Creating a Lite version
very useful tutorial on creating lite versions of iPhone apps (dev forum thread here).
At first I thought a lite version would decrease sales because people would play the Lite version instead of buying the game. Turns out my logic was wrong. Sure people may do this – but it’s better to have 100 people play the Lite and 5 buy the game, than just 1 person buy the game! Plus when there’s a Lite version of an App I’m interested in I will always download it to try before I buy – if there isn’t then it forces me to do a little research first or punt $1-4, and I have to say I’ve punted a few times and been dissapointed.
Neon Lite is in the works… stay tuned.
Some additional tips for creating Lite versions:
1.
Where the tutorial says: “For each Build Configuration that you need (e.g. Debug, Debug Device, Device Ad Hoc Distribution, Device App Store Distribution), you need to change the following settings for the Lite version.”, you can actually specify “Configuration: All Configurations” in the top left of that screen to avoid the hassle of doing this multiple times.
2.
To test that your targets are setup correctly, add this code somewhere:
#ifndef LITE
#error "Not Lite"
#endif // LITE
That will cause your build to FAIL on all non-Lite builds, and SUCCEED (assuming no other compile issues) on all Lite builds. I added that code and tested every single combination in my project just to be sure (especially the distribution configs because you can’t actually test those!).
3.
To have an URL that opens directly in the App Store instead of first launching Safari, follow this advise. Basically it boils down to copying the URL from iTunes and replacing the domain ‘itunes.apple.com’ with ‘phobos.apple.com’.
4.
To have different versions of assets, e.g. the Icon.png and Default.png files, create two directories “Lite” and “Full” with the copies. Then add them to your project, selecting only the target(s) they are relevant to. This will mean that the Icon and ‘Default’ load image are different for the LITE version. Another very useful feature of this is if you reference these files (or any other files you add in this way) within your project (e.g. in a UIImageView) the correct image for the target will be used, saving you the hassle of needing to set this up in code.
