Why I'm Android Semi-Exclusive

     With TriGrid, it's ads, with Candy Shop Catch it's iPad game loop breaks from random resolution errors. The big picture here is iOS giving me trouble after trouble and Android being smooth sailing start to finish. From here on out, Android is my main priority. If I find decent success, I'll spend however long I need to in order to get an iOS port working. That mostly applies to my two latest games. With the ones I'm making next, I have a new strategy in mind...

     I'm getting new problems on iOS that don't exist on Android because of resolution issues. Android devices can stretch a screen that's too small in order to play on a variety of devices. Apple devices do not.

     The way I coded Candy Shop Catch was making an HD and SD resolution boolean. If a screen was bigger than 640x960, Globals.isHD was set to true, the resolution was a forced 640x960px, and bigger sprites were used. Otherwise, the resolution was a forced 320x480px and small sprites were used then positioned accordingly. The exact positions of things were either based on a resolution's edges or exact positions with "handwritten" numbers.

     The Unity resolution force apparently does not work for iOS. The only devices I am able to test on are my small android phone, My roommate's high-resolution android phone, and a 3rd gen iPod Touch. I was unable to check if the resolution force applied to iDevices. I even made the application iPhone only just to be sure.

     My iOS simulator crashes on launch and I have yet to find a solution for that. Without it, I don't even have a fake iPad to test on. My big issue with this is how iOS seems to keep ignoring entire lines of code at random. I implement a multitude of fixes and see no changes at all. I even do basic things just to see if any line of code can go through and I get nothing. I try entire new scripts, empty all but for some test lines and nothing works.

     As you can see in the picture above (taken on a 3rd gen iPad) it recognizes the device is HD to the point of using large sprites, but only some of the sprites look right. A majority of them are still SD sized. The background is also blue,when I specifically set it to beige. All the commands to fix these problems are right alongside the code that works. It's like it just stopped caring, mocking me, and that frustrates me to no end.

    I took  long look at all the chaos I'm braving and thinking about if it's worth the effort or not. I came to conclude that if the android version is getting no attention, neither will this, and that's weeks of development time and energy I could put into games that people will really want to play.

    To resolve my problems and clear my head I'll be creating my next game with these issues in mind. If more random errors pop up, iOS will simply wait until it proves worthwhile to resolve the mystery of "The Cyber-Ghost That Hates My Guts". I'll arrange my games in a way that adjusts to any screen size and be sure to make games that people would want to show to their friends.

     It's time I actually made a game that's worth the money I'm hoping to get from it. My next game will be worthy of sitting on the top free apps list. That's my mission and I'm not going to fail.