Game1, Day 97 – Just ’cause it’s bigger doesn’t mean it’s more powerful!

We’re running into some problems getting things going on the iPad. The intro/menus load fine but when it goes to load the gameplay it blows up. Derek suspects that it might be a memory issue, which would make sense…if the iPad is only about as powerful as a 3Gs, but the art we’re loading into it is like twice the size, it’s no surprise it’s going haywire. The iPad 2 would probably have no problems since it’s more powerful, but this is kind of unfortunate. We also figure the iPhone 4 will have no problems with the huge art because it’s pretty powerful, but this iPad lack of power is something to keep in mind in future games.

It also reflects in file size…There’s a 20 meg limit on an App’s size for it to be downloadable over 3G (which is very important when you consider how “impulse buy” the App Store is…if someone gets an error message they probably won’t go out of their way to remember to download your game when they get somewhere with a better connection). So you could have this phenominally graphical iPhone game where the art only comes to 8 megs. But then you port that same game to iPad and bam, that’s 16 megs of art.

On top of all that, after talking to Derek it looks like the “iPhone” version of the game will have to contain both the non-retina and the retina art. That’s unfortunate, because the retina art is only about 7% smaller than the iPad art and the iPad art is huge as it is…I don’t think there’s any way the iPhone version of the game will be under the 20 meg limit! At least the sound and music don’t need duplicate versions!

So this is something I’ll have to keep in mind when I design future games, in terms of adding voice acting, cutscenes, etc. (all the extra visual frills)…is it better to make all versions toned down, or put out an iPad version that’s missing stuff the other versions have? An interesting dilemma!

This might turn out to just be a code issue, Derek’s checking into it but this was our Crisis Of The Day today, haha

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