Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer
GDC 2010: From concept to Top Paid with Unity iPhone
The company was actually founded in Denmark, but has since expanded around the world with just two products: Unity Pro and Unity iPhone Pro. The second product, as you might imagine, allows developers to put together an application that can then be exported out into an Xcode project and released on the App Store. Higgins said that they've had over 90,000 people download the software since it was released for free last fall, and that more than 500 games in the App Store were authored by Unity.
He also ran a short demo of the software at the panel. While some of the coding got a little technical (the system allows you to create and change variables on in-game objects even while the game is running in the engine), the coolest feature was the way they simulated iPhone controls: by using a real iPhone as a remote. They've released a free app on the App Store that will connect via Wi-Fi with a copy of the development tool running on your Mac, and as you touch and turn the iPhone, the editor reacts, and sends the (slightly lower resolution) output to the iPhone's screen. You can also make changes to your code as the game runs in that mode, so you can be playing and coding at the same time.
That was pretty impressive. Of course, Unity won't actually help you be a game developer -- like many of the tools on display at the conference this week, it's a professional tool that can only make your ideas and art come to life, not actually create them for you.
But when you combine Unity's compatibility across platforms (there's even a web player that will play your Unity-created game on any web-compatible computer) with the ease of development (the app just outputs an Xcode project, so you can write an app in Javascript with the tool and output it straight to the App Store, or even edit the Xcode after the output if you want to take advantage of features that Unity doesn't support by default), it's definitely worth a look as an iPhone development tool. I'm not a developer, so I don't have much insight on how the program actually works, but just in terms of creating apps for multiple platforms at the same time ("author once, deploy anywhere," as Higgins said during his talk), Unity seems like a worthwhile solution.
The Unity platform is available as a free download, and the iPhone app either comes in source code with the rest of the platform, or can be downloaded straight from the App Store.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
numnutz said 8:20PM on 3-09-2010
Wow. Now that is a cool product. All you need is some graphic art/design talent, some audio/sound effects skills and yer set for life. Now [face palm] why didn't I think of that!
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Johnzim said 9:04PM on 3-09-2010
Speaking as a Unity Developer I love the suite.
It takes a while to learn the tips and tricks to optimise as heavily as you'd like but the community's great.
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Sinecure Industries said 8:37AM on 3-10-2010
We plan on making the move to develop in the Unity engine, it's really well made
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Aaron Sullivan said 12:29PM on 3-23-2010
I've used Unity for years with less time to devote to it than I'd like. I just want to say that the team behind this product is dedicated and seem to love what they do and the product itself is a dream for dreamers. You can prototype extremely quickly once you get the hang of it. Fun, fun, fun.
Also, I'm developing an iPhone App natively atm, but I can't wait to switch over to Unity.
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