Hi Guys,
Just a few more days and AppGameKit is officially unleashed into the welcoming community arms. I am sure you will have lots of fun exploring the examples and trying out some code, but for those who already have a Mac or Macbook and want to be compiling native iOS apps right away, I want to provide some insight for those who might have difficulties with the Apple certificate/provisioning system. It's too late to get into the V1 documentation but perhaps a few of you will read this and it will save some heartache.
Troubleshooting iOS Code Signing
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Code signing can be a pain in the arse if you're not doing it in the right order. Here is my understanding having reformatted my Mac and starting from complete scratch (video to follow):
* you install the OS and the XCODE 3.2.6 and iOS SDK 4 as usual
* log onto the Apple website, enter the developer.apple.com and go to iOS provisioning portal
* first grab the master Apple certificate as requested by the website, download it and double click it (added to keychain)
* you can then go into the Keychain program itself and 'REQUEST A NEW CERTIFICATE'
* this is the trick as when you reformat your Mac, you reset your identity (private key is erased if you had one before)
* the request actually generates a private key at that point and the certificate you eventually get uses this private key
* you MUST revoke any old certificate if your Mac is reset fully
* with your new certificate, download it and double click it to add it to your Mac keychain
* that will be it for keychain stuff
* only then can you generate your mobile provision. The provision has YOUR certificate built into it so it has to be built with your new certificate
* when you generate the provision and download it, ensure XCODE is not running to keep it clean (and ensure no old provision are in there by deleting them from the Windows > Organiser item)
* the big test is that when you open your project and go to Edit Active Target and look at the code signing
* in code signing, you will see in addition the team provisioning stuff, you can see extra profiles you can use
* they will show up when the mobile provision file contains the same certificate as that which was generated by your present Mac (private key check)
* failure to adhere strictly to the above method will result in a yellow warning when you try to compile - certificate key chain pair not match or some such
It is tempting to just jump right in and assume you know the order in which things need to be done, which was my trick. In doing some final tests with AppGameKit and building an AppGameKit Player for iPad/iPhone from the files you will get with the product, I discovered that although the AppGameKit files are perfectly fine, sorting out the required certificate and provision can be troublesome if you already have had a go with XCODE and have some old certificates and provisions laying around.
I have recorded my exploits and will edit the best bits for a video of the process to be released soon. This should help illustrate the essential steps to getting your Mac development system set-up. Once XCODE is behaving itself, there is actually no coding required to begin with. Just double click to open an XCODE project and compile/run. Simple. If you check out the help documentation in Guides and navigate down to Tier 1 Publishers & Players you will see the remaining steps to take your BASIC apps and get them compiling natively as an iOS binary, ready for submission to the App Store. The reason I wanted to post this rather isolated technical article now is that it's fresh in my mind, and that iOS is still the biggest way to generate monstrous revenue with the right game or app idea, which I guess some of you might be interested in
I drink tea, and in my spare time I write software.
