L I M E Blog

Add Facebook Connect to a Unity iPhone Game

A step-by-step tutorial: sample code included!

    

Context for this Tutorial

Carnival Craze is a 2D iPhone game we're submitting to the app store this week. It's programmed in Unity's 3D engine with an orthographic 2D camera. In the game, the Fortune Teller gives you any of a number of fortunes. You can post your favorite ones to your Facebook wall for all you friends to see. This tutorial shows how to do this, with all the code you need.

Writing to Player Prefs

In the game, each fortune has a button saying “POST THIS FORTUNE TO YOUR WALL.” In script, we write to PlayerPrefs when that button is pressed. We're naming this PlayerPref “Fortune” and the associated value is whatever the string currentFortune is holding. When the game is running on device, this adds a key-value pair to NSUserDefaults. The key is “Fortune” and the value is “Plan for many pleasures ahead.” in this instance.

var invisible : GUIStyle;

private var currentFortune : String = "Plan for many pleasures ahead.";

function OnGUI()

{

  if( GUI.Button( Rect( 100, 260, 120, 40 ), "", invisible ))

  {

  PlayerPrefs.SetString("Fortune", currentFortune);

  }

}

Street Fighter IV now on the IPHONE!

Street Fighter 4 coming to the iPhone is one of the biggest news stories since, well, the last big brand announced a port. Whether it’s GTA: Chinatown Wars, Plants vs Zombies, or any other major series stepping onto Apple’s iPhone, there’s nothing that gets gamers’ blood up like a classic game on their cutting-edge handheld. Being an avid Street Fighter Fan throughout the years, playing such series as the original SF2, I think hardcore and casual fighters alike won’t be disappointed by this handheld version.

Street Fighter 4 will feature eight classic characters: Ryu, Ken, Guile, Dhalsim, Chun-Li, Blanka, M. Bison, and Abel. The game will not feature separate storylines, but does offer a Tournament mode with a series of fights escalating in difficulty, and the familiar taunts when you win or lose. This timeless classic can now be yours for the price of $9.99 on the Itunes App Store.
 

Colors and Printing

Printing is a pretty tricky process. The computer has to take the digital files and pixel placement and translate it into coordinates for a little desktop printer to deposit ink in lines as it travels at about a foot a second (in the case of ink-jet printers). Its a complicated process, but has become so refined that amazing results can be achieved. 

There is one drawback with this system. Color. Our eyes receive light and red, green, and blue wavelengths of light are interpreted by our brains to produce an image. This is convenient for us because we are able to produce red green and blue light quite easily. Our TVs, phones, computers are all using this same color system, and they look great. They produce these colors which add to form new colors. This is called an additive color system.

Print however operates on a different color model. It is called a subtractive color system. It involves Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. When colors are printed on a page, they subtract the light wavelengths that are reflected to our eyes, not adding colors together to produce light. In this system, red and green don't produce yellow, for example, but produce an orangish color. 

The computer has to take all this RGB information and translate it before it gets to the printer where it is printed in CMYK. This produces limitations in what colors can be accurately printed. For this reason, dark blues and bright reds look especially bad in printers. this graphic demonstrates the look of the color spectrum before and after printing. As you can see, the smooth color variations are lost.

This is why when you want to get an amazing print, it is important go to the professionals who know how to compensate for these color limitations. Modern professional printing processes can over come this and produce lifelike results if you have the knowhow and the willingness to invest in your image.