Hi everyone, I have been building a game in unity for 2 years now using C# and it is now ready for release. But before I can release I need to understand a few more things.
First off: When unity builds my .APK does it auto generate an app manifest needed for the google play store, or does it grab the manifest from the Android Studio project?
Secondly: Because my game is built and complied entirely in unity, do I need to build it again from the Android Studio project? I can push my games, unity .APK to my phone and it works as intended without being built from Android Studio.
Thirdly: I do not see the need to even have Android Studio when building a game with unity. Could anyone clarify the connection between the two and the dependencies. As far as I can tell I’ve only needed it for the SDK manager?!?
Fourthly: I would like to thank anyone who could offer me any answers to these questions as I’m eager to finally get past this and get my game out into the world! =)
You don’t need to generate the Android Studio project, and unless you have a specific reason to use it, you should just let Unity do the build. Android SDK (and its dependencies) is enough, no need to have Studio if you don’t plan to use it.
Perfect, that’s what I thought! Apparently I read a few wrong articles when I did my startup 2 years ago haha. It all makes sense now. A major tip off has been the Unity Player settings where you can set these values anyways.
Unity will create a manifest for your game: It has a project template already prepared (under the Unity installation folder, somewhere in a folder called AndroidPlayer):
As you can see, it has a few things in there, including a manifest. This is the default manifest that is used, unless you supply your own custom one.
You don’t need to build your project from Android Studio (or Eclipse). Unity provides 2 options for building your game for Android: APK or “Google Android Project”. The first will generate an .APK that you can install / upload to Google play. The second one will generate a project template that you can open in your IDE and further edit or customize (only the native parts, since Unity’s assets and the C# code was already built).
You don’t have to get Android Studio. You only need the Android SDK (which Android Studio also uses to build for Android). Both apps (Android Studio and Unity) use the Android SDK to perform the build process for Android.
