Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Packaging gotchas
You have your game running fine in the editor, and you finally come to start testing it on a
platform. Life is good and surely you must be ready to deploy; sadly, this is just the point
where your next journey begins.
Actually, shipping your title brings to light a whole raft of new challenges. What follows is
a list of tips, tricks, and gotchas I've encountered while working with many different teams
and events:
Just because it runs in the editor DOES NOT mean it will run on a platform
I've come across too many teams that finish their game in the editor without even trying to run it on at least one target
platform. This can cause serious rework later on as you may find that the code will simply not run on some platforms.
Another issue that can sometimes rear its head is when you have written code that depends on the editor but you have
not placed it in the Editor folder. When you run it in the editor, it will work fine, but on a platform it will either crash or
give you a spurious message (worse on some platforms than others.)
If you are targeting the Web, then beware of the limitations of deploying to that platform.
The best advice is to build to a platform at regular intervals, and make sure that it actually compiles and will deploy to a
device.
Just because it works for one platform DOES NOT mean it will work for all
Unity obviously supports many different platforms, and each has its own peculiarities. If you mean to target multiple
platforms, always check periodically whether you can build and deploy to the various platforms. It doesn't have to be
too often, just find the right balance for you. See whether you can automate it through the Unity command-line tools.
What is often missed is how each platform behaves; Windows/Windows Phone/Windows 8 all run on the NET platform
directly; however, iOS/Android/Mac/BlackBerry all run using the mono framework (which is an interpretation of .NET
for those platforms). They are both different in their own ways and handle similar situations differently. Don't assume
just because it works for one, it will work for all. This is true for both JavaScript and C#.
As stated already, the Web is just different from everything else.
For maximum exposure, try to focus on the lowest common denominator
It's always attractive to build to the highest resolution and target really high spec'd machines; however, this is going to
really limit your target audience.
