Discuss games on Apple platforms.

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What triggers Game Mode?
What are the specific characteristics that trigger Game Mode in an iOS game? I have several casual SpriteKit games in the App Store but only one of them triggers Game Mode. What does GCSupportsGameMode do when set to true? Will it trigger Game Mode or will the OS still decide by itself?
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2k
Oct ’24
How best to handle AirPods audio glitches in Game Mode?
Hello! The new lower latency support for AirPods in Game Mode is impressive, but I'm not sure of the best way to handle the transition into/out of Game Mode while audio is playing. In order to lower the latency, the system appears to drop some number of samples, with the result being a good deal less latency. My use case is macOS where it's easier to switch in/out of the fullscreen game (a simple swipe left), thus causing more issues for Game Mode since the audio is playing the entire time. It would be nice if offscreen games could remain in game mode, but I understand not wanting to give developers that control. Are there any best practices for avoiding or masking the audio glitch caused by this skip-ahead? Is there a system event I can receive to know when Game Mode is about to be enabled or disabled, where I could perhaps fade out the audio? My callback checks the inTimestamp->mSampleTime value to detect gaps, but it only rarely detects a Game Mode gap, even though the audio skip-ahead always happens. BTW, I am currently only developing on macOS (15.0) and I'm working at a low level with AudioUnit callbacks and a SpatialMixer. I am not currently using any higher-level audio APIs. And here's a few questions I don't necessarily expect answers to, but it doesn't hurt to ask: Is there any additional technical details about how this latency reduction works, or exactly how much of a reduction is achieved (or said another way, how many samples are dropped)? How much does this affect AirPods battery life? And finally, is there a way to query the actual latency value? I check the value for kAudioDevicePropertyLatency but it seems to always report 160ms for AirPods. Thanks!
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1k
Sep ’24
CADisplayLink wrongly capping at 90hz on iPhone 15 Pro
I have a game for iOS where I use CADisplayLink to animate a simulation, and for some reason the animation is not getting the full 120hz on capable devices (like iPhone 15 Pro). When I enable a 120hz refresh target, the animation is capped at only 90hz. This looks terrible because the animation works best when doubled (30, 60, 120, 240, etc). The really bizarre thing is that when I turn on Screen Recording, my frame rate instantly jumps to 120, and everything looks perfectly smooth. My game has never looked better on iPhone! When recording is stopped, the animation drops back down to 90 fps. What in the world is going on? [displayLink setPreferredFrameRateRange:CAFrameRateRangeMake(100,240,120)]; //Min. Max, Preferred [displayLink addToRunLoop:[NSRunLoop currentRunLoop] forMode:NSDefaultRunLoopMode]; (Also, CADisableMinimumFrameDurationOnPhone is set to True in info.plist)
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939
Oct ’24
Unity GameCenter Leaderboard issue
Hey, i have created a game in unity with the apple core and apple gamekit plugins present. I setup 5 leaderboards on the app store connect. I made a unity build and did the whole testflight build loop to test everything. When i open my gamecenter panel via the button i see my leaderboards but they show as MISSING TITLE which is weird because i have for sure set them up correctly they have a leaderboard reference name and leaderboard id as well. When debugging i can see that when i call my submit score function it gets submitted with no error but then i also dont see the score appear anywhere . Keep in mind the leaderboards are not live and are being tested on testflight first
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1.1k
Jan ’25