iPhone or iPodTouch as a user interface device

Unity Engine
,
1

Is it possible to use the iPhone as a user interface device to a Unity application running on a computer? For example, have buttons on the iPhone that “do things” in the remote game?

2

yeah, there are already apps like that. Like for example the keynote app update they showd on macworld for which one can download an iphone app to use it as remote. Then there´s also the unity remote app of course which sends the input update over and receives a lowres version of the game screen all the time. So yeah, quite doable.

3

Using the iphone this way requires either the iPhone SDK or Unity iPhone Advanced and some knowledge in socket programming as they base on pure WiFi usage.
you can not use them as USB device, if that was your plan.

4

Sorry, I should have more precise. I meant, can one use the network support within Unity itself to establish connection between a computer running a Unity game and the iPhone running a iPhone/Unity application. In much the same way as one makes networked Unity games. Starting to read up on this now but would like a heads up if can definitely be done, or not.

5

So, further to the above, I created a simple server/client style network game … worked fine on one computer with two apps, as well on on two computers. The client game just has controls that moved the camera around in the server.

So I built the client for the iPhone, no errors during the build relating to unsupported features but the game just dies on the iPodTouch while the Unity spash screen is on. When running from xcode I get a BGD interrupted message.

Should the
Network.Connect();
networkView.RPC()
all work on the iPhone?

6

Hello,
multiplayer networking currently is not supported by Unity iPhone. Currently you can use .Net sockets (requires Unity iPhone Advanced) and WWW class to communicate via network.

7

Hi,

I have been trying to get a handle on what kind of networking support Unity for iPhone contains at the moment, and the status seems to be “none, except for NET sockets”. Correct?

I basically want to do the same thing as the OP. We have a 80% finished Unity Mac/PC game in dev, where we are considering using an iPhone as a gameplay element. NET networking is viable but quite complex. Is Unity-specific networking on the radar for the iPhone suite, and is there a timeframe?

Thanks in advance,
Dan

8

I was able to get the “Network Cursor” example from the wiki working without much trouble. That’s probably a good starting point for what you want to do.

9

It was mentioned to be in work and comming to Unity iPhone Advanced, but there hasn’t been a timeframe or target version mentioned for this to happen