Hi,
I’m new to Unity so this will seem like a REALLY Stupid Question. Say I was a programmer, and purchased an android or iOS dev license. Do I have to buy the Unity whochamajigger mobile dev thing (I repeat: I’m new) in order to make games on that platform?
Thank You
Unity Free/Indie allows you to generate for Mac OSX/Windows executables(downloads) and Webplayer-plugin (embedded in a website/webpage).
If you want to publish on a mobile platform, you need to buy minimum the BASIC licens for the platform wanted.
If you both need iOS and Android, then you need both licenses. The PRO liceses for the mobile platforms can ONLY be used with a PRO editon of Unity. So PRO is rather expensive for “testing” and “private development” for a start.
Apple/iOS
If you want to build for Mac/iOS, you will need Mac hardware (Apple’s developer licens demands that the actual iOS code is compiled and build upon Mac hardware.) The Mac you’ll need is a MacOSX compatible machine running at least Snow Leopard (10.6.x) - which is around Intel Core2 Duo or better.
Apart from this Apple requires you to signup as an Apple Developer. This costs 99$ minimum.
So to get started with iOS you will need minimum $99 for Apple, $400 for Unity iOS Basic and then a Mac running Mac OSX 10.6.x (check Unity requirements for that). After becomming registrated as a developer at Apple, you can download Xcode which is Apple official free developer toolkit (IDE) and THIS piece of software is the thing that compiles your Unity output into iOS afterwards.
For more info look here:
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/iphone-GettingStarted.html
Android
If you want to use Android instead, you still need the Unity Android Basic licens $400, but as Android is OpenSource, you just need an IDE like Eclipse. Android programs are build with JAVA.
If you mean do you have to buy the Unity iOS license or Unity Android license in order to make Unity games for those platforms, then yes.