Windows-based dev question

Unity Engine
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1

Hello,

I’ve been thinking about getting Unity3d for iPhone development, but I a have a question:

If I develop an iPhone game inside windows, will it compile an Xcode app or do I have to have unity3d installed on a Mac?

In case I do need a Unity3D copy on a Mac, do I have to buy two licenses for that (one for windows and one for mac?)

Thank you very much!

2

Unity iPhone is a separate license anyway, and yes, it only runs on a Mac.

–Eric

3

Thanks for replying. I’m still confused, though:

Ok, I got that from the “Store” page

Right, but if I buy a license, can I use it on both Windows/Mac? Or should I buy a license for Mac and another one for Windows?

And can I develop the iPhone game on Windows, then take it to Mac and compile it?

Again, thanks a lot!

4

When you buy Unity, you’re buying a license, not a platform, so you can run it on Windows or a Mac as you see fit. Unity iPhone is an additional license, and it only runs on a Mac at this time. Unity: $200 ($1500 for Pro): runs on Mac + Windows. Unity iPhone: the cost of Unity, plus $400 ($1500 for Advanced), runs on Mac.

Sort of, but you can’t use any of the iPhone features or do any testing on the iPhone, so it’s of limited use at best.

–Eric

5

Actually I believe you can’t, because you won’t be able to open a Unity 2.5 project with Unity iPhone, and 2.5 is your only option on Windows. Or are 2.5/2.1 projects compatible?

6

I suppose you could copy over your assets folder, but that’s somewhat clumsey and some important things could be lost in the transfer, such as physics timing and other project-specific settings.

Or are packages exported from one compatible with the other? I haven’t tried that yet.

7

Yeah, they are for the most part, unless you’re using 2.5-specific features of course. But you can open a 2.5 project in 2.1, which (as you know) isn’t always the case between Unity versions.

–Eric

8

the major problems are:

  1. There is a significant feature delta between iphone and regular unity. There are things like render texture and terrain on the desktop only, while occlusion culling (a MUST USE for all FPS and 3rd person type of games more or less) is only present on the iphone

  2. the graphics power and behavior differs quite between the iphone and the pc.
    You have no shaders, just combiners and various things that are little to no problem on the pc will make your game a diashow instantly on the iphone.

  3. You can’t use any of the input, nor can you use the remote to test the things, nor do you have the graphics emulation to even have an idea how it will look

  4. if you don’t have a mac, you will never release an iphone game

If you want to create a game that you hopefully get many users for, you would better focus on webgames and platforms like Facebook for example

9

However,

  1. If you know you’re developing for iPhone, you simply won’t use render to texture, terrains, etc. And if yours is not an FPS or other similar type, you don’t need to use occlusion culling.

  2. The graphics power differs just as much using your Mac to work on an iPhone game. And again, if you know you’re developing an iPhone game, simply don’t use unsupported shaders. In fact, I don’t even turn on iPhone emulation anymore (it isn’t set by default for me) and I’ve had zero problems.

  3. Actually, you can use some of the input. The mouse clicking routines work on iPhone. So if touching a single point on the screen is all your game needs, you can do that.

  4. True.

So given the above, there is a somewhat narrow class of games you could write that would allow you to develop largely on PC (a non-FPS with only single touch and no tilt). But of course, you’ll still need a Mac to publish and test with. I’d recommend using a Mac for main development, but if you have a Windows laptop for travel or something and want to work on the road, if you fit the limitations above, you should be able to get some work done.