Games Developed on iPad when testing -> (natively launched or via internet browser?)

GDevelop general
1

Hello,

I noticed the games we play from the home screen - the games the community has created, on iPad, these games are launched via a web browser.

Unfortunately, this web browser game experience is NOT optimized for the input systems on the mobile platform (touchscreen) it is truly a horrendous affair, very buggy when trying to play these games, I avoid doing so now.

My question basically…

The game I develop on my iPad, when I test it… will it also be launched from a browser?

OR… will my game be locally stored in my iPad, and when I launch it, it locally launches from my iPad?

thank you.

1 Like
2

anybody has information on this? thanks

3

Exported and compiled iOS games will run electron, like all non-HTML5 exports do regardless of OS. iOS games will be built via Cordova to make the electron package. Electron itself is Chromium in a wrapper, so whatever experience you have on iOS may be the same regardless if it is an HTML5 export or otherwise.

Note: iOS forces all browsers to run safari as their renderer (even if you’re testing in iOS chrome or edge or another browser), which is not well supported by any web games, so you may have a worse experience on an HTML5 export/preview than you would once compiled to iOS. You’d have to test to confirm.

4

I appreciate the detailed response.

Pretty much:

• no i cannot test offline

• no my game is not ran natively off the ios metal.

• must be online to test your games.

• when testing your games on iPad or any ios device (currently) it will be a horrendous experience due to apple forcing developers to pipeline any browser experience through safari renderer - which is trash.

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I have deeper understanding now, I really appreciate the knowledge.

thank you!

5

To be clear, an online connection isn’t required for previewing your game. You can run the network preview mode and test on a local network, even if you don’t have an internet connection.

Not quite, or at least the way you’re listing it here is not what that means. Anything running on iOS (including browsers) are running on the processor. GDevelop uses PixiJS as its renderer, which is running in an Electron wrapper/Container, and uses WebGL for GPU calls. (See next part)

This is correct, and is really unfortunate that Apple has designed it this way. It wouldn’t be a huge issue if Safari had better WebGL support, then you’d have a more 1:1 comparison. But Safari does not, and therefore you won’t have an exact comparison.

2 Likes
6

Thank you! Extremely helpful.