Comments on: Tweaking your game with Google Spreadsheets

By: Flash Games

Flash Games — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:45:34 +0000

i like the game its cool. but i cant find it that link dont take me to the game

By: Ben Garney

Ben Garney — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:29:39 +0000

What we will probably do is just store a dump of the RSS data in the game and have the tweaker apply it right away rather than fetching it from outside. We could also go in and hand-apply all the values, but I'm only doing that if I absolutely have to.

By: MightyCicero

MightyCicero — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:12:49 +0000

A bit late for a reply but I was wondering about your release strategy with this XML thing.

Do you plan using the google feed on the released version of your game or do you plan on packaging the xml file with the game? Or integrating the final tweaks into an internal structure in the .swf?

By: Ben Garney

Ben Garney — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:02:48 +0000

It was just editing what was in the game. The issue was that it was a little cryptic, and too tied to the internal structures of the game. So the designer was faced with this deep tree of weird fields.

The Google approach is way better because data is laid out sensibly, and most designers are good with spreadsheets already. Plus you get the whole cloud/collaborative thing.

By: Dale Beermann

Dale Beermann — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:25:45 +0000

well it's certainly easier not to build the UI in the first place… I'm really more interested in the proof of concept rather than the actual use I guess Especially since we don't have designers…

When you were using the custom UI was it in fact hooked up to the Google Spreadsheet, or was it just editing local data?

By: Ben Garney

Ben Garney — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:56:01 +0000

Actually, that's a really good point. For our designers, the Google Spreadsheet UI is actually easier to work with than the custom UI we built originally. So I think that wrapping it would actually hurt productivity (at least for us). If your designers find Google Spreadsheet intimidating, then a custom UI might be worth it.

By: Dale Beermann

Dale Beermann — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:33:53 +0000

so next step… a UI layer that lets you tweak the parameters for Grunts, editing the data in your spreadsheet at the same time. Doesn't seem like their API allows it unfortunately, although I haven't dug that much.

By: Alex Ionescu

Alex Ionescu — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:25:20 +0000

Thanks for sharing!

By: Luna Drift

Luna Drift — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:25:26 +0000

really… really… really cool!

By: timaste

timaste — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:57:36 +0000

This