Miguel DeQuadros - GameSalad Beginners Guide

Miguel DeQuadros is a Game Developer and founder of the independent development studio Wurd Industries, based in Ontario, Canada. He has been developing iPhone games since the release of the App Store back at the exciting release of iOS 2.0. Since then, working under Wurd Industries, he has had eight games and one entertainment app published world-wide on the App Store, with more to come.

Originally interested in 3D animation and graphic design, Miguel focused mainly on this, but then got the game development "bug" and has been developing iPhone Apps since 2008. This allows him to use his creativity and knowledge of 3D animation for cut scenes and videos within his apps, and he loves every minute of it. Starting from his first project "Toy Tennis" back in 2008 (which, to this day, still remains a very popular app, thought it has been updated quite a bit with new graphics and social integration), down to his current project iMMUNE 3: The Final Stand, he continues to develop iPhone apps.

He began expressing interest in GameSalad when it was first launched in March 2009, but never started using it until January of 2010, when he started to develop his third iOS game, iMMUNE 2: Rise of the Salmonella, a 2D platformer sequel to the iMMUNE series. To this day, he and Wurd Industries continue to be Professional Members of the GameSalad community and still use GameSalad for prototyping and developing games for the iOS devices, and are now branching out to Mac development.

I would like to thank my dad John, my brother, and sister in-law Johnny and Katie, my cousin Corey, my best friends Brandon and Kaleb, and a very special thanks to my wonderful fiance Joanne for encouraging me during the writing of this book and spending countless hours on the phone with me. There are many other of my friends who were very encouraging to me and I thank you for the constant boost of confidence. Without you guys I don't think I could have done this book by myself. I would also like to thank Packt Publishing, and all the wonderful employees who helped me out, both in the initial stages and into the final chapters of the book. Your professionalism and ability to clearly explain things also helped me a lot, thank you Rashmi Phadnis, Srimoyee Ghosal, Kushal Bhardwaj, Priya Mukherji, Vishal D'souza, Hyacintha D'souza, and Newton Sequeira for everything. You made the production of this book a very smooth process.

Dick Abanto Lou was born in Trujillo, Per and is currently the CEO of Gamitz Mobile Studios and Dekoders In Vitro Studios, both being independent videogame-related startups located in Venezuela.

Videogames are his passion and daily bread, that's why he decided not to only play them but also to create them. So, he founded Gamitz Mobile Studios. His first game went directly to the iOS platforms called "El Gocho" and had a decent success within the Venezuelan App store, reaching the top 5 in all free apps in just a week.

His knowledge enabled him to make "El Gocho" a board game, similar to peg solitaire, which was a challenging task as GameSalad doesn't provide any reference in how to make board games.

"El Gocho" had gained the attention of many locals, but the most important fact of the game is to give hope to all the people who want to make videogames, as this is something really hard to accomplish due to the circumstances in Venezuela.

Besides his work as a videogame developer and CEO at Gamitz Mobile Studios, he founded a company called Dekoders In Vitro Studios that will encourage, help, and teach people in Latin America to make videogames with a very wide range of available tools, from open source projects to elite high cost platforms, and also publish them.

Craig Pearson (aka single sparq) has been an independent Game Developer for 3 years but has played games for more than 35 years. As an avid Apple fan, Craig previously ran two Apple-centric websites and since then has focused more on being an iOS developer in his spare time.

Without formal training, Craig has accumulated experience in all media areas such as video (editing, directing, and writing), Web development (CSS, HTML, and PHP), art direction (Photoshop, Illustrator, and Quark/InDesign) and music (Keyboard, Logic Pro, and Garageband).

Before finding the ultimate outlet of utilizing these skills in game development, Craig wrote and produced the album TwoPointZero, under the moniker of Monospark, currently available in iTunes.

Games produced with GameSalad include Space Tech Defender, Orbitz Jump Adventure, Barnyard Stackem, and Suburban Grand Prix.

When not making games, or enjoying life with his wife and daughter, Craig is the Manager of web development for a Canadian magazine publisher, managing over 40 Joomla-based websites.

Thanks to the author for the opportunity to be a part of this book and to GameSalad for the software that even a non-coder like me can use. To Apple for the tools to be so creative in so many ways. Also, a big thanks to Kathy and Natasha for allowing me the time to fulfill my passions.