Questions about iPhone 5

Solar2D iOS
1

Hi All,

I have a couple of questions about the iPhone 5 I hope some one can answer.

  1. I included a 640 x 1136 screen called Default-568h@2x.png as instructed in the build. Then I removed it. I can see no difference on the iPhone 5 when I either have it in or don’t have it in. What exactly is this supposed to do and what difference should I see on the screen?

  2. Apple had indicated we need to “support” the retina display on the iPhone 5 as of May 1, 2013.

Since my game is a 2D sprite graphics and background game do I need to somehow make use of those extra pixels by filling it with something? Obviously it can’t be related to actual game play since then the game wouldn’t work properly on earlier iPhones and iPads. I am using letterbox scaling btw. How are people dealing with this issue? Is Apple kicking games and apps that don’t use that area currently?

Thanks in advance for any information.

-Dennis

2

Hi there,

  1. For actual device builds (not the Corona Simulator), the presence of the Default-568h@2x.png alerts iOS that the app supports the iPhone 5’s taller screen.  Without it, your app would still run on the iPhone 5, but using the iPhone 4 resolution / aspect ratio, so you’d see a black bar on the top and bottom.  When you say that you see no difference whether you include the file or not, do you mean in the Corona Simulator or on an actual device?  In the simulator you won’t see a difference, but on the device, you should.

  2. Yes, you do have to fill that area with something, either with gameplay (if your game is suited to having a variably-sized game play area, like Angry Birds) or with other content.  Black bars will get rejected for sure, but basically anything else that fits with the app should be OK.  Take a look at some popular games (Candy Crush Saga, Pudding Monsters) on different devices and you can see how they handle it.  It’s usually by positioning or sizing the game elements a bit differently.

  • Andrew
3

Hi there,

  1. For actual device builds (not the Corona Simulator), the presence of the Default-568h@2x.png alerts iOS that the app supports the iPhone 5’s taller screen.  Without it, your app would still run on the iPhone 5, but using the iPhone 4 resolution / aspect ratio, so you’d see a black bar on the top and bottom.  When you say that you see no difference whether you include the file or not, do you mean in the Corona Simulator or on an actual device?  In the simulator you won’t see a difference, but on the device, you should.

  2. Yes, you do have to fill that area with something, either with gameplay (if your game is suited to having a variably-sized game play area, like Angry Birds) or with other content.  Black bars will get rejected for sure, but basically anything else that fits with the app should be OK.  Take a look at some popular games (Candy Crush Saga, Pudding Monsters) on different devices and you can see how they handle it.  It’s usually by positioning or sizing the game elements a bit differently.

  • Andrew
4

I’ve hit the same problem: Apple stating that games which don’t support iphone5 will be letterboxed but new and updated app submissions cannot be uploaded by the app uploaded without the larger splash screen. I assume that if I do, but fail to fill that area during the game, the store police will not approve it anyway.

What I’ve also found is that finding the full complement of required icon and splash screen names and sizes is very difficult in the apple developer documentation. You have to somewhat infer the list from descriptions or just hope the uploaded allows your binary. (Failure reasons are emailed to you when binary uploads fail.)

My problem is that I no longer have the artist time available to reproduce my game graphics for the larger screen and even if I did, the source imagery is not a high enough resolution!

5

http://docs.coronalabs.com/guide/distribution/buildSettings/index.html#launchimage

6

I’ve hit the same problem: Apple stating that games which don’t support iphone5 will be letterboxed but new and updated app submissions cannot be uploaded by the app uploaded without the larger splash screen. I assume that if I do, but fail to fill that area during the game, the store police will not approve it anyway.

What I’ve also found is that finding the full complement of required icon and splash screen names and sizes is very difficult in the apple developer documentation. You have to somewhat infer the list from descriptions or just hope the uploaded allows your binary. (Failure reasons are emailed to you when binary uploads fail.)

My problem is that I no longer have the artist time available to reproduce my game graphics for the larger screen and even if I did, the source imagery is not a high enough resolution!

7

http://docs.coronalabs.com/guide/distribution/buildSettings/index.html#launchimage