iOS Game Creation

I thought it would be obvious, and maybe to some people it WAS obvious (though i am not cetain of that). One would expect it to be blinking obvious too, especially with so many having gone before me.

I am talking about creating a game Name and Metadata setup for iOS devices (an instance if ya like of a game for me to fill in the details and upload a binary). Well it wasn't obvious. I created my Signed game bnary and then simply figured I would create the instance of the game within the developer.apple.com. Only I could not for the life of me find the link to create a game.I thought maybe there was some special name to the process. In the end I gave up for the night, instead satisfying myself with the fact I had built a Distribution binary. (yes, that is the signed version that you upload to Apple).

So next day comes around and I send off an email to a couple of friends who have gone through this process before (always try ya friends when in annoying situations). Well before they even got back to me I have looked around the Developer site some more to no avail. Then I decided to sign into a different part of the Apple system. itunesconnect.apple.com and looking around there I saw a link titled 'Manage your Aplpications'... oh wow.. this could be it!

Clicking that link took me to a nice page with a big button stating 'Add NewApp'. I was in the right place. Woohoo! I proceeded to go through the directed steps, filling in the fields I knew about. Then as I did not have ALL the relevant information I clicked 'Save'. Well it moaned in red text that i was required to fill out more fields. Though I had not got the relevant information on me at the time. So i left it expecting the process would have saved the current point I was at in the setup process.

Then I went home,

Once home I quickly booted my PC and went back to the itunesconnect site. Only to find that my partial setup had not been saved. I was a bit bummed about this, but it is not something I could change or alter. So I dived into the process and redid all the fields, yet now I could do so much more. I filled in all the MetaData and language choices and stuff. It is all very easy and yet I was also surprised by a coulpe of fields, present and missing.
Missing:
  Features List (I like this list that some sites use)
Surprising:

1.  Keywords space is limited to ONLY 100 bytes. This was disappointing as I took a long time coming up with my games keywords and yet mine are 200 bytes long (and used for Android and WP7)
2.  Image sizes. I really think that these systems need to all get on the same page. WTH am I having to create a 57x57 icon, and then a 50x50 icon. These sizes MAKE NO SENSE.
3. Rounding of Icon image. The main Icon (512x512) has it's corners rounded automatically after upload. No mention of this, bah!
4. The upload of the Screenshot images is uninformative and annoying. I select an image off my hard drive and then wait till it shows up on the web page. Sometimes it did, and sometimes it did not. Refreshing the page would sometimes show it up, and sometimes not. So I only uploaded3 for the ipod/iphone sizes in the end (sizes of 960x640)
5. I HAD to upload at least one screenshot for the iPad section (1024x600). This is a resized version from the 800x480 I had from WP7 dev. Seems odd they couldn't just use an iPod one though.

All of this was of course just par for the course, but now I have my game setup and waiting a binary upload. Which means i NEED a Mac for this step. Only I don't own one. So tomorrow I am hopefully going to be able to use a friends Macbook and upload my binary, which will also put it into the Apple review process. (wish me luck!)

Hope your Apple Game/App setup goes smoothly,
Da Voodoochief