My number one pet peeve is apps that don't rotate when you turn your iOS device. Even if your app is built for only one viewing display (i.e. portrait), not being able to flip my ipad over sucks! I often play games in the evening while sitting on the couch and have my ipad plugged in to recharge. With it plugged in, i cant rest the ipad on anything bcause the power cord is in the way. If i were able to just flip my ipad around and view the app in portrait mode my problem would be solved! Unfortunately, almost no one builds this type of simple functionality into their apps, even though it was supposed to be one of those common features that all iOS devices had. The same goes for landscape viewing -- with my device plugged in, my movement is limited by the length of the power cord. If your app is only viewable in landscape and my power socket is on the other side, it makes it impossible to use the app while plugged in, as i lose 12 inches just wrapping the power cord around to the other side of the ipad.
I 100% agree with you and have the same problem with many games. It's also trivial to add to a game, no reason not to do it really.
Apple requires apps to work in two landscape or two portrait orientations on the iPad. If the games you are playing do not support this, then Apple is failing to test for that ability. They were rejecting apps right and left a year ago for not supporting both versions of an orientation.
A lot of the stuff I play on my iPad is not universal, so they're not required to support both orientations, though they should anyway.
Sure, it'd be nice if that were true. But it's not trivial to add to all games. Some would be easy, some not so easy. Devs have to weigh the cost of doing it vs the benefit.
I can't see why the O/S doesn't do this automatically tbh, at least in terms of flipping just upside down from the default orientation. You're right that it's easy for devs to do this, but easier still (and more stable for the end users) is to not require them to do it at all! Flipping between portrait and landscape can be harder. It's not so much about the gameplay as most 2D and almost all 3D games could probably handle the effects of that - it's the layout of the GUI elements which is a pita even in just one orientation. If you're not careful you end up with a tiny rectangle in the middle of the screen that fits into the lowest common denominator and becomes crap for everybody.
Mmmm yes it is? I'm just talking about landscape right and left support. There's really not much to it for a game. Can you give an example of it taking time to add? What would the difficulties be?
Yes, when I made an iPad version of my most popular iPhone game last year, which was never designed to rotate when it came out in 2008, it was a pain to add rotation, and took a few days to get it working correctly without totally hosing all the various views in play. Not all games are OpenGL. Ultimately, I found a good solution that I could certainly use across all my iPhone apps, but it'd probably take a day each to implement (I've got 8 iPhone apps), and would not increase sales in the slightest. Plus, I've only received a handful of requests for it over the last 2.5 years, out of millions of copies, so it certainly doesn't seem like a priority to most of my customers.
Well usualy ipad apps get tested for the support of at least 2 orientations, and rejected if they dont support it, so most should be fine. This does not take iphone apps into account, which is logical As for playing while recharging.. Well charge it over night while you sleep, problem solved without any coding involved
Are you joking? As long as your main window is in a UIView (which I don't see how it could possibly not be), all you have to do is apply a transformation to this view, either with UIKit or CoreAnimation (since every view is layer backed on iOS). This is, as a matter of fact, quite trivial. I would hope a developer who has sold millions of copies would know this.
No, the proper thing to do is to use a view controller, and let the system rotate the whole thing for you when it detects a shift in orientation. My app from 2008 had a ton of UIViews at multiple levels, with multiple transformations in play (so please do not try to school me on transformations), and the view controller method was not working, and nor would your method have worked, as the various views were shifting incorrectly as a result. I found a way to make it work, in a very clean and proper way, with the view controller and automatic system rotation, although not without having to rework some of the flow of my views. The reworking of the flow is what took time, in my particular games. Will it be that difficult for other games? Some yes, some no. Depends on how the app was originally written, and if they had rotation in mind in the first place. The poster asked for an example where it wasn't so easy, and I gave him my case. Will it be hard to do for my future games? Or course not, as it's built in from the beginning. So please take your condescending tone elsewhere.
Transforming a parent view should not have an affect on any subviews/sublayers, as long as the bounds did not change (i.e. just changing position or rotation)... that is strange.
Correct, if the subviews are all children of the view. The app in question had a few odd design choices, due to my complete lack of experience with Obj. C/Cocoa when I created the app three years ago (much more experienced now). I was doing one thing with the view controller to allow a landscape status bar, but had the other views decoupled from that controlled view, causing them to be in a portrait coordinate space. This caused coordinate space chaos when pairing them back together for iPad rotation. A few other apps used the same general codebase, so the issue exists in them as well. The iPad versions have been corrected, but it did take time to rework things. The iPhone versions have no need to be corrected, unless there is customer demand for rotation. Sure, it'd be nice if they were fixed, but I'm a one man operation, so I've got to work on things that are profitable. So, my point was, sometimes it may be easier in some games than others to support orientation switching. Be it ill-conceived design choices, unique game play/controls, or just pure lack of experience with the platform, there can be reasons why devs do not automatically support orientation switching in their games, other than sheer laziness.
Another problem is apps that use the accelerometers, I had nothing but problems when I tried to use the accelerometer and different orientations.
Yet another issue I'm running into for supporting both landscape and portrait, is adapting the background artwork for both orientations.
