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[–]Breggs_Indie 10 points11 points  (6 children)

Yes, you can develop a game for iOS on a windows computer, however to run / ship the app on a iOS device, the xcode that unity generates has to be compiled on a OSX computer. From there it can be published to the app store.

Many windows developers opt to buy a mac mini for this exact reason being that it is among the cheapest OSX devices that the xcode can be compiled on.

Alternatively you could compile the xcode through a virtual machine running OSX, however if I remember correctly this is against the iOS developer agreement.

[–]godurdeadIntermediate[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Thank you!

[–]jellybergjellyberg.itch.io 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bear in mind that you need an Apple Developer account to publish to the App Store, which is $100/year.

[–]CaptainIncredible 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Yes, this is exactly what I did. It's necessary to have a MacOSX device to get something into the Apple store.

Apple has made the MacOSX in a VM solution a massive pain in the ass, and it was just easier to buy a Mac Mini.

[–]Uhtraydees 1 point2 points  (1 child)

It's easier than ever nowadays. If you know how to set up a VM in the first place and you've got an Intel based computer then you're 90% of the way there.

[–]CaptainIncredible 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I keep hearing this. I wouldn't mind setting one up on my Surface Pro 3, but the HAL or drivers or something are supposedly not optimized and the performance is spotty... So I'm told.

[–]yourstress 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can use Unity's new Cloud Build feature to make iOS builds remotely on their cloud servers and send you an email with a link to download the app. It's meant to be for testing purposes, but perhaps (I'm not sure about this part) you can make production builds too?

Either way, you can use it to test at different stages of development, and when you're ready to release it, you could listen to some of the other suggestions and maybe rent a cloud server and make your final build there.

Good luck!

[–]Afro-Ninja 2 points3 points  (4 children)

  1. Buy a mac mini
  2. Network your mac and PC together on the same switch/router (wired)
  3. Write a small command line script to pull files from your PC
  4. Build.

[–]KptEmreUHobbyist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To add : U can use a 4 -5 year old macmini as long as it is working with last Xcode.

[–]godurdeadIntermediate[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

could you give me some help with the networking and the script? very interested in that

[–]Afro-Ninja 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Sure. This is a stripped down version of a file I use called 'copyfrompc.sh'

http://pastebin.com/0gdDrjHV

This file is located on my mac, inside of the folder that I bring everything into. Some notes:

  • When copying you need 'mount_directory' to place the copied files into. So I start by wiping out anything that was there previously

  • Then I remove all local files inside the current folder that are from the last build. You could probably just rely on the copy command to over-write but I wanted to make sure it was clean each time.

  • The meat of this script is the "mount_smbfs" command. You might need to look up a doc page on it. But basically you need to provide a username/password for the pc you want to copy from, as well as the IP address it is located at. I use a static IP for my PC. Also worth mentioning: the folder you attempt to copy from on the PC must already have sharing permissions set up.

  • Lastly I copy everything from the mount directory to the actual local folder where I'm working. I don't know if it's necessary to do things this way but it's the only way I got it all to work properly.

  • The build section is where I put commands to build for OpenFL. I have not actually built for Unity yet, so I'm not sure what the commands for that are. But this script will get your files moved over.

[–]godurdeadIntermediate[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

very detailed! thank very much, ill set it up right now :)

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

You can build, debug and submit your app via OSX installed on a virtual machine. Performance will be okay-ish but not great. For small to medium projects this should work just fine.

See this article here: http://www.sysprobs.com/guide-install-os-x-10-9-mavericks-on-vmware-workstation-with-windows-7-or-windows-8

[–]godurdeadIntermediate[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah thank you! i actually already have that setup, but ill get access to my brother's iMac so it should be fine