Desvelado on iOS

What I built

• Built the iOS release pipeline in codemagic.yaml: Godot 4.6.3 and export templates fetched onto a mac mini runner, headless import, export to an Xcode project, CocoaPods when needed, automatic signing through an App Store Connect API key, signed .ipa uploaded to TestFlight
• Kept every credential out of the repository: the App Store Connect .p8 and the RSA signing key live in a secure Codemagic variable group, and the build creates or fetches the distribution certificate on the fly
• Diagnosed the on device Firebase failure as an export packaging problem rather than a code problem, then fixed it by moving the credentials to firebase.env and adding *.env to the non resource export filters on the iOS and Android presets, restoring cloud save on both platforms
• Wrote LivesManager, a global lives economy: a life spent per death, a rewarded ad refill at zero, and a wall clock regeneration deadline stored in the save so it keeps counting while the app is closed
• Made regeneration survive a tampered device clock by never letting the remaining wait exceed one full interval, and ran its poll timer with PROCESS_MODE_ALWAYS so the countdown stays live while the out of lives popup pauses the tree
• Drove lives maximum, enabled state and refill hours from Firestore through GameConfig, so the client retunes the economy from the console instead of cutting a new build
• Reused the existing reward popup for the out of lives flow behind a mode flag, so a single popup and a single rewarded ad callback serve both the power up grant and the lives refill
• Added first run touch onboarding: the floating joystick is invisible until touched, so it now appears once at a fixed lower left spot as a hint and hides for good after the first drag, with the flag persisted in the save
• Fixed a dash that silently did nothing when pressed while standing still, by opening a short input window and dashing in the facing direction if no direction arrives
• Integrated the AppLovin MAX iOS plugin (.gdip descriptor plus xcframework) and shipped the accompanying store and ads fixes alongside the Android Google Play Billing setup
• Added the lives HUD on the player and the refill countdown on the main menu

Gallery

Breakdown

The refill deadline is a unix timestamp in the save file, not a running timer, so closing the app does not pause it. On launch and on every application resume the manager compares the deadline against the system clock and tops the player back up if it has passed. A deadline further away than one full interval is treated as a clock that has been wound back and is rewritten, so moving the device clock cannot park the player on a permanent wait.

The game already had a rewarded ad popup for power ups, so the out of lives offer became a mode on that popup rather than a second one. The Yes and No handlers branch once on the mode and hand off, which keeps a single ad callback, a single pause path, and a single place to change if the ad network is ever swapped.

Firebase looked broken and was not. It signed in, read the client's save out of Firestore and wrote one back, all from the editor against their live project. Only the built app failed, and it said why: "Unable to read Firebase config". The addon keeps its credentials in a plain .env file, and Godot's export step copies only files it recognises as game resources. The file was in the project and never in the build. That distinction was worth making carefully, because the visible symptom, progress resetting on the phone, reads like lost work rather than a missing setting.

Lives, ads and purchases are the kind of thing a client wants to move after launch, so none of the numbers are compiled in. GameConfig reads them from Firestore at startup, with the code falling back to sane defaults (six lives, a 24 hour refill) when the document is missing, so a bad or absent config degrades to a playable game instead of a broken one.