Using Unity Basic, intend to publish for android

Unity Engine
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Title says it all; I’ve planned an android game, I’m beginning development, and based on my previous experience with Unity, I want to use it to make the game. However, I’m not in a financial position to spend 3000 dollars just so I can start developing. Therefore, I’m planning on using Unity Basic to make the game, and once it’s in a near-final state, spend all of my remaining money to buy the full thing and publish.

So can anyone give me advice regarding what to expect in terms of development pitfalls? Since I’m apparently not even allowed to debug the game on a phone, and since I won’t have access to accelerometer/touch inputs, I realize that I’ll be working blind.

My plan is to program the game using the mouse as my ‘touch’ and possibly a joystick or the arrow keys as my ‘tilt’. As for performance, my only real option seems to be that I try and be as economical as possible in my use of graphics, and just cross my fingers when I try to run the thing for the first time on a phone.

If, for example, anyone knows something about certain game/graphical features I should stay away from for compatibility reasons, I’d appreciate that kind of info.

While I’m at it, I feel like a rant is appropriate: This strikes me as a backward way of releasing a game development tool that’s supposed to be ‘little guy’ friendly. I realize that 3000 dollars isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things, but for small, pocket-funded development teams, that’s a really steep cost to pay at the beginning of the development process, as opposed to the end, when you know you’ve already got a product that’s worth something.
If you look at other game dev tools, like Shiva 3D, you’ll see that they allow developers to do everything with their free version, except for actually publishing (games authored by the free IDE have banners running across the screen saying that it’s a non-commercial development version). That way, you can perfect the game experience on the actual device, and yet the company still makes a sale for every published release.
I realize that the android version of Unity isn’t fully developed yet, but based on how Unity iPhone works, I’m guessing it won’t be very different. If Shiva were less buggy and had better support, I’d switch… I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it as they improve the product.

Anyway, the rant isn’t the purpose of this post, I’m more interested in constructive advice. Thanks!

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An Android basic license will be out in the future, comparable to the iOS basic. If you don’t want to drop $3K, just wait for it.

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Most of the latest Android devices use OpenGL ES 2.0

Detailed Specs are here: http://www.opengl.org/documentation/specs/version2.0/glspec20.pdf

Wiki has a decent overview: OpenGL ES - Wikipedia

If you want to be backwards compatible, you can release your app assuming the phone uses OpenGL ES 1.x

Device specs very greatly in the Android market, compared to the Apple Market anyway. As a generally rule of thumb, I try to keep character models at 2,000 polys or less. Others may have more detailed input though.

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Android is unhappily not iOS, just cause there are new devices with OGL ES 2.0 that does not mean that there aren’t many new devices that are trash and years behind current state.

Half the devices released are not even ARMV7 (ie unity compatible)

Its true only if we say “most of the latest android devices costing $500+ without contract” …
those costing less without contract can often not even compete with an iphone 3g

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I’ve tried to keep working on the game in this manner, and it’s just going to be a nightmare. Scripting controls is the big issue: since the most important thing in making a good game is having good controls, and that’s exactly what I can’t do with Unity basic, I’m simply not going to get anywhere without dropping 3k.

So just as I’m grinding my teeth, cursing this idiotic pricing system, and starting over from scratch in Shiva 3D, I saw this:

I’m wondering if there’s ever been any talk about doing things that way-- meaning I develop in Unity basic, but I use an android phone as a controller. I could test my game’s controls and also not spend thousands of dollars. Problem is, the guy in that link clearly doesn’t seem interested in helping anyone achieve this; he’s just showing off.

So is there any way to get Unity basic to recognize an android phone as a controller and 100% stand-in for actually running the game on a phone? Even as I’m writing this and thinking about it, I realize it’s highly unlikely that anyone’s done this, so I’m still probably saying goodbye to Unity.