Helmet Hero : Head Trauma released today. Long Live Torque 2D. :)

#1 Congratulations! Wow just saw the screenshots... I"m buying right now.

#2 Well thanks man! My first iPhone game! I hope it doesn't crash on ya!

#3 Congrats on getting your first game out.

#4 Congrats on the game - looks like a lot of fun - I've bought a copy and have it ready to sync :)

#5 Lowell, got to play some tonight, this is a really excellent game and very original, well done :) It looks like it's doing well on the store and I hope it continues to do so :)

#6 Scott thank you for the kind words. I'm getting ripped up a little with ones stars because the game isn't loading on OS earlier than 4.2. With no crash reports I'm at a loss as to what to do. At this point I'm thinking about making the min spec 4.2 which of course sucks a little. Although perhaps not as bad as I though. My stats through appcirlce show that 96% of people are running OS 4.2 that run my game.

I don't suppose anyone has had any experience with a game not getting loaded on anything other than the latest OS??? :( It literally displays the Default.png splash and then closes, so in my case the game has just started. I have 8 devices here in my house but all have 4.2.1 :(. It's been very tough to find something to test on older than 4.2.1 here.

Through customer emails I've verified that 3.0 3.1.2 and 4.0.2 all exit the app as soon as the splash appears. Ugh... 4.2.1 people are just fine.

In terms of custom code I have game center checks that look for game center support before making any calls. In addition I don't call my first game center call until 1 full second after the game's title screen appears and the customers aren't even seeing the title screen. Clueless..

Does anyone have an older OS they could test on? I'd toss you a promocode of course... thanks.

#7 Lowell, I tried to install on my iPod 3.1.2 and it says the game requires the iphone 4.0 software update. The game runs fine on my iphone 4 with the lastest firmware.

Did you change the minimum iOS requirement in the new update?

#8 Game center requires its framework to be weak linked if you want to run on lower versions of the OS, that might be causing it. It came in on 4.1, so that would explain 4.0.2 still crashing.

#9 I recommend the above as I had the same issue with one of my games a couple of months back by the way, so I'm reasonably confident that it could be just the remedy you need.

#10 Heys guys, thanks for the responses.

My bad, yeah I've already up'ed the min specs in the store to 4.0. Sorry about that. I have an email from a guy saying it wont' open on 4.0.2 on an iphone 4 even after rebooting...that's where I'm at.

@Craig, when you say weak-linked, do you mean the "Deployment Target"? I'm pretty sure that's what you mean. If so that would mean I need to set "Deployment Target" higher than 4... to 4.1? Correct?

#11 Still though, I would think that if I set my deployment target to something lower than 4.1 I'd be okay, because every call to game center is wrapped with:

BOOL isGameCenterAvailable()
{
// Check for presence of GKLocalPlayer API.
Class gcClass = (NSClassFromString(@"GKLocalPlayer"));

// The device must be running running iOS 4.1 or later.
NSString *reqSysVer = @"4.1";
NSString *currSysVer = [[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion];
BOOL osVersionSupported = ([currSysVer compare:reqSysVer options:NSNumericSearch] != NSOrderedAscending);

return (gcClass && osVersionSupported);
}


This is taken from the thread here at GG on game center integration. I thought'd I'd be okay since isGameCenterAvailable() would protect me on OSs prior to 4.1. ?

#12 I'm now even more sure this is the issue :P

Double click on your target, and in the new window that opens go to the general tab. Look in the "Type" column for the GameKit framework. Change it to "Weak" rather than "Required".

#13 Agreed with Craig on GC, we had to weak link as well.

We also had problems with game exit just after the splash - this was due to us taking too long to load and the OS culling us - but I think this was a 4.0+ feature.

The only other issue we had was with the Flurry analytics library - this didn't work on 3.x and we didn't weak link it - it's fine now we've weak linked.

I've asked my colleagues in Vietnam to take a look at the game - they have still have devices on 3.x - we can give it a go and pull of the crash report if that helps?

As a matter of interest though - we are nixing all versions other than iOS4 - we have some new iOS4 features coming up that we want to use and the code is starting to turn into a monster with all the combinations of features etc.

#14 Oh man...I've never even seen those options. :( Man, live and learn. Sad and happy at once what a bitter feeling. :\ MUCH APPRECIATED!

@Scott, I also have flurry linked in. :( I will libFlurry.a to "weak" as well

@Craig, dude, I will send you a check if I make a little pocket change... much thanks...

#15 aaaaaaaaaaande a little salt to the wound...

in plain english..

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/GameKit_Guide/GameCenterOverview/GameCenterOverview.html

#16 Just bought it. Nicely done! These kinds of games always make we wonder why I go for such complex apps...

#17 @Chris, totally agree, the next apps are in a completely different direction for us and will cover a much broader demographic.

#18 Thanks guys. I've got 4.5k people on the leaderboards and that feels great from a game dev perspective! This was a solo project but I wanted to agree with you guys on targeting the broadest demographic you can via simplicity. My partner artist and I make 90 in 1 apzilla and were fortunate enough to be featured in iTunes rewind this year az the 4th highest paid utility app in 2010. Our focus is just that ... We want a 15 year old and a 50 year old to both be interested in the app. I tried to carry that same idea over to helmet hero. I will continue to push that theme through future updates of helmet because I've seen it work with utility apps. A little different but fundamentally the same. Im convinced simple is stil dominating the app store.

#19 Fun game man, great work. Having a good time with it.