What devices and plugins should I buy to produce and test mobile games?

News & General Discussion
1

Hey,

I was thinking lately what devices and plugins from Assets store should I buy to produce mobile games ( especially 2D) for Goolge play and App store.

Many devices has different screen resolution. I was reading about it a bit and I know I have to pay attention not to resolution like 2208 x 1242 etc. but aspect ratio, right?
I visited http://stats.unity3d.com/mobile/display.html and popular aspects ratio are:

16:9
5:3
16:10
4:3
3:2 (I got Galaxy Fame for this )

And what exactly devices I need for this. This is my list:

Apple devices for App Store
16:9 - iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus or iPhone 5
4:3 - iPad Air 2

Google Play (devices with Android):
16:9 - Samsung Galaxy S6
4:3 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 or Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

I don’t know what should I choose for 16:10 and 5:3, .

I want to work on my master PC but I know I need computer with OS X operating system to publishing in App Store.
I need Mac only for this so I was thinking about Mac Mini ( Core i5, 500GB, 4GB RAM or i5 1TB 8GB RAM)

I was thinking also about useful plugins from Asset Store.

  1. Ultimate mobile https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/20152 because there are plugins fro facebbok, twitter, admob, in-app purchase

  2. Liquid Physics 2D https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/23907 because it could be cool to use liquid in some of my projects.

Do you have some other useful and “must have” plugins for this?

What do you think about it? What devices and plugins do you choose?

Thanks.

2

You don’t need devices from each aspect ratio category as you can mimic em in editor. You should however get something that equals the lowest device you want to support and some other device from mid-high performance range since memory and performance issues are more common problems.

1 Like
3

Thanks. I thinking about it because maybe I’ll have a chance to get grants for open new start-up and I have to buy devices and software for this money. I have to prepare the list what I want to buy. I can’t buy any new stuff after that.

4

In general, I would take your budget and target platforms and tend to focus more on the low end of what you are targeting. I would only buy 1 high end device per platform so you are aware how to design for both small and qhd displays (the most useful for the high end to me was the highest pixel density the UI can get really tiny if you aren’t aware). The low end obviously depends on what type of game your making but it should be clear from the outset what devices you want to target. Focusing on the low end allows the following.

  1. Your budget goes further with the low end allowing for you to get multiple cheap devices instead of one expensive device to account for other differences that crop up on android/ios (x86 devices, 64 bit devices, tablet/phone design differences, gpu differences, etc)
  2. The low end is always going to be the biggest challenge and should be your main test device. If it runs well on the low end device it will also run well on the better device. Not the other way around.
  3. To stretch your budget test devices don’t need to be in the condition that you would need for your personal phone. If it has some scratches or other imperfections it’s perfectly suited for testing and will be less costly on ebay.
1 Like