When should I release my game?

DoMan

Hi, I have made a pretty cool game, titled Phase II. It is a survival game where the player controls a spaceship that must avoid hitting big black blocks, or you will get destroyed by a big evil laser. Their are plenty of extra features and such, so it is DECENT.
At the moment the entire game is complete, except i have no sounds or music. Should I stick "Itunes compatible" and release it now? Or should i get some sounds and let it wait a bit, anyone have some advice? And once i have finished it, when should i release it then? BTW - I dont have any physical devices to test it on though. Sad.

SlickZero

Everything about this says "wait" You really need to test it out before you submit, and you should wait until you have sounds and music.

Submitting to the app store without any form of device testing is a bad idea. Real bad.

RodrigoPerez

Well really if you want to do it right, keep polishing your game, add music and sounds, play through the whole thing twice while writing down any bugs or issues then go fix them and then play through it again making sure there are no problems, if you have a friend with a ipod touch see if you could borrow it so you can test your game or wait till you can buy one used off ebay or craigslist. Testing Ad-Hoc on the device is the only true way to test your game.

The last thing you want to do is rush an app to the App Store, take your time with it.

DoMan

Hu Humph. Unfortunately I have not the rescues, I cant afford an iPad or iPod touch (South Africa doesn't have any apple stores) and these devices are 10x more expensive...

RodrigoPerez

Well then that should make that much more important to make the game the best possible game you can, so then hopefully you'll make enough money to buy a iPod Touch and an iPad :-)

devjohnson

Your game needs to be as best as it can be at launch. If you are trying to make money, you can't afford to put something into the app store that isn't as finished as possible.

Your game will very likely get the most attention when you first release it, so you don't want to release something that isn't as good as it can be.

If you think sounds will improve your game, wait.

Dhondon

Optimized for deaf people?

JohnPapiomitis

i know this is gonna sound harsh and im sorry, but if you dont have a device to test on you have no business doing this or making a game.

Its extremly stupid and irresponsible to release without testing. For all you know it could be crashing on the device as soon as it starts.

Im sorry but like i said if you cant find a device to borrow, or afford one, this isnt for you

DoMan

Anyone want to give away an old, slow, obsolete iPad 1?

shaundunne

Is it possible to package up and send another GS member?

They might bug test it for you? of course after the sound is added.

I would offer, but at the moment just waiting for some cash to get an apple dev license.

</$0.02>

DoMan

Hmm, i'm not sure, what if he takes the game, adjusts it and calls it theirs? Trust is very hard to earn online. BTW do you have to pay for an apple dev license?

SlickZero

Yes, you have to have a dev license to publish to the app store.

shaundunne

This is true, but short of getting a device, this might be the only option. The game NEEDS to be tested on a device really.

Dev license is $99 per year. Tried to get it as an expense at work, but they denied, just need to wait till the end of the month.

ultima

when you say itunes compatible... if i'm guessing correctly... you are saying you can play music through itunes while playing game? unless i'm missing something as soon as you open gamesalad game.. your music stops... so that won't work.

if you want you can send me the game file and i'll test it on ipad, iphone (and possibly my tester's ipod touch as well, but there's no guarantee since sometimes their response is slow)

quantumsheep

ultima said:
you are saying you can play music through itunes while playing game? unless i'm missing something as soon as you open gamesalad game.. your music stops... so that won't work.

Unless something's changed recently, that's not true! Your music will carry on playing over the in-game music - you can (if you have the option) set your game music to off and listen to your own tunes off your phone/ipod.

If you have a set of Apple headphones you can even skip to the next/previous tunes.

It's one of those undocumented GS features - and the first time I discovered it was with Kraken a year ago - so it should work..

QS

DoMan

Cool looks like I'll be polishing this one for time.

Hey sheep, is my iPhone game already in retina display? It fills that lol camera thing, but on the iPhone will it automatically be scaled down to retina display? And what is res independence?