so, i went through a bit of an ordeal setting up Unity Remote, i wanted to test out the mobile controls i have been working on for the game on an actual touchscreen device. having to install the Android SDK, download the app and get Unity to stream my game upon test play was much more convoluted than you would think it would be.
i decided to go ahead and install Android Studio which i read includes the kit, in lieu of the SDK alone. maybe one day it will prove useful for some other app development or deploying to the app store, but at the moment i’m focusing on Unity.
even once Android Studio was installed, i tried to fire up Unity and the remote app, but no luck. i received an error in the console about not having the latest API installed. so, i checked the list of installed programs on my machine and saw no entry for a SDK.
for the hell of it, i fired up Android Studio. i thought maybe the SDK was managed from inside the IDE, knowing Visual Studio does something similar for it’s extensions. sure enough, many more components were downloaded and installed after launching the software. for the record, there is still no entry for the SDK in the list of programs installed on my machine… which is irksome, to say the least.
after that fight, loading up unity and the remote presented me with a new warning, saying something to the effect of me needing to set the path for the SDK. all well and good, but without the package listed as installed on my mschine, i had no idea where to point Unity.
i suspected it was somewhere inside the AppData directory and a little googling confirmed my suspicion. so i found the path inside the project settings for the player for the SDK and now everything should be gravy? right?
wrong. something happened, but more errors in the log; red ones this time. scrolling through, i noticed a URL and then recalled the original warning message from Unity saying that I needed an internet connection, as well as a newer version of the SDK, so i figured it was worth a shot. once again, i downloaded and installed some sort of packages apparently necessary for this voodoo magic ritual to be performed.
so, now i’m good? right? wrong again. restart the software? the machine? no,.. well, maybe; idk. i unplugged my phone a few times reconnected it, restarted the software, tried internet, no internet… then somehow it worked. i clicked test play and the magic happened.
or did it? the is definitely a noticeable quality difference, but more importantly there is a considerable lag… in truth, what i wanted to test out was the mobile input and i found that the joystick was too small to reliably be able to touch and track with a finger. so, i suppose it served it’s purpose.