All the answers I've seen say you can do most of the work on Windows, create your game layout/mechanics etc in Windows which creates an Xcode project you then need to transfer these files over to a Mac(which is setup with Xcode/dependencies) and compile and deploy from the Mac to create your ipa file, is this correct?

Can you not use a Virtual machine on Windows to do the final build?

You also need a developers license to deploy to the appstore($99)?

Thanks.

So I have only used Unity a few times but it's got a lot of settings/compexity like the UE4 editor as you would expect.

So I have a 10 year old newphew who wants to make some kind of Clash of Clans MMO game with a star wars theme.

I have seen a few world builder plugins and character creator plugins for Unity. Now I can do any programming, all the networking side or visual scripting etc(give me enough time) but I am pretty sure this will still be way out of the depth of a 10 year old, albeit he is very capable on a PC/iPad. It would all need to be easy drag and drop. Is this realstic using various builders/plugins?

Obvioulsy it wouldn't be at the level of COCs but even if we could get something stategy going on.

I have not worked with him enough to really gauge what he will be able to grasp/remember, but as I said I think he just too young, have to say he has some good ideas though. I would probably end up doing everything which would make him feel left out and incapable etc, what do you think?

Would Unity be the best option?

He is not to young to get familiar with it, with a major caveat.

You need content. Content involves a lot of roles.

He can create terrain just fine with Unity. It is an easy matter to plop down some of the sample assets like trees and grass. Then you can put in your first person camera and run the camera around the terrain.

After that, though, you are limited to cubes and spheres or to models you have either built or downloaded.

There is a significant amount of work involved in creating fully rigged models with their animations. You can find some online but usually get the quality that you pay for.

It will be fun for a while to build a terrain, so you might get him started with that. Creating content after that will really direct him toward the modeler, animator, or texture artist career tracks. After the content is created, the associated scripts need to be created (programming) and the objects placed in the world (level design).