Fix, polish and publish
The game gets slower and heavier with every scene change
Backgrounds and sounds of finished scenes stay in memory until a phone gives up, yet unloading too eagerly makes shared pictures flicker or reload at every change. Here is a bookkeeping rule that frees exactly what nobody uses and keeps what the next scene shares.
Fix a game that lurches or freezes after the player switches apps and returns
Swipe away to a message and come back, and the game tries to catch up on everything it missed: pieces teleport, a timer runs out, or the screen freezes while it computes. This entry shows how to make the AI keep the game running in fixed steps and set a safe limit on catching up.
Fix button labels that spill out of their box once translated into longer languages
A label that fits in English becomes much longer in German or Finnish, runs out of its button or is cut mid-word. This entry shows how to make the AI test every label against its box, shrink the text only as far as is still readable, and report the ones that need a human decision.
The German version of my menu does not fit in the buttons
Translated words are often much longer than the English ones, and short labels grow the most. Here is a quick check your AI can run on every translation so that no button or title is cut off, including the names players type in, and what allowance to give each length.
Fix huge numbers in an idle game that show as 1e+21, NaN or 1000K
Once the counter grows big, the screen fills with ugly scientific notation, a word that is not a number, or a number that is rounded one step too high. This entry shows how to make the AI write a short display helper that stays readable and never lies at the edge.
Stop players from gaining huge offline earnings by changing the phone clock
When a player comes back, the game pays for the time away. Move the clock and the payout can turn huge, negative or empty. This entry shows how to make the AI pay fairly for time away, shrug off a clock that jumped backwards, and cap the reward.
Pictures and sounds load on my computer but are missing once published
On your own machine the file name hardly matters, but on a website a capital letter, a space or a stray mark can make a picture vanish. Here is a list check for the files your game asks for against the files you really ship, including the ones nobody uses.
Keep impossible scores off a casual game's leaderboard without any secret code
Someone posts a score nobody could reach and the list stops being fun. Perfect cheat-proofing does not exist for a phone game, but a few checks on what could really happen catch the silly cases. This entry shows how to make the AI check a submitted result against the game's own limits.
Players use up a key too early and can no longer finish the game
In a haunted house with one key and two locked doors, the order matters, and a player who picks the wrong door is stuck without knowing it. Here is a search that tries every order, tells you whether the game can be won and counts the situations from which it cannot.
Switching the language mid-story throws the player to the wrong line
A translation rarely has the same number of lines as the original, so remembering "line 112" sends people to the wrong place in the other language. Here is how to name lines so the game finds the right spot, even where a translator split or joined them.
Fix a lives refill timer that restarts on every use or hands out too many hearts
A player loses a life and the next one should arrive after a set wait. In practice the wait starts over each time they lose another, a long break gives more hearts than the maximum, or a full set starts counting too early. This entry shows how to make the AI keep the timer exact.
The loading bar sticks near the end or says done before the game is ready
One picture that never arrives can keep the game on the loading screen forever, and a bar that counts files instead of size jumps to the end while the heavy files are still coming. Here is how to measure progress honestly and decide when to go on without a file.