BlackBerry10 and Windows Phone 8 Add-Ons Released!

[Alex Chouls]

Add-ons for BlackBerry10 and Windows Phone 8 are now available in our store:
http://hutonggames.com/store.html

Should also be in the Unity Asset Store soon...

[SimonRinkyDinkyCo]

Are you planning on keeping the add-on prices $20 each or is this on sale like the standard playMaker Asset currently is?

[Alex Chouls]

We plan to keep the price at $20.

[slerpiniere]

Hi,

Why are these being released as add-ons?  It would make far more sense if Playmaker was just updated to support these platforms (i.e. remove the use of Hashtable and Arraylist, update iTween etc...).

Do these add-ons remove any functionality from the standard PlayMaker?  If I install these add-ons to my existing game, will it break any of my FSMs?

Price is not really the issue, it's that ideally I want Playmaker, exactly as it is now, but just working fine on Windows Store.

- Simon

[Alex Chouls]

There are some Unity limitations on the new platforms:
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/windowsstore-gettingstarted.html

Also internally Windows 8 builds use a limited subset of .net which required a rework of our serialization and reflection systems. It also requires a separate dll for the editor and the runtime so you can run the game in the editor.

So even if these were packaged with PlayMaker they would require importing dlls from a unitypackage - which is what you do when you import the add-on. It works exactly the same as importing the PlayMakerNACL.unitypackage for NaCL support.

Your project should work the same as before except some Unity features are not supported on the new platforms (e.g., Unity networking). And iTween is not yet supported in Windows Store builds (but we're working on that with Bob). The only thing to be careful of is that you import the same version of Playmaker...

Also you should always backup projects before importing any unitypackages, or ideally, use version control so you can roll back changes you don't like...

[slerpiniere]

Sounds reasonable.  My concern is that I will have to maintain another repository for the Windows Store version and 2 versions of my game. 

If switching between the Windows Store version and the Desktop version doesn't mess up anything, would I be able to get away with 1 repos and switching in the build script or similar? (assuming I don't use any unsupported features).

[Alex Chouls]

Yes. You should be able to import the platform specific unitypackages as part of the build process.

[slerpiniere]

Great, in that case I'm just waiting on iTween and the Windows Store add-on :-)

[cb]

What's the score with Blackberry dev using PM ? I'm building ok to my Z10 with Playmaker as it is, what exactly will the BB add-on give me with regards to stability?

[Alex Chouls]

Are you using the NACL build? That might work on Blackberry because NACL has some of the same constraints, no Unity networking being the big one. The Add-On allows us to target Blackberry explicitly in the runtime, and allows us to package BlackBerry specific actions, the same way Prime31 has plugins for native functionality on different platforms. But if you're building fine now, by all means wait a few updates, until the BlackBerry add-on makes sense to you...

[Mayhem]

Will there be also something like a PS4/PSVita/XONE/WiiU Addon ?

[Alex Chouls]

It depends if the platform requires different versions of the Playmaker dlls to work. I haven't had a chance to test on any of those platforms yet...

[Tochas]

Sounds reasonable.  My concern is that I will have to maintain another repository for the Windows Store version and 2 versions of my game. 

If switching between the Windows Store version and the Desktop version doesn't mess up anything, would I be able to get away with 1 repos and switching in the build script or similar? (assuming I don't use any unsupported features).

Hi how do you switch the dlls at build?

[slerpiniere]

You don't need to, it's handled automatically by Unity.  The Windows 8 Store (or Windows phone) dll goes into the Metro plugins folder which Unity uses when building for those platforms.

[refinedgames]

Hey Hutong,
I just began the unpleasant job of porting my game to WP8 and the first stop is importing Playmaker to an empty project.  I imported PlayMaker (v1.7.5) with no issues, then imported the WP8 add on (v1.7.5) with no issues.  I went to build and got Photon errors.  I think Unity does not support networking in WP8 yet, so what folders should I delete to make this go away?  Is this in a "Read Me" somewhere that I'm missing?  Thanks

Edit: I deleted the entire "Photon Unity Network" folder and it compiles now.