Sticker Pack App still hanging on Compiling Asset Catalogs

Already reported this in Xcode Beta 4. Still persists in Beta 5. Sticker Pack Applications (iMessage Only) are still stuck at build-time. This seems to be happening with Sticker Packs over 10 or so animated stickers. This wasn't an issue Beta 1 thru 3


Testing with Sierra, Xcode 8 Beta 5 and iOS10 Beta 5.


Tried a lot of debugging. Deleted Derived Data, Cleaned, the works. Thought maybe this was an issue from using Xcode projects starting with Beta 1 thru 3, but even with new Xcode 8 Beta 5 projects


Happens in the Simulators and iPad / iPhone devices.


Anyone else seeing this?

Replies

Just found that someone else is seeing this too.... https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/54234


Glad I'm not alone!

Yes this is a really serious bug please help!

I've got a sticker pack (not an imessage app) that has over 100 animated stickers in it and it builds fine. Admittedly it is horribly slow but it works. I'm running El Capitan though and not Sierra and my stickers only consist of 2 frames (all PNG). Not sure if you have any other differences in size of animations etc.

Tommy, are you on Beta 4 or 5?


And yes, all my animations include more than 2 frames. But that is interesting, as I wonder if its size issue with the total number of frames.

I also think it has something to do with the overall size of the stickers. Mine have 4 frames per sticker, each frame is 100 x 100 points @3x. I have tried to add them one by one and see when it starts to get stuck at compiling asset catalogs, and the number of stickers I can add varies.

Agreed, all my Stickers are either 100 by 100 or 136 by 136 (Small or Medium), and I've also tried adding one at time until the Build fails. There doesn't seem to be a magic number or total App size when it fails.


I submitted a Technical Support request today, but they won't deal with anything in Beta.

Sorry for the late reply.This was beta 4 and 5 for me it's working. All my assets are 100x100@3x and only contain 2 animations.

This is STILL happening for me with beta 6.

PLEASE help...

I really don't know if I'll be able to submit my pack for day 1. 😟

Unfortunately beta 6 didn't contain the fix for this. I believe it should be resolved in the next Xcode build.

I just ran into a similar problem when I started using Xcode to generate multiple Sticker Sequences. I was orinially just dragging the frames into the sequence box directly for each animated sticker.


Looks like the issue is when two or more sequences have frames with the exact same file names. My animated stickers use some common frames between them.


To get around this, I put all of my frames for all stickers into a sepearte asset catalog, then I use the those for assembling the sequences for each sticker. I have now been able to create 5 sequences with no problems.


Hope this helps!

Ok, the above might not be true. After using that method for a bit was was back to the not able to compile scenario. I eneded up ditching using Xcode to create the animated sequences and used a 3rd party Mac app to create the APNGs.

Unfortunately the situation that leads to the failure to compile is not completely predictable so what works for one person when they jiggle the bits might not work for somebody else's project. The most reliable thing currently is to do the composition of the APNG using an external tool. We've got a fix for this in the next release we post. Sorry for the hassle!

What's the method for embedding APNG's created via an external tool? When I try adding them, it is only adding the first frame as a sticker.

An APNG file will be a single file, with a .png file extension. It'd be no different than adding an individual .png file. I find it's easiest to just drag and drop them in.

I created APNGs using:


http://littlesvr.ca/apng/assembler/assembler.php


You can also use:


https://github.com/apngasm/apngasm


Then dragged those PNG files into the "Sticker Pack" directory inside "Stickers.xcstickers" asset catalog. They didn't animate within Xcode but seem to animate in iOS Messages.