As a hobbyist I’ve been interested in Unity for some time but I find myself now wondering if I could apply Unity to my business (or rather contract with an expert). I’m an old VB.Net guy working in a .Net shop doing ASP.Net and winform development.
A client has expressed interest in what I’ll call a “dynamic quiz engine” for iPad. This is very industry specific content that I can wrap up in xml or any other type of data store that will be delivered via web service to the device. The engine will present and collect some information based on the content of the xml file. The input control types will be radio buttons (mutually exclusive) and free form text fields, but could eventually include dropdown lists and checkboxes (non mutually exclusive). At the end of the session, all of the collected data will be sent back to another web service for parsing on the server. At no time is data saved on the device itself (besides in-memory session). It really is that simple.
My 1st thought was to spec it out and contract with an Apple developer, but then I run the risk of another client wanting it for Android, web, Microsoft tablet… and I don’t want to maintain different versions with different developers.
It wouldn’t have to be 3d, although some interface schnazziness will be required… like the page turn thing (I know… trendy, but client’s tastes are always EXCELLENT). As a matter of fact, using a 3d engine may even be overkill but the cross-platform abilities of Unity compel me to ask if this is feasible. If so, can a Unity team member point me to similar successful use cases that I can use to compel upper management that this would be a track to consider?
Does Unity have sufficient 2D GUI tools, text and data collection components to make this boring app?
Are the behaviors and appearance of those tools consistent across all platforms (I imagine this is why I’d need an expert… to catch all the quirky pre-compile gotchas).
Would my company need to purchase our own Unity license(s) to distribute the binaries created by our contracted Unity expert?
Would my company need an Apple developer license to sell the binaries created by our contracted Unity expert through the Apple store?
Is it “safe” to put mission critical business into Apple iDevice middleware at this time (all things considered)?
Before anyone suggests it, they’re convinced they want a native app, not a web app. I have no idea why (possibly because they want the schnazziness). They’d even get the Blackberries, the Palms, the Nokias with a nice web app but they’re convinced they want a native app… go figure.
Contact me through pm here or give general advice in this post.
So am I to assume this is not feasible? Granted, I’m not a Unity user, but from the feature set it appeared that some of the data collection could be pre-fabricated into re-usable controls instantiated on an “as-needed” basis. That along with the ability to consume standard web service calls would really be all that’s needed.
So what exactly is missing from the engine to make apps that push boring business data around? Is it the text? GUI? Something else?
That’s a dumb assumption, the demos and feature set show that it is an easy task to accomplish. Nothing is missing from the engine to do any of that, but if you want to do it in a particular way, you would have to write your own plugins.
You asked about a “Unity Team Member”, but posted on the weekend. I’m sure they would have answered if they noticed this. You could try sales@unity3d.com for more information that isn’t covered in the site as well as use the demo. It’s an absurdly simple task and using one engine would make it easier, but is not necessary as the libraries to handle the interaction could be written for many platforms. For example, a moderately skilled programmer could make this so it uses an XNA client on the 360, a Flash based one for web, Unity for Mac, Unreal for PC, the project is just about decent data modeling.
Regarding question #4, that is an Apple question, isn’t it? If you wanted to sell them, you would need a license from Apple. If you wanted your contractor to sell them, then it would be the contractor selling them, not you and that would be reflected on the store.
For question #5, that is dependent on the definition of “safe” and the skills of the programmers.
:lol: LOL… You’re preaching to the choir. I have proclaimed this from day 1, but they want a native app. I even went as far as suggesting an app that does nothing but launch safari or maybe a shell of safari (if the dev tools allow it) on a form that essentially loads a web page. I could do a fancy jQueried/javascripted html web app using whatever server side framework that would be 95% of the experience they want, but right now… iPad and iPod are hot, trendy, marketable items.
…as far as my “dumb assumption”: Without the benefit of seriously using the IDE (which I admit to), I can only assume about details.
Let’s now just consider text. Text needs to be formatted (underline, super/sub script, bold, paragraphs), words need to wrap around in a given area, letters need to kern and lead properly. These aren’t trivial things so if Unity does not offer a way to handle text streaming and formatting “out-of-the-box”, I’d like to hear about a clever developer who has come up with his/her own method of doing this (maybe with an html renderer or other markup). This is why I’m posting in the forum… to hear what experts think about the feasibility of this project.
Feasibility != Possibility. Feasibility is a spectrum of the relative ease that something can be accomplished given what is available right now.