Just got word from GameSalad and they DO plan on implementing Apple TV publishing in the future. However, no specific timeline is available and they hinted that signing the feature request below would influence how quickly this is rolled out.
@Chunkypixels said:
So in this thread, theres been 2-3 mentions of push notifications being the most important thing GameSalad should implement. I just don't get it... but i am willing to be educated on the subject.
So why do some people rate push notifications so highly? From my personal experience, they're just an annoyance in games... there to pop up every so often to remind you that you should be buying something, or that you aren't playing a game enough...
I don't know... to me thats just not something I feel adds to a product. Definitely doesn't add to the user experience. Just seems like a method of pestering the user...
So yup... someone please explain to me that Im wrong...and why...
So for me... AppleTV would be way higher than push notifications...
Push notifications is all about retention. I was at a game conference last month a person put it best. Retention is like a leaky bucket. If you don't keep retention up you won't have any users. It won't matter what your gameplay is like or if you are using IAP or ads it won't matter because no one will be there to see it.
It reminds your users to come back in play. Yes you might turn them off, but most people don't. My day job I work at game studio and have two types of notifications. In game notification, and push notifications. In game notifications remind you when when your energy is at full or time for your daily reward. We also use external notifications to let players know about sales, or specific messages to get them back in the game. We see DAU soar after these notifications. We have a team that just works on the weekly notifications for our game.
If we are talking about features for small studio GS really need to support incentivised Ads. Not being able to tell if a player has watch a video ad is hurting everyone's revenue.
@BaDDApple ...cheers for that explanation. I guess just because I find Push notifications annoying, it doesn't mean they aren't useful or a turn off for everyone.
I guess I need to move with the times...
Would still be further down my personal wish list than Apple TV support... but I can also agree that it would probably be a much simpler thing to implement than Apple TV support... so realistically should probably be higher on the to-do list.
I fully support adding push notifications, but mainly due the their being essential for multiplayer. You need to be able to tell the player when it's their turn.
If an app sends me a push notification that I don't think is essential, I'll likely delete it. I don't plan on ever spamming players with "Come back!" type messages.
I got the privilege of getting an Apple TV early (receiving it in 3 days) and I would love to be able to publish to it before it's release! GS, you have 1 month to make this possible. Please! I would be AWESOME!
@crazycam99 said:
I got the privilege of getting an Apple TV early (receiving it in 3 days) and I would love to be able to publish to it before it's release! GS, you have 1 month to make this possible. Please! I would be AWESOME!
I'm jealous, I applied to get one too! didn't hear anything yet tho
@crazycam99 said:
I got the privilege of getting an Apple TV early (receiving it in 3 days) and I would love to be able to publish to it before it's release! GS, you have 1 month to make this possible. Please! I would be AWESOME!
They would have to have the whole team working on it full time as it is a lot of work - but that is exactly what they should be doing
@FINNBOGG said:
Im actually not one bit surprised to notice that no one from GS Office has stepped in and given some kind of an answer to the OPs curiosity.
There is a response in one of the threads. The problem is there are multiple threads.
We certainly have a desire to support it if possible. We don't believe there are any technical reasons we can't, but don't have a device and can't really know for sure yet. Our current focus is making sure iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan are well supported.
@GeorgeGS said:
We certainly have a desire to support it if possible. We don't believe there are any technical reasons we can't, but don't have a device and can't really know for sure yet. Our current focus is making sure iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan are well supported.
Thats pretty bonkers that GameSalad wouldn't have or get an AppleTV devkit if they requested one... seriously... Apple not giving a $150 piece of kit out to an engine provider?
Just hanging out waiting for GS to support tvOS. Apple shipped the dev kit to me today, so in the mean time I'll continue to learn Swift Xcode ...good times
raywenderlich is offering a beginning course and book on 2d games Swift 2.0 and TVOS. I was listening to their podcast today and they said they would actually skip Swift and go to Unity.
Amazon announced new FireTV / FireTV Sticks today, shipping October 5th. If you don't have one already, might as well get one, it's a great device, Gamesalad supports it, and it will be a great stepping stone for any AppleTV game you wish to publish, I imagine you'll only have to update your game to support new controls.
@jonmulcahy Speaking of FireTV, I noticed that if I publish an app to android with controls set, it will still work on fire tv when sideloaded to it. Which gets me thinking, android is android, so it will run either way. {Isn't Ouya running on android? Essentially, if you can sideload an android app made in GS to it, won't it work?}
Would iOS be the same in that publishing to iOS universal with a game that has controls be playable on TVOS? Is the software infrastructure much too different with each device or something? If iOS devices are running the same OS, then sideloading a universal iOS app into tvOS, with controllers put in, shouldn't it work?
@Franto yes you can side load a published android GameSalad game with controller support on a Ouya (i have done it). We still do NOT official support Ouya as a platform.
Apple's doc they want you to build an universal app against the apple tv sdk. However since apple tv is missing some frameworks from iOS i am not sure if a straight iOS app would work side loaded on an apple tv.
@BlackCloakGS I appreciate the insight. No support means that stuff like iAP behaviors won't work{or would end up linking to Google play/Amazon}.
Hopefully, those missing frameworks don't have too much of an impact. Although, it would explain why some have posted seeing the tvOS store being empty-ish of games.
@Franto no support means if it works great if not we are not going spend time fix things to work on Ouya. The only game i ran on Ouya is insect intruders.
@Franto said:
BlackCloakGS I appreciate the insight. No support means that stuff like iAP behaviors won't work{or would end up linking to Google play/Amazon}.
Hopefully, those missing frameworks don't have too much of an impact. Although, it would explain why some have posted seeing the tvOS store being empty-ish of games.
Apple has mandated that all apps for tvOS work with the remote, unlike the fireTV which allows people to program a game with a traditional controller in mind.
Apple has mandated that all apps for tvOS work with the remote, unlike the fireTV which allows people to program a game with a traditional controller in mind.
Does this mean the Apple TV simply will not support any 3rd party controllers? That would be a bummer...
Apple's doc they want you to build an universal app against the apple tv sdk. However since apple tv is missing some frameworks from iOS i am not sure if a straight iOS app would work side loaded on an apple tv.
Universal in this case is referring to app purchases, iOS and tvOS app bundles are unique so definitely no side loading. Porting a simple SceneKit based iOS app to tvOS has been reported as a ten minute job by one developer.
Comments
Just got word from GameSalad and they DO plan on implementing Apple TV publishing in the future. However, no specific timeline is available and they hinted that signing the feature request below would influence how quickly this is rolled out.
Sign this!
http://bugs.gamesalad.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1388
Voted. Would love to make TV size games!
Push notifications is all about retention. I was at a game conference last month a person put it best. Retention is like a leaky bucket. If you don't keep retention up you won't have any users. It won't matter what your gameplay is like or if you are using IAP or ads it won't matter because no one will be there to see it.
It reminds your users to come back in play. Yes you might turn them off, but most people don't. My day job I work at game studio and have two types of notifications. In game notification, and push notifications. In game notifications remind you when when your energy is at full or time for your daily reward. We also use external notifications to let players know about sales, or specific messages to get them back in the game. We see DAU soar after these notifications. We have a team that just works on the weekly notifications for our game.
If we are talking about features for small studio GS really need to support incentivised Ads. Not being able to tell if a player has watch a video ad is hurting everyone's revenue.
Thanks for sharing this information @BaDDApple
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@BaDDApple ...cheers for that explanation. I guess just because I find Push notifications annoying, it doesn't mean they aren't useful or a turn off for everyone.
I guess I need to move with the times...
Would still be further down my personal wish list than Apple TV support... but I can also agree that it would probably be a much simpler thing to implement than Apple TV support... so realistically should probably be higher on the to-do list.
I fully support adding push notifications, but mainly due the their being essential for multiplayer. You need to be able to tell the player when it's their turn.
If an app sends me a push notification that I don't think is essential, I'll likely delete it. I don't plan on ever spamming players with "Come back!" type messages.
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I got the privilege of getting an Apple TV early (receiving it in 3 days) and I would love to be able to publish to it before it's release! GS, you have 1 month to make this possible. Please! I would be AWESOME!
I'm jealous, I applied to get one too!
didn't hear anything yet tho
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They would have to have the whole team working on it full time as it is a lot of work - but that is exactly what they should be doing
It wouldn't bother me to do testing for them if they don't have a unit.
Im actually not one bit surprised to notice that no one from GS Office has stepped in and given some kind of an answer to the OPs curiosity.
There is a response in one of the threads. The problem is there are multiple threads.
We certainly have a desire to support it if possible. We don't believe there are any technical reasons we can't, but don't have a device and can't really know for sure yet. Our current focus is making sure iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan are well supported.
Presumably GS applied for one of these though ? https://developer.apple.com/tvos/developer-kit/
Thats pretty bonkers that GameSalad wouldn't have or get an AppleTV devkit if they requested one... seriously... Apple not giving a $150 piece of kit out to an engine provider?
Did GS even request one?
We did request on but so far no email for us. However, we are still looking into this. Do NOT take this as official support.
The first round of kits are out. We get ours Thursday. If you haven't heard by now (Devs) you are in the second round.
@BaDDApple Yeah mines should be coming within the week. I hope GS is able to get their hands on one prior to launch.
Big Smile Games Play Happy!
Check out our other GameSalad exclusives.
Just hanging out waiting for GS to support tvOS. Apple shipped the dev kit to me today, so in the mean time I'll continue to learn Swift Xcode ...good times
raywenderlich is offering a beginning course and book on 2d games Swift 2.0 and TVOS. I was listening to their podcast today and they said they would actually skip Swift and go to Unity.
Amazon announced new FireTV / FireTV Sticks today, shipping October 5th. If you don't have one already, might as well get one, it's a great device, Gamesalad supports it, and it will be a great stepping stone for any AppleTV game you wish to publish, I imagine you'll only have to update your game to support new controls.
Send and Receive Data using your own Server Tutorial! | Vote for A Long Way Home on Steam Greenlight! | Ten Years Left
@jonmulcahy Speaking of FireTV, I noticed that if I publish an app to android with controls set, it will still work on fire tv when sideloaded to it. Which gets me thinking, android is android, so it will run either way. {Isn't Ouya running on android? Essentially, if you can sideload an android app made in GS to it, won't it work?}
Would iOS be the same in that publishing to iOS universal with a game that has controls be playable on TVOS? Is the software infrastructure much too different with each device or something? If iOS devices are running the same OS, then sideloading a universal iOS app into tvOS, with controllers put in, shouldn't it work?
@Franto yes you can side load a published android GameSalad game with controller support on a Ouya (i have done it). We still do NOT official support Ouya as a platform.
Apple's doc they want you to build an universal app against the apple tv sdk. However since apple tv is missing some frameworks from iOS i am not sure if a straight iOS app would work side loaded on an apple tv.
@BlackCloakGS I appreciate the insight. No support means that stuff like iAP behaviors won't work{or would end up linking to Google play/Amazon}.
Hopefully, those missing frameworks don't have too much of an impact. Although, it would explain why some have posted seeing the tvOS store being empty-ish of games.
@Franto no support means if it works great if not we are not going spend time fix things to work on Ouya. The only game i ran on Ouya is insect intruders.
Apple has mandated that all apps for tvOS work with the remote, unlike the fireTV which allows people to program a game with a traditional controller in mind.
Send and Receive Data using your own Server Tutorial! | Vote for A Long Way Home on Steam Greenlight! | Ten Years Left
I saw that and having worked on making our engine work on FireTV i think that is a mistake on Apple's part.
Does this mean the Apple TV simply will not support any 3rd party controllers? That would be a bummer...
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It does but you have to support the remote as well. It supports (I think) all MFi (“made for iPhone”) controllers.
@BlackCloakGS tvOS will indeed support all MFi controllers. Its kind of a bummer that games need to work with the apple tv remote too.
Universal in this case is referring to app purchases, iOS and tvOS app bundles are unique so definitely no side loading. Porting a simple SceneKit based iOS app to tvOS has been reported as a ten minute job by one developer.
http://www.raywenderlich.com/114313/tvos-initial-impressions