iPhone Development Time

Unity Engine
,
1

Hello,

I am looking for a very rough estimate to give to my supervisor. If someone already had a relatively simple puzzle game developed in Unity (something on the order of a match-3 game like Bejeweled), approximately how long would it take to port to Unity iPhone and have it function on a device? The source code is in Unity JS, but could easily be ported to C#.

I am hoping someone that already has done this can give me some feedback.

Thanks!

2

Between ~4 days and ~3 months, depending on the code base.

3

I don’t think it depends so much on the amount of code as it does how well the code is written. If strict typing is used in Unity, the code will just work in Unity iPhone. The biggest hurdle will be to get satisfactory input on the iPhone. I think it would be very possible for someone with a bit of Unity iPhone experience to port a simple game in a few hours. I think it would take far more time to figure out Apple’s certificates and profiles for the first time - Unity makes the rest pretty simple.

4

As the port also includes optimization it can easily take significantly longer if the original game was not developped with such a significantly capped device in mind.

If it is just slightly like match 3, its for example near granted that the different gems are distinct objects and bang, you will have to rewrite it from ground up to reduce the draw calls

5

Not necessarily…remember that Unity iPhone 1.1 has been announced to have automatic batching, so as long as the objects have the same material, it’s possible that no such rewrite would be needed.

–Eric

6

My main concern would be whether your graphics are properly proportioned/scaled for the 480x320 display. Depending on the density of your icons, they may be too small, and what was easy to “click” is frustrating to try and “tap”. Porting the code would be trivial though, if it was well written to begin with I can’t imagine it taking more than a day or two to get up and running.

I bet your draw calls will be high, but maintaining a silky smooth framerate may not even matter since its a match 3 game.