The big email finally came Sunday, August 2 at 1:24 PM EDT with the exciting subject "Snowferno 1.0.0: Application Submission Feedback".
Hello Brent,
At this time, Snowferno 1.0.0 cannot be posted to the App Store because it is crashing on iPhone OS 3.0 and Mac OS X 10.5.7.
Ouch.
I had done a Build and Run of v1.0.0 before submitting and it played just fine, so we knew the game itself was solid. I was away this weekend so Ben tried symbolicating the crash logs Apple sent us, but with no luck -- probably the crash was happening inside the Unity core of Snowferno. Also, being the Team Agent I have to do the final builds, so we didn't have a chance to get to this until last night.
Best we could tell, based on how far Apple said they were in the bootup when it crashed, it was probably a bug with the device having network access but not necessarily internet access -- we imagine that the App Store testing ground is heavily firewalled. I never recorded any game activity from Apple's IP addresses tho, so we know that it didn't get even get that far.
Ben went in and beefed up the networky bits and added some "no network found" messages if any of the WWW responses came back empty. We also took this chance to fix some not-terrible-but-glad-to-catch things like the end screen wasn't locked and the starting point on one level was left halfway into the level from a screenshot photo-op.
So, from v1.0.0 submit to rejection took 7 business days, or 10.5 actual days -- they did email us on a Sunday afternoon, after all. Not bad... We rebuilt last night and submitted v1.0.1 last night. Start the clock again at Wednesday, August 5. Tick tock...
P.S. I encountered this error when uploading the new binary:
The binary you uploaded was invalid. The signature was invalid, or it was not signed with an Apple submission certificate.
Well, I made sure the app was signed properly. Ben found this thread, and the solution for us was to change the Bundle Identifier in Info.plist from com.mycompany.${PRODUCT_NAME:identifier} to com.mycompany.Snowferno.
I added a one-stop Media Kit page to the site yesterday.
In anticipation of our pending App Store approval (and on the heels of our first review from No DPad), we wanted to be nice to the people who we hope will write nice things about Snowferno. It would be just mean to make them gather up all the bits themselves.
So, I put copies of all the good stuff on one page -- screenshots, MP3 excerpts from the game soundtrack, YouTube gameplay trailer URLs and most-common embed codes, our app icon, and even just the basics like our names and App Store link.
Going even further, everything found on the page can be had as a one-click .zip archive download.
Every page on snowferno.com has a link to the Media Kit on the footer navbar in the bottom-right corner.
Snowferno RC2(.5) became version 1.0.0 tonight. The binary is built and submitted. Some late in-house testing found teensy things that needed fixing, and the rest of the night Ben trained me how to build Xcode projects. :)
We also (finally) assembled our screen shots, which were picked out of video Ben captured in ScreenFlow, and we wrote up the iTunes sidebar text.
Oh, and that one big final detail: price! Snowferno will sell for $1.99.
While we wait for Apple approval, we want to give a big thanks to all our beta testers. While we worked out the bugs, some versions allowed unfair "advantages" on some levels, so to even the playing field we're going to reset the leaderboard to bRC2 and after. That also means our developer scores are being reset as well, so here's your chance to get in some scores ahead of benbritten. :)
Your unlocked levels will stay unlocked, but if you want your scores to count on the leaderboard, make sure you've playing bRC2 or later!
I put the finishing touches on the Leaderboard yesterday, and it is now live. Snowferno.com has been collecting game scores all during the beta period, so we already have a nice heap of data.
Congrats (so far...) to Baller77718 who leads the pack, and quite definitively -- although s/he has yet to conquer all 20 levels.
Some key features of the Leaderboard:
- Recently Played games gives a snapshot of the last few levels completed worldwide
- All-Time Top 5 by Level lists the best 5 scores for every level, mirroring what you see in-game on each "Level Complete" screen.
- Top 50 Completed Games sums up the best times by level for the brave snowballs that have conquered the Inferno.
- Click on any screen name to view that player's game stats and recently played levels. Stats include that player's best level times, total attempts, fallouts, meltouts, wins, their win %, and the score ranking per level.
- Personalized screen names are coming very soon, so you won't have to be your auto-assigned Inferno character forever.
Global Leaderboard participation is voluntary. "Post Scores" is enabled by default when you first launch Snowferno. To change your preference, be sure your device has Internet access, then tap Settings > Score Board from the main screen and toggle the setting there. NOTE: this does not delete your scores, it only changes whether your scores are displayed to the public. You can enable or disable "Post Scores" ad nauseam to suit your fancy. :)
Let us know what you think - comments are welcome: improvements, (errors?), suggestions for more Snowferno data mining goodness... I have been playing around with some graph-drawing libraries, but all the charts I've made so far are pretty ugly. But look for possible future improvements in that direction, too.
For the technically curious, the Leaderboard is powered by a custom WordPress plugin that hooks into the handy filters and actions provided by the WordPress core. Our own custom API gathers and stores the Leaderboard data in supplementary tables alongside the WordPress data.
I originally tried to find an off-the-shelf WordPress plugin for this functionality, but I found that the "community" aspect of WordPress is one area (admittedly, I think) that it is lacking. WP is a terrifically flexible foundation, and just having the blog and account management functions at our fingertips has been an immense time-saver. Now that we've built our first game website, maybe for future projects we'll look at a WordPress MU, Drupal, or very likely the highly-anticipated, 2.0 CodeIgniter rewrite of ExpressionEngine.
