Many people think that to make games and to play games almost the same. I have bunch of similar reviews in Russian for my games.
Also, In Russian GameDev community a few screenshots of similar reviews already become a meme.
4 Likes
A HTML5 version of the free version is now live on itch! It’s really surprising how good it looks and how well it plays even as a web version even as highly compressed in some areas…
7 Likes
Still working on getting iOS version live. Tested now and it all just works! I didn’t have to do any platform specific stuff really to make it work besides setting up icons and launch images.
For the launch images I used all solid black. The game doesn’t instantly load but on a first gen iPad Retina it’s about 3 seconds which is fine. On an iPhone 5 it’s about 2 seconds so probably newer devices would be even faster.
launch_images.zip (60.5 KB)
I used the certificate and provisioning profile downloaded from the developer site. I downloaded the iOS Distribution cert with xcode. I uploaded to Apple with xcode uploader tool. Tested with testflight. You don’t have to wait for them to review you can use your developer accounts if you add them here. To upload to apple it’s important to use something like “iPhone Distribution: Team Name (…)” and not “Developer ID Application: Team Name (…)” like I was doing otherwise you’ll get codesign errors when uploading… 
Via @dapetcu21 for uploading dev ipa to phone. I also asked about the folder structure because of platform specific loading. It’s nice that it’s simple on iOS.
You can also use xcode (via the “Devices and Simulators” window) like docs say. Although testflight works too (thanks to @sergey.lerg for pushing me to try it) and is a little easier for testing on multiple devices quickly. Last time I used testflight was back when it was another company and not a built in part of the system. Now it’s way more convenient!
I have to make a few specific to iOS changes such as removing the exit button on the main menu which I know is not allowed, then it should be good to go for reviewing…
2 Likes
Stats from the HTML5 demo after a few days. I posted it on /r/WebGames/ and it got most visitors from there. Everyone should probably be posting HTML5 builds of their games there as a rule.
I’m not sure if any demo plays converted to sales yet as there are no meaningful changes to sales based on the release of any of the demo versions so far (and I really have no way of tracking that). But again it’s probably not enough data, not the correct target audience being shown the demo versions currently, and the demo version is probably too generous and not persuasive enough. In the old FS1 the demo version converted strongly. It was content locked and locked to 1 hour play time (and we put a ton of polish into making sure the first hour was as good as possible “the golden hour”). Of course it had differently gameplay and a stronger narrative to drive play forward. I think doing that locking people out would hurt the review score on the mobile stores since people would get locked out eventually and then be upset they can’t play more (while not willing to pay), but it would also convert sales (for those willing to pay and wanting to play more). Still I feel no rush to make these changes for now.
4 Likes
FSH is live on iOS App Store! It only took a day or so to go from submission to approval.
This is supposed to be the link but it isn’t working for me directly, maybe it will take a day to fully work https://apps.apple.com/us/app/faerie-solitaire-harvest/id1478467632
6 Likes
Getting on Mac App Store now… This old post helped. 
I already had all of the proper certs downloaded from xcode.
Ran into ITMS-90236 when uploading. Using iConvert Icons app to originally make the icon. I had to do this to reconvert the icon file https://stackoverflow.com/a/30936685 if you still get the error after this make sure that the 2x files are actually in the icon.iconset folder when you do the second step.
But I think you can do it right the first time with this https://blog.charlie.fish/2018/02/09/mac-app-store-icns-error/
It’s probably a good idea to follow the advice here and make the small icons simple instead of auto-generated from large icon but… I don’t expect this to be worth the time as is financially so I’m not doing that. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/icons-and-images/app-icon/ But maybe for future projects. Apple seems to not really care about Mac App Store, all of their money is in mobile apps.
Another error I had was “unsealed contents present in the root bundle” when signing the app. I moved everything extra into the Resources folder when signing, then moved it back out after signing and it seemed to work.
Now to finish store listing and submit for review…
5 Likes
Dang! So this means I will have to move the files around and make appropriate adjustment in the game code for loading so everything is in Resources folder only.
Is it the FMOD banks you have there?
Yes, this is how it has to be.
I have to manually move the folder after macOS bundling.
1 Like
Or just use the per-platform subdirectories in bundled_resources instead of using the same banks in the same location everywhere.
2 Likes
Editor scripts are coming eventually which I assume will make this more convenient in the future too.
At the moment, I don’t want duplicate files, and for now platform specific folders do not override common folder files instead make a conflict error.
As a workaround write a python/bash script that will place all the needed files into the place. Then run this script manually before bundling.
I have a collection of utility scripts in /external directory in my project.
2 Likes
This is exactly what I do. I have a script that does all sorts of optimisation and moving things around, then invokes bob and I basically never bundle from the editor.
2 Likes
I do most builds on Windows and do use build scripts there. For Steam releases it is invaluable to use them to build and upload. This is my laziness on macOS for now to not use one. 
I will set one up to do Mac App Store builds for bundling, house keeping, signing, packaging, uploading in the future.
Review failed and I’m not sure what to do about it. It works for me. And it seems like I’m following all of the signing steps correctly. I tested on macOS 10.13.6.
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/qa/qa1778/_index.html
Ok, got it to reproduce… after restarting this mac.
If I try to run the binary directly it says “permission denied”
So it must be the codesign step?
Woah, now when I try to codesign I get.
“codesign_allocate helper tool cannot be found”
Internet suggested “sudo xcode-select --reset” but it didn’t help. Using xcode 9.4.1.
I had to do “sudo codesign …” it seems.
I also changed the name of the cert to be full. Maybe this was a problem before.
Now after doing codesign I can’t open the app every time, running the main binary every time does not work. Going to try to rebundle fresh again.
–
I realized I had game center checked in the id so I added it to the entitlements. Still waiting on bundling…
Bundling finished. I made a copy of the app just in case I need to re-attempt things…
Running before signing works. After codesign I get
Running the binary directly it says
“Killed: 9”
At the moment, I’m unsure what to do.
I removed the game center entitlement and it’s working again after codesign.
Back to “permission denied” currently I’m assuming it is an entitlement problem but I don’t know why.
Going to test un-checking game center in id and not including it in entitlements.
Maybe it’s working now… I think the critical flaws were that
- I checked game center in the id even though I didn’t need to
- In the entitlements I didn’t include game center
- I didn’t create a distribution / development provisioning profile which are only required (I think) if you use extra entitlements like game center
So I disabled game center in id. Removed its entitlement. And also created provisioning profiles. Uploading build 4 now hopefully.
Nope. Tested on a guest account and still get “The application ‘…’ can’t be opened.”
3 Likes
I’m not going to spend more time on Mac App Store build for now. If anyone can attempt to get a build to sign and upload and be approved I would appreciate the insights.
Submitted FSH to Samsung app store.
2 Likes
Sales stats from iOS App Store so far. I paid Apple the $99 to renew (a lapsed account) 8 days ago on August 30th, and probably the game will have made that much by tomorrow’s stats update. It feels good to break even on that entry cost in a few days! I’m certain people from here bought some copies on iOS so thank you! 
14 units on the 5th and 5 on the 6th. No other data. So sales data seems to lag behind 2 days.
On the analytics page most things don’t show much because not enough data has been collected yet.
Most likely the sales will taper off until Black Friday / Christmas where usually there are big larger sales bumps on iOS from new device sales. The next times FSH is on sale on Steam I will put it on sale on mobile for the same discount amounts and periods.
There were a few people who requested promo codes from us for the iOS version and I sent some out. So far one person has written a review and it seems positive according to Google translate http://app-s.ru/news/faerie_solitaire_harvest_skazochnyj_pasjans/2019-09-07-13967 he contacted me for more questions and seemed to enjoy the game more than he thought he would.
I still plan to do some more quality of life updates specifically for mobile such as increasing the sizes of things and generally making it easier to play on the smaller phones. It will happen in time.
FSH on Samsung seems to have passed technical validation and is now waiting content review? Most of the English on the site is good but some of it is still difficult to understand.
8 Likes
Updating sales data from places I can share. I’ll wait a while to share again since there will probably be no major difference in the totals for a while. Planning to most likely put each version on sale Thanksgiving and Xmas holidays here.
iOS
Google Play
Amazon
Samsung
itch
We’ve been chugging along on Dire work. It will be a very cool game and I’ll have more to share about it on its thread soon.
7 Likes
I hope you got through the reviews of FSH, and generally, if people are complaining, it’s about a though level of difficulty and punishments regarding spending more and more money, when trying to win the game using special abilities that are getting more and more expensive. My brother tried the game on PC and, though he likes the game and how it feels, he admits, that he spend all his earned money in some level and couldn’t get any further because of he can’t afford to pay for abilities that could allow him to win a difficult level. I was having the same problem on mobile and many levels needed to be replayed to have a great cards that just “fits”. The problem I see, is that the economy is not established. Maybe you are rewarded a bit, but after using some abilities you can’t afford to buy next, so it’s making you annoyed, because it doesn’t depend on your skill, but rather on your luck 
Also, I read a nice text on gamasutra last time, it could be useful (as I have the same thoughts about a trailer ;)) : https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ChrisZukowski/20190906/350248/How_Steam_users_see_your_game.php
3 Likes