Hi,
I’ve been playing about with unity for a few months now and was hoping to get a bit of advice.
I’m a hobbiest (at best 
) when it comes to current game engines but have made shockwave games and developed with a Net Yaroze in the past. I’ve been thinking of buying the basic addons for a while but as it was made free yesterday I’ve got a bit of spare cash.
I currently have an xperia arc s running gingerbread and a galaxy tab 2 10.1 running ICS. So my question is what sort of devices should I be testing with if I ever make something good enough for release. Would those devices and an emulator be enough or should I be looking at a broader spectrum. I’ll probably be getting a new jellybean phone soon (xperia z, samsung s4 ,htc one or possibly archos 53) unless there is something better for me to get.
I realise this might seem like I’m jumping the gun as I have no worthwhile game to test but I’m just looking at the options now and finding out how the veteran unity developers (without endless cash and time for testing) handle the testing phase of a product.
Thanks.
I would say, if you are intending your main audience to the US, then program for phones that are two years old. This is due to the contract system that a large amount of people in the US use. Also, many people that do the pre-paid model on devices tend to wait at least a year, generally 2 years, and some times even longer as they want to justify the purchase of the device.
That’s if you are wanting the largest likely to buy audience. I haven’t actually sold anything myself, but I do know a fair amount of people in the industry and this seems to be what they are testing on. One of the local game companies test on mid/low range Huawei devices even. Honestly though, it’s all up to what market you want to target. If you are wanting one of the highest quality games, then target high end devices, if you want a simple game that pretty much any system can play, test on older devices. Personally, I know enough people with low/mid end devices that I can test with their devices. (I have a galaxy s4, so I have no need to know someone with highend :P)
Also, if you really “need” to test it, I’m sure plenty of people will be willing to test on their devices on the forums here. The community is great, and can be a great asset in many situations.
Thanks for the reply.
Sounds like a good idea. My arc s is about 18 months old (ish) and I won’t be releasing anything any time soon so hopefully it should be suitable for testing performance.
Hopefully I’ll be able to find some time and work on some projects and get them on here which I’m sure will help me.
With so many android devices with different specs and operating systems I was just a bit lost on the best way to test. If I build something in unity for a low end phone running gingerbread is it likely to work on an s4 running jelly bean without any compatibility problems etc?
I’m probably just over thinking these things which I’ve got a habit of doing. Just thought as I might get something now which may help in the future when developing games. Think I might just use my arc s as a development device and get myself something shiny and new for day to day use and I’ll cross the best way to test my game bridge when I get to it.
Thanks for the advice.
Well, I have one thing on the android marketplace, and google tells me the live wallpaper is compatible with over 2000 different devices. (2186 to be exact) Obviously there is no way that I can test for all 2000+ devices. So all you can do is a decent sample size. Get a few from the low end, a few from the mid, and a few from the high end.
Some devices just won’t work like expected. While yes, it is true that anything newer then the low end devices “should” work doesn’t mean it “will” work. The thing is though, it’s just not viable to test 2000+ devices for every iteration of the game, same as you can’t check it on every video card and processor matchup on PC. You can only do your best and hope it’s good enough for the majority. If there are some issues, people will let you know. Then you can focus on them.