your app being

successful are small, unless you know what the people want and you’re
about to read just that. To have a successful game, the game has to be
extremely simple but addictive. Take flappy bird for example, the app is
extremely simple; tap the screen and the bird goes up, use this to make
your way through little passages in the tubes. Something so simple made
so much money, the developer was making over $50,000 a day and
you can too! Games like Clash of Clans are extremely complex and I
recommend staying away from stuff like that unless you have a
dedicated team who know what they are doing.
Teaching you the basics
I will be including screenshots of me doing these but on Windows; this is
still possible on Mac OSX. Once you have installed GS, you will be
prompted by a “Create a New Project” window, like this:

You will want to select the platform you want, for me, I chose ‘iPhone
Portrait’. Now we have an application that we could put on our
smartphone but it is blank so that would be pointless.

You now want to go to the “Actors” tab, which is here:

And then create an actor, then double click the actor and rename it “Ball”.
You now want to drag the “Ball” onto your scene.
You now want to press “Edit Rule” under the attributes for the ball.

And add the following:

You then want to add to the “do” section:
You can now edit the text to however you want, but make sure you do
NOT click “wrap text inside actor” as this will make it so that the text only
shows inside of the ball.

You then want to copy and paste the rule but changing the “pressed”
next to the touch is on the second one to “released” so that the text will
always be there.

You can now test this function out by hitting the play button at the top of
the screen and then pressing on the ball:
Now press the actor (the square in the middle).

If you want the text to go off when you release, turn the rule that says to
display text when ball is released off.
Continuing the basics.
I am guessing that just by that small little section, you are starting to
understand this program; I will be teaching you more and getting into
more depth in this section.

We will now be making the ball be destroyed if it hits something. To start

off, go to the properties of the ball and change the size to 25x25:

Delete the ball on the scene right now by clicking on the square on the
scene and pressing backspace; then add the smaller one onto the
screen. I have changed the color of my ball to blue.
We now want to add another actor that will kill the ball if the ball hits it,
call it “hole”.

I am going to make the hole brown by changing the color:

We now want to go to ‘physics’ which is below where you changed the
size and color:

Now copy the following settings:

Now click go to the attributes for the ball and copy the following settings
in ‘Physics’:
Change the size of the hole to 35x35 and drag about 3 onto the scene.

Create a new rule for the ball and type ‘Key’ in the condition box:
You then want to type ‘right’ in the “receives a key press’ box.

Now go to the library and select “move” and drag it into the “do” section:
Now make it relevant to “scene”:

Now copy and paste this rule and change the key to left and then move
in direction to 180:
If you press play now, you can move the ball left to right but it can’t go
up and down so we will do that now by repeating the steps we did
earlier but making it go up and down. For up, the direction is 90 and for
down, the direction is 270:

-----
We will now rename the rules so that they are easier to find / recognise
later on:

The ball now moves up, down, left and right if you press play.
To make it so that you die if you hit a hole, we can now add a new rule:
Now copy this 3 more times and make it change to the size of -4.

We will now destroy the actor by typing “destroy” and pressing enter in
the behaviour text box:
You have now learned the basics!
I recommend you now to go onto YouTube and look up some more
tutorials on this software. One I recommend doing now is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IDR9k2lr5U

This video will teach you everything else you need to know, such as how
to add walls, how to respawn, etc.

How to make the app a hit?

Game apps nowadays are particularly easy to make a hit out of if you
know what you’re doing and I am about to tell you now. Some points that
are important about apps that will make a hit are:

- Free
- Not super hard but not easy either
- Get back into the gameplay quickly (no class selection etc, just a
replay button)
- Addictive
- Simple design and simple concept

These points are what makes an app capable of being a hit and once
you have made the app, I recommend getting all your real life friends to
download the app and start posting their scores on social media sites,
This is pretty much how Flappy Bird got big, people posting on social
media sites about it and eventually, a famous person did it and it went
off. If you really believe your game is perfect, get feedback from some
people first and then if it all comes back positive, you can even pay a
famous person on social media to advertise it (I don’t mean singers, etc –
they won’t do it)!

Thank you
Thanks so much for purchasing and reading my E-Book, I genuinely do
hope that you can make a hit on the app store and I believe in you too! If
you want anything, feel free to PM me on HF – my user ID is at the top.