Make sure your iOS games are iPhone X compatible!

[britzl]

Defold released iOS 11 support in version 1.2.124 (release notes). According to a recent Apple Developer News post:

“Starting July 2018, all iOS app updates submitted to the App Store must be built with the iOS 11 SDK and must support the Super Retina display of iPhone X.”

What this means specifically to you guys developing games for iOS is that you need to do two things:

1. Make sure to provide all launch images in game.project. Specifically 1125x2436 and 2436x1125 for the iPhone X.
2. Make sure to respect the safe areas of iPhone X, meaning that you shouldn’t have any UI elements at the top area with the notch or the opposite side of the screen.

Detailed information can be found here: https://developer.apple.com/ios/update-apps-for-iphone-x/

[gianmichele]

Would be great to know what’s the recommended approach for multi-resolution.

What base resolution do you use? At what resolution you create all the assets?

[britzl]

What base resolution do you use? At what resolution you create all the assets?

Well, to start with you have the High Dpi setting under Display in game.project:

“Creates a high dpi back buffer on displays that support it. Typically the game will render in double the resolution than what is set in the Width and Height settings, which will still be the logical resolution used in scripts and properties.”

This gives you two options:

1. Use high_dpi and set game.project to half the resolution and scale game objects
2. Don’t use high_dpi and set game.project to full resolution and let the render script scale everything (default behaviour)

Discussed in these forum posts:

What is a proper way to handle textures on universal app for high and low res devices

There is currently no atlas/texture selection mechanism based on retina/low res. The easiest path now is to use a large texture and scale it down. Make sure you tick the “high_dpi” setting in the game project and the engine will create a hi-res buffer where the graphics are drawn on devices that support it. If you want to create different versions depending on screen size you will currently need to set that up with some off-line build pipeline. We have a ticket in our backlog to start working o…

How High Dpi and Retina screens work (SOLVED)

I’m new to Defold and trying to understand how to get high res graphics for Retina screens working. For example when using a standard game object with a sprite attached - how do I set it up to use a double sized sprite (and scale down)? I cant find any way to set the size of the actual sprite. See attached screen: [sprite_settings]

[dmitriy]

How to build app for iOS simulator?

[britzl]

I don’t think you can. @sven did an experiment a while back though.

[sven]

I have a branch of Defold with a working iOS Simulator build target for the engine that I experimented with on an exploration day here at the office.

If there is a need for such a feature I’d like to take a stab at it next exploration day, unless if there is urgent need we could prioritise it into a sprint.

[connor.halford]

BUMP

King probably has Scrooge-McDuck-style vaults of iOS devices but for indies being able to test in the iOS simulator would be incredibly useful

[connor.halford]

In the mean time I think it would be worth adding a sentence at the top of this manual page saying you can’t use the simulator. Save anyone else wasting a few hours

Defold development for the iOS platform

[britzl]

King probably has Scrooge-McDuck-style vaults of iOS devices

Ha, that would be cool. The truth is somewhere in between. We have quite a few devices per studio and the Defold team has a dedicated group of devices. We also have a device cloud for remote testing on device. Similar to AWS Device Farm (https://aws.amazon.com/device-farm/), which could be an option if you want to test on an iPhone X.

being able to test in the iOS simulator would be incredibly useful

I agree. I think @sven researched this a while back, but not sure how far he got. He’s back on Monday, I’ll make sure to ask him.

[Axel]

In the mean time I think it would be worth adding a sentence at the top of this manual page saying you can’t use the simulator. Save anyone else wasting a few hours

Good idea! Similar to the “Help -> Report Issue” in the editor, you can click the “Have a suggestion?” button on all the manuals/documentation pages, and they will reach @sicher.

[sicher]

Due to insane amounts of bot-spam that managed to circumvent the bot honeypots the “Have suggestion” button now only appears if you are logged in.

[kate_smith]

How to build app for iOS simulator..?

[britzl]

Defold development for the iOS platform

[Chung_Xa]

Not related but why do I see this thread in Lastest?

[britzl]

Because a spammer posted in this thread and got deleted.