- Home /
API integration for Unity
I have been doing a lot of research into iPhone development and have seen the light of APIs. I would like to use Xcode for the APIs but I want to use Unity for the engine. Is there a way I can integrate the APIs (like CoreMotion) into Unity so it compiles altogether so I don't have to worry about everything working together? Or are there unity APIs that do the same thing?
I am a beginning developer and need help. Links are great but explanations on how to integrate are better.
Thank you in advance!
Answer by jashan · Sep 10, 2010 at 04:51 AM
Sure, Unity iPhone Advanced 1.7 supports "plugins" and Unity iPhone 3.0 will also support plugins (in other words, starting with 3.0 you will no longer need Unity iPhone Advanced in order to be able to use that feature).
There's a related question and answer: Specific steps to set up a plugin for iphone in XCode
There's also a couple of vendors that sell Plugins that make it very easy to access many of the iOS features that are not directly supported by Unity. One example would be: Unity 3 iPhone Plugins - Native Made Easy. As these come with full source code, they might also be a good starting point to learn the trade ;-)
EDIT: How to connect Unity scripts with plugins ... it's in the documentation but I only have a local link which wouldn't work for you, so I'm duplicating some of the information here (EDIT2: That documentation is now available online: Unity Manual > Advanced > Plugins - Pro/Mobile-Only Feature, thanks to ForceMagic for the note):
Define your extern method like:
[DllImport ("__Internal")] private static extern float FooPluginFunction();
Hit build in Unity iPhone
If you are using C++ (.cpp) or Objective-C (.mm) to implement the plugin you have to make sure the functions are declared with C linkage to avoid name mangling issues.
extern "C" {
float FooPluginFunction();
}
Using your plugin from C#
iPhone native plugins can be called only when deployed on the actual device, so it is recommended to wrap all native code methods with an additional C# code layer. This code could check Application.platform and call native methods only when running on the actual device and return mockup values when running in the Editor. Check the Bonjour browser sample application.
Calling C# / JavaScript back from native code Unity iPhone supports limited native->managed callback functionality via UnitySendMessage:
UnitySendMessage("GameObjectName1", "MethodName1", "Message to send");
This function has three parameters : game object name, game object script method to call, message to pass to the called method. Limitations to know:
only script methods that correspond to the following signature can be called from native code :
function MethodName(message:string)
calls to UnitySendMessage are asynchronous and have a one frame delay.
Thanks Jashan! Those are very helpful links. The next thing that is holding me back is this. I can put these plugins into unity but how do I connect them to the object on the screen? Like for instance I add in accelerometer support but how do I connect it to lets say hit a drum?
Well, with accelerometer support it might be a little tricky because for "hitting a drum", you may want to do some fancy calculations from the data you get from the accelerometer to figure out the user shook the device so that the drum should be hit. That's not trivial. But connecting the two technically is not that hard; I'll add something about this to my original answer ...
I'm going to experiment with this for a while. Hopefully it works. But I'll try to get back to you with results!
Well, no offense but linking the original page would have been faster. There is no new content on that awnser anyway, except for the related question and awnser.
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/$$anonymous$$anual/Plugins.html
At the time when I posted the answer, that part of the documentation wasn't in the public documentation, yet - that's why I copied the contents here. See also my remark in the beginning of the quote: "it's in the documentation but I only have a local link which wouldn't work for you, so I'm duplicating some of the information here". Had it been available in the public documentation back then, I would have posted just the link, of course (that was during the Unity 3 beta, with the NDA lifted ;-) ). But thanks for the heads up - I've added the link now that it is available.
Your answer
Follow this Question
Related Questions
iOS Title Rejected due to Apple Music API Inclusion 1 Answer
Xcode error dyld: symbol not found: _glbeginquery 0 Answers
unable to download & load particular scene in iPhone Project 2 Answers
iPhone StoreKit implementation problem 2 Answers
I need the pro version to call my own objective C libraries from Unity ? 2 Answers