Skip to main content

3 posts tagged with "ios"

View All Tags

Solo Mode — Offline Play Without a Multiplayer Lobby

· One min read
Mike Homol
Mike Homol
Principal Consultant @ ThreeWill

Backseat Games got a v1.1 delight pass — and Solo Mode so play still works when the relay lobby cannot. Offline-first turned out to be a product feature, not a fallback.

What happened​

  • Shipped jingle, SFX, icons, critter motion, and first-run teaching as one release theme
  • Added Solo Mode for offline play without a relay lobby
  • Useful for App Store demos and real car rides with spotty connectivity
  • Update is live on the App Store — Solo Mode and delight assets look right on device
  • Visual polish landed across the games (Travel Bingo board + License Plate Game cards)

Backseat Games Travel Bingo with delight visuals

Backseat Games License Plate Game card grid

Polish Pass — Making Expo Home Screen Widgets Actually Readable

· One min read
Mike Homol
Mike Homol
Principal Consultant @ ThreeWill

After the SDK 55 revival, the next problem was not “do widgets render?” — it was “can you read them at a glance?” Trimming the set and using a consistent brand mark beat shipping every layout variant.

What happened​

  • Wired shared skull PNGs through the widget snapshot builder for completed goals
  • Clarified week/dreams layouts and trimmed the overall widget set
  • Fixed TestFlight margin gates for fewer widgets
  • Confirmed on device / TestFlight (not simulator-only) — readable at a glance
  • App Store v1 docs will cover all layouts in the polished set (not deferring variants out of the write-up)

Memento Mori home-screen widgets — polished readable set

Reviving iOS Widgets on Expo SDK 55 (and Why They Went Black)

· One min read
Mike Homol
Mike Homol
Principal Consultant @ ThreeWill

Home-screen widgets for Memento Mori came back to life on Expo SDK 55 — but not before a stretch of black squares that looked like a React layout bug and were actually an extension packaging problem.

What happened​

  • Rebuilt widgets against Expo SDK 55 with expo-widgets patches and EAS multi-target signing
  • Black widgets traced to JS bundle copy into ExpoWidgetsTarget.appex, postinstall idempotency, and extension runtime symbols
  • Hardened TestFlight / IPA CI gates so widget regressions fail earlier
  • Current home-screen set is readable again — life % ring, weekly check-ins, and Dreams vs time — after the black-widget era
  • Smart Record is active again (not gated off for release): speak stream-of-consciousness reflections and get a bulleted summary; in final testing ahead of app go-live

Memento Mori home-screen widgets after the Expo SDK 55 fix

Smart Record — talk freely, get a bulleted reflection summary