Unity has announced work on Apple TV support

“We are already working on transferring the Unity runtime and all games created on Unity to a new platform,” Mantas Puida, an iPhone team leader, said yesterday in the official blog of the engine.

Despite the fact that tvOS is based on iOS, it is not so easy to adapt the Unity environment to the new OS. Numerous frames are simply not available on tvOS,” Mantas writes.

According to him, Unity developers are currently working with a closed focus group on polishing Apple TV support. And if any team has an Apple TV devkit, Unity will be happy to add a team to this focus group.

However, if there is no devkit, then you should not despair. Without it, it is also possible to start preparing content for tvOS. To do this, it is enough to connect the iPhone 6 Plus to the TV using an HDMI cable and tie a wireless MFi gamepad to the smartphone.

Mantas also shares a checklist for those developers who already want to prepare their game for tvOS:

• make sure the game runs well on the latest version of Unity 5.x;
• make sure that the game responds to the requests of the gamepad (in the future you will have to “screw” the support of the remote). Interaction with the game should take place completely without the participation of the smartphone screen (this applies both to working with the game menu and the gameplay itself);
• the game should save all saves to the cloud by default;
• Apple TV is, in fact, a streaming device (each application can occupy a maximum of 200 MB, if it is heavier, then the content is loaded from the cloud). For this reason, all big games must support OND (On Demand Resource) technology;
• since all plugins must be recompiled for the new platform, some of them may not work or may not be available at all within tvOS, so you should make a list of all plugins that you use during development and contact their developers regarding Apple TV support.

It is not reported when exactly Apple TV support will enter the open beta testing stage. Unity hopes to do it this fall. tvOS support will be available to Unity personal license holders.

Source: Unity

Also on the topic:

• The size of the app for Apple TV will be limited to 200 MBThe fourth-generation Apple TV will be a game console
• You will be able to learn about the latest trends in the gaming industry first-hand, personally meet and discuss working issues with leading companies in the game development and publishing market at White Nights Moscow 2015, which will be held on October 13-14.