iOS Screenshot Formats Rant

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Rasterman, Oct 22, 2014.

  1. Rasterman

    Rasterman Well-Known Member

    May 10, 2010
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    Game Monger
    Tampa, FL
    I just wanted to rant about the requirement that iTunes now makes you upload 5 different resolutions of your screenshots, does anyone else think this is ridiculous and a waste of time?!? I have better things to do than resize 25 screenshots. I thought at least the preview video would be like this, but it requires different sizes, all annoyingly non standard like the screenshots.

    I would like to see them simply take them in one size, then resize them automatically. You can still provide them in each format if you want.
     
  2. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    The screenshots make sense. I was hoping that there would be a one resolution preview video but it seems like the screenshots they want a preview video to be mainly gameplay which is why they went they way.
     
  3. OnlyJoe

    OnlyJoe Well-Known Member

    Sep 29, 2013
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    Auckland
    Totally with you on this, its like the icons and splash screens as well. You would think there is a smarter way to do all this. I mean why can't xcode just automatically resize all your icons for you. I always feel like I am spending way too long making everything the right size, and it can be pretty easy to put the wrong resolution item in the wrong place.

    I have noticed that xcode 6 makes a xib for the splash screen now, I haven't really experimented with this all that much, so not sure if it is just for ios 8.
     
  4. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    Unity has done that for me always so I forgot about that!
     
  5. Xammond

    Xammond Well-Known Member

    Mar 22, 2014
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    UK
    I suggest that everyone pays extreme attention to each and every one of the 10s of icons and screenshot sizes - Avoid the 'muddy' effect like they say, which happens when detail is scaled down to the smaller of their dimension catalog(ue).
     
  6. pated

    pated Well-Known Member

    Jul 30, 2014
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    Game maker
    Paris
    Exactly, automated resizing isn't a synonym for quality.
    For the screenshots, it's also because a lot of games have different aspects and UI setups for each resolution.

    But Apple could add an option to do everything automatically if you don't care about the final quality of (crucial) images. ^^
     
  7. TapTapGo

    TapTapGo Well-Known Member

    Nov 6, 2013
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    #7 TapTapGo, Oct 25, 2014
    Last edited: Oct 25, 2014
    Apple Quality Standards

    Well, you know, this is the way Apple enforces quality. Making sure that developers invest the required time to provide above-the-standard quality apps, even if 98% of time for the 98% of audience it won't make any difference.

    It could be easy for them to add such feature on iTunes, just asking for a few resolutions and for instance automate resizing or even leave to the client the resizing of the image but this is not the "pixel perfect" approach they have embraced for years.

    BUT...

    I'm really worried regarding the recent decline in Apple software quality. Many of you should have read lot of post about the issue. Lots of things don't work properly since iOS 8. They're getting fixed with time but still some weird bugs which break running apps.

    Our game, Noir Run ran smoothly on iPhone 5 and iOS 7.x
    We have filled a critical bug concerning SpriteKit iOS 8.1 implementation which produces a dramatic FPS drop under certain circumstances.

    The question is, why on hell one product (iOS), which is expected to be premium, is allowed to implement changes which break backward compatibility on the same devices?

    I'm completely shocked right now, and hopefully I'm not making a living of my games. Don't know how to handle this situation. For one moment I'm thinking of leaving iOS development at all or at least not trust on SpriteKit anymore for future projects.
     
  8. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    At least they gave you plenty of warning and developers got early releases in xcode which gave you time to fix.

    Apple is really bad at not being backward compatible and dumping older devices.
     
  9. TapTapGo

    TapTapGo Well-Known Member

    Nov 6, 2013
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    Yes, I guess you're right. Since we choose the SDK version when building, it's up to us to do the regression tests.

    In this case, once again SpriteKit shows up weird behaviour concerning SKShapeNode... one lesson to learn: as soon as you see the devil far away, change your lanes, don't try to deal with it!

    And I wonder how many of the 1+MM apps they talk about are really functional apps on devices with iOS 8.1
     
  10. Crichton333

    Crichton333 Well-Known Member

    Mar 26, 2014
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    Game developer
    I got the resizing down to about 5 min for the 25 of them. Just imagine a nice sunny beach and the time flies :)
     
  11. markofjohnson

    markofjohnson Active Member

    Apr 2, 2010
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    Game Developer
    San Francisco, CA, USA
    Yeah... try that in 12 languages too, then you will really be crazy. Oh, and don't forget the IAP names and game center achievements in all those languages too :)
     
  12. Strange Famous

    Strange Famous Active Member

    Oct 30, 2014
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    Doesn't take that long.. take the screenshots on iPad and iPhone 5, then into gimp to resize the iPhone 5 screenshots to iPhone 5, 6, and 6+, and iPad screenshots to iPad and iPhone 4. Takes maybe 15 minutes.
     
  13. Leegames

    Leegames Well-Known Member

    Jul 1, 2010
    1,083
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    Ex. game journalist and EiC now PR
    Denmark


    This.

    Stretched out pictures, blurry crap and wrong formatting is what makes me skip a game purchase or mention on site most of the time. It might be extra work, but have a little pride in your product.

    This is from a reviewer/editors view.
     
  14. TapTapGo

    TapTapGo Well-Known Member

    Nov 6, 2013
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    Totally agree. Make sure your screenshots, especially the first one, are awesome.
     
  15. Netforza

    Netforza Active Member

    Nov 6, 2014
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    Game Developer
    Making the screenshots great is one thing. Uploading the same screenshots 12 times for different languages is a totally different things and it is stupid.

    5 resolution times 12 is 60.

    Why AppStore does not have an option to use the English screenshots for all the localisations, as default screenshots?

    What if my game does not have any text in it?
    I just feel stupid having to do the same dumb thing 60 times.
     
  16. having just gone through this VERY much so.

    And the resolutions are all odd, meaning I had to have the screen resolutions webpage handy so I could get them right.

    then the app got rejected for showing android/windows icons in the leaderboard so had to redo a handful! bah!
     

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