Construct 2 supports exporting your games and apps in a format that can be used by
PhoneGap.
PhoneGap provide a way of building HTML5 games and apps as native phone apps. They also provide the
PhoneGap Build service which can build native phone apps for
iOS,
Android,
Symbian,
Blackberry,
webOS and
Windows Phone 7! This saves you from the huge amount of hassle of setting up your own development environments for each phone system. You can simply upload your project, wait a moment, then download the apps that PhoneGap Build has built.
Although it's possible to build "manually" via downloading and installing various SDKs, this is extremely time consuming and complicated compared to PhoneGap Build, and the resulting app would be identical. Unfortunately Scirra cannot offer support for users who try to build with the SDKs directly, so we highly recommend using the PhoneGap Build service.
Building iOS apps
You need to be registered with Apple as an iOS developer to build iOS apps, even with PhoneGap. This costs $99/yr and requires access to a Mac. There are more instructions in
How to become an iOS developer.
You might also want to consider making
iOS web apps: they work very similarly to native apps, but are much simpler to set up. You don't need to be an iOS developer to make them!
Supporting multiple screen sizes
Different devices have different sized screens. Construct 2 has some features to help you get your game working well on different devices - see
Supporting multiple screen sizes.
Test first over Wifi/LAN
Exporting to PhoneGap is a fairly lengthy process if you just want to test your game. During development, it's a lot quicker and easier to
preview on a local network.
You
must test on a real device during development! Your desktop computer is probably 10-100x as powerful as a mobile device. To save yourself nasty surprises, make sure you test regularly on a real device all the way through development to ensure your game does not run too slowly on the device.
Sign up for PhoneGap Build
Visit
PhoneGap Build and create an account. For now it is free.
PhoneGap won't build any iOS apps until you upload your iOS developer details. See
How to become an iOS developer for more details.
Export your game for PhoneGap
Make sure your project has an appropriate
description set in Project Properties. Then, in the Export Project dialog, choose
Export for PhoneGap.
Click
Next. The PhoneGap options dialog appears:
ID must be a string in the form
com.companyname.productname, e.g.
com.scirra.spaceblaster. If you're making an iOS app, this must match what you entered when creating the App ID.
You can also enter your author details, limit the orientations supported, and limit it to either tablets (like the iPad) or handsets (most mobile phones). However, it's best to support both orientations and all devices (universal) if you can.
When you're done click
Export! Construct 2 exports your files to a folder as usual, but with an extra
config.xml file which is for PhoneGap.