Question

[Xaos]

So, I'm going to be making my fish harvesting game into an app this summer, as well as officially publishing it on the web and whatnot. I don't want to recode it in Objective-C and Java to publish on iOS and Android, it just seems silly. So I was thinking about using Unity engine to code it in C# and export it to iOS, Android, Windows app store, Web, etc. Unity has really great export options. The snag though is that I don't know if Unity really fits what I'm doing. It's basically a text game with GUIs. For the end result, I want it to have a picture GUI (Maybe of a dock or something) and you can choose to fish, in which an animation would pop up of a guy getting into the boat and going into the ocean, then you input a harvesting effort number and an animation plays of him fishing and then it displays the reuslts, and so forth, you kind of get the idea. Pictures and animations are the extent of the graphics, inputting numbers is basically all user control. Would it be good/possible to do something like this in Unity to take advantage of the export options? Or are there better engines with similiar export options out there that fit what i'm trying to do?

[a_bertrand]

I don't think Unity is the right way to go for such kind of game. Why not try to check those HTML/JS packer which create apps? Or try to check out http://xamarin.com/ ?

[Xaleph]

Wouldnt recommend Unity. Unity`s GUI options are terrible. I would search for alternatives or go html/js using webgl. Allthough, I doubt iphone supports webgl..

I know there`s a lot of cross-compatible platforms out there, specifically designed for apps. Cant recall any though.. sorry.

[Xaos]

Xamarin's price tag is just too much. Otherwise I would. Maybe the free version will suffice, actually -- I'll have to look more into the limited app size and what all that entails.

I'd also do HTML5, but I want to be able to put the game into the actual app store. I could make it so you download an app and it's just a redirect to the game basically, but people are mostly opposed to playing stuff like that. I also want the game to be able to be played without internet connection.


Have you guys heard of MoSync? http://www.mosync.com/sdk It allows the building of apps that can be run offline using either C/C++ or Javascript/HTML. Best of all, it looks free. Going to check into this some more too.

[hallsofvallhalla]

http://www.appmobi.com/ and a ton of other free options will allow you to publish to android and IOS from HTML5.

Unity free does allow multi platform publishing but also remember the free version is missing options. You might not need them...but you might. Double check.

Unity to me is a last resort. It triples your development time when talking about web games. Especially 2d. Do not get me wrong it is a great engine. I use it occasionally but that is only because all game engines are severely lacking in one place or another. In most cases they lack in all areas. Unity was smart enough to make everything just usable to make it ok.

[Xaos]

Xamarin defines a small app, which is in the free section, as " contain no more than 64k of compiled user code (IL), and which do not call out to native third party libraries" the third party libraries part is fine, I didn't plan on calling any anyway. But how much is 64k of compiled user code?

[SpiritWebb]

Unity is what I would recommend, as that is what we are using.

http://www.appmobi.com/ and a ton of other free options will allow you to publish to android and IOS from HTML5.

Unity free does allow multi platform publishing but also remember the free version is missing options. You might not need them...but you might. Double check.

Unity to me is a last resort. It triples your development time when talking about web games. Especially 2d. Do not get me wrong it is a great engine. I use it occasionally but that is only because all game engines are severely lacking in one place or another. In most cases they lack in all areas. Unity was smart enough to make everything just usable to make it ok.

2d is extremely quick and in one shot you can do 2d. The new version of Unity is a lot quicker, and especially if you go to the asset store and download the standard assets beta which is replacing the current standard assets. I would check it out.