GameSalad 0.9.85: Android Publishing is here!

Over this past year, we’ve made strides to bring GameSalad games to more platforms. This past summer, we debuted our first non-Apple publishing target, with our HTML5-powered GameSalad Arcade. Today, GameSalad is pleased to announce its newest platform target and Professional feature: Android publishing, available today in GameSalad 0.9.85 Beta
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The Android market is far more varied and complex than the world of iOS publishing, with a multitude of Android app stores and almost innumerable devices with varied resolutions and device specifications. To accommodate this expansive market, our engineers have crafted our Android publishing system to support all the major markets, including Google, and Amazon, as well as all the latest and greatest Android devices like the Nook Color, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and the soon to launch Amazon Kindle Fire.

As mentioned earlier, Android publishing is being introduced as a Professional feature. Setting up the development environment, and managing multiple forms of app packages, both signed and unsigned, as well as the multitude of app stores make for a very complex and sometimes overwhelming market. We believe Professional GameSalad members have an incredible opportunity to establish themselves on the Android marketplace, and will be a perfect group to break ground for the GameSalad community.

Also, like we said before, the Android world is very big place. To help orient yourself, we’ll be providing a primer to Android App Stores and Android Devices. This will help provide you with all the need to knows in terms of testing games on comparable devices, and understanding the various package requirements that can vary from marketplace to marketplace.

That being said, Android publishing isn’t the only thing new in Creator 0.9.85. We’ve also made modifications for improving compatibility with iOS 5. Also, we’ve implemented some expanded functionality in the OpenURL behavior, now allowing users to select between our in-app browser and mobile Safari. The behavior will now also automatically detect iOS App Store or email links and open the proper application (App Store or Email) rather than utilizing a browser first.

This is just the beginning and we’ve got a lot more coming very soon, including the second half of our performance / loading improvements, tables support, Game Center achievements, and in-app purchase.

Thank you to everyone in the GameSalad community for the incredible games you’ve been producing over the last two years and we can’t wait to see what you bring to the Android marketplace.

Where to go now: