Little bites of Bloom #2: Releasing apps in the store
You’d think this is easy, as you’ve done it a bazillion times…
The basics
a) You need to do a Master build, not a Release build in Visual Studio
This is only new for you if you haven’t released Unity based apps in the store
b) You only need the x86 build
As it’s only running on the HoloLens
c) You’ll need to edit the .appxmanifest by hand
The Windows.Universal TargetDeviceFamily needs to be changed to Windows.Holographic
d) Double-check the “Build Settings” screen in Unity
So you don’t forget to remove the tick from the “Development build” checkbox like I did :)
The less obvious parts
The image assets table is completely wrong…
- you’ll need at least one image of all the tile assets (44x44 is missing from the table)
- “Recommended scale” is always 200% apparently https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/maartenb/2015/10/06/missing-default-200-logos-and-appx3210/ — if you only have the 100% assets you’ll need to edit the .csproj, otherwise you’ll get errors while building the .appxbundle
- the “Where is this displayed?” column gets wrong the splash screen — the normal splash screen (the one you set there and not in Unity) is displayed in the temporary 2D windows that you use to place the app when you open it
- The StoreLogo is required both in scale 200% and 100%
To sum it up, you’ll need: StoreLogo 100%, 200%; Square44x44 200%; Square71x71 200%; Square150x150 200%; Square310x310 200%; Wide310x150 200%; SplashScreen 200%.
f) You’ll need the latest HoloToolkit
Because if you’re using a version before this commit you’ll fail the WACK Supported API test…
g) Unity’s UWP player build process has some issues
First, even though you specify both the 200% and 100% StoreLogo assets, Unity will create a 3rd non-scale version, and that’ll cause issues in the .appxmanifest. And second, the SplashScreen is just completely ignored — you’ll need to add that by hand to the VS project.
I hope this little article helps someone who runs into the same issues that I did.
shore party out
