Questions about Game Center Integration

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

I have some basic questions about Game Center Integration as a stand alone provider. I was looking at the tutorial here:

http://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2012/01/17/tutorial-game-center-integration-ios/

I see you can tell if the user is logged into GC. With that:

  1. Does gameNetwork.init just check to see if the user is logged in, or does it send them to Game Center to login?
  2. Do I only post GC scores/achievements if the user is logged in, or is there some kind off offline support?

The BIGGIE:
Believe it or not I have been happily using Corona build 2011.704a with no complaints. I did not want to move beyond that because I did not want to make my minimum iOS requirement 4.3 – I mean Verizon iPhones never even got a 4.3 as far as I can tell I think it only went up to 4.2.9, so that means their minimum requirement is pretty much iOS 5 isn’t that right? So is there a way to get stand alone GC support to work in 2011.704a?

Thank you!
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#2

  1. gameNetwork.init will check if the user is logged in. If not, it brings up the standard Game Center login interface.

  2. These are two different questions. Don’t post scores/achievements if the user isn’t logged in; Game Center won’t know which user account these need to go to. For offline support (but the user is logged in), this is actually up to Game Center’s implementation. Apple has changed behaviors between iOS versions. iOS 5 introduced some offline caching abilities so when the user goes back online, updates are sent.

Finally, all armv7 iOS devices can upgrade to iOS 5, regardless of carrier. There is no way to get standalone Game Center to work in Corona with older builds. The reasons about OS versions in general are explained in more detail elsewhere but the crux is that Apple moves very fast and uses both the carrot and stick to get developers and users to adopt/upgrade the latest OS versions. The stick is sometimes quite painful which we try to insulate you from, but you still feel effects indirectly because everybody is encouraged/pressured to upgrade.
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#3

Ewing,

Fantastic! Thank you so much, that answers it for me. OK now I am very happy about implementing the stand alone Game Center. What you say about Apple and the iOS upgrades explains a lot and helps ease the concerns about missing support for older versions. Thank you for taking the time to explain it, actually quite interesting. Tricky tricky Apple. Bad Apple. I mean I have no problem upgrading, but we know not everyone keeps themselves on top of that so it’s a concern to leave people behind. No iPhone left behind! So I looked it up and the iPhone 3GS is armv7 too, had no idea. Looks like almost everyone can upgrade I am happy.

Really interesting though, how you at Corona have to juggle all of this behind the scenes, we really have little idea unless we can spend all day reading release notes and combing the forum/blog, all we do is watch for our magical next build :0)

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#4

Fortunately, iOS has really good upgrade adoption rates. Over 80% of users are now running iOS 5.x. And thanks to over-the-air updates in 5.0, I know the 5.1 adoption was something ridiculously fast like 60% in 2 weeks.

But Apple does eventually leave older devices behind; sometimes it is more bitter to accept than at other times. For example iPad 1 is rumored to not be getting iOS 6 updates. I don’t know the actual number of users with iPad 1 (vs. iPad 2 or the new iPad) so maybe Apple knows something about the marketshare that makes this acceptable. But I know this will be a bitter pill to swallow for a lot of developers whether iPad 1 marketshare is significant or not (and if these users are still monitizable). But I say this from experience…like it or not, get used to this. This is standard operating procedure with Apple and they are in the driver’s seat.
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