Using Unity for an online iOS shooter?

Unity Engine
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1

Hello all, this is my first post so if this type of thing has been asked before, my apologies. A link to a former topic would be quite helpful.

I’m a programmer and I have a client that wants a 2D/2.5D shooter for the iPhone (something like this).

There are 3 major features we want in this game

  1. Vehicle customization. Players should be able to mix and match wings and plane bodies and things.
  2. Online multiplayer. 2-8 players in a dogfight.
  3. iPhone and PC/Mac versions.

The game isn’t too graphically intensive. The levels are mostly outdoors and fairly sparse. Mostly hills and some small buildings. For the online portion, there should only be around 8 players and 15-20 objects that need to be synched across the server.

I’ve been looking at the site for a couple of days and seeing what the engine can do, and the impression I get is very good. It sounds like Unity has all the features I need, but I was hoping I could get some input from developers who have done (or tried) similar things with Unity and see what their experience was.

We originally started this project with Torque, but there is no real iOS version of the 3D engine. T2D has some performance issues on iOS and not much in the way of real-time networking.

What do you guys think? Is this project feasible?
What kind of performance can I expect on iOS devices (especially older ones)?
How does Unity handle networking(master server, p2p, etc…)?
Any “gotchas” that would cause any major headaches?
How would licensing work for iOS and PC/Mac versions (it looked like 2 separate products but I wasn’t sure)?

If this is not the appropriate forum, again I apologize, let me know where it should go and I’ll post there instead.

2

There is no problem with doing this :slight_smile:

But I would consider not mixing mobile and desktop platforms in MP as one of the two sides is in a worse standing when doing so, as either the input is “sub optimal”, the rendering speed, the overview or many more things. I say “would consider” cause you definitely should do indepth testing first, to be sure on the experience and problems - as you can develop them in one go (iOS optimally as getting it over to desktop is much faster and easier) and later seperate the sessions for the platforms if needed :slight_smile:

3

Certainly. Balance is definitely an issue between platforms, but that’s a design issue. What I really wanted to know was if the technology would be suitable, which it sounds like it is, so thanks.

Do you happen to know of any similar games on the market?

4

Depends on which of the points is relevant.

For the whole thing or configurability I don’t think so as such a game is no small thing to pull off and even less to make it interesting later on instead of having the configurability only as a useless and time wasting gimmick (thats unhappily what all games that offered it so far did in the end)