iOS Controllers Support Added To The Newly Released Unity Engine 4.2.2

The popular mobile game engine, Unity 3D, has been updated to version 4.2.2. Starting with the latest update, your favorite game development engine now supports game controllers on Apple’s iOS platform, a feature which was introduced with the latest iOS 7 release. Meaning, iOS 7’s native game controller API is now included in the game engine’s package.

What the release notes state is that there will be no separate iOS-specific API for iOS Game Controllers in the new Unity release, the iOS Game Controller support plugs directly into the standard Unity Input API, making it a lot easier for developers to integrate the controller  functionality into games. To beard in mind however, games will not be developed with a controller-only input method. The game controller interface will be optional for every game to support it as per Apple documentation requirements, which state that every iOS game needs to be playable without a controller.

Some of you probably wonder if games made with the game controller API will only be supported for iOS 7 or above. Well, the answer is fortunately no. All games that include this functionality can be played on later versions of iOS (given that developers will actually want to support the game on later versions). This is thanks to Unity, which dynamically loads the Game Controller framework into the Unity iOS runtime. What it does for short? It will only load an empty list of controllers.

For those who want to read more about the feature and all updates added to the new Unity 3D version can head over to the manual page and Apple Game Controller documentation here.

Thank you NextPowerUp for providing us with this information.