I’ve been using Unity (basic) for a few months now and finally starting to make a bit of progress. I come from a long background in an art position but never done any programming up until a little while back. I’m beginning to get a few little game prototypes together and now I want to move on to actually testing them on a mobile device, which is what I want to build for eventually.
My question is really which one is quicker and easier for iterative testing (if indeed there is much of a difference). It will be quite some time before I think I’ll be at a level where I’ve got a finished game ready to submit, so for now, it’s purely for me as a hobbyist.
The reason I ask is that from doing a bit of research, it seems that for Android, I can just build a .apk file, and stick it on an Android device, where as with iOS, you gotta go through the whole XCode signing/certificate thing right?
In terms of having the right equipment, that’s another reason why I’m asking. I use a Mac anyway so that’s not a problem, but I don’t have an Android device or an ADC membership, so I’ll need to buy one or the other.
Also, if there are any other things to note about compatibility on either platform, I’d love to hear that too.
The certificate/provisioning profile stuff for iOS is a pain, but you only have to do it once (well, they do expire eventually, but regenerating them is pretty trivial). Once that’s out of the way, making a build to the device from Unity is just a matter of shift-command-B, double-click .xcodeproj icon, click run button. (Or just command-B after the first build.)
I’d go for iOS since you already have a mac. I have both basic iOS and android licenses and I develop for android with the plans to port it to iOS when it’s finished. For android the equipment was cheap, a 4g phone and kindle fire for testing.
But honestly the iOS store is probably worth going for since you have a mac and need to buy a testing device. At least if you use an older iOS device for testing, you’ll know it works on newer devices, where android is so fragmented and people can simply share your apk amongst their friends. There was a build limit on android of 50mg without using external data, but I read it was lifted several months ago, not sure if it still affects anything.