Details about the implementation of the used iOS plugin from Stan’s assets and why I didn’t use the unity-ios-keychain-plugin or made a plugin on my own
CP Social’s iOS Services were created using Stan’s Assets – Ultimate mobile pro just like the android services. As described in the available solutions this plugin wasn’t the only solutions that could help development of CP Social.
D.I.Y.
To create CP Social’s iOS services I looked into creating my own iOS native plugin, this would have had to be an external library written in Swift (iOS native programming language) or in Objective-C (super set of the ‘C’ programming language, used for iOS devices).
Pro’s
Creating my own plugin for the iOS services would have had a couple of pro’s to it.
- Working with Swift or Objective-C would have been a great learning experience.
- The plugin would have been ‘free’
- iOS service wouldn’t rely in a third party plugin
Cons
Even though creating my own plugin would have had some pro’s there were a lot of cons to it.
- No-one at the tall ones knew anything about Swift or Objective-C, so if something would break in the iOS services no-one could fix it.
- Time, having to learn Swift or Objective-C would have taken a lot of time to learn. Time I didn’t have.
- Keeping track of my personal goals and ‘Don’t reinvent the wheel’. If there is a substantial better solution to the problem, don’t try to fix the problem by creating your own (potentially worse) solution.
After discussing these pro’s and cons with Martijn, we settled on using a third party plugin that would lend the opportunity to expand CP Social in the future and have support available when needed.
Stan’s assets – Ultimate Mobile pro
Just like the Android services I used Stan’s Assets – Ultimate mobile pro to help with the iOS native implementation.
I could also have used the two other iOS available solutions:
- Geri borbas’ – Eppz Cloud (cloud saves)
- KT Apps & Games’ – iOS Game Center Plugin for Unity (Achievements, user data)
But like stated earlier, after discussing with Martijn, we wanted a plugin that would lend the opportunity to expand CP Social in the future. The two plugins stated above would only allow for the bare minimum requirements for CP Social. And not be expandable.
Implementing
Just like the Android services, implementing the iOS support using ‘Stan’s assets – Ultimate Mobile pro’ was a breeze. Using their iOS documentation the entire iOS support was added to CP Social in about 1 sprint.
Examples
When developing the iOS services for CP Social, every time a new feature was added I would create a small video to show to the rest of the team at The Tall Ones how the progression went.
These videos can be seen below