I am creating an app that will require small mini-games as a menu option, and I have created these games in Unity. Ideally, I would like to embed these games into a Flutter project. I have seen tutorials on doing this with Java and Android Studio, and I need to make a decision on which platform I will be using for my internship project. I have several questions about the SDK, but I have posted them separately to keep the answers distinct (and help filter out the noise for anyone searching for these specific answers), and this is one of my main questions.
Specifically, I am following this guide: https://medium.com/#davidbeloosesky/embedded-unity-within-android-app-7061f4f473a
for Android Studio, and was wondering if something similar was possible with Flutter. I am also using Android Studio as my IDE for Flutter, but need to decide if I should stick with Java, or switch to Dart and Flutter (which actually works much better for specific UI elements I need).
If not, is there another way to package a Unity project and a Flutter application together?
You can imagine the whole Flutter app to be rendered on one view of the final native application. It can coexist with native views. So it should definitely be possible to display a native Android/iOS view with Unity content and trigger that from Flutter.
Create a Flutter project and open the Android native part of it (right click the android folder in Android Studio, choose Flutter -> Open Android module).
Create a native Android view there and use platform channels to display it.
Add Unity content to the native view.
https://flutter.io/platform-channels/
As of May 2022, I would like to share an updated information for mobile app developers who are researching this interesting issue. The reason I'm writing this answer is because there was so many development tasks that need to be done before I get the right answer to the above question. A developer researching this subject should work in both Unity, Android Studio and Xcode in order to find a definitive answer to his/her question, and should also know how to develop mobile apps with Flutter. Honestly, if everything had not gone well, my long time development works might have been wasted. In addition to my answer, I would like to give also positive news on the side of Augmented Reality developers who are using Vuforia and investigating the same issue.
Using the magnificent https://github.com/juicycleff/flutter-unity-view-widget repo; in your mobile app developed with Flutter, you can run the game you developed with Unity or the AR app you developed with Unity + Vuforia. You can use the app you developed with Unity, in the Flutter App you developed. They can also communicate each other in the Flutter App. You can pass parameters from your Flutter App to your Unity application in the Flutter App, and you can also pass parameters from your Unity application to the Flutter App. This means, you can pass parameters from your Flutter App's Dart code to the C# code of your Unity work and vice versa. For those who develop AR Apps with Vuforia, I would like to point out that for the scenario I am working on, I use Image Targets. I have same experience on the phone, with the Unity APK and Android Studio APK, they are in the same stability. Of course APK sizes are different, Flutter App APK size is of course bigger than Unity APK, but in my case this is absolutely ok.
As of May 2022, the answer to the above question is: Yes, you can. Moreover, for those who develop AR Apps in Unity using Vuforia, the answer is also: Yes, you can. I wish success to everyone who will start working in this scenario. Since it is a detailed subject, some difficulties are waiting for you on the way, but if you can see that the product you dream to achieve will be a stable Flutter App, with all the nice features, I am sure that you will find the enough motivation to bring all of them together. Good luck.
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So I am a freelancer who is tasked of adding new changes to an already existing app. However, the person who hired me does not have any information about how the app was developed. He said he hired another freelancer to help develop it for him. I am trying to rebuild his app but the trouble is that I cannot seem to understand which IDE or framework he was using (xamarin, react-native or flutter) to develop his app. I am getting several errors all over the place. For example, referring to the picture below:
Looking at the first image, you can see that I am getting an error with android:colour=resourceId:0x106000b. Based on my experience with android development, I have never seen this syntax. The same case for the picture below:
Same case here, I am not sure what tools did the previous developer used because I never seen the format resourceid:#x#######b assigned before. Can someone help me with this?
EDIT: I am using Android Studios to develop android applications and have been using only that. I am kind of new to android development
EDIT: May I ask what this means?
Is it possible to create a new iOS app with exsisting sources?
I am working with xamarin in Visual-Studio. I've got a project, an app that runs on Android devices. But can I make a new project for an iOS app with those existing sources? I have a Macbook that I can use to do this. I also have a PC with windows 10 on it. So the hardware/software requierments shouldn't be a problem.
Getting to the point..
Is it possible to transform the project from an Android app to an iOS app without writing any code extra? And how can I accomplish this, any tutorials that I can watch/read?
The code language is C#. The programs that I am using are Visual studio and the xamarin extention.
I've read something about Platform Abstraction and Divergent Implementation on the xamarin ducomentation page, but this couldn't fully answer my question.
Short answer: NO.
Long answer:
There are a quite a few cross platform developing tools out there. Xamarin, like the one you are using, or Cordova. They simplifies the development by "A LOT" but you can't just convert one app to another without writing 0 code. Some of the libraries in one platform do not exist in the other. So, the long answer is that cross platform shortens the development cycle as you do not need to start from scratch on other platform, that does not mean it can completely convert.
P.S. Youtube is your friend, but the difficulty of the transformation solely depends on the scope of your project, as they vary a lot.
I second the other answers.
Furthermore, I'd like to propose to have a look at Flutter.
Flutter is based on Dart language . The framework and your application get compiled from Dart to the Android and the iOS target platform.
Flutter is a product of Google and likely to get the base development environment for Fuchsia, a new OS from Google.
My own experiments with Xaramin ended up kind of frustrating. The development was slow, several times problems with Xamarin itself or plugins made me stop the effort.
At the other side, I created an app with Flutter quite fast. While Dart and Futures might seem at first quite different compared to other concepts/languages, after some time things turn out to be very natural and well designed.
While Flutter originally was based on Material design, Google added an iOS theme using CupertinoWidget.
A simply great feature is the enormous quick development turnaround time: The app under development very ofter adopts within just a second your source-code changes. Flutter/Dart hot reloads changed classes often instantly.
Android Studio is a great and free IDE for Flutter development. Plugins enhance to IDE with Flutter development tasks.
If you have android application written in Java you can use Migeran Analyzer to understand how much % of the code could be reused between android and iOS: https://analyzer.migeran.com/
Once you have the % you can use Intel Multi-OS Engine (free product) to create cross-platform application in Java: https://software.intel.com/en-us/multi-os-engine. It will have module with cross-platform shared code, android specific code module and iOS specific code module
I have one simple question, that is can I convert my android .apk app into ios using any software? If yes, then please give me the name of that software. If any alternative method for that please guide me.
Google has a tool to convert the back-end, nothing for front-end though
http://www.xda-developers.com/google-tool-helps-developers-port-android-apps-to-ios/
There is a new startup that clains to convert the APK to IOS.
It's called MechDome.
The goal is very simple and attractable:
Reduce time to market by eliminating cross-platform development. Automatically convert your existing Android apps to high-fidelity, native iOS apps.
There is nothing out there that would convert apk into ios app. To my knowledge there is also nothing out there that could translate android code to IOS. The operation is simply too complex for a simple tool to manage.
However, there are tools you could use to make your apps (developed by you) work across multiple platforms. I'm sure there are more, but here are 2 of them I found in minutes (look into them if you are interested): Apportable, Phonegap (discontinued as of 2020/03. It was made obsolete by ProgressiveWebApps - PWA).
In past decade or so WebApps have been picking up for anything that is not too graphically demanding as they can run on anything that has a Web Browser. With this style devs pretty much open their website in a platform-specific executable and it looks like an app.
As for your existing app depending on complexity of your software you have to rewrite from a little to a lot of code to adapt to IOS APIs.
In short: No. Unless your app is build on multiplatform framework, converting means manual adaptation.
There is no known way to convert an android app to iOS. MechDome which is a Developer Tool that Automatically Converts Android Apps into iOS Apps seems to have stopped as of 30/03/2021. link
However if it is your plan to launch android and iOS app from one coding project, use Flutter which allows you to launch on both platforms simultaneously.
Flutter is Google’s mobile UI framework that provides a fast and expressive way for developers to build native apps on both iOS & Android, using a single codebase.
Get started here link
So I read this article on Mobile Orchard and, as I'm planning on having my first steps in Android development, it got me thinking: is it possible to develop for Android in Lua only? I Googled the topic but found no definitive answer. I know Java is the "base style" for Android but for the coding newbie which I am (elementary Python, basic C++), Lua seems somehow clearer and more friendly. Then here goes my question: can one develop an Android app using Lua only? If so, could you please show me some directions to move from here?
I've been developing a mobile application in Lua to control robots remotely from iOS and Android phones. The app is in pure Lua and runs on top of Mosync platform using MobileLua. There is still some plumbing required, but it's not too complex.
I also have a debugger and a Lua IDE (ZeroBraneStudio) that support debugging of Lua scripts running remotely (including MobileLua scripts running on Android or iOS devices). I provide a demo app you can use as a client to run simple scripts and check remote debugging in action.
[Update] If you are interested in more game oriented options, there are several available: (1) already mentioned Corona SDK, (2) Moai, and (3) Gideros Mobile. There is also Marmalade Quick and Cocos2d-x Lua bindings (for example, quick-cocos2d-x). All these toolkits/frameworks allow to develop in Lua.
Here is a detailed comparison of Moai vs. Corona.
I know this is an older question, but just to correct some misinformation (in the comments) for people who come later, Corona SDK (as of spring 2013) has a Starter Edition which is free -- no splash screen or anything. The main difference between it and the "Pro" version is you can't do in-app purchases in the Starter Edition. But you can use it to create apps for sale, etc. No expiration date on it or anything.
And in answer to the original question, learning Java may allow you to write Android apps, but if you then also want to target iOS you don't have any great options. By choosing something that's cross-platform from the beginning you can target Android or iOS or both. Lua (in any of the flavors already mentioned) is a great base language to learn for mobile development.
The question is what kind of app do you want to build and what skills do you have. If you are already familiar with JavaScript there is Phonegap/Cordova. If you are building games there are a number of frameworks for 2D and 3D which use Lua. Some are free, others have licensing fees but are worth it if it provides a solution to your problem. All have pros and cons. For example I'm not sure if I would want to build an RSS reader in a game framework. Java is just another language, I would recommend just learning Java and the Android framework to start and knowing what is there before adding another application specific framework layer on top.
Corona SDK allows you to write iOS and Android apps in Lua. Its very easy to learn, but its not free.
Edit:
I saw you posted that you found Corona just after I sent my post...
You can try http://scormpool.com/luastudio
Develop and run code on your device including iOS, Android, Mac, Win.
Exporter can help you to make standalone app on listed above platforms.
This may not be useful to the OP, however for other people interested in using lua to write their apps, I'd share my thoughts. So to answer the question:
Yes, you can use only lua to write apps for android using LuaJava from the kepler project (though I don't believe its being maintained anymore). You can create and manipulate Java objects seemlessly, and interact with the Android APIs through lua. You can even create UI elements dynamically using just lua. However, a small amount of java bootstrap code is needed to start the lua VM from your app. The AndroLua project is a great place to start for Android. The creator has done a lot of work making lua work with Android and packaging it all into an app. From experience I can say it works great! However, I would in no way recommend this to a beginner, as it requires a lot of knowledge about java and lua to make things work, meaning more work not less.
For AndroLua, just clone the repo and use that as a base for your own app. Last time I used it, I just imported it into android-studio, and after fixing a few problems with my own setup, had it compiling and running on my device.
If only pure Lua then the answer is no.. unless you want to use a lot of libraries
If you want to make little Android app/games then use a game engine, learning is a step by step process, don't dive straight into the hard part.
I do not have to do such manual updating in App Inventor so it is logical that Eclipse would have a similar automatic update feature.
App Inventor is made especially for non-programmers. Its main purpose is to give everybody the possibility to basicly develop an app so that one with a great idea and no or low programming knowledge would be able to get it done.
Now, Eclipse is an IDE that integrates great with the Android SDK. So it only helps you with basic stuff that any IDE does, plus some things about Android integration (like test your app on the emulator/device really easy).