Create iOS games with Stencyl - (Launched on Dec. 15)

As you referenced in your previous post, you submit it to our servers to be built. There will be an option from inside StencylWorks that publishes to the app store instead of simply giving you a copy to test.

A Mac won't be necessary, it just makes testing easier.

Ah, right, and this gets tied to your 'own' developer account, and if so, how is this possible ?  Or released through stencyls' itunes account ?

I think Jon would have to chime in with the details, but the bottom line is that you don't need a Mac, you do need a developer's license from Apple, and the game ends up in the app store and is 100% yours (well, after Apple takes it's bite).

I'm not sure what I'm allowed to divulge at this point, but I can tell you that I'm probably one of the few people who has used the Windows based version of iStencyl quite a bit. I promise it works and works well. If you can get your apple dev/distro certificates and provision profiles in order, you'll be golden.

You build and test your game in Flash and when you want to test it on your device, you upload it to our server where a Mac will auto-build it as an IPA and e-mail it back to you to install on your device just by following a link.

You do need to provide some certificates to let it build, but that's a one-time deal.

Ok, thanks for the replies, I understand the building on your server and then receiving the .ipa files back for test purposes, I just didn't understand the process of how we also get it submitted to the appstore using the same process ?

Apple has a form you can upload that IPA with in iTunes Connect.

Ah, thanks !  finally, it's clear now !

Regards

I'm concerned weather this "iStencyl" will bring to the table what iOS developers need. I've tried out today Stencylworks for the first time, and I must say it brings a "Gamemaker" sort of atmosphere. Gamemaker let you build complex games easily with a simple drag & drop interface. Even YoYoGames (The people who made Gamemaker) are looking to producing a version of gamemaker called "Gamemaker studio" which allows you to export your games to not only .exe, but also android, iOS, HTML5 and so forth.

Now, this is what Stencyl is doing, making iStencyl for iOS development. But I fear that it may not come into a reality for one reason, performance. When Adobe started work on Adobe AIR (allowing people using Flash Professional to export their projects to iOS) there were horrible performance issues, and alot of features were cut out (retina display, iPad, and alot of native options).

Now, after a year and a half, they've finally fixed all of their issues. MASSIVE strides in performance were accomplished, and they fixed all issues regarding "not being able to access native API's" with Native Extensions. Allowing anyone to develop an extention needed when a native API wasn't already available directly from Adobe.

To sum it all up, I doubt that iStencyl will have the same performance and compatibility as a work environment such as a Flash IDE. After all, it is specifically designed for games (which is great and all), and I do wish you all the best, but make sure that the biggest issue (performance), woun't be one.

P.S: I would be interested in seeing how well the performance is with apps compiled with iStencyl (number of moving objects on screen, physics, etc.)

Make sure when you finish iStencyl, that you let the developers take FULL control of the environment, don't hold anything back!

iStencyl generates native code in Objective-C.

Mutank, this will allow windows and linux users to publish for iOS devices. Also, we don't have to learn objective-c, which is icky! Just like apple!

I think that one of the reasons that adobe air had trouble is because it was trying to port AS3 to objective-c. I don't think Stencyl will be doing that for istencyl. I think using design-mode, it will just generate objective-c code instead of actionscript 3 code.

I double-checked with my Flash contacts about a week ago to check on the AIR exporters, and they assured me that although the Flash exporter has made improvements, it is still well off in performance from what a native app can provide, even for basic, non-Box2D games.

If that were not the case, I wouldn't have spent months developing a native port, and I surely wouldn't release a slow, crappy product and charge for it.

One specific contact said that with a simple Flixel game, which ran at 30 FPS to begin with, it still started choking after more than a few objects on screen. This was after Adobe made all of its performance improvements. I can't place my startup's fate on an in-progress work by another company when there are better paths to take. Perhaps it'll improve some more - but I can't wait months or a year for that.

With our stack, the games are fully native games (OpenGL, OpenAL, C++ port of Box2D) and provided you don't do anything stupid, they run at 60 FPS with plenty of objects on screen (see the balloon video which has a high object count).

I double-checked with my Flash contacts about a week ago to check on the AIR exporters, and they assured me that although the Flash exporter has made improvements, it is still well off in performance from what a native app can provide, even for basic, non-Box2D games.

If that were not the case, I wouldn't have spent months developing a native port, and I surely wouldn't release a slow, crappy product and charge for it.

One specific contact said that with a simple Flixel game, which ran at 30 FPS to begin with, it still started choking after more than a few objects on screen. This was after Adobe made all of its performance improvements. I can't place my startup's fate on an in-progress work by another company when there are better paths to take. Perhaps it'll improve some more - but I can't wait months or a year for that.

With our stack, the games are fully native games (OpenGL, OpenAL, C++ port of Box2D) and provided you don't do anything stupid, they run at 60 FPS with plenty of objects on screen (see the balloon video which has a high object count).

Very interesting stuff. I hope that when you release iStencyl that it will be everything you said and more. For now I guess i'll stick to Flash CS5.5 + AIR since its working great with me, but maybe one day once iStencyl is released, i'll check it out and even switch to it for my game development needs. (Flash will always have a place in my heart for iOS utility development with its large range of native extensions).

I hope that it woun't be too long of a wait period before iStencyl is released. There are other studios like YoYo games which are working on what you're trying to accomplish. But then again, it may not be as impressive as what you will bring to the table.

EDIT: Adobe Air has made major strides in it's development. It's latest release (AIR 3.1) performs great on all devices (3GS, 4, 4s, iPad 1 & 2) (I can personally vouch for this since older versions of Air would run HORRIBLY on an iPad, such as 8 FPS, now ( the same app) can go easily up to 80 FPS with the latest improvements.)

SUPER EDIT: Strange, when I try to download a resource, let it be a sprite, or whatever from the store, the program hangs for as short as 10 seconds to as long as 2 minutes. Is this normal? This happened while I was following the tutorial.

SUPER MASSIVE AWESOME EDIT: "We're targeting September as a likely window for launching iStencyl to the public." Err, kind of overshot the release window? I know great development takes time, but I would LOVE to beta test the iStencyl environment. I've made 2 apps so far via flash and would love to take your environment for a test drive. (I'm planning a third app right now and building it in your environment would be awesome.)

@mutank yes that's normal for a lot of users of Stencylforge; hopefully it will get attention after the iStencyl release.  Also I think iStencyl will be released sometime next month, with more details coming in the near future on the blog (http://blog.stencyl.com/).

I'll ask someone on our team to give AIR 3.1 a spin, but what I've yet to see is a decently complex Box2D game done with it that runs at 60 FPS and doesn't gobble up memory. Does it play nicely with Alchemy, or would we have to look into using the direct AS3 port of Box2D?

The best example to date is Machinarium, but the fact that it requires an iPad 2 to run doesn't inspire the most confidence in me. It's a gorgeous game with lots of animation, but it's a non-physical game.

Workflow is another concern. If you want to test on the device, how do you do that? Do you have to generate an IPA and sync it, or does it provide some other means to get on the device quickly? This is where generating an Xcode project has a leg up, I think.

Development wise, we actually finished about a month ago, but it's taken a bit longer than expected to get the non-technical parts of this in order. After we launch iStencyl, we'll start off right away on an Android port, which will take a lot less time than this all did.