Things I should know before diving in

[Deangelo]

Hey!

I have been familiar in the past with MM Fusion 1.5 - Way way back.

Now I am interested in purchasing 2.5 and I have some questions regarding IOS development;

1. When starting a new project on Fusion 2.5, what should I prepare in order to be able to eventually export the game to IOS, besides purchasing the IOS exporter?
2. Once exporting to xcode, how complicated is it to send that to Apple for review?
3. Are there any basic preferences I should work with from the get-go when developing for IOS? (Like specific resolutions) So that I don't need to go back later and change things from the ground up.

Thank you for the help!

[Tuna]

Welcome Deangelo!

1. You'll need an Apple IOS Membership ($99/year).
2. You'll need a fairly recent Mac running at least Mavericks with xCode installed.
3. You'll need to test on IOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod)
4. You'll need to have a plan for what devices you intend to support. (Various resolutions between the models of phones and tablets mean you have to pick the right resolution and decide if you want to zoom, stretch or allow "black bars" on some devices...)

Sending the app to Apple for review has become a much easier process than it was a few years ago (it is far more "automated" now), but you'll need to do a few things before archiving the app/game and submitting. At first it may be confusing...

Now the good news:

The Clicker community and the Clickteam staff are both very supportive. People will help you solve your issues and get you on your way. The most common issues are supported with tutorials and sample files, and the learning curve is relatively short. I encourage you to jump in with both feet. Fusion 2.5 is a very mature product, the IOS exporter is fast and the Android exporter has also been improving constantly and is in a very good state! There is only minimal effort needed to compile for either platform. If you're compiling for IOS, the exporter will "ignore" Android components, and vice versa.

Hope to see your participation in the Forums continue. I encourage others to add their 2 cents to my comments!

[Deangelo]

Hey Tuna,

I played around with the free version of Fusion 2.5 and it's very similar to what I remember, so it looks like I just need to do some brushing up and then start looking into all the new features.
I seem to remember there used to be a lot of power in Array systems, but the free version doesn't seem to have that option for some reason, am I missing something, or is it only an extension for the full version?

So regarding IOS development. Say I want to create a game for both iPhones and iPads, should I select the FRAME resolution to be similar to that of an iPhone screen (1136 x 640)?
If I want it to also support an iPad, where would I find these "Zoom, stretch or letterbox" options? Do those show up only with the IOS exporter?

Thank you for the reply and all the help, it will put me a couple of steps closer to getting things running.

Cheers
D

[Tuna]

There are components to handle Arrays that work well... you may have to use the full version to get those, but honestly, I never tried the free version of 2.5 so I can't speak accurately on that.

About IOS - I just released MechaBall on IOS in February... The resolution i chose was 640x1136 because I only had an iPhone 5s to test on. I found later that it fills the screen perfectly on both iPHone 6 and 6 plus. On iPad 3 there are slightly noticeable black bars on the left/right and some people told me to expect Apple to reject the game for that reason, but it was not rejected.

About Display settings:
The options you'll have when you purchase the IOS Exporter for Display are: Center, Adjust Window Size, Fit inside (black bars), Fit Inside and Adjust Window Size, Fit Outside and Stretch to Fill...

How you choose to use these options will affect your display... Anders (from Clickteam) made a very useful tool for understanding how these options will work on various devices. You can find that here: http://www.andersriggelsen.dk/clickteam/resolutions/

Hope this helps!

[DaveC]

my number 1 tip would be to test on a real device throughout the entire development... don't make an entire game and then try to export it to iOS, that is a recipe for disaster.

[Dino]

This is a nice discussion.
I am new here; I have downloaded the free version of Fusion 2.5 and gone through the first tutorial. I understand that the free version can only export an HTML5 version. Question: Can anyone direct me where to upload the html5 files to test the game, and how to do this. I think this is a good product and I wanted to explore further.
Hope someone could be of great help.
Many thanks.

[Perry]

Upload it to your website, or create a website (there are some free ones) and upload the files.

As far the IOS
I have a guide in the Clickstore that takes you to the whole process for creating/ posting for the App Store

http://clickstore.clickteam.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=161

[Outcast]

About uploading Html5 to website to test. I think you can just put it in a dropbox folder and test that way instead of on an actual website? Not 100% about this though.

[DaveC]

I think dropbox has blocked this now - but you don't need to upload it anywhere, you can just build and run and it will create a local/virtual "server" or something like that. (you need to update your exporter for this to work though)

[Tuna]

my number 1 tip would be to test on a real device throughout the entire development... don't make an entire game and then try to export it to iOS, that is a recipe for disaster.

Oh yes, without a doubt I agree with this comment... very good point.