Still trying to figure that out actually. It used to run well on iPhone 4S, iPad Mini 1st Gen and iPad 2 at a minimum (512 MB RAM devices). However, that was several months ago and since then I've been building the game for Android as my development laptop is a PC rather than a Mac and my daily phone is a Note 3. I also made loads of changes and upgraded the underlying game engine (from Unity 3D 4.6 to Unity 5.01), which has a massive impact. I'm also currently trying to get it to now build in 64-bit mode to comply with Apple's new requirement of 64-bit apps. So at the moment, I can't say for sure ... I got it working on my iPad 2 last night but that was in 32-bit mode, which won't pass Apple's certification requirements now. Building to 64-bit mode is causing some type of error so I'm working through that stuff now. Really hoping to get past this issue as it might well delay my launch schedule yet again.
I wasn't expecting the character to be quite so cool but he just worked out really nicely. He's similar in design to a Grave Guard / Black Knight from the Warhammer vampire counts faction ... basically a really powerful skeleton / undead hero. He has a cursed blade that can poison his targets and he has abilities that drain the life out of nearby hostiles and heal himself. I'll post a video preview of him this week.
Yeah, it should do. I don't have a 6+ to test but my game development engine can emulate the 6+ screen and I'll check that it works for that screen beforehand. So quick update, guys ... I'm having some type of error in Xcode when trying to build the game. It works if I build it for 32-bit in Unity 3D but not 64-bit. I'm working through the issue but there is a chance that it will cause some delay as I wasn't expecting this issue. I had managed to build a 64 bit version earlier using an earlier version of Unity 3D and an earlier version of Xcode. While I could roll back to an earlier version of Xcode, rolling back to an earlier version of Unity 3D would be a huge undertaking so I'd prefer to avoid that for the moment. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.
@Wavelight, about device support: Same advise I gave to Protopop, the developer of Nimian Legends (he struggled with the same question) : Ignore anything that doesn't support Metal, just not worth the trouble. Short summary: he had to seriously cut down on graphics features to get it to run on anything that only has 512MB. Lots of work, for very little gain. You can read up in the Nimian Legends:Brightridge thread here on TA, if you want. And good luck with the 64bit/Unity/XCode trouble, hope you can work it out.
Thanks ... I'll keep that in mind. The approach I took was to have the game detect how much RAM the device has at the beginning and then it automatically sets certain graphics options accordingly. For example, on low RAM devices, it cuts down texture size by half and switches off special effects and such. It's already coded and seems to work so I'll leave it for now. It doesn't really impact the graphics for those with newer devices since those automatic changes aren't applied on newer devices. That being said, you're probably right ... I imagine it probably isn't worth the trouble but it's not too hard a thing to do in Unity 3D.
Hey guys, finally got the 64 bit version of the game to compile in Xcode. It turned out that some scripts that were written by someone else for some particle effects were causing the problem. Just sending up a test build to iTunes Connect to verify it passes whatever other certification requirements it has on that side. Fingers crossed but I'm hoping the issue is resolved. If it is ... then I think we'll be good for finishing up loose ends this week and having a new beta session next Monday. If you'd like to be a part of that, please let me know.
Re: Betatesting I should have some time for that, count me in. I assume I should send you an email with my data? If yes, let me know whereto.
Quick update, guys ... I didn't receive a validation error related to 64-bit compatibility when I uploaded my first successful build to iTunes Connect. As such, I think we're good on that front.
Hey guys, Quick update ... I have the 64 bit version working and my test build seems to have passed validation. So I think we're good. Got the game working on my iPad 2 and it looks okay. Hopefully will have it running on some newer hardware tonight so I can do the comparison and tweak graphics settings accordingly. Going to do some grunt work tonight and tomorrow but will try to have some pretty pictures to show off on Wednesday if all goes well.
Thanks ... got the message and will add you. I'm noticing that the game is fairly unstable on the iPad 2. I think this is just memory crashes so upgrading to Unity 5 is probably consuming more memory than Unity 4. Oh well ... I'll tweak a few things but I might have to exclude some of the older devices after all.
Hi guys ... bad news. Seems the unity 3d 64 bit build process still has issues. The build I made earlier was crashing due to null reference errors and when i made changes to address those, it no longer builds in xcode. No clue why as none of ot makes any sense. Looks like I have more technical hurdles to get over in the build process. I'll try to roll back to my last backup and work from there.
Good things take time.... Will all be worth it when the final product rolls out, you become famous and are the TA game of the week.
Thanks guys ... I appreciate the support. Luckily Unity 3D are releasing lots of regular fixes for their tools related to this area as many people seem to be having issues. I've posted a question on the forum about it to hopefully get some guidance and will also file a bug report to Unity. Until then, I'm going to hack and slash at my current project in hopes of figuring out what the issue ... I think some script is using some function that is not compatible with Unity's converter to 64 bit C++ code ... though that could be literally anything. I'll be digging around. I may be able to release a 32 bit version for distribution to playtesters ... I don't think Apple care about playlets builds as much as they do stuff that's submitted to their store for sale. That way, I could at least get some feedback while I try and figure this issue out. Will let you know what comes about.
Hey guys, Just a quick update. It seems almost certain that the issues I'm facing are due to the underlying game engine. I've done a tonne of debugging and shown that game engine code that should work the same way on IOS and Android is just not working on IOS. From the Unity 3D IOS support forums, it seems like lots of other developers are having similar issues. Looks like Unity 3D version 5 porting to IOS is a mess at the moment. As such, I'm going to file a formal bug report to Unity with an example of my project and hope for a bug fix on their end. Not too much I can do until they get that fixed so I think I'll spend a few more days trying to find work arounds and if that doesn't work, I'll have to just go back to developing this for PC / MAC / Android / WP8 and come back to IOS once Unity 3D get their bugs ironed out. On the positive side, Unity are releasing regular bug fixes of their engine each week and one is due this coming Wednesday so there's hope they'll fix things quickly on their end. Will let you all know once it gets fixed.
