Developing iPhone games: But Stuck at the Starting Gate!

Unity Engine
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1

Hi Unity Team.

I am new to Unity but having committed to using Unity to develop games I purchased the Pro package and the iPhone Advanced package. Although in general I am incredibly happy with Unity, I am having some trouble getting out of the gate when it comes to the iPhone/iTouch. Note: I have finished the process of becoming an official Apple Developer and I am trying to take my first steps in simply testing Unity programs already created.

First thing though. In the Unity instructions for getting up and running as a Developer I followed the instructions reading many pages of Apple Dev Program Portal notes and going through step by step being quite meticulous. However, almost done with the process and I had problems and then going back realized there is a simple LAUNCH ASSISTANT on the first page making this far easier to finishing getting started as a Developer through iPhone’s site. I throughly recommend it.

Second thing. There is a discrepancy between Apple standards and what Unity recommends. In the Unity Remote pages it says to add a .* (that’s a dot followed by an asterisk) in the App ID. However Apple states clearly that certain characters like the asterisk are unacceptable and won’t let me name anything with this appended. Meanwhile the Unity notes say, “If you don’t have an AppID with a trailing asterisk you will HAVE to create one”, in reference to getting the Unity Remote working.

Therefore I cannot follow the instructions to the letter, unless I’m missing something, which is entirely possible.

Third. Having finished setting up my developer information and installing my certificates as well as running the Unity Remote App to my iTouch I simply get a screen saying it is searching for “Web services” and “Make sure you are connected to Wifi and Unity is running”.

I have gone through the trouble-shooting. My wifi is up. My firewall is down. I have tried to open about every safety portal on my system. On my iTouch I have tried to enter the name of my system to see if it finds it, but it’s a no-go. As an example, I am running Unity iPhone with the game TunnelRunner, and I have no clue what to do next. I don’t know if I’m supposed to do a build and run on TunnelRunner to get it to the iTouch, and assume so but there is no clear instructions I’ve found thus far which is surprising in that I have found an incredibly wealth of knowledge at Unity resources. Likely I am missing it.

So I’m wondering first if there is a step by step tutorial for testing a game to the iTouch/iPhone, and second can anyone help me resolve this problem with the remote and take my next steps because clearly it is not even seeing my system and is not ready to receive a signal.

help! and Happy Holidays!

Daev Finn
Boulder, Colorado

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Hey Daev,
I just went through a similar process. Here is the thread: http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=40094

Particularly there are a couple links in there to some step by step tutorials that may help.

Peace,
dingo

3

Dingo,

Thanks so much for this, I feel that this all seems like it should be simple and for some reason has been left vague, it reminds me of how Microsoft gurus generally are about doing anything Windows related, vague and overly-complicated. Not my idea of Apple or Unity3d, so I feel that there is simply a lapse in documentation due to this being a new and evolving area.

I will look at this and hope to clear up my problems soonish… gulp. Fingers-crossed… now if my infant son stays asleep long enough to let me digest all this.

I’ll let you know how it goes and thanks for seeing my post! Happy new year!

-Daev

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I read through the first set of notes by Will, and they are great. After reading them I realized an important error. When launching the tutorial apps I was taking for granted it was launching Unity iPhone which it was not.

I seem to remember the files being smart enough to launch the right utility but I’ll assume otherwise from here out.

The notes though are great and I am following them for the next steps in developing for iPhone and will refer back to them if I have issues or need to setup more AppIDs.

So here is the Workflow for anyone in a similar boat that just needs a quick check list and not twenty pages.

  1. Make sure airport is on and active

  2. Make sure firewall is down

  3. Launch your Unity iPhone utility running your program (or one of the tutorials)

  4. Run UnityRemtoe.xcodeproj which launches Xcode.

  5. in xcode make sure to go to the menu
    Project > Set Active Target “Unity Remote” > Properties
    Set your Identifier: com.businessname.UnityRemote

  6. Run a clean up if you’ve done this already with no success:
    Build > Clean All Targets

  7. Make sure your iPhone/iTouch is connected and that it is looking for the right device and not set to Simulator in the top left next to Build Go. I’m using Device 3.0 (Base SDK)

  8. in Xcode hit Build Go

  9. Your iPhone/iTouch launches UnityRemote and it should see your computer, you choose the name and it will say it’s waiting for you to hit PLAY on the game in Unity iPhone.

  10. Hit the play button (lower left of Unity iPhone on your development computer) and it will Play on your main monitor and on the iPhone/iTouch.

It seems solidly working for me now and I’m moving on and hope that my delay and cookbook shorthand notes can benefit someone else.

-thanks

Daev