Can't get LaunchScreen.storyboard to work! Need docs.

Unity 2017.3.1p3 copies my storyboard to the Xcode project, but there doesn't seem to be a way to include images in an xcassets folder. When I manually add the xcassets in Xcode, the launch screen storyboard appears correctly, but Unity crashes on startup:

Uncaught exception: NSInvalidArgumentException: Storyboard (<UIStoryboard: 0x1664c580>) doesn't contain a view controller with identifier 'unitySplashStoryboard'

0 CoreFoundation 0x21a29b23 <redacted> + 150
1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x211e6dff objc_exception_throw + 38
2 UIKit 0x267143d9 <redacted> + 0
3 GameAppName 0x00049ff4 _Z16ShowSplashScreenP8UIWindow + 548
4 GameAppName 0x0006d3cc -[UnityAppController(ViewHandling) createUI] + 2160
5 GameAppName 0x000698f0 -[UnityAppController application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:] + 1856

Can someone from Unity please document how to make this work? Thanks!

 

I'm being a squeaky wheel... perhaps some of these fine Unity folks can shed some light?
@Mantas-Puida @Yury-Habets @Aurimas-Cernius @povilas @JeffDUnity3D

 

I've been digging into this some more by looking at the Unity source code in XCode. What it looks like to me is that in the SplashScreen.mm code, ShowSplashScreen() wants a UIViewController with ID 'unitySplashStoryboard' so I added that to my storyboard. That fixes the first crash above, but then it crashes in ShowSplashScreen() a few lines later when it calls [_controller create: window] because UIViewController doesn't contain the 'create' selector. It clearly is looking for _controller to be a SplashScreenController instance, but it isn't possible to assign custom classes (like SplashScreenController) to LaunchScreen storyboards, so I don't get how this code is supposed to work?

 

Any help on this @karl_jones ?

 

Thanks @karl_jones ! - Yes, I filed a bug, the fogbugz number is 1023109

I included a LaunchScreen.storyboard and xcassets with images for it with the bug post.

Hopefully there's a fix I can make in the IOS Trampoline source (i.e. Classes/UI) so I don't have to wait for an official patch.

 

Hi @karl_jones, did that bug post have enough information?

 

@karl_jones, yes, they've reproduced it and passed it on to the engineers.

 

No that doesn't work because storyboards do not allow custom classes.

Thanks, that would be very helpful!

 

I'm not sure what your point is. If you try to compile with that storyboard using a custom class as a launch screen storyboard, you'll get an error. My experience is that launch storyboards only work with core classes, like UIViewController. It will not work with a derived custom class.

 

Thanks @Masterfalcon - while that fixes the crash, I don't think that's the expected solution because then there's a black screen after this and before the Unity Splash screen. I noticed there is code elsewhere in the Unity IOS startup code (I don't recall where at the moment) - where it tries to display the storyboard. This is a good thing as I think it's trying to avoid having a black screen by displaying the Launch Storyboard again. However, I believe this code to display the Launch Storyboard again is broken. The fix above avoids this code, but that is not ideal.

Also there's no way to have xcasset images with your Storyboard. Unity needs to find and copy those associated assets to the IOS (XCode) project folder and add it to the XCode solution/project file.

 

Sorry, in that method ShowSplashScreen, it creates the view controller from the storyboard to avoid that black screen. Elsewhere above in the SplashScreen class, it checks if the storyboard is being used and it doesn't show the Launch Images or "nib" file alternative. If you remove that code as you suggest in ShowSplashScreen, then you get black after the Storyboard launch screen, which looks bad.

 

I'm facing the same problem. Changing `ShowSplashScreen` as Masterfalcon mentioned above works (application is booting again) but it does not look good because it is immediate fading to black.

 

Any ETA when it will be in the release versions?

 

@Masterfalcon Will this be included in the LTS releases? 2017.4?

 

I've stumbled upon this as well. It's still not fixed in Unity 2018.1.6f1.

I've been happily using the simple iPhone/iPad Launch screens, until I found out that they cause Screen.safeArea to return wrong values for some reason ( Case 1052565 ). So I tried the built in Unity Splash Screen stuff, but I don't want it to fade in and out, and 2 seconds it too long and it seems that I can't set it to be shorter than that.

So I thought I'd create a Storyboard and use that. So I made it, added it to my Unity project and then I was stumbled as to how I'd also add an image to go with it in the build. Seems it isn't possible (?). So I added the image manually and it also crashed for me.

Then I came here.

I applied the patch posted here, and even though it works now, it seems it doesn't handle the orientation correctly.

I have the orientation set only for landscape in the General settings and it's set to only landscape in info.plist. But still, if I have my iPhone 6S Plus in portrait when I launch my app, the storyboard I provided switches to portrait for half a second, which is annoying and looks weird.

I have to say it has been frustrating that none of the built in methods that Unity provides work correctly for me.

 

So I upgraded a project to Unity2018.3 that had a working storyboard splash screen and got the following exception on launch:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'Application windows are expected to have a root view controller at the end of application launch'

I switched to a simple test project, and copied my storyboard over and I get the same error. After some further testing and tweaking, I've discovered that by replacing this line:

_controller = [storyboard instantiateInitialViewController];

with

_controller = [storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier: @"unitySplashStoryboard"];

in SplashScreen.mm.

The line came from the previously working SplashScreen.mm as part of Unity2017.

The app will launch and show the storyboard as expected. Can anyone @Unity or @Masterfalcon illustrate how this is supposed to work?

 

In the 2nd test project, everything is as default in Unity2018.3, except I checked the 'use storyboard' option in the build settings, created a storyboard file (used previously working storyboard from my 2017 project, less the background image), and then modified the SplashScreen.mm file as per my previous post after building the project once.

So I don't explicitly set the initial ViewController, its just whatever the normal unity launcher does.

 

That let the standard 2018.3 code launch without error. I had to recreate a new storyboard file, the one I'd used previously had a custom class name, and that was generating an error. Also, the storyboard must be called "LaunchScreen.storyboard" and I had to manually add it to the XCode project generated by Unity.

However, this should let me upgrade to 2018.3.

Thanks.