GOOGLE PLAY SERVICES

The overwhelming majority of yesterday’s programming session was spent on Google Play Services. Leaderboards were setup, 30 achievements were added, which is a far longer process than it is on SteamWorks. Speaking of SteamWorks its a far smoother process to setup achievements, leaderboards and do anything. Having to copy / paste the achievement codes is a chore as clicking anywhere on the entire line will open the achievement to edit it.

The game setup and testing process is far easier in SteamWorks. You upload a game, set which group of users can use it and its instant. With Google Play you need to wait for the update to go live. Even when it says its published… it might not be published for hours. Each and every update is like this.

On my tablet, the game is able to fetch my achievement data, but not my leaderboard data. Meanwhile, over on my phone, its able to fetch my leaderboard data, but not my achievement data.

Due to leaderboard support my game asks people questions that makes it sound like I’m trying to steal personal information. At least players can disable that, but it takes away leaderboard and achievement support.

CONTROLS FOR MULTIPLE SIZE DEVICES WITH THE SAME RESOLUTION

Other than that, I made the controls the same size from device to device. It seems like GameMaker recommends display_set_gui_maximise()… well what happens when my phone resolution is actually a larger resolution than my big screen television? So I went with a DPI method. Smaller devices have a larger DPI.

I discovered its easier to play on a tablet when the controls are in the middle rather than at the bottom. It turns into a strain on the wrists having to hold a tablet up from the bottom. There is now a control slider to move the controls up toward the center or top of the screen to hold the tablet or phone in the middle on the vertical alignment.