Apple to reject non-64 bits application after Febriary 2015

[LightStriker]

Unity is currently working on bringing their version to be 64 bits compliant on iOS.

They distributed a beta version over the 4.6.0 version (4.6.0 P1), and while it compiled properly, the XCode solution fails on Scaleform.

This is a major blocker if Scaleform has no 64bits version by the month of Febriary 2015 as all iOS app will fail submittion.

Can we expect 64 Bits version of Unity/iOS Scaleform before Apple's deadline?

[unity007]

Technically the plugin could be 32-bit, as long as the Unity app itself is 64 bit.

But this depends on the requirements of Apple.

A reply from Autodesk would be greatly appreciated. February starts in 21 days. If we (developers) have to make changes we'd need a new plugin (from Autodesk) and fast.

[LightStriker]

Trust me, I've checked. For Apple to accept your app, the binary must be compiled against arm64, and for that to happen, all linked library must also be arm64 compatible. Otherwise XCode fails to compile it, and output "Cannot find arm64 version of..."

[unity007]

Check this official Scaleform answer from a while ago about a 64 bits-version:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/scaleform-unity-development/where-do-i-find-the-64-bit-dll-version-of-...

The answer is scary.

It would be GREAT if a scaleform employee could take away a bit of the FUD about Apple + 64-bit requirements.

If we have to PAY for a 64-bit version then tell us when and how much. It can't be more than the 1m USD we spent so far on a Scaleform + Unity product for mobile... 1m that will soon be "gone in 60 seconds" if we can't have our product in the Apple app store.

[LightStriker]

1m? What?

[bzor]

this is really scary, it's a few weeks away now.. can we at least get some reply

[k.rybin]

They have no official info about that 

https://twitter.com/rybin_k/status/558196541148917760

[zedaidai]

J-8 

I'm working on a scaleform based game for ios / android. 

I'm getting a little nervous about this... Could'd we get a yes or no ? Will there be an update of scaleform to support 64 bits ios build ?

[k.rybin]

Answer from support:

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There are no current plans to update the consumer Mobile SDK. Feel free to contact us in a couple of months regarding future plans for Scaleform Unity / Mobile. 

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[bzor]

I got the same reply.. This is outrageous, they will be selling a plug-in that will get your app rejected if you include it. It'd be bad enough if it were several months until the 64-bit version was available, but it's several months until they announce their plans? Insane.

This is derailing the production of our game, we've lost all faith in Scaleform.

[LightStriker]

It's not looking like Autodesk care... And frankly, that's really bad for us. We have lot invested in this and have multiple projects using Scaleform planned to be released this year. On the better news, Unity released their IL2CPP version of Unity 4.6, which supports Arm64.

[unity007]

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@LightStriker wrote:
It's not looking like Autodesk care... And frankly, that's really bad for us. We have lot invested in this and have multiple projects using Scaleform planned to be released this year. On the better news, Unity released their IL2CPP version of Unity 4.6, which supports Arm64.

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We're in the same boat. Nearly 1m USD invested in a product which heavily relies on ScaleForm. We never had any doubts in Autodesk, but the forum shows something different.

We already looked into "GAF converter" ( http://gafmedia.com/ ) to convert SWF to a native Unity3D texture atlas. It means we have to do a lot of work again and re-code some of our AS3 logic to control animation, but luckily we already made the decision to develop the core game-logic in C# so we can use that. 

GAF convert is not cheap, it will cost us near $1000 PER YEAR but honestly .. with our product-costs that is nothing. So Autodesk can keep their 'cheap' unsupported and left-to-die Unity plugin and we'll go native.

We had a lot of trouble anyway to get our SWF assets going well with all kinds of ScaleForm limitations and requirements (think of expensive masks, gradients etc).

GAF might give us worse results at a higher cost but at least we will be 100% depending on Unity only and not on an external library publisher that clearly does not think it needs to communicate with it's users nor feels it should anticipate (64-bit support) needs. It's not like 64-bit is something from last week. It has been out for a year now, Apple has announced it already a while ago and the iPhone 6 has been available for a bit as well. I can understand programmers at ScaleForm / Autodesk need time and we, as programmers, totally understand that. But at least COMMUNICATE with us, your paying customers. We don't need an ETA that is precise to a day, but something like ; we are working on this, we might have an alpha around february, a beta around march and maybe a stable 64-bit version in june 2015, then we have a choice (to wait, or not). Now the silence is seriously hurting Autodesk's reputation.

I wonder if the PR department has a clue how reputation works the internet.

[zedaidai]

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@unity007 wrote:

We already looked into "GAF converter" ( http://gafmedia.com/ ) to convert SWF to a native Unity3D texture atlas. It means we have to do a lot of work again and re-code some of our AS3 logic to control animation, but luckily we already made the decision to develop the core game-logic in C# so we can use that. 

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Same story as yours. We're investigating "uniSWF". It reproduces the flash display list and nested animations in unity with texture atlas.  It works 100% with new il2cpp and 64 bit builds for ios. GAF seems promising too, but doesn't have nested animation support yet.

Maybe there are some forum rules to not advertize these stuffs , but who cares now ?

[k.rybin]

With Scaleform all your flexible logic can be in AS2/3 code.
Without Scaleform all your flexible logic in C#. This is not comfortable in many cases.

[bzor]

We've also invested a large amount of time and resources in Scaleform and creating tools/workflows for our artists. We never thought Autodesk would drop the ball, all of our experience with them as a company has been great and their support for AAA titles seemed like it would trickle down to this integration. We could probably rework all of the UI and menu screens in Unity's new GUI system, but all of our cut scenes are vector based animations and would have to be converted to video or texture atlases. This just isn't feasible for us.

We'd even be fine with delaying our ship date if they could give us any hint that this was in the works, but as it stands now we have nothing to go on. Watching Unity work around the clock to ship IL2CPP in time for the deadline has been amazing, and this is the complete opposite. Hopefully Autodesk can show some sort of commitment to their customers and at least let us know what their plans are.