Unity Game Developer Contest 2016

Sounds like a scammer to me.

More info here: https://www.callercenter.com/973-929-3290.html

 

I registered for the contest like 4 days ago, and i still haven`t received my token for the developer account.

Also unclear requirements, lack of communication or ambiguous replies from the organizers make me feel like this contest is so half assed...

 

I think it took about a week to get the token - I wasn't really expecting it though. I already have a development account, so I gave the token away or I'd give you mine

 

What was the turnaround time for publishing after submission for you? I'm hoping it's not going to be too late, I was shooting for 3 weeks before the deadline, but that didn't happen!

 

Looks like it was legit.

 

What happens if I publish my game within the contest time restrictions, but then submit an update after February 10? Will the judging team consider the update I submitted as part of my official submission if they hadn't judged my app yet?

 

@MindnightMeep yes, would be nice if this was clear

i hope they just handle saving the version present on the cut off date

--

guess the store does have our updates separated between submissions so seems like it should be doable

 

Finally our game "clic - connect lines in color" is live!

We got rejected twice because of the age regulation system used by Microsoft. If anybody from MS listens: do yourself a favor and just copy the Google Play submission system. Makes life easier for developers!

And now let's see how this whole contest thing plays out! Good luck to everyone!

 

So since Unity 5.3 doesn't support IL2CPP and IAPs does that mean that this competition accepts entries with x86 and Arm?

 

The post above yours shows a submitted game. If you look at that game's store page, you will see that it supports x86, x64, and ARM processors.

 

Yes but that's completely irrelevant to what I'm asking. The game above my original post doesn't have IAPs

 

I guess I misunderstood you. I thought you asked if this competition accepts entries with x86 and ARM. Sorry.

 

Apologies if I sounded rough! We are worrying whether we'll be able to take part in the competition and have in-app purchases in all versions, currently it seems that x64 has some sort of problem with IAPs so we might need to release it without just for the competition but it would be great to know whether we'll be judged on not having the x64 version

 

Not a single official answer to any questions regarding the contest rules. This is very disappointing.

 

@Nihil688 All we know is that "Does your game target multiple devices?" is in "Technical excellence" part of judgement, which is 20% of whole score.

 

Unity currently prevents us from reaching that excellence

 

For what it's worth, I've decided to get my game ready for the contest without IAP and later release an update which introduces the IAP and features that IAP would unlock. (All the features are ready to go, but with the current issues there's just not enough time to properly set up the IAP before the deadline. I don't want to have the features there for free and then later lock them behind a paywall, so IMO it's better to not have the features there at all (from the point of view of the players) and then introduce them later when I get IAP working.)

 

Is there a chance it's NuGet giving false warnings? I get this everytime I build a freshly generated project. Funnily enough it declares almost all the references as missing and yet, my game builds fine. (Just look for the animated build icon in the bottom bar)

EDIT: Several other people beat me to it.

 

Damn, I'm reading some of the posts here, this is looking good for me now. I'm actually close to getting my base content in and submitting soon. Wish me luck!

 

Actually, a good question... is it possible to find out how many people have entered? I'm curious.

 

@FuzzyQuills Good Luck!

me too, hope they do one of these competitions every 6 months

 

@FuzzyQuills Good luck! We've been in certification since Friday, we're only trying to test IAPs but still! :/

 

Ouch... Hope the certs pass soon.

 

I've published my game Super Night Riders on the Windows Store, targeting Windows 10 PCs:
microsoft.com/store/apps/9nblggh5gk48

This is my first time publishing on Windows Store. Certification for me was faster than I expected (same day). But I'm pretty disappointed about visibility so far: My game is not visible at all in the store, not even in the relevant category.

Is it a bad idea to publish a premium game on the Windows Store? Actually, I wanted to make it free + IAP, but Unity 5.3 doesn't support IAP + IL2CPP, so I made it premium only.

 

i want to do the same,

how long has your game been on the store? might take a bit before it shows up in the relevant category

 

2 days... It is visible on the web (Microsoft Store website), but not on the Windows Store app.

 

i dano

someone here will,

 

@bakanekofr don't worry, it'll eventually show. They'll definitely have some down time and delays due to the Windows 10 platform being launched to a lot of mobiles in February, plus it's a relatively new platform if you think it's a universal store now ( which my guess is also partly the reason for this competition ).

I would say that it might be showing in some countries faster than others and it might not be currently showing in yours just yet.

 

Actually, I've noticed that there are much more games in the Racing category on the Windows Store website than on the app. I'm using France as a region on both.

I suppose you need a few installs before being visible on the app, which is quite ironical, as you need to be visible before getting a few installs

 

Like a unity-only Ludum Dare?

 

I wouldn't think premium games would be that bad, since no one's cracked the windows store DRM yet... (Or have they?)

And your game... WOW. That seriously looks like a remastered Moto GP form the GBA. Looking good. On top of that, who did the soundtrack?

EDIT: Looked your game up in the app, it's showing fine here! Screenshot:

 

Ok, a warning to those using BitDefender free anti-virus; if for some reason, a build fails, check bitdefender, it managed to flag one of the .ildll files as a virus... Just saying to save everyone else the pain later.

 

Thanks for the shot!

Actually I was not talking about the direct link that I've provided which works fine, but about finding my game directly within the store, by browsing the racing category for instance, or checking the new released games, basically as any user that don't know about my game, which is probably 99% of the potential buyers as I don't have that much followers

EDIT: For the soundtrack, it's a freelancer: http://kannnaduki.com/

 

Huh, I'll see if that's the case here then. Crazy how a search bar finds it straight away. (Maybe it's a bug on Microsoft's end?)

EDIT: Yup, nothing here... yet my search bar found it. (C'mon Microsoft! )

 

There's still not porting guidelines that I see.
http://unity3d.com/pages/windows/porting

 

Obviously, there's a lot to cover.... Then again though, Unity team and Microsoft would have been on holidays for most of this time, and probably only got back a few days ago!

 

A question to everyone; would it be allowed if I were to make a WIP thread on my entry?

 

Umm, so I figured I might as well ask here since you guys are active.

I'm running into two issues porting to WP8. The port is working fine, but for some reason when I make a new build and test on the device all saved games are lost. I serialize my stuff with FullSerializer and store in PlayerPrefs. Is PlayePrefs local to the app and not global? How are users supposed to Update to an new version of the game then?

Another issue regarding IAP, it seems to work fine in the editor I get mockup results and stuff. But on the phone it always fails to connect to store and initialize purchases (I'm using Unity Services). Does the phone have to be signed into a MS account or something for this to go through? ... And does anyone know of a good guide into WP8 IAP? this thread doesn't cover it unfortunately, and the docs are poor on the subject.

 

I don't have any solutions to your problems sorry, but just wanted to let you know, WP8 builds are not accepted for this contest. You need to build Windows 10 Universal or Store or Mobile builds.

 

Wait what...? You mean in the build settings menu, the SDK options? I'm choosing Phone 8.1 (under Windows Store build option) now, is that not accepted? I must choose "Universal 10"?

 

Yep, it must be Universal 10. Then in the generated Visual Studio solution, when publishing the package you get to choose which Windows 10 platforms you'll ship the game to. It doesn't have to be all the Windows 10 platforms but is more favorable that way also.

 

I'm not 100% confident on my answer here, but I'm almost certain that because of the new build and push to the device, the context of local storage for the app gets cleared.. that could be the reason why.

 

Based on the reply here, PlayerPrefs seems local but Visual Studio does incremental builds so users updating their stuff it wouldn't get erased. Never tired that before so I have no idea how it works in practice.

 

ya, I think i'd need to see this in practice first

I'm not having much luck "finding" any examples yet on it though....

 

I submitted my small memory game to the contest: https://www.microsoft.com/pl-pl/store/games/memo-tiles/9nblggh5f39d

Good luck all!

I have a question - can I update my game after submit to contest? When the builds will be "collected" so jury can see changes?

 

You too. Not sure if updating's allowed during the contest though.

 

Started a thread on finding a IL2CPP IAP workaround
i don't know c++ so
please help if you know any c++

 

Yikes! I should have made a test build earlier, but I've been in a crunch trying to finish my game in time for the deadline.

I decided to make a test build just to make sure I knew how to build for UWP platforms and I'm getting "error CS0234: The type or namespace name 'Formatters' does not exist in the namespace 'System.Runtime.Serialization' (are you missing an assembly reference?)"

My game uses a BinaryFormatter to write the save data. This works on all other platforms I've tried (OSX, Windows, Linux, Android, WebGL, WebPlayer) and doesn't throw any errors in the editor even when the active platform is Windows Store. But when I try to make a build, it fails very quickly with this error.

Does anyone have any suggestions for an alternative to the BinaryFormatter that I can use in my project to save data?

 

@Deozaan don't know much about serialization, but i'm pretty sure you won't get that error if you switch your scripting backend to IL2CPP instead of .Net

possible solution depending on how many errors you get on the other side and whether or not you want Unity IAP to work

 

I've had to cut my plans to implement IAP before for the deadline anyway. I'm planning to release an update some time in the future for that.

Thanks for the tip about IL2CPP. I didn't install it with Unity 5.3.x since I was under the impression that IL2CPP was still in early-ish beta-ish stages, but I'll get it downloaded and installed and see what happens.

Thanks again!