Unity Android Plugin

SamJ

Hey all,

As a dev gamer hobbyist (full time dev) I'm a little upset that I am going to need to buy the $400 Unity Android plugin to create my games for OUYA. (Newly married and on a tight budget) I understand why they sell this feature but since I will only be using it to create OUYA games so I feel a little ripped off as my audience is a lot smaller than the average purchaser of the feature. I choose Unity to develop my first game because it was "free" and thought building to OUYA was going to be added as a free feature.

Anyone else in the same situation? I'm guessing students would be the same?

Anyway that's my rant over with, I wish I was using Unity when they gave away the feature free in April, common Unity, help out some OUYA devs!

nick

Unfortunately, you have to have the Pro version of Unity to use plugins at all, so I don't think there's much we can do there :( Not a Unity developer though, so I may be wrong.

SamJ

No I believe you can use the basic Android plugin with the free version but if you want the Android Pro plugin you will need Unity Pro.

tgraupmann

I feel your pain, as I upgraded twice.

You will be able to use Android basic to publish to the OUYA from Unity. You would have had to do that anyway.

Not using the OUYA plugin just means you have to use the Unity API to get controller input. And you won't be able to access the OUYA product API from Unity.

nick

I'm referring to the OUYA plugin, not the Android one. You need a Pro copy of Unity to use native plugins (like ours). See http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/Plugins.html

tgraupmann

Ah right Nick. You can't use the ODK jar plugin with Unity Android basic. The OUYA should still be able to launch the application, right?

SamJ

Oh that's fine. I'm not planning on any in game purchases and I'm sure I can get the controller working from the Unity API, I just need to be able to build it to test it and I can't do that without the Android plugin.

nick

Not sure- It depends on having the GAME or APP intent in the manifest, along with whatever other metadata we add later. If you can do that without Pro, then it should. Just no IAP or other API's like you said.

SamJ

I think there needs to be more documentation around this and how to get a build working if you can't afford Unity Pro (like a lot of the student devs). There is nothing in the current documentation that says you need Unity Pro or even that you need the Android plugin to build.

Dreamwriter

I thought you didn't need Pro to use plugins for Android or iOS - Unity specifically calls plugins a "Pro/Mobile-Only Feature" and says "Note: On the desktop platforms, plugins are a pro-only feature. For security reasons, plugins are not usable with webplayers."

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/Plugins.html

tgraupmann

Maybe it's a non-issue. I only tested with PRO.

VoodooDoubloon

hi - where are you finding info about a ouya plugin for unity? Sounds like we just use android basic/pro to export apk and run on Ouya console? We are excited about using unity3d to bring our games to Ouya!

tgraupmann

http://forums.ouya.tv/discussion/25/all-in-one-unity-odk-discussion/p1

tgraupmann

tgraupmann

Also check out the documentation - https://devs.ouya.tv/developers/docs/unity

tgraupmann

Dreamwriter said:

That fixed it, thanks! I can now verify that you don't need Unity Pro or Android Pro, as I have OUYA controller code working on my tablet, and I have Unity Free with the basic $400 Android license.

That settles that. You can use Unity + Android basic.

GodlyPerfection

I'm in the same boat... I'm low on cash and my only hope to get an Android Pro license would be to get Kickstarted. I could probably scrap up some cash for the Android Basic, in the meantime I'm using the Pro Trial. I already have standard Unity Pro, another Pro license is going to hurt my pocket.

EDIT: Just re-read the comment above... so we should be able to use OUYA IAP with the basic license then, amiright?

Would I be able to use the PayVault/IAP system built into Player.IO on the Ouya or would there be something that disables purchases under other systems? I was going to use that as a backend for my networking/database anyways and being able to use PayVault across all platforms rather than PayVault on everything but the Ouya version would be nice.

tgraupmann

GodlyPerfection said:

I'm in the same boat... I'm low on cash and my only hope to get an Android Pro license would be to get Kickstarted. I could probably scrap up some cash for the Android Basic, in the meantime I'm using the Pro Trial. I already have standard Unity Pro, another Pro license is going to hurt my pocket.

EDIT: Just re-read the comment above... so we should be able to use OUYA IAP with the basic license then, amiright?

Would I be able to use the PayVault/IAP system built into Player.IO on the Ouya or would there be something that disables purchases under other systems? I was going to use that as a backend for my networking/database anyways and being able to use PayVault across all platforms rather than PayVault on everything but the Ouya version would be nice.

amiright ^^^^ right, and payments show on a semi-transparent layer above Unity.

GodlyPerfection

tgraupmann said:

amiright ^^^^ right, and payments show on a semi-transparent layer above Unity.

That is definitely good to hear on the Android Basic then. :)

So being that payments is on a pseudo separate layer, it is probably more of a question of whether it is against a ToS. I'm going to start a new thread on it.

Shiels

Hey sorry to necro - has there been any movement on the whole Android Basic license use? We are also too cash strapped to buy pro right now... any info would be appreciated.

Ayrik

Android Basic should work with everything just fine. There should be no concern since basic supports plugins on all mobile platforms

Shiels

Hmmm... we get the "building is only possible with Pro" error. Maybe this is Unity 4 only (we are on 3)?

tgraupmann

You can compile C++ and Java via the OUYA Panel. When you want to build Unity you have to use the file menu on non-PRO versions.

Dreamwriter

What you can't do without Pro is do the full build process from the Ouya menu, because Unity doesn't let you use script commands to build and run without Pro. But what you can do is press the Compile button in the Ouya menu to build the Ouya-specific code, and when it's done use the normal Unity interface to Build and Run the rest. So Unity Pro just allows you to do it all in one step.

Shiels

ahh thanks... Phew :)

Gassi

I was wondering, if there Is any way to build for the Ouya without the Android Plugin?

Dreamwriter

Not if you are going to use Unity, OUYA is an Android device, and Unity cannot build for Android without the $400 Android plugin. There are other development environments than Unity, but Unity costs money.

GodlyPerfection

Yeah, I finally caved for the $400 basic plugin... and then realized that one of the frameworks I'm using requires Net.Sockets and now I'm sad cuz I need the Pro version of Android (you don't need pro Unity for PC though) for that. Looks like I'll be focusing on PC/Browser dev until I can hopefully have a solid build for people to play and kickstart off of that for the rest of the Pro Android license... grrrr.

tgraupmann

You can build an Android for android without the plugin. But you can't build Unity for Android without Unity Android Basic or better.

I could extend the OUYA Unity to build a regular Android app in the free version without the Unity player. But at that point you might as well just use eclipse.

I do have an option to build Unity for Android remotely if you have a friend willing to run a Unity instance as a slave. You can also trigger Unity builds remotely from your phone. We will have a beta coming in the next few weeks. Email [email protected] for details about "Good Drop".