Thanks for the support
As for the experiences sure!
Well we originally started off on a super tight budget.. So we didn't have unity iPhone to work with. We developed most of the game on Unity Free - Computer version.. Which looking back - terrible idea.
Once we figured our game was far enough along we purchased Unity iPhone... We just assumed porting it wouldn't be all that difficult. Just create some controls, and probably rework some of the models.. we figured the Code was simple enough to work fine.
Well that was wrong!
A lot of things just weren't working right. The FPS was wayyy low, just because of the way we were coding things.. There were also quite of few other code errors that we had to deal with.
Then came the next problem. We only had an iPhone 4 to work with at first. FINALLY after weeks we got the game running perfectly on the iPhone 4. I obvisouly wanted to test it on older hardware so we picked up a second hand 3G phone... Another surprise- the game only ran at 5 FPS!? Just like we had to do with porting from desktop to iPhone 4- we had to do again for the 3G. Lowered some of the particle effects, texture resolutions and tweaked some code. Got it to run at a steady FPS and no noticeable lag (in our testing at least!)
We reeeeeealy underestimated the porting part, and actually delayed our game by a week and half.
The second part: Building the final game and submitting to apple.
First- Apple really over complicates this part. The steps involved on creating a license on the mac, and creating a profile for the app to run on the phone.. Just unreasonably confusing.
Fortunately apple does provide lots of documentation on this, and if you follow it exactly things go fine.. But really an annoying process.
So once the game is built - you submit to apple. And wait. The waiting was the worst part. It took a week for our app to go into review. Which probably isn't too bad especially during this holiday season.
But what made it bad was emailing apple. We sent off an email asking if everyting was fine and what to expect. We got a reply (which I thought was human) that said our app is almost done being reviewed.
The wording left me confused a bit, especially since on the site it still said our app was waiting for review. So I search google and learn it is just an automated email and doesn't actually mean our app is near the end of the review process.
FINALLY a few more days go by and we hear back...... Our app was rejected.
The reason being- We mentioned in our description that we were going to donate our money to charity. Apple doesn't like this.
So we changed the description, and filed for appeal. 2 days later the app was in the store!
We learned quite a bit, specifically with time management.. Giving our selves enough time to port and fix any bugs.. But also enough time to deal with apple.
Hey guys, just like to announce our new game Santa's Delivery. It has just launched and available on iTunes right now. Cost is 99 cents.
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