Prototyping iPhone with Web Build?

Unity Engine
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1

I know very little about Unity iPhone development, though I have developed an iPhone application using a different platform. How feasible is it to prototype an application idea for Unity iPhone using the Web player at 320x480?

Obviously performance is going to be entirely different on a device, but my application is basically just 2d textures and GUI calls. Is that sort of code portable between Unity and Unity iPhone?

2

Anyone?

3

these “just” are basically just two of the worst things of all unless you do it all through batchable / single surface systems with your own code or sprite manager 2 + EZ GUI

4

I was developing my game on the Web build at 320 x 480 until I felt confident enough in Unity to buy the iPhone version. There is a massive performance difference, and you need to be prepared for different control methods, but otherwise it was quite easy to move over.

5

The standard resolution is 640x960 now, although you still need to keep 320x480 in mind. There’s no particular reason to use a web player; you might as well use a standalone. The code itself will run, ignoring already-mentioned things like performance and input.

–Eric

6

Worked fine for me, so far. It took me about 3 days to get from a completed game on Windows 2.6 to a complete game running on my iPad, and that includes getting to grips with my Unity 3.0, my iMac, my iPad, Apple SDK, XCode, developer licenses and all the others things I’d never used before.

7

What is your hourly price? :smile:

8

Is this necessary for any texture/menu driven application, or more geared toward high performance applications with lots of textures? It seems strange to me that Unity iPhone would not have native support for such fundamental things as drawing textures and creating a GUI.

9

it has the support
it just means 1 drawcall and with 20 - 80 drawcalls at hand (vs 1000+ on desktop) you will realize pretty fast that you are exactly on the wrong end of the stick in this case :wink:

10

There’s a new GUI system apparently coming in a later version of Unity, which I suspect will be more appropriate for iPhone usage (as well as being just plain nicer, I gather). Right now you sort of have to roll your own, or get a third-party utility.

–Eric

11

Thanks a ton for the info guys, I really appreciate it. :smile: