Apple Store Game Releasing?

[Just Ace]

So after very nearly recoding an MCCodes engine into practically my very own, I don't feel like just a Browser release is good enough these days, so I've been thinking of some other options, which you'll probably all agree, is how most games and apps become successful nowadays.

- Apple Store

- Android/Play Store

So there is probably someone around on here who can help me out and give me some experienced information and tips towards what I want to achieve and how I should achieve it.

My initial plan now is to Enroll on the Apple Developer program. This is just basically to give you the rights to make an app, give you the rights to submit the app for review before release & then literally eventually releasing it on the App Store. (I could be slightly wrong with that, but I'm probably right along with you get lots and lots of developer tools when enrolling)

Now i'll get straight to the point, I've been trying to do my research on converting a Browser game into an Apple App, nothing is quite clicking with me on what it is initially I need to do.

So my question, how & what do I need to do to convert a browser game into an Apple App?

-Thanks for reading.

[KyleMassacre]

It's a bit tricky to port such things to swift/obj-c code. Also, if you don't have a Mac it can get quite pricey to develop for IOS. What you can do is use a HTML/JS based framework like phonegap for example.

Or the extremely easy/lazy way is to use a nice mobile template and you can just point a webview to your site

[SRB]

Apple developer costs too, although it's only $99 a year or something.

You have a few options after that;

- appcelerator

- ionics

- Cordova

- phonegap

- objective c

- swift?

Be warned though, iOS development isn't for the feint hearted. The development dashboard is a pain in the ass, with what should be a simple click being a whole list of step by steps - be ready to write your own notes!

Sometimes you won't be able to find anything relating to an issue on Google, so you gain grey hairs and wrinkles overnight.

There's also more to what Kyle says;

On iOS launches, Xcode updates and sometimes, their updates break current apps when you recompile them due to changes in the core. Means a small edit can become quite a big task,

we have just had 2 of the apps at work go nuts as a result of appcelerator updating too, which killed the push notification system. so third party software adds another layer of headaches!

Worth the time if you have it to put in though - will be hard to find jobs soon that don't require at least some basic app development, with a portfolio containing an app. Seems the way the market is going now.

Take it slowly and step away when it starts to make you feel under pressure - keep it fun, you'll get further.

[KyleMassacre]

I agree. [MENTION=50378]Guest[/MENTION] pretty much nailed it on the head. Obj-C and Swift are quite touchy and you really need to understand a lot of OOP. It's not like C# or JS type objective syntax, it has its own unique syntax that can be quite tiresome. The "!" Is what kills me 99.9% of the time with swift. But there are some familiar functions when developing for iOS like your standard conditional functions i.e if,else,else if, and switch. It also has a lot more data types that explicitly need to be defined or your method/object will fail much like C# unlike PHP where you have strings, and arrays. You have arrays, mutable arrays, dictionaries, mutable dictionaries, structs, and etc.

Basically, there is a lot to learn in order to venture in this direction if you wish to make a native app not using a framework like guest has mentioned. Have fun ;)

[Just Ace]

Yeah it's £79 for the year!

I probably will be lazy for the time being and make it mobile compatible to be a web view on the app & then maybe the real plan would be to hire someone to get the actual job done for me, I'm already in contact with a Company that has given me a good offer to do that work, but I don't want to dip too far into my money pot just yet!

On the good side of it all, I do have a Mac, provided from work so guess that's covered.

[SRB]

Inbox me just ace, I'm curious about that company :)

[Just Ace]

http://www.gluepromotions.com for anyone interested!

[SRB]

www.gluepromotions.com for anyone interested!

Personally, I don't trust that "company". Seems too... uhm... risky!

Apparently, the owner is named Stefan Vermulst and his LinkedIn says that he has been running the company since 2011, but given it's a design and promotion company, I would expect more than;

 

• 1,337 friends on facebook facebook
  
• Posts dating back from before the companies founded date.
  
• A 12 year old domain
  
• The smoothest website in the world. Damn, that scroll is smoother than a babies backside.
  
• A custom made design to market their business.
  
• A whole gallery of images across the internet. Nobody has more images than Myspace Tom!
  

[Script47]

I suggest using something like IntelXDK, speaking from personal opinion it works very nicely and is very smooth, it does most of the hard part in terms of configuration and it allows you to use Cordova alongside it without having to set it up. Allows you to build and package applications for Android and Apple. I suggest starting off with just an Android developers license to see how the game goes as it is only $25 one time payment for lifetime license. Then if things go smoothly I would then purchase an Apple developers license. I tried Appcelerator as [MENTION=50378]Guest[/MENTION] suggested a while back but I had an issue with it which can be found here, much to my disappointment I couldn't fix it so I looked for another alternative, this is how I stumbled upon IntelXDK. Phonegap (again my personal opinion) I tried and I found the setup too confusing. It'd ask to have a file called Cordova.js and that would never exist even if I did the install correctly as shown. I didn't use Phonegap much.

Edited June 20, 2015 by Script47

[Sim]

I think the best way to share data would be a using "JSON" data. Creating a PC Application, Android or iPhone would all be possible from a web server if the device has internet. I am going to use this approach in the future myself.

Once a user login's(just send header request to web server with GET/POST with login/pass(encrypted), the session is stored on the web-server.

Then every time you need to fetch information(actions, users, profiles, results), send a request to different page, return results, figure out what you need to do, and display to Android/iOS/PC device if possible.

 

If user is idle for awhile, maybe send something like a "PING?" (blank-fake request to keep session live on web server).

 

I am a straight genius!!

[KyleMassacre]

I think the best way to share data would be a using "JSON" data. Creating a PC Application, Android or iPhone would all be possible from a web server if the device has internet. I am going to use this approach in the future myself.

Once a user login's(just send header request to web server with GET/POST with login/pass(encrypted), the session is stored on the web-server.

Then every time you need to fetch information(actions, users, profiles, results), send a request to different page, return results, figure out what you need to do, and display to Android/iOS/PC device if possible.

 

If user is idle for awhile, maybe send something like a "PING?" (blank-fake request to keep session live on web server).

 

I am a straight genius!!

Actually that is a lot of work :p. All you really need to do is create a global variable/constant when they login, something like this:

//depending on the library used to return your json objects this would change
if let userid = json.stringForKey('userid') {
  let defaults = NSUserDefaults.StandardUserDefaults()
   defaults.setInteger(userid, forKey: 'userid') // if their unique id is a string for some reason use defaults.setString()
}

You never want to store personal information on the device. Or an alternative is to use keychain.

[Sim]

Def is not a lot more work. All data is coming and going to one place and in same format. Only code that would be different basically is writing code for each devices GUI.

I never said to store data on a device

[KyleMassacre]

Def is not a lot more work. All data is coming and going to one place and in same format. Only code that would be different basically is writing code for each devices GUI.

I never said to store data on a device

You were right, I miss read. But you wouldnt need to "PING" anything if done right. When you send a request for data just submit a couple of parameters with the request like a userid and maybe an Authentication Key or API key if you will and check the headers for the key/value pair

url --get --include 'http://yourdomain.com/somePage.php?action=someAction' \
 -H 'userid: theUsersId' \
 -H 'Authorization: Token token=someToken' \
 -H 'Accept: application/json'

Then you can create a logout feature and do something like:

if let userid = json.stringForKey('userid') {
   let defaults = NSUserDefaults.StandardUserDefaults()
   defaults.setInteger(0, forKey: 'userid')
   defaults.setString('',forKey: 'Token'); 
}

and just check to see if their token and userid are not 0 or nil

[Sim]

I know I was right [MENTION=68711]KyleMassacre[/MENTION]

When am I ever wrong? LoLs!