So after nearly a year since the Android release, I've finally managed to get the game released on iOS!

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id849846434?mt=8

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.me.GDXEngine&hl=en_GB

When I first started developing FlyBy, LibGDX had no support for iOS. I had decided I would just make an Android game and it would never be released on iOS. So its pretty amazing to be able to say the game is available on iOS. But there were quite a few challenges even once LibGDX added its RoboVM backend for iOS. For starts, I don’t have a mac, or any iOS devices and I’m not a registered Apple Developer. Three essential requirements for making an iOS game! Luckily fellow game developer Matt Taylor offered to help out with the iOS version, and he had access to all three of the things required. Due to the way LibGDX works, where each platform has its own project that shares a common core project, it was possible for me to work on the core game, adjusting game play elements and re-factoring certain areas that would allow Matt to work on implementing game center support for the iOS version. The process essentially had me exposing certain elements of the game into interfaces so they could be accessed by the iOS project (for example achievement unlocks). This worked well, since Matt was not familiar with the code base at all, and allowed him as little direct interaction with it as possible, making it possible for him to focus on getting the core game center implementation to work.

For the most part, the core game worked almost without any adjustments, once the initial setup of deploying to iOS was overcome. However, there was a few quirks, mainly with sound. If serveral sounds were playing at once, there was a noticeable drop in FPS on the iOS version. Debugging issues such as this was very difficult. As they lied with the base engine classes, I had to essentially guess at what the problem could be, ask Matt to try out some changes, wait for him to do it, and then wait for him to tell me the results. This made for quite a slow and tedious development cycle and made it nearly impossible to tackle the problems to an acceptable standard. In the end, to overcome the sound issue, all sounds except the background track was removed from the iOS version, a less than ideal solution.

However, against all odds, the game is now released on iOS, and works decently on most devices we know about! So if you haven’t yet, download the game!

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id849846434?mt=8

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.me.GDXEngine&hl=en_GB