For some reason I encounter a big differences between Development and shipping builds
mainly in AI:
While in development packaging everything works perfectly fine,
in Shipping build the AI is just falls apart.
Characters stuck on an empty places - the collisions also resolved very differently (and all in favor to development build).
I am really thinking on distributing the Development build instead of shipping.
Is it possible to Distribute Development build ?
for App Store and Steam and what not ?
The shipping build turns on optimisations which do not happen in the debug or development builds. These could be causing the differences in behaviour. Generally, every time i change from development to shipping i also have these odd differences, usually small visual things, but sometimes game breaking things.
I recommend that you resolve them; the development build is generally accepted by steam (i submitted my code for review while still in development build mode, and passed) it is not a good idea as the game will be a ton bigger, feature a development console, lack optimisations etc. On android, this could be a significant barrier to gaining players, as your game will eat more battery and take more space.
When it comes to consoles, and passing ‘cert’, they simply don’t accept debug/dev builds at all (for more information see: GDC Vault - Your Indie Game on Console: A Practical Guide to Porting), generally, and expect that all optimisations be turned on. This is a battle for a very different day.
Hope this helps!