Native iPhone Bluetooth Multiplayer?

Question

So I want to create a 2D Tank game that you can connect to another iPhone over Bluetooth and battle in a stadium. I have everything working, but now I just need to get the Bluetooth connection and I am at a loss. I have searched around and it seems that in 3.x Unity was supposed to get a native Bluetooth API, but apparently it didn't or if it did I just cannot find it.

If I could choose, I would rather not pay for it (I'm an Indie developer, not a massive corporation) and I would rather it be simply [i]Bluetooth[/i] connection - No GameCenter or OpenFeint, just simply connect over Bluetooth and play.

Answer 1

Answer by dannyskim · Jan 16, 2012 at 07:15 PM

I know you said you'd rather not pay, but Prime31's plugins for Unity are great and are affordable for an Indie studio. His GameKit bluetooth plugin for unity is only 50 dollars, which I believe is well worth it's weight in functionality. I haven't tried it personally, but if it's anything like his 5 other plug-ins i've bought, it should be relatively easy to integrate if you know what you're doing.

http://www.prime31.com/unity

Quote from prime31.com and his plug-in for bluetooth:

Have you ever wanted to add Bluetooth or WiFi multiplayer to your game but didn't want to deal with the all the complexity of networking? Now you can add multiplayer support to your game in just one line of code! If you want to kick it up and notch and add voice chat it's just one more line! It is really THAT easy! Check out a simple example video here. For the adventurous types, the GameKit Bluetooth/WiFi and Voice Chat plugin gives you all the tools you need to make your own game lobby fully customized to match your games style!

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Menoites · Jan 16, 2012 at 07:18 PM 0

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Haha yeah, if I couldn't find a free one I was going to go with Prime31's Bluetooth plugin. It seems the best of the best plugins out there, and it seems quite simple to use. Also seeing as how a lot of the other Unity projects I am working on require a Bluetooth/WiFi connectivity as well, the $50 might just become chump change.

Thanks Danny :) Just wondering - Which of his plugins have you used and have been easy to work with? I was also looking into using his iCloud and possibly StoreKit but I really have nothing to go on for those...

dannyskim · Jan 16, 2012 at 07:27 PM 0

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I'm currently using his TapJoy, StoreKit, Free 2dToolkit, GameCenter, and Etcetera plug-ins. They've all been fantastic to use as long as you understand his usage of delegates, events, and actions and how to add your code into his base to tailor it to your project.

Trying to learn Objective-C then creating a wrapper for all of these plug-ins would have literally taken me 4 - 6 months, making the REUSABLE purchases of these plug-ins invaluable and a moot price point for me. That's assuming I make any money off my projects of course, =p.

Storekit was a breeze to implement after learning how to deal with the delegate and actions calls. The only thing that's missing from the StoreKit is the native access to the Apple Spinner to freeze the Unity thread when a transaction is communicating and being processed. This is included in the Etcetera plug-in separately, which is why I decided to purchase it.

Native iPhone Bluetooth Multiplayer?

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