I'm looking to develop an iPad game in Unity. I'm wondering if theres a way to test the app without using an iPad. I'm aware of a few different iOS simulators, most prominently iPadian, but wheneve. Want to make a 2D game but don't know where to start? This video should help point you in the right direction! Free Assets List: Sup. There are two ways you could test your games in iOS and trust me I have researched a lot and found these to be the best ways: Unity3d Build/Run to iOS Device (s) attached to XCode This sounds simple but there’re many different devices supported by iOS, many resolutions, iOS versions, etc.
I recently released the beta of my first mobile game, Juggl, for both Android an iOS. Not owning any Apple products besides an old iPod Nano, I found publishing to the App Store to be more difficult than I expected. It’s no wonder some indie devs neglect the App Store altogether to save themselves the headache of getting through Apple’s strict hardware requirements.
This is unfortunate, because they’re missing out on a lot of potential revenue. Even though Android has the largest market share globally at around 87%, iPhone users tend to have deeper pockets and play more games. Plus, if you’re living in Canada, the U.S., Australia, or the U.K., you probably have some friends with iPhones who will want to try out your game, and that’s as good a reason as any.
One of the benefits of working with a game engine like Unity3D is that you only have to code your game once. This is great for mobile games, as you will usually want to publish your game on both Google Play store and the App Store. However, don’t underestimate the additional work required to publish your mobile game on two stores at once. There’s a lot of red tape involved, and Apple has really tried their best to make it impossible to develop for iOS without buying their products.
If you’re in a similar situation as me, and you don’t feel like buying a Mac and iPhone just to publish your game on the App Store, hopefully I can save you some time with this blog post.
Step 1: Joining the Apple Developer Program
You will need:
- $132 CAD ($99 USD)
- A trustworthy (and trusting) friend with an iPhone
Joining Apple’s Developer Program is necessary if you want to deploy you app to the App Store. They also charge you a hefty $99 yearly fee for the privilege of being in their store. This may me a shock to you if you already paid Google’s one time developer fee of $50. But if you own a lot of Apple products, you can probably afford it. It’s no wonder that iOS is more popular in richer counties.
Once you’ve emotionally prepared to part with your hard-earned money, now comes the tricky part. As of February 27th of 2019, Apple now requires you to enable two-factor authentication to create a Developer account. This makes your account more secure, but it also means that you’ll have a hard time creating an account if you don’t own any Apple products. Even using a cloud service, or running macOS in a VM won’t work, because you’ll have to have access to the device’s unique UDID. Buying a used Mac or iPhone is risky as well, because you can only create a maximum of 3 new accounts on a single machine, which the original user may have done already. This is one of those rare problems that you can’t solve from the safe familiarity of your bedroom.
For this next part, you’re going to have to find a friend with an iPhone. If you don’t have access to a friend, a colleague or acquaintance will do in a pinch. Ask them to let you borrow their iPhone or Mac, and it shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes. All you have to do is sign into their device with your Apple ID, and enable two-factor authentication. Also, make sure to write down the login password for their phone. Apple will ask you for it later. Once you have this set up, you won’t have to borrow the phone again. Just make sure you set up two-factor authentication with your phone number and not your friend’s.
Ideally, you would test your build on a physical device before releasing to open beta. If you have long-term access to an iOS device, you’ll also want to write down the UDID of the friend’s device. However, the basic premise of this tutorial is assuming you don’t have access to an iOS device. As a compromise, you may want to make a second testing group that only includes people you know personally, so they can alert you to any major bugs.
*Note: Borrowing an iPhone is by no means a long-term solution. If you want to start a game development company, or plan to do long-term iOS development, you should probably invest in a Mac and an iPhone for development. Only use this method if you’re looking for a short-term way to publish your app as soon as possible with minimal investment.*
Step 2: Get Access to macOS
In order to publish your app to TestFlight or the App Store, unfortunately you have to use XCode at some point. Without shelling out for a Mac, you have two options: run macOS in a VM or use a cloud service. I tried out both of these, and they’re both good options. The one you choose just depends on your priorities and budget. Do you have the time and technical skills to go through the painful process of installing a virtual machine? Then go with the VM. Do you want to save time, and are willing to spend at least $20 per month or $1 per hour on a cloud service? Then go with the cloud. I personally went with the VM because I like the control, but I admit it was a pain to set up. If I knew how long if would take to set up ahead or time, I’d probably just go with the cloud service. I’ll go over both options here so you can decide what works for you.
Option A: Use a Cloud Service
You can use a service like macincloud.com to get up and running in around 20 minutes. For the purpose of publishing your app, I would probably go with an hourly plan, since you shouldn’t take over 20 hours per week uploading your app.
I personally only have experience with macincloud.com, but here are some other options which look promising as well:
1. wens.io
- wens.io offers a service that gives you the only program we actually need, Application Loader, for €9.99 ($11.22 USD or $14.96 CAD) per month.
2. App Uploader
- For a $40 / year licensing fee, App Uploader will generate the provisioning profiles and certificates you need, and upload your .ipa file to the App Store.
Pros:
- Get up and running quickly
- XCode comes pre-installed
Cons:
- Costs more than $0
Option B: Run macOS in a VM
Your other option is to run macOS in a VM. I used VirtualBox and followed this tutorial which includes links to the relevant files. With this route, you can expect to spend several hours downloading the disk image files and creating the VM. You’ll also have to install XCode once the VM is ready, so make sure you save enough
Pros:
- Free
- Full control and ownership over your software
Cons:
- Hours of time that could be spent coding your game, marketing, playing frisbee, etc.
- Could run slowly depending on your hardware
Step 3: Building your Game For iOS
If you’re running Windows or Linux, you can still build for iOS, but instead of creating a .ipa file, Unity builds an XCode project. You can then open that project on your VM or cloud machine and continue the build process from there.
However, that’s not the way I would suggest you go about it. The extra step of transferring the XCode project to your macOS machine is time consuming, and in my experience you may encounter some cryptic errors if XCode isn’t configured just right.
So instead I would suggest you check out Unity Cloud Build. It costs $9 per month, but in my opinion it’s well worth it. All you have to do is point Unity to your repo on Github, or whatever hosting service you’re using for your code, and Unit will automatically build for both Android and iOS every time you push a commit. This also has the added benefit of letting you continue coding your game while your project is building. When you’re setting up your project’s repo, I recommend creating a new branch called something like “unity-cloud-build” which just contains your “Assets” and “Project Settings” folders.
In order to publish your game on TestFlight or the App store, you’re going to need to generate the appropriate certificates and provisioning profiles here. Unity’s documentation has a useful tutorial for setting these up correctly.
Once you have the appropriate p12 file and provisioning profile, you will need to add them to Unity for the build process. Go to Edit > Project Settings > Player > Other Settings > Identification. You can download your provisioning profile, and add it here. Also make sure the Bundle Identifier (com.CompanyName.AppName) and Signing Team ID are correct.
With these parameters set up correctly, you should now be able to build your project.
Step 4: Publishing to TestFlight / the App Store
Finally, once you have your .ipa file from Unity built, you’ll want to publish it to TestFlight for beta testing. I’ll just cover publishing to TestFlight here, but publishing to the App Store is a similar process.
Access macOS in whatever way you decided on, and open XCode. Now you can open Application Loader by clicking XCode > Open Developer Tool > Application Loader. Apple will now ask you for all the passwords you’ve accumulated up to this point, so hopefully you’ve written them down somewhere.
Next Steps
Now that you’ve submitted your build to the Apple’s Beta Review process, you can expect to wait 1-2 days for your submission to be accepted. In the meantime, you may want to figure out how you’re going to get beta testers for your app. I’m not a marketing expert, you I’ll direct you to the Game Dev Underground Youtube channel, which I’ve found to be a useful resource.
Also, now that your game published on multiple platforms (assuming you already published your beta on Google Play), it can be helpful to create a landing page for your app as well, so you can direct people to one central location to download your app. It’s also just nice to have a place to showcase your app that you have complete control over. The landing page for my game is a pretty minimal example, so I would suggest you check out some more professional examples for inspiration.
As a side note, Unity is currently working on the Unity Distribution Portal which allows your to publish your apps on multiple app stores at once. It doesn’t currently support publishing to the App Store or Google Play, so it’s not that useful at the moment. I expect Google to agree to collaborate with Unity eventually, but I have less hope for Apple, given their general business strategy of keeping everything proprietary and exclusive. The possibility that some of the more tedious aspects of cross-platform publishing could be reduced is exciting at least.
I hope you’ve found this tutorial helpful. Apple would probably prefer that you but their devices, which large game companies can afford to do, but is often outside of the budget of indie developers or hobbyists. If you run into any difficulties, be sure to let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to help.
Even if you don’t have a knack for programming, you can still achieve a lot in Unity with tools from the Asset Store and artist and designer-friendly features natively integrated in the editor.
It’s true that most of the interactive content you create in Unity relies on text-based programming. Unity supports the C# programming language, and there are two main areas that need to be understood: logic and syntax. You can think about the logic as ‘what’s supposed to happen’ and syntax as the language in which we communicate that.
However, if you have little or no experience with Unity or coding, and simply want to begin to understand some basic workflows and concepts, then we suggest that you download the free version of the Unity editor via the “First-time Users” option on our Getting Started page. During the download process you will be able to select a ready-made Microgame that will automatically open in the editor when you launch it.
With your Microgame open, you can immediately begin to make simple changes to it by following the interactive tutorials in the editor, that guide you step-by-step through your first creative tasks in Unity.
When you’re done with the tutorials, you can continue customizing your Microgame with our collection of Mods that enable you to build on and add to your microgame in a number of fun and simple ways.
There are also plenty of tools available in the Asset Store that help you get very far in your game creation with little or no coding. Take a look at three of the best in the following sections.
Visual scripting with Bolt
Bolt, which is free with all versions of Unity, gives you the ability to bring your visions to reality in a creative and visual way, thanks to its fully-featured visual scripting system developed by award-winning tool and game developer Lazlo Bonin. There’s no integration layer between Bolt and Unity which simplifies maintenance. Bolt will improve your ability to prototype rapidly, iterate and bring your ideas to life faster.
“I wanted to make a visual tool, a tool that’s meant to work for visual thinkers, people who enjoy good design and visual feedback, people who want to know what’s going on at a glance, know when and where there’s an error or warning.” (Lazlo Bonin, Bolt publisher)
Bolt in action
Laszlo Bonin started working on the Bolt visual scripting tool while he and his team were still working on the narrative, walk-around experience called Ephemera. They were looking for visual state machines that could help artists and animators contribute to the scene structure and gameplay, while still focusing on the core systems and coding.
With Bolt, you have immediate access to your own character classes and your own item classes, etc. You can just call functions from these inside the tool and set properties.
“I don’t have to do anything nor do my users: Bolt just automatically picks it up. It directly analyzes and reads the entire code base and gives you options.”
Visual scripting with PlayMaker
If you’re a designer or an artist who wants to realize your creative potential without coding, PlayMaker’s the way to go. You can quickly make gameplay prototypes and A.I behaviors, as well as animation graphs and interactive objects. This visual scripting tool was also used in games such as Hearthstone, INSIDE and Dreamfall Chapters.
'Playmaker is the smoothest and most intuitive way for non-coders to implement functionality into our games!' Andreas N Grøntved, INSIDE
PlayMaker in action
Playmaker is a visual scripting tool which replaces the text-based paradigm with a visual metaphor. The logic is expressed through graphics, wired together to create relationships, and syntax automatically expressed using pre-made Actions that can be selected from a list.
A tool like PlayMaker integrated in Unity empowers a lot of creators who are interested in game creation, the story, or relationship between characters and objects, without having to get down to the code syntax details.
If you want to see how it works, there’s a series of videos that explores how to create interactivity using visual scripting with PlayMaker.
Numerous game creators have struggled with getting right the code syntax and error compilers, but you don’t have to be stuck there. Get back to what’s important to you.
Visual scripting with Adventure Creator
Adventure Creator is the asset you need if you’re into making 2D, 2.5D or 3D games in Unity, no coding required. Its visual scripting system and intuitive Editor enables beginners to build an entire game without writing a line of code, and helps programmers plug-and-play their own functionality.
“It’s incredible, all of the tools needed to create a professional looking point-n-click game without having to type a single line of code. Plus the creator is super helpful and has pulled me through many issues and complex ideas I’ve had with his software.” (Ash Denton, Capital)
Adventure Creator in action
Another example of a tool that makes a non-coder’s life easier in Unity is Ash Denton’s story.
He has worked on videos for Inside XBox and is one of the creators of the “Thank You for Playing” video series.
Ash found through the Unity community the Adventure Creator, an open ended and flexible tool that allowed him to get 2D characters in a 3D world. What’s great with this tool for a non-coder is that you can easily create node-based scripted events and buttons, and the scene manager organizes all the logic in a scene, including hotspots, navigation and triggers.
Learn basic coding in Unity
If you are interested in learning how coding works in Unity, we provide free resources on our Learn site, such as:
- Creator Kit: Beginner Code: In this short beginner project, you’ll explore the basics of C# code for Unity in the context of an action RPG.
- Create with Code: In this official course from Unity, you will learn to Create with Code as you program your own exciting projects from scratch in C#.
- C# Tutorials: A collection of bite-sized tutorials that explain how C# scripting works in Unity, for beginners and beyond. Start with the Beginner C# tutorials and then try the Intermediate C# tutorials.
You can also subscribe to Learn Premium, which gives access to an extensive collection of scripting tutorials from our team as well as Unity-approved content featured on partner platforms like Coursera, Udemy, Pluralsight, and Pathstream.
Finally, there are many free resources available from our community of users that will teach you coding in Unity, including Brackeys, Code Monkey, and Jabrils.
The Unity Editor is a creative hub for artists, designers, developers, and other team members. It includes 2D and 3D scene design tools, storytelling and cinematics, lighting, audio system, Sprite management tools, particle effects and a powerful dopesheet animation system. Get an overview of the feature set:
There are thousands of other assets available in the Unity Asset Store to cut down your development time even more: characters, textures, environments, animation assets, 3D models and audio assets, as well as editor extensions and complete projects.