Australian studio Atlas Gaming Pty Ltd has released its first project – AtLas Vegas casino. Following the launch, the team shared tips with Reddit readers.
Developers from Atlas Gaming Pty Ltd write:
“We have launched the Atlas Vegas casino game in the App Store. And here are some difficulties that I had to face:
- the volume of downloaded files should not exceed 100 MB. This restriction is set so that users are not charged an additional fee for data transmission. Our original graphics assets weighed more than 400 MB, so we have reduced them to 90 MB. To do this, I had to convert all PNG files to WebP (with an alpha component), compress the video, redo some effects using GLSL shaders, and so on;
- in reality, the user changes the amount of the bet per game on the slot machine using buttons, so we had to develop a virtual panel for players. That is, players can use techniques from real life when playing the game. This is probably the first such example in the App Store;
- we needed three aspect ratios for three generations of iOS devices (4:3 for iPad, 3:2 for iPhone 4, and 16:9 for iPhone 5 and above). We made 2 different sets and with the iPhone 4 just cropped the set for the iPhone 5. The game screen for all devices was 960×540 in size and scaled;
- it turned out that the images on the smaller screens were too small and unreadable. We had to add the ability to zoom manually. We didn’t plan this at the very beginning. The result was better than expected;
- the basic application was in C++ with minor changes to Objective-C for iOS functionality. Integrating the project with the AppStore API turned out to be easier than we expected, although it took a small wrapper to integrate the Objective-C code with the C++ game code.”
Art for AtLas Vegas
In conclusion, the team shared their disappointment: after the publication, it turned out that there were more than 100 thousand casino games in the AppStore.
“Without marketing, the app has no chance,” the Australians conclude.
Screenshot from AtLas VegasSource: Reddit