I have my iOS game and I would like to upload it to the Google Play Store but I have no experience with Java/Android programming so I ask if anybody knows a faster way to port an iOS game to Android without having to program all again.
Note: My game uses the Sprite Kit framework.
Thanks
as far as I know there no easy two click transition App for this. If you know the inner mechanics of the game, then it should be easy to rewrite it. Take a look at a libgdx for java.It supports needed libs and allows an easy android exports (http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/)
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I have just spent an entire semester of my Mobile App Development class coding with Android Studio(in fact my last day was actually today), and I have gotten very skilled in it for the time I've been doing it. I also just installed Unity and want to make PC and/or mobile games. Out of pure curiosity, hypothetically, is it possible to convert a unity project made for android and open it in android studio or vise versa? If so, how hard would it be? I'm also curious, since Unity can export for Android and IOS, assuming what I've just mentioned is possible, could it be used to make a game which was previously only available for Android, compatible with IOS? I don't absolutely need to know exactly how any of this would be done since I don't want to try it(yet), but in the off chance it is possible, I'd be interested to hear about it and how it might be done. While I'm here, I'd also appreciate any tips for creating games in Unity with the experience of only making regular apps and simple 2D games in Kotlin with Android Studio.
I have searched in the web and found very few material on this question. I've heard of Unity 3D and know that there are other tools. But I would like to know if it is possible to develop games in Android Studio? I'm learning Android development and Java, therefore don't want to jump into other language and platforms. However, if it is not efficient way then which one you would advice? Where to start?
Yes it's possible. You can make your own game by using game engine that freely available for Android.
You can use LibGDX. For the tutorial with Android Studio, you can read here.
Visit Sample 2D game with LibGDX
Yes of course it is possible. But there are some things you should know. Games made without a game engine are usually not as good as you might expect. You define the interaction of the objects in the game with each other with simple codes, but there are collider structures developed for this in game engines. In addition, while adding effects to the game is easy with the game engine, doing this without the game engine is more difficult and does not show a stable working performance.
here are some 2D game tutorials you can do without using a game engine
game-1
game-2
Recently, I've wondered if a non-game mobile app like Facebook could have been written all in Unity?
I am planning to develop a Social Media app and I am a .Net Backend Web Developer with no iOS/Android background. I especially know to code Objective-C and Java, however I don't have any experience or know-how about designing UI and add some animations to it.
I encountered the platform Unity while I was playing Dead Trigger 2 on my tablet. When I learnt that Unity is a Cross-Platform Game Development Environment, I tried playing Dead Trigger 2 on my phone (Note 3) and friend's iPhone. Works perfect. Then, I saw it has something to do with Facebook and shocked when realized that I am able to play the same game in a Web Browser on Facebook. That's amazing...
Since I am convinced that such a 3D game can be developed in such a way, I have the idea to develop a normal non-game mobile app with Unity. If the Dead Trigger Team can draw such zombies in 3D, I think it would not be so hard for me to draw a sliding-menu in 2D mode that magically works in all mobile platforms including Windows Phone. I did, and saw that any kind of animation is done with drag-drop editors and C# scripting, wooww. So, Unity fullfills my lack of UI coding in mobile platforms...
The question is, how about some backend stuff? Sending web requests? Multi-threading? async/await stuff we have in .Net? Periodically checking something from a server in background? Integrating the data with the UI?
Would you go for developing a Facebook like app all in Unity?
Thanks
If you want C# on android, there is xamarin studio. I don't think that unity is ideal for such an application. You can use it, but if you don't need anything graphical, the overhead of the engine is not worth it. If you don't care about performance (think it more like power consumption, because it's not going to be slow or anything, just way more power hungry than a simple web browser), as the FB app obviously doesn't, then you could use unity.
What you are describing, already exists. It's called the web. It's as cross platform as it gets. And there are multiple ways to convert a web app (written in html5 technologies) to a "native" mobile app, both for iOS and android. I'd recommend that you followed this road, and not unity.
In short,unity is a game engine and as such it is designed for high performance. This means that even the lightest UI built can take up a lot of CPU and in turn - a lot of battery, which is kind of precious on a mobile device.
As stated here unity doesn't seem to handle threads very well, though Im sure this is something that can be worked out
Anyway I believe that it is not the platform that answers your needs in this case.
Yes, you can develop a non-game app on Unity. But, there are fallbacks, Unity will be a bit hard for developing the UI navigation part of the application. A social media like Facebook is more complex than just graphics. There is a lot of backend development. I don't think it will be too simple compared to coding it, but of course, you can do it. You should create non-game apps when you have to incorporate advanced graphics and/or physics.
I have developed an app with Eclipse, a little stupid game.
If I wanted to port it in iOS, is there any hurting way to do it?
I mean, can I re-use xml code for GUI?
May I re-use my DB (I think so, it would be horrible if not).
If I learnt how to use libgdx or unity it would be compatible with both platforms?
Is there a good guide to understand one of them? I can't find any good guides online.
If you write your game in Unity or PhoneGap/Cordova, it would be compatible with both devices. I personally recommend Unity more because it's geared toward game development.
I'm planning on writing a multiplayer game with Android as my primary focus as far as OS/platform, but I would like the ability to port the game to at least the web. I'm looking into Andengine as I'm just starting out with java and android and it seems the most noob friendly. The game shouldn't be too demanding as it will be a 2d turn based game with simple animations and chat.
So my main question - is it possible to port a Andengine game to the web?
If not what would you suggest?
I looked at libgdx, but I'm concerned that it might be a little to advanced for someone just starting out with java/android. Am I correct in my assumption?
Another idea I've been playing around with is writing the game in Flash and porting it to Android with Adobe Air - does anyone have any experience with this? Is it a bad idea? I kind of have my doubts of how well this will work, but if nobody can really talk me down from this idea, I might just go this route.
I've also considered writing the game in pygame as it seems easier but I don't like the idea of players having to download something like Pygame Subset for Android or Kivy to run the game. So basically if the other options are either too difficult or wont work on android then I'm probably just going to go with Andengine and consider rewriting it later for the web if people like it enough.
Moai SDK is an open source multi-platform framework for game developers.
One codes in lua - a dynamic programming language (that is easy to learn).
Apps made using Moai can be deployed to iOS, android and the chrome web store.
Moai could be an alternative.
Andengine makes a fine starting place. (I have made 3 projects with it now and I really like it). but it does not deploy to anything other than android. That is its strength and its weakness. As a strength, it is very easy to integrate android OS features and libraries with your project and has good performance. And as a weakness, well, it only runs on android.
Code-once publish anywhere platforms trade off development time for speed and size usually.
Some top competitors in that area are:
Ancsa Corona
AppMobi
PhoneGap
Unity3D
Adobe Flash(bonus of web distribution)
and others. (Moai SDK listed by #andrew, for example)
Each platform has had successful games launched with them. Find the one that suits you and your projects needs best. Do not forget to check for things you will want to integrate, such as using Facebook for mobile, or AdMob, or OpenFeint or other 3rd party services.
Good luck and enjoy you game making!
Just a side note, user do not need to download "Kivy" to run the game. As other toolkit, your application will provide Kivy as other libraries you'll use.