Building for Windows Phone 8.1 from Windows 7 Pro x64

Unity Engine
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1

Ah! Greetings, Command!

Anyway, Terran references aside - It seems like I’ve got a software compatibility issue at hand. I’m trying to compile Jason Fox’s homebrew VR scene (found here: http://jasongfox.com/getting-started-with-vr-for-windows-phone/) to use on my Lumia 735, but for some reason the ‘Build’ and ‘Build and Run’ buttons are grayed out. I scoured the internet for solutions and found a few, but none of them seem to apply in my case.

I’m starting to suspect that this has to do with my running a Windows 7 Pro while trying to compile to 8. Although I’m skeptical because that would imply that no one who has bought their computer more than a couple years ago would be able to write apps for WP8 without an upgrade.

Other options - writing to iOS, writing to Android, Linux, PC Standalone, Even blackberry Do offer a Build button.

Did any of you guys ever face this dilemma? If anyone has a word of advice that might point me in the right direction, I would love to hear it.

Many thanks,
0l0id

2

…by the way, if it’s of any consequence, I do have Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2013 Community edition installed, and I tried to do this in both UNity 5.0 and 4.6…

0l0id

3

This is not really a Unity question - try asking here - Microsoft Q&A | Microsoft Learn, but I am fairly sure, that you need Windows 8 or higher to develop Windows Phone 8.1

4

Doesn’t Unity give you an error (or at least a warning) that you need Windows 8?

5

It is mentioned here and there on Microsoft pages that the windows 8 / 8.1 sdk requires windows 8 to function properly, for example here: Getting started with developing for Windows Phone 8 | Microsoft Learn

I tried to run an unity windows phone project that I build on a win10 computer on win7 VS2013 and I ran into an error, I don’t remember the exact issue but I think it was something related to loading the SDK.

You could do the following:

  • Wait for windows 10 to come out (on the 29th of July). Your windows licence should be eligible for a free upgrade to windows 10.
  • Get in the “Windows Insider” program to install an early build of windows 10 right away
  • Set up a virtual machine with vmware or something similar and develop inside the virtual environment. (Everything is a bit slower, but it works, I’ve tried it)