Ready to give up on C2 Mobile App Ad-based games

BUT as a mobile dev you absolutely MUST target iOS. Its a non-negotiable. I would go so far as to say that you should make iOS your priority 1. It's where the money is. iOS represents the high end, wealthy part of the market.

Artpunk

So your game got more downloads on iOS ? your revenue was higher on iOS ?

Btw thanks for the input.

So your game got more downloads on iOS ? your revenue was higher on iOS ?

Btw thanks for the input.

Yes basically all my income came from iOS. Ive made only tiny amounts from Android and Steam, and literally zero from WinPhone. But thats just been my experience with this one game. I talked to other C2 devs who have made really awesome income on both Steam and Android. Its possible to be successful on any of those platforms.

Well, in my opinion it's time to say Fuck you to Apple store and Google store and simply go with HTML 5 games. They play full screen just like any app. The whole app download and install process is really bullshit and unnecessary in this day and age. Cut out the middlemen.

All we need is somebody to make it as easy to integrate ads into HTML 5 games as it was with flash and CPM Star ( it was literally 2 lines of code ), you could position ads the way you wanted them, show them whenever you wanted. Or we'll have to figure it out ourselves, but I'd rather concentrate on making games.

It's absurd that Scirra does not realize that this is the most important thing about Construct 2/3. All these new features, the whole Construct 3 is unnecessary. All these new improvements will save us maybe 15 minutes of work, but we lose hours dealing with monetization part and possibly lose a shitload of money because the most important thing is being ignored.

With the app stores being over saturated as it is, making a standard mobile app rarely gets much success. Freemium games have sadly become the norm.

Honestly they should target Steam and home consoles for better chances at exposure. They have Xbox, just need Sony and Nintendo to show their support.

Artpunk

Indeed that was really interesting and informative read Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your experience and for all the awesome tips it will definitely be really helpful for all of us that are new to mobile development, and also was very inspiring to keep me working and pushing to that direction as most of the post you find related to Mobile are or had bad experiences so is very refreshing to hear positive experiences like yours to keep the motivation is like you game an Extra boost battery haha

[quote:1elsurro]Sorry for the wall of text. I got on a roll.

No man Keep Rolling don't be sorry post like this is like a Golden Mine and you don't find them very often well you don't find them at all, indeed will be nice to have a dedicated section just for the mobile development where you can find awesome Tips like this and people sharing their experiences will be great to hear from people that already have experience in that area

The main thing I would want from the Scirra mobile build service is a complete Ios export.

I could do the Cordova build manually with an expectation that it would get easier with experience, but with Ios you have the extra hurdle of using a service, or pay for hardware.

Easily worth the $99 bucks a year.

The main thing I would want from the Scirra mobile build service is a complete Ios export.

I could do the Cordova build manually with an expectation that it would get easier with experience, but with Ios you have the extra hurdle of using a service, or pay for hardware.

Easily worth the $99 bucks a year.

so you mean to skip the Xcode step? that would be huge... but I doubt that's going to happen.

I just finished a mobile game with ads & IAP recently with C2, it was compiled with Cocoon.io Canvas+ for iOS and Android, it was pretty straight forward, no more work than putting an ad sdk in past Unity or GM:S games I have made. I used the Verstala Heyzap plugin found here , I am currently using Admob, UnityAds, Vungle and Heyzap video and reward ads in the game. The plugin is extremely easy to use, comes with good documentation for set up also.

I ran into a few hiccups getting compiler errors but literally 99% of the time it was because I messed up with the config.xml in Cocoon. A few tips for things I did that made everything work.

1. When exporting from C2 make sure Minify script if unchecked and PNG recompression is set to "None"

2. When zipping your C2 project for upload to Cocoon do not include the config.xml file or the intelxdk.config.additions.xml file in the zip, I manually add the plugins myself in Cocoon.

3. Set Multidex enabled to "Yes" for Android builds.

4. Make sure every plugin you are using in C2 is also included in the Cocoon.xml file.

5. Make sure any plugins you are getting from Github have the ".git" appended to the end of the URL in the Cocoon config.xml file(See example configs below).

6. Check in Cocoon under Installed plugins and make sure Cocoon didn't add any of the "Whitelist" plugins to your project, I got a black screen everytime one of these plugins where included.

Example iOS config.xml with Verstala Hepzap plugin, Cranberry Game Center leaderboards, EddyVerbruggen Social Sharing Plugin and Cocoon IAP plugin.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<widget xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets" xmlns:cocoon="http://cocoon.io/ns/1.0" xmlns:cdv="http://cordova.apache.org/ns/1.0" id="YOUR_BUNDLE_ID" version="0.75">
		<name>YOUR_GAME_NAME</name>
		<description>YOUR_GAME_DESCRIPTION</description>
		<author email="YOUR_EMAIL" href="http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com">YOUR_COMPANY</author>
		<content src="index.html"/>
		<access origin="*"/>
		<allow-intent href="http://*/*"/>
		<allow-intent href="https://*/*"/>
		<allow-intent href="tel:*"/>
		<allow-intent href="sms:*"/>
		<allow-intent href="mailto:*"/>
		<allow-intent href="geo:*"/>
		<preference name="Orientation" value="portrait"/>
		<preference name="Fullscreen" value="true"/>
		<preference name="target-device" value="universal"/>
		<platform name="android">
			<allow-intent href="market:*"/>
			<preference name="enabled" value="false"/>
		</platform>
		<platform name="ios">
			<allow-intent href="itms:*"/>
			<allow-intent href="itms-apps:*"/>
			<preference name="enabled" value="true"/>
		</platform>
		<plugin name="com.ludei.canvasplus.ios" spec="*"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap1.1.8.git" spec="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap1.1.8.git"/>
		<plugin name="cocoon-plugin-ads-ios-admob" spec="*"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-applovin.git" spec="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-applovin.git"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/cranberrygame/cordova-plugin-ad-chartboost.git" spec="https://github.com/cranberrygame/cordova-plugin-ad-chartboost.git"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-unityads.git" spec="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-unityads.git"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-vungle.git" spec="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-vungle.git"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/Calendar-PhoneGap-Plugin.git" spec="https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/Calendar-PhoneGap-Plugin.git">
			<variable name="CALENDAR_USAGE_DESCRIPTION" value="This app uses your calendar"/>
		</plugin>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/SocialSharing-PhoneGap-Plugin.git" source="npm" spec="https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/SocialSharing-PhoneGap-Plugin.git"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/cranberrygame/cordova-plugin-game.git" source="npm" spec="https://github.com/cranberrygame/cordova-plugin-game.git"/>
		<plugin name="cordova-plugin-inappbrowser" source="npm"/>
		<plugin name="com.ludei.canvasplus.android" spec="*"/>
		<plugin name="cocoon-plugin-inapps-ios-appstore" spec="*"/>
	</widget>
[/code:2n8kg8d3]

Example Android config.xml with Verstala Hepzap plugin, Cocoon Googleplay Services, and EddyVerbruggen Social Sharing Plugin and Install Location plugin.
[code:2n8kg8d3]<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<widget xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets" xmlns:cocoon="http://cocoon.io/ns/1.0" xmlns:cdv="http://cordova.apache.org/ns/1.0" id="YOUR_BUNDLE_ID" version="0.86">
		<name>YOUR_GAME_NAME</name>
		<description>YOUR_GAME_DESCRIPTION</description>
		<author email="nYOUR_EMAIL" href="http://YOURWEBSITE.com">YOUR_COMPANY</author>
		<content src="index.html"/>
		<access origin="*"/>
		<allow-intent href="http://*/*"/>
		<allow-intent href="https://*/*"/>
		<allow-intent href="tel:*"/>
		<allow-intent href="sms:*"/>
		<allow-intent href="mailto:*"/>
		<allow-intent href="geo:*"/>
		<preference name="Orientation" value="portrait"/>
		<preference name="Fullscreen" value="true"/>
		<preference name="target-device" value="universal"/>
		<platform name="android">
			<allow-intent href="market:*"/>
			<preference name="enabled" value="true"/>
		</platform>
		<platform name="ios">
			<allow-intent href="itms:*"/>
			<allow-intent href="itms-apps:*"/>
			<preference name="enabled" value="false"/>
		</platform>
		<plugin name="com.ludei.canvasplus.ios" spec="*"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap1.1.8.git" spec="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap1.1.8.git"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-applovin.git" spec="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-applovin.git"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/cranberrygame/cordova-plugin-ad-chartboost.git" spec="https://github.com/cranberrygame/cordova-plugin-ad-chartboost.git"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-unityads.git" spec="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-unityads.git"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-vungle.git" spec="https://github.com/Verstala2016/heyzap-cordova-vungle.git"/>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/Calendar-PhoneGap-Plugin.git" spec="https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/Calendar-PhoneGap-Plugin.git">
			<variable name="CALENDAR_USAGE_DESCRIPTION" value="This app uses your calendar"/>
		</plugin>
		<plugin name="https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/SocialSharing-PhoneGap-Plugin.git" source="npm" spec="https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/SocialSharing-PhoneGap-Plugin.git"/>
		<plugin name="cordova-plugin-inappbrowser" source="npm"/>
		<plugin name="com.ludei.canvasplus.android" spec="*"/>
		<plugin name="cocoon-plugin-application-android" spec="*"/>
		<plugin name="com.ludei.installlocation.android"/>
		<preference name="android-installLocation" value="auto"/>
		<plugin name="cocoon-plugin-social-android-googleplaygames" spec="*">
			<variable name="APP_ID" value="YOUR_GOOGLEPLAY_SERVICES_ID"/>
		</plugin>
	</widget>
[/code:2n8kg8d3]

If you have did all of those things you should not be getting compiler errors, if you do it's because your plugins and config.xml aren't set up correctly. If you are getting it to compile and getting a blackscreen, I suggest compiling a developer app with Cocoon, installing it on your test device and checking the Log in the developer app to see where you are getting an error. I ran into a problem where everything worked fine on iOS but was getting a blackscreen on Android, after compiling a developer app and looking at the Log I found the problem was the Cranberry Game plugin used for leaderboards wasn't working on Android but was working on iOS, so I switched to the Cocoon Googleplay plugin and everything worked fine.

Cheers.

Thanks twg for your input. Glad to know someone else got everything working. Maybe that GMSDEV (Verstala) plugin is the way to go...

1. When exporting from C2 make sure Minify script if unchecked and PNG recompression is set to "None"

this worked for Canvas+! up till now I've had to use Webview.

2. When zipping your C2 project for upload to Cocoon do not include the config.xml file or the intelxdk.config.additions.xml file in the zip, I manually add the plugins myself in Cocoon.

also, I used the normal Windows>SendTo>Compressed THIS DOES NOT WORK. I downloaded Winrar and that seemed to do the trick.

3. Set Multidex enabled to "Yes" for Android builds.

Mine is set to 'No' and still worked. although Ads aren't working..

6. Check in Cocoon under Installed plugins and make sure Cocoon didn't add any of the "Whitelist" plugins to your project, I got a black screen everytime one of these plugins where included.

yes these caused Blackscreen on mine as well I learned way back in the beginning.

twg What is the differences between Canvas+ and Webview or Webview+? In which situation I should use which? I had tried Canvas+ but I got no luck.

twg What is the differences between Canvas+ and Webview or Webview+? In which situation I should use which? I had tried Canvas+ but I got no luck.

Webview: https://docs.cocoon.io/article/system-webview-engine/

Webview+: https://docs.cocoon.io/article/webview-engine/

Canvas+: https://docs.cocoon.io/article/canvas-engine/

Honestly performance for games I've made has been absolutely horrible with Webview, I've been able to get a constant 60FPS even on really low end devices with Canvas+ and have never had a problem getting it to work.

twg What is the differences between Canvas+ and Webview or Webview+? In which situation I should use which? I had tried Canvas+ but I got no luck.

To get canvas+ to work make sure in your export you uncheck 'minify script'

I've also heard loader layout can cause issue, so set your loading bar to None (not sure if this is even true or not)

And lastly I've set Multidex to Yes (again no idea if this is necessary)

I've updated the OP to reflect what I've learned so far.

Thanks for the helpful documents. twg

But I'm still confused about "DOM access is restricted" for Canvas+. Would you mind elaborate that for me?

jobel Thank you. I'll try that on my upcoming project.

Additionally, even though I'm new to mobile app making, I can totally feel your frustrations. That's why I think mobile app development deserves it own forum on Scirra.

Hello! I am really sad to hear that you have experienced such difficulties with setting up Appodeal. We have made some significant changes recently and released a big update, version 2.1.4 of our SDK (dated September 20th). We’ve shipped support of new ad networks, updated partner SDKs, and improved consistency of our own SDK. Here is the link to the new plugin: github.com/appodeal/appodeal-cordova-plugin, I'd be happy to personally assist you and see what was the problem last time.

We have made some significant changes recently and released a big update, version 2.1.4 of our SDK (dated September 20th).

haha... maybe that explains why all of a sudden I had compilation errors! perhaps you should email users when you change something that could effect their developments?