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Publishing on Android

I have just published my first application on the Android platform. My game, Clowntraptions, was built in Unity, and therefore I could easily port it to Android even though it was designed for Windows Phone and Windows 8 primarily.

The main issue I had with Android was dealing with different screen sizes and resolutions, because on the Android platform there are so many different devices with very little standardisation. Compare this to Windows Phone, where you can build for a single screen resolution. Luckily, I had the skeleton of a screen resolution adjustment in the game in order to handle Windows 8.1’s varying screen shape. I built from there to allow for any common screen resolution.

One weird limitation that the Android Play Store has is that you can’t change an app from free to paid or vice versa. Once an app is set as free it must always remain free, and once set as paid it must always stay paid. Because of this I ultimately published two versions of my game, a free one and a paid one. Of course on Windows platforms there is free trial functionality to incorporate this into a single app.

For the most part the game ported easily. I simply had to add a few lines of code here and there to replicate some of the custom code that I had used for Windows.

The Android developer console is very nice, probably better than the Windows ones, as it is laid out more logically. The Windows Dev Centers are poorly designed, but are improving over time.

Anyway, here’s the link (to the FREE version, you can upgrade from inside the game if you want):

Clowntraptions for Android

FREE/trial https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Grogan.Clowntraptions

 

Paid (99c) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Grogan.ClowntraptionsFull

 

Clowntraptions Out Now and Half Price!

Roll up, roll up, the circus is in town! Those crazy clowns have enlisted you to help them put on the greatest show on Earth! Put up a platform, place a trampoline, spray a clown with bubbles and put on a show across dozens of physics- based puzzles!

Grogan Software presents:

Clowntraptions!

Clowntraptions! The clown-filled physics puzzle game. Available NOW exclusively on Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.1!

Clowntraptions is a fun, fresh twist on the physics contraptions puzzle genre. Use a Big Top full of circus-themed objects to solve each zany puzzle. Fire a clown from a cannon to reach that hoop, knock over the huge clown shoes to collect those stars, bounce a clown off a trampoline and into the path of stream of bubbles to send him flying towards the goal!

 

Lots of wacky puzzles

Clowntraptions has:

  • 72 levels of physics-based puzzles (FREE TRIAL has the first 24 levels)
  • clowns
  • over 200 stars to collect
  • ever-increasing challenge (don’t be fooled by the easy early levels!)
  • Clownchievements
  • more clowns
  • fun for all ages
  • buy once play anywhere – if you own the phone version you also own the tablet/PC version and vice versa
  • did we mention CLOWNS?
Shoot clowns from cannons!

To celebrate the launch, Clowntraptions is half price for a week! Only 99c! That wouldn’t get you an ice cream at a regular circus! (regular price of $1.99 takes effect on July 7th).

What are you waiting for? Get the game at the following links:

Windows Phone 8

Clowntraptions_WP8_QR

Direct link

Windows 8.1

Clowntraptions_Win8_QR
Direct link

For all support and queries please contact support@grogansoft.com or visit http://www.grogansoft.com/

Beware of Class/Namespace Duplication in Unity Windows Games

I recently had some trouble building the Windows Store version of my upcoming game, Clowntraptions. I was getting the bizarre error below:

Image

‘Window’ is a standard class in WinRT (Windows.UI.Xaml.Window), and this error was troubling! I couldn’t build the project let alone deploy and test it. What was wrong?

I had a script in my Unity project called ‘Window’ holding a class called, of course, ‘Window’. This conflicted with the Visual Studio code that referenced a different ‘Window’ class.

So I renamed the class in my Unity project to something else and those errors went away. The class in question was actually a part of a plugin, so I wasn’t really to blame, and the plugin creator can’t be blamed for inadvertently using the same name as a Windows RT class.

Relieved, I rebuilt from Unity, opened up my game in Visual Studio, and hit the debug button to have a play test…and instead of my awesome circus game I got this before the game even managed to get past the splash screen:

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Sigh. The web build was working fine, and more notably the Windows Phone 8 build was working fine…so what was causing this issue in the Windows Store build (and it was an untouched, fresh build with no extra code or plugins added in – straight from Unity). Was it a problem with the recent Unity 4.5 update? I tried everything…and was on the verge of filing a bug report…but then I had another look at my code and realised I’d made the exact same mistake I’d only just repaired. I’d created my own script a few days prior, and called it ‘Notifications’, which Visual Studio got confused with ‘Windows.UI.Notifications’. I renamed my script and class to something different and, Hey Presto! My build was then successful.

So if you come across weird errors like above in Unity projects that work on other platforms, make sure you don’t have any poorly named classes that clash with existing Windows classes.

To avoid these mistakes:

  • Keep your scripts organised in folders (and subfolder if required) so they are easy to browse through.
  • Give your scripts/classes descriptive names (avoid single words).
  • Make good use of namespaces in your project.