I have been making an RPG for the iPhone and I wanted to release it in episodes that you purchase separately. I’ve never created an iPhone app so I’m not sure how some things work. I want to set it up so you have to complete the previous episodes to play each one, and I want the player to be able to transfer their party and items between episodes.
Would I be able to create a save file on the iPhone’s storage with one app that can be loaded by another app? To that end, what kind of file IO is possible on the iOS platforms?
You will annoy a lot of people if you make a number of separate apps…use in-app purchase for the episodes instead. (Which also happens to bypass the problem of save files entirely.)
My guess is that it would require me to have my own server handling the CC transactions and providing the files instead of it being handled by the app store, and that’s something I’d really like to avoid. It would obviously be preferable from a user standpoint though. I had planned on the episodes being a fairly substantial part of the whole, maybe 3 or 4 total.
Also, how you go about patching new files into the Unity app? Wouldn’t it have to be a complete replacement of the existing files?
Handling transactions no (how would Apple get their 30%? plus they wouldn’t expose their customers to random unknown internet sites for billing purposes), hosting files yes. Or you can use a service like Urban Airship which takes care of it. Probably the best thing is asset bundles if you have Pro, but things like basic map data and so on shouldn’t require that. I don’t know if it’s even possible to replace existing files.