Microsoft Using Unity for iOS AND WP7 Game

There was a lot of buzz on twitter today about Micrsoft using Unity to develop Kinectimals for the iOS. The proof

What is REALLY interesting is it looks like they used Unity for the WP7 version as well. Not sure what to make of this. Did they just port the Unity3D API to XNA?

Anybody have some insight on this?

-Jeff Weber
www.farseergames.com

 

Wow.

I hope this means development for WP7!

 

No its a microsoft title so they simply used native code likely using the source version.

going to xna and C# with the engine would be a massive undertaking but getting it to run on a HTC Desire (thats what every single WP7 phone is cpu-gpu-ram wise until the Lumia from nokia and the new ones from HTC and Samsung are released) is relatively trivial and MS can run whatever they want (the same as apple runs software that violates basically every security aspect we have to comply to as iOS dev)

 

At the very least, maybe they are seeing the usefullness of it... and some pressure from the WP7 blogosphere can't hurt.

 

Lets be fair: MS is rather fast on that end. Android took over 2 years to get the first native code SDK out and if we are fair even now 2 years later it still sucks like hell by any possible measure. Hey even the emulator still is total trash for native code development compared to iOS and WP7 development, its really the worst piece of trash available for mobile development and that although its in its XXth incarnation by now.
Also MS from what I recall is rumored to really think about opening it up for games and I guess when the dual core nokias land in Q1 / Q2 2012 we will see a push into that direction so multimedia stuff can make use of it in a more performant way

 

I don't understand the fuzz about WP7. Let's just hope they get Windows 8 running on phones in a reasonable way instead too.

 

Its the snappiest mobile OS at the time, by far. I own a Galaxy S2, iPhone 4S and a crappy Omnia 7 (HTC Desire powerwise so 2008 class hw not 2011 one) and now guess which of the OS is the fastest , snapiest with the best battery life and 'just works' without trying to play the imperator (WP 7.5 is the only OS where I can sync contacts from Live ID, Google Cloud, Facebook and others and have them auto linked. Have the images working from all the clouds etc).

Might be that the store isn't the best, but they at least got what mobiles should be about, easy painless usage of your data on the go and syncing it easily a thing where apple and google suck badly, with google not being able to do it and apple trying to force in their cloud system removing as much data as possible from your pc to prevent you from switching.
if it wouldn't be for the too limited software offering and lack of skype (WhatsApp exists since 7.5) and the fact that I can't dev for it with Unity it would pretty surely be my primary phone

 

All the programs i use on my phone i don't need Unity for, i don't need any of the services you've mentioned and my iPhone is still good enough for me. Instead of Windows 7/8 here and WP7 there i would prefer and focus on a hopefully consistent Windows 8 platform instead.

 

For one, I don't think there is any "fuzz" to understand about WP7 because it appears (unfortunately) there is not one.

The people that have used it love it for many reasons, but I guess the highlight is that its gorgeous. I love my iPhone but I'm sick of looking at a huge wall of icons. Metro navigation is exquisite, and their live tiles are the perfect middle ground between distracting battery eating widgets and elegant icons.

I guess it's a good thing Apple released the iPhone 4S and no updated iPod Touch with the same chip, because had they done so I would had just purchased an iPod Touch for gaming and development and a Windows Phone for more practical purposes.

The only thing that are wrong with WP7 are the marketing and the name. They market it in a way that makes people think you won't want to play with it for long, and the name... ugh.... who ever thinks Windows is an actual selling brand name????

That aside, XBox Live opens the door for some insane potential for gaming. It's a shame they don't allow native code for non-VIP third party developers.

 

Fingers crossed for Windows 8, it will be a sad day when i have to buy a mac WP7 is alright i guess for you old folk, but formost people it isent as eazy to navigate as Iphone and isent as good as android. as to speed dose android not run flawlessly on your Galaxy SII? i have one and it runs good, exept for the music player wich freezes my phone all the time, but with a difernt media player now it is flawless.

 

*Translated to correct English.

(I'm sorry titanty, but I couldn't resist)

 

After looking at the DLL list, I half suspect Microsoft isn't actually using Unity at all.

http://mobilitydigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/image_thumb39.png

If I had to hazard a guess, one of their programmers is a home Unity user and out of habit layered a light Unity-looking API over the XNA API and placed it in the UnityEngine namespace (hence the DLL name). That's just my conjecture because there's a separate CPU_Skinning dll which probably shouldn't be needed at all if it were actually Unity.

 

My coworkers did something very similar. All you have to do is rewrite some of the parts you use from the Unity engine and follow the same naming convention/paradigm and it's not too difficult. Having said that, they also say that they'd never want to do it again. Surely the WP7 engine just wasn't as good as Unity's real engine.

 

Wouldn't they of had to buy the source? then it would put out whatever they made it do?

 

As inferred, they probably didn't buy the source; they used Unity for the iOS version, and then made an API layer over their XNA engine that looks like Unity, allowing them to port over parts of their game code with fewer changes.

 

If only Unity was enable for WP7. I like a lot my wp7 and would like to produce game with unity for it. Can't wait that microsoft open native code for unity.

 

Well they are at the very least feeling the same pain the rest of us are that want to develop once and deploy to iOS and WP7(8). Maybe this will nudge them in the right direction and get them to just support Unity3D outright. Then, their developers won't have to dev twice (once for each platform.)

 

Or at the very least, provide the migration tools they used to XNA devs.

Would also benefit XBox indie games.

 

I would assume that they created only a 'game specific' layer that used exactly the few little things they used, nothing that you could really use as migration tool for unity in general (so they basically did what Union does for new platforms too - support whats needed for the game and only that)