Ah! The good old "check for no more bugs but hey, this needs some improvement here" routine near end of a release. Hopefully don't get too caught up in that loop. Since most apps can always need a few tweeks even after release.
Agreed ... more or less got a code freeze going on now. Unless it's the most superficial change, I ain't updating it at this stage. It's more lets make sure the levels progress nicely in difficulty and there aren't any that have enemies set to the wrong faction or something like that. For example, I came across one level where just one of the goblins was set to a different faction than all the others so the first thing that the goblins did on their was attack that one goblin. What's left now on my to do list is to finish the play through and fix anything identified from that and then go through all the text in the game and make sure wording is consistent, fix grammar and spelling and so forth. No actual code changes planned.
Will definitely submit to Apple this weekend come hell or high water. If it goes through the review process cleanly then I think first week of August will be the release date. Haven't decided on which day exactly but something in the first week.
Hey guys, quick update ... worked like crazy over the weekend and have completed the game and built a brand new app preview video. We are just working on the store submission today so things like app description and key words and all that stuff. Will let you know when we finally hit the submit button. Should be some time today though. We're also going to push out a final test flight build for press contacts primarily but obviously those that are in the playtest group can download it and test it out while waiting for the final release to hit the App store. Here's a link to the final app preview video: Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel Let us know what you think of the video.
Hey gents, in an almost comedic twist of fate ... my development machine decided to no longer boot up this morning. After several hours with Apple support, I ended up having to format the disk and re-install the OS, which is going on at the moment. On the positive side, my backups seem to be in order though I didn't do one after the weekend of work so I lost about 3 days worth of progress. I also lost the original files of the app preview above but that isn't too bad as I already uploaded them to iTunes Connect. Luckily I have my checklist of stuff so I'll just go through it again and redo all the stuff I did this weekend. I really hope I didn't lose anything too valuable but won't know for sure until I boot up to a clean OSX and start to rebuild it all. Anyway, assuming my backup files are okay then I don't think it'll cause too much of a delay. Should still be good to launch in August.
I was able to compile a build from a backup and submit that to iTunes connect successfully so I think I'm in reasonably good shape. I'm going to work on redoing the changes I made these past couple days and will then submit.
Awh, that's really bad luck. Glad to hear you didn't lose too much. Still, 3 days is a good piece of work. For the last stretch, don't forget to make backups at least once a day. Bet you'd be inviting Mr.Murphy over otherwise
Luckily I kept notes on what I had changed on my actual testing device so I still have those. A lot of the time was testing and adjusting difficulty in later levels, which shouldn't be too hard to recreate quickly from my notes. The worst though is that I finally got around to proof reading all the text sections and stories in the game and correcting for spelling and grammar. I'll have to do all that again ... blah. No biggie ... finally learned why I need to invest in a better backup strategy.
That's how it usually goes I am by no means an expert, but if you need help with getting something proper going, I'm quite sure I can dig up some stuff, e.g. what integration (if any) with a version control system - ideally in conjuction with an external backup device like a NAS - is possible on OSX. If you need help, just holler.
Actually ... yeah, if you could give me some tips on how to set up a good automatic backup to an external drive on a mac, that would be helpful. I'd like something that just scanned a folder for changes each night and updated a backup copy automatically.
Sure, be my guest Easiest way is to use Time Machine, it seems. Not this, but that one If you have the Time Capsule, it might be even easier to setup. But any external storage should do fine. Here's a how-to link: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250 And the hardcore version, go commandline! https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/tmutil.8.html From what I found, Time Machine automatically makes incremental backups every hour, day, and week. Hourly might be a bit much, depending on how much diskspace you have available for backups. I guess that if you e.g. only want backups every 2 hours, you need to use the OSX scheduler to setup a task (or what you call it on OSX) for that. Need to dig further to find instructions for that, if you need them. And if you need something more sophisticated, like a full-blown VCS, I need to dig around more as well.
Alternatively, there should be an OSX/Unix equivalent to Windows Robocopy, but I couldn't find right away what that would be. Also, if I remember right, at least some NAS have built-in auto-backup functions as well. But that naturally depends on what you have as external drive.
Cool ... thanks for the info. Will look into that. I did the full assessment and it doesn't look too bad. Redone most of the big things this morning and the rest of it shouldn't take too long. Main thing will be the proof reading of text again. I think it'll be all ready for submission by end of this week. Not more than a day's worth of work but during the week days, the day job has to take priority and I only get to work on it for a couple hours a day in the mornings.
You might also want to take a look at (Open)ZFS, an extremely powerful file system geared from the ground up for data safety & integrity: www.open-zfs.org, it's available for OSX too. However, judging from the two articles I read just this evening (funny coincidences, sometimes) it's far less trivial than switching on Time Machine. Definitely not something I'd recommend if you don't have a serious need for it and/or the time to check it out in detail. The articles are in German, I'll check tomorrow if I can get them in English.
I ended up going with Crashplan.com, which seems to be a pretty painless online backup solution. Only costs $5 a month. Anyway, after much work this week and weekend, I am again finally ready to launch. Going to make a new app preview for iPad resolution and finalize the app store listing tomorrow and submit. I came across a bug that I never identified before ... I realized that the icons were blurry. This wasn't that noticeable on the iPhone 5 or iPhone 6 but really obvious on the iPad Air. It took a while but I managed to fix it. You'll notice that the icons are now much sharper. Will update you guys once I launch. The planned release date is August 20th. Hopefully there the Apple review and approval goes smoothly.
Hey guys, Will be submitting to apple tonight. Taking care of a few other items right now such as finally putting together a dedicated facebook page for the game. Here's a link. Would really appreciate it if you guys could take a quick look and like the page and such: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Demons-Rise-Conquest-of-the-Deep/1646862478862815?ref=bookmarks
I don't see it in the App Store. Waited to see if it was one of those late apps that normally comes out at 11 pm ET Wed. but that doesn't appear to be the case.
