Application.OpenURL working for iPhone?

Unity Engine
,
1

I’ve got a button with this:

Application.OpenURL("http://www.ezone.com");

Works fine in authoring, but not on the iPhone. Is it supported?

2

The iPhone SDk certainly supports it, so maybe file a bug.

3

@ezone, did you file a bug on this one?

The availability of this function is really quite heavy needed, since people might want to develop a FREE limited version of the software and a commercial version.
And then we would of course like to be able to let the user navigate from the free app to the appstore page where customer can find the commercial version.

So please is this supported? And if not can this be made high priority ?

Thanks,

4

We’ve received the bug and it’s in the queue to be added in a future update.

5

Just so you’ll know Apple reject any apps that directs users to a “full” version of the game. They do allow free “lite” versions … but it cannot direct users to a full version or mention anywhere in the app about mission features.

But you can direct users to your webpage… just be careful of the wording you use.

6

Hmm, “Fuzzle Lite” clearly advertises its full version in-game…

7

Yeah, in fact, I’ve seen one which, upon completing the “lite” game, you tap the screen and it automatically opens the App store (not a webpage, the actual App store) and automatically goes to the full version’s listing. Pretty spiffy! I’d really like that functionality.

8
9

Doesn’t Bliball also redirect you once your lite version is done ?

This is the best marketing strategy you can possibly think off when publishing a LITE game to advertise your FULL game.

So please can you tell me where it is mentioned that you can’t do this because Apple doesn’t allow it ?

Kind regards,
Bart

10

Obviously they do allow it–at least in some circumstances. I’d also like to see where this is documented.

11

You can’t be serious… opening a url doesn’t work on the iPhone!? This might just kill a project for me. Does any networking work from the Unity iPhone to the web? I am going to be seriously disappointed. This is make or break for one of my apps.

12

You can use the WWW class, which is far more common than using OpenURL, which you’d only need if you have a button which takes you to a web site or something, and using that would quit out of your app anyway.

–Eric

13

Thanks Eric - thats great news. My client is asking for a creation app where users can draw on screen and arrange images. Then it needs to take a screenshot and upload to a webpage/database with some user input. I still would like to launch the Safari browser but that isn’t critical to the app.

Do you know everything about Unity Eric!? They should hire you buddy : )

14

Unfortunately that might be a bit problematic as ReadPixels doesn’t work on the iPhone (yet?).

–Eric

15

Do you know where is the official bug list is? I need to see what works right now and what doesn’t. This stuff makes me very nervous. Clients are asking for quotes on iPhone apps and its hard to tell what it does and doesn’t work. It also doesn’t help that it takes so long for Apple to get me the CSR and provision info I need to do any testing.

16

There’s no official public bug list, although there’ve been a couple of requests on the forums to open up the bug database. In the meantime, I’ve started a very sketchy list on http://www.technicat.com/games/unity.html for reference by my collaborators. There’s no reason something like that can’t be on the unify wiki, also.

17

There isn’t one; I just get my info from the forums here.

–Eric

18

Hi,

@technicat: Great page and overview.

i hope some of the not supported features will be implement asap in the next version. ^^

greetings
Latzi

19

Thanks! Now that someone’s looking at it, I better fill it out some more!

Se7en, re screenshots, this may be too kludgy a workaround for you, but you could rely on the Home+Power button screen capture and then have the user submit the image outside of the app, perhaps with a separate non-Unity app.

20

A couple things about that list: 7000 visible triangles isn’t a limitation, it’s a general recommendation. Some people have gone higher than that and still gotten good results. Also it’s only clamped to 30Hz by default; you can change that to 60 if you want (not that it’s necessarily a good idea). “No shaders” isn’t accurate; I think you mean “no pixel shaders” as you can write custom shaders just fine.

–Eric