Implementation of the Unity Engine for Developing 2D Mobile Games in Consideration of Start-Up/Student Developers.

Abstract

The Unity 3D engine is used by a large majority of developers to create games. It owns a forty five percent market share and is considered one of the biggest development tools today; this is due to its simple and fast development process which allows for rapid production of game prototypes. However, with over a hundred different options available to develop games, one must ask whether using an engine such as Unity to generate simple 2D mobile games is necessary. This paper aims to discover whether the use of the Unity engine is appropriate for beginner developers who are looking to create 2D mobile games whilst also providing insight into how influential Unity is within education and whether learning more programming orientated applications is beneficial in regards to universal application and longevity. We will define the criteria for selecting a development methodology and create a 2D mobile game within the Unity engine and replicate this game using Corona SDK. The development process for both implementations will be reviewed and compared then the game will be tested using a benchmark application on various devices to help demonstrate which method was the most optimised and therefore appropriate for mobile development.