Delayed Launch

Okay– so *officially* I launched Spider Prank last week in the App Store. But *officially* I’m launching today. :)

The reason is as follows. I spent a ton of time with localization. Localization is simply translating all your app stuff so that it’s localized for different regions (Chinese, Korean, Russian etc etc.)

The great challenge, especially for an indie dev one man show, is that you not only need to localize your *app*, but also you need to localize all the itunes stuff that goes along with your app.

What does that mean?

Well first you gotta translate all the words that show up on itunes itself. The writeup basically.

Here’s my writeup in Russian:

**********************

ПАУЧЬИ ПРОДЕЛКИ

Невероятно реальные трехмерные ПАУК И МУХА на ваших iPhone and iPad!

ИСПУГАЙТЕ ВАШИХ ДРУЗЕЙ

АНОНС: http://www.SebastiansGames.com/RU

Насекомое ПОЛЗАЕТ. Оно ШИПИТ и АТАКУЕТ.

Оно реагирует на смахивания, касания и ГРАВИТАЦИЮ.

Уверяют, что оно настоящее!

Реалистичная, жужжащая муха вызывает их любопытство, а затем выскакивает паук и здорово пугает их.
Установите таймер: пауки появятся тогда, когда их менее всего будут ждать.
Используйте ваши фото в качестве фонов. Сделайте снимок экрана для фона, чтобы было похоже на то, как будто паук попал в ловушку в вашем устройстве.

ЭКСТРЕМАЛЬНЫЕ ЗВУКОВЫЕ ЭФФЕКТЫ И ТРЕХМЕРНАЯ РЕАЛИСТИЧНОСТЬ
РЕЖИМ НЕСКОЛЬКИХ ПАУКОВ

ВАЖНО: Совместимо с устройствами 4-го поколения и выше.
ВНИМАНИЕ: Максимальное количество пауков и фоновых фотографий зависит от поколения устройства.

Спасибо за поддержку НЕЗАВИСИМОГО РАЗРАБОТЧИКА. Чтобы узнать больше, посетите http://www.SebastiansGames.com

**********************

Now I’ve translated my app into ten languages (English makes 11), so do that ten times. Or I guess work with professional translators to do that ten times.

Then the hard part.

The itunes art.

Every time you have an app in the App Store you need to provide itunes with the requisite art to showcase your app. Five images. For each of the three screen ratios.

So five iphone4 images:
spiderprank_IPHONE4_01spiderprank_IPHONE4_02spiderprank_IPHONE4_03spiderprank_IPHONE4_04spiderprank_IPHONE4_05

Five iphone5 images:
spiderprank_iIPHONE5_01
spiderprank_IPHONE5_02spiderprank_IPHONE5_03spiderprank_IPHONE5_04spiderprank_IPHONE5_05

And five ipad images:
spiderprank_IPAD_01
spiderprank_IPAD_01
spiderprank_IPAD_01
spiderprank_IPAD_01
spiderprank_IPAD_01

And then you translate them.

Ten languages… times 15 images.

DE_IPAD_00000ES_IPAD_00000IPAD_FR_00000IT_IPAD_00000JA_IPAD_00000KO_IPAD_00000PT_IPAD_00000RU_IPAD_00000TH_IPAD_00000TR_IPAD_00000ZH_IPAD_00000

150 images to doctor in photoshop and translate correctly. No small feat!

And the reason the latest version of the app is late is that I’d just finished all of this work… and didn’t realize that when I submitted just the translated stuff to Apple, it would take them another week and round of approval to approve the artwork/itunes descriptions alone.

I’d mistakenly assumed that since my binary (the actual game data) was unchanged, I could skip the long approval process.

Live and learn!!

So long story short, now the game, the writeups, the itunes art are all properly localized. It’s official.

I’ve launched!

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