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So the last time I submitted an app was March. But since then, major new apple products have hit. The ipad 3, and now the iphone 5 and new ipod touch.
What is apple's policy regarding these devices? Do they have new requirements when I submit an app?
I'm using xcode 4.2 for snow leopard. Do I need to submit an ipad 3 resolution icon? And where would I do this?
And as far as the 16:9 displays are concerned, are they requiring compatibility with them yet?
I just submitted an update today. I too am on snow leopard, using an xcode hacked to allow the 5.1 sdk to compile.
I did notice that there is a new slot for Iphone 5 screenshots in itunes connect. I didn't upload any. I have no idea if my game will run on iphone 5 ....... fingers crossed I guess
I dont like how apple makes it challenging for developers to keep up. I can only hope that my current development environment will last another year so I can at least make back my investment.
I'm trying to remember now, is there a place in itunes connect to upload app icons? Or can that only be done in xcode?
It's done in itunes connect, and you have to submit a higher resolution icon (1024x1024) when submitting a new app, or updating an old one. And I'm pretty sure you have to upload screenshots for all the resolutions.
Ok, good to know. So my game was designed at 480x320. What's going to happen when it loads on an iphone 5? Will it be pillarboxed? I know clickteam are introducing scaling methods for 16:9 displays, but not sure if that's out yet, and even if it is, with only days before submission, I really don't want to be running on a beta version, especially since everything is working pretty well.
If you don't change the res you will just get black pillarboxes along the sides, only drawback to that IMO is newer 5 owners might not buy your app.
But if you make it in 5 resolution you'll get letterboxing.
If your phone uses the full iPhone 5 resolution, they require screenshots of the iPhone 5 version otherwise its status becomes "Missing Screenshot", so without an iPhone 5 or an iPod Touch 5 you'd have to jump through hoops to take PC screenshots at the right resolution etc.
I'm keeping MANOS and AWESOME Land pillarboxed because there is a lot of locked scrolling where the camera frames boss rooms etc. that are exactly the width of the iPhone 4 screen, but everything from now on I'm building with multiple aspect ratios in mind.
It's more than reasonable to submit your app without iPhone 5 screen support at the moment, I mean only real hardcore nerds have iPhone 5s right now, those who camped outside the stores or rushed to pre-order the moment it became available, they'll now be out of stock for a good month or so. Some might have iPod Touch 5 but I doubt too many people have yet paid £250 for an MP3 player.
I have been working on a system to take screen captures from the PC build of the game in iPhone 5 resolution so that I can submit them without having to shell out £500-600 for something I don't need or deal with poor blurry scaled images. Hopefully it's doable with the screen capture object.
The beta version we currently have out for testing supports new view modes to get away with the letterboxing in different devices. You simply design your game for one of the resolutions and then decide how the screen should shrink/expand to fit the resolution on the new device (by showing less or more of the game level).
Beta 3 which will be out soon should fix the iOS6 problems people have.
All my iTunes screenshots are from my games running on Windows ;) apple can't tell the difference because there practically aren't any. Maybe the aliasing around text, but they've never picked up on that.
And people do all sorts to embellish their screenshots with borders etc, so I can't imagine they would have a problem with it.
I use a screen cap utility, but there's always the screen capture object if you wanted to integrate it into your game. Save out a PC version, make an event binding a key to take a screenshot using screen cap object. Done :)
Yeah, that's what I figured I would do, stick the screen capture object in there and use a key to capture the shots, and also set it to run at the correct resolution so that there's no scaling (scaling is fine on high res games but on pixel games you lose definition when post-scaling).
Another option is to rescale your screenshots in Photoshop or equivalent.
If you want a smooth rescale use bilinear or bicubic sampling.
If you want to preserve the pixelated look you can use nearest neighbour sampling.
Yes, that's what I do, I'm a graphic designer so I have the right tools, but a pixel game will never scale down and retain its sharpness, instead you'll get this look:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/27148256/master.gif
I'm not sure what you mean there. Do you mean taking a pixel art game and stretching it? Because obviously then you'll get distortion, as with anything. Stretching a pixel art game will probably look worse than a high res game, in that case then you'll definitely want the original image in the right aspect ratio before the rescale (or use letterboxing).
But you can take a blown up pixel art game and proportionally scale it down using nearest neighbour and have it be identical to the original. As long as no aliasing has been introduced, you don't scale smaller than the original, and you are proportionally scaling you will be fine. This is what I mean:
http://colejefferies.com/stuff/Untitled-1.pnghttp://colejefferies.com/stuff/Untitled-2.pnghttp://colejefferies.com/stuff/Untitled-3.png
The third image is the downscaled second image using nearest neighbour, and is for all intents and purposes identical to the first.
With that image you've posted, it looks like you've got some aliasing & sharpening somewhere along the way.
For those of you who don't know photoshop, you can change the re-sampling of images on the bottom drop down menu in image > resize, or if you want to change the way the scaling tools do it go to preferences > general > image interpolation.
Basically what I'm saying photoshop is useful for scaling because you have control over how to scale as there are resize methods to suit both pixel art and high res games:) I'm sure there is something equiviliant in GIMP too.
I just take my screens on PC too. Both my games have run at 480x320. Apple requires retina screens, so I just took screenshots and resized X2. In Paint. Paint also allows you to scale with anti-aliasing or nearest neighbor. If you resize the entire image without selecting it anti-aliases it. If you select all and then resize, it does it by nearest neighbor. By the time it gets onto the iphone's small screen though, you can barely tell the difference.
I actually updated both my games for iPhone 5 resolution, one of which was out on the day of the release. I too simply print-screened in windows. I'm curious, how come so many have worked in 480x320 resolution? Is it because the games where made when that was the standard or something?
Well up until the iphone 5, if you were working on a universal app, 480x320 or its retina equivelant were really the only logical choices. My games are both pixel art style, so there's no benefit to the added resolution. It would just be more apt to have slowdown.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xeeko
Unfortunately reworking my game for iphone 5 is more work than I can put into it right now. Like DistantJ, I have boss stages and cutscenes where there's simply nothing to the left and right of the screen. I will probably design for 16:9 from the ground up in future releases, although it still creates balance issues, such as enemies that get activated once they're on screen will be activated sooner in a 16:9 game, but it also increases the player's time to react.
Once I'm rich and can afford the new overpriced ipod touch, I will see how my games run on that device. All of my testing on PC occurs on a 16:9 monitor, where I have the game set to fill the screen, and it doesn't look bad at all, so I may just go with the stretch option. We will see.
That's good to know paint includes nearest neighbour & aliasing resize options too.
I'm also considering going the stretch route with updates for my current games. Either that or stick with the letterbox.
With stretched graphics I find they look very ugly to begin with as you are used to the original dimensions, but then you quickly adjust to the stretch.
Basically it's not integer scaling, nearest neighbour would create an uneven effect because it's scaling down from the full screen size of my laptop; I will need to make the game run at its proper iPhone resolution and then take the screenshot then.