hexaust/play-games-plugin-for-unity repository overview

⁠Google Play Games plugin for Unity

Copyright (c) 2014 Google Inc. All rights reserved.

The Google Play Games plugin for Unity® is an open-source project whose goal is to provide a plugin that allows game developers to integrate with the Google Play Games API from a game written in Unity®. However, this project is not in any way endorsed or supervised by Unity Technologies.

Unity® is a trademark of Unity Technologies.

iOS is a trademark of Apple, Inc.

⁠Overview

The Google Play Games plugin for Unity allows you to access the Google Play Games API through Unity's social interface⁠. The plugin provides support for the following features of the Google Play Games API:

• sign in
• unlock/reveal/increment achievement
• post score to leaderboard
• cloud save read/write
• show built-in achievement/leaderboards UI
• events and quests
• nearby connections⁠
• turn-based multiplayer⁠
• real-time multiplayer⁠

All features except the nearby connections are available on Android and iOS. The Nearby connections feature is currently only available on Android.

Features:

• easy GUI-oriented project setup (integrated into the Unity GUI)
• cross-platform support (Android and iOS) with no need for platform glue code.
• (Android) no need to override/customize the player Activity
• (Android) no need to override/customize AndroidManifest.xml
• (iOS) integrates into XCode build using Cocoapods to manage the framework dependencies.

System requirements:

• Unity® 5 or above.

  Note:4.6.8 works at runtime, but some editor functionality does not work. as a result, use of older version of Unity are at your own peril.

• To deploy on Android:

  • Android SDK
  • Android v4.0 or higher
  • Google Play Services library, version 8.4 or above

• To deploy on iOS:

  • XCode 6 or above
  • Cocoapods⁠

⁠Upgrading

If you have already integrated your project with a previous version of the plugin and wish to upgrade to a new version, please refer to the upgrade instructions⁠.

⁠Configure Your Game

To use the plugin, you must first configure your game⁠ in the Google Play Developer Console. Follow the instructions on creating a client ID for Android and/or iOS (depending on what platforms you intend to deploy or game on). Be particularly careful when entering your package name and your certificate fingerprints, since mistakes on those screens can be difficult to recover from.

If you intend to use real-time or turn-based multiplayer in your game, remember to activate those features in the Google Play Developer Console when creating your application instances.

⁠Copy the game resources from the console

Once you configure at least one resource (event, achievement, or leaderboard), copy the resource configuration from the Google Play Developer Console, and paste it into the setup configuration in Unity. To get the resources go to the the Achievements tab, then click on "Get resources" on the bottom of the list.

If you are building for Android, copy the "Android resources". If you are building for iOS, click "Objective-C" and copy those entries.

Select all the contents of the resources window, and copy them to the clipboard.

⁠Paste the game resources into the plugin setup dialog

Back in Unity, open the setup dialog Window > Google Play Games > Setup... > Android Setup

• Enter the directory to save constants - Enter the folder for the constants file.
• Constants class name - this is the name of the C# class to create, including namespace.
• Resources Definition - paste the resource data from the Play Games console here.
• Web client ID - this is the client ID of the linked web app. It is only needed if you have a web based back-end for your game, need an access token for the player to make other, non-game API calls, or need to access the email address of the player.

The setup process will configure your game with the client id and generate a C# class that contains constants for each of your resources.

⁠Setup Checklist

Make sure to do the following if they are relevant to your game:

1. Add tester email addresses to the testing section of your game on the Play Games Console.
2. The SHA1 fingerprint used to create the linked Android app is from the keystore used to sign the Unity application.

⁠Add Achievements and Leaderboards

Add achievements⁠ and leaderboards⁠ to your game in the Google Play Developer Console. For each achievement and leaderboard you configure, make sure to note the corresponding achievement ID or leaderboard ID, as those will be needed when making the API calls. Achievement and leaderboard IDs are alphanumeric strings (e.g. "Cgkx9eiuwi8_AQ").

⁠Add Events and Quests

Events and Quests are a way to introduce new challenges for players to complete and incentivizing them with some in-game reward or benefit if they succeed. Read more about how to configure and use Events and Quests on Game Concepts - Events and Quests⁠

⁠Load Your Game Project

Next, load your game project into the Unity editor.

If you do not have a game project to work with, you can use the Minimal sample available in the samples directory. Using that sample will allow you to quickly test your setup and make sure you can access the API.

If you want to test a larger sample after you are familiar with the plugin, try the CubicPilot game. More information about building the samples can be found in the samples README⁠ file.

⁠Plugin Installation

To download the plugin, clone this Git repository into your file system (or download it as a ZIP file and unpack it). Then, look for the unitypackage file in the current-build directory:

current-build/GooglePlayGamesPluginForUnity-X.YY.ZZ.unitypackage

To install the plugin, simply open your game project in Unity and import that file into your project's assets, as you would any other Unity package. This is accomplished through the Assets > Import Package > Custom Package menu item (you can also reach this menu it by right-clicking the Assets folder).

Next, make sure your current build platform is set to Android. From File > Build Settings… select Android and click Switch Platform. You should now see a new menu item was added under Window > Google Play Games. If you don't see the new menu items, refresh the assets by clicking Assets > Refresh and try again.

⁠Android Setup

Next, set up the path to your Android SDK installation in Unity. This is located in the preferences menu, under the External Tools section.

To configure your Unity game to run with Google Play Games on Android, first open the Android SDK manager and verify that you have downloaded the following packages. Depending on if you are using the SDK manager from Android Studio, or using the standalone SDK manager, the name of the components may be different.

• Google Play Services
• Android Support Library
• Local Maven repository for Support Libraries (Also known as Android Support Repository)
• Google Repository
• Android 6.0 (API 23) (this does not affect the min SDK version).

Next, configure your game's package name. To do this, click File > Build Settings, select the Android platform and click Player Settings to show Unity's Player Settings window. In that window, look for the Bundle Identifier setting under Other Settings. Enter your package name there (for example com.example.my.awesome.game).

In order to sign in to Play Game Services, you need to sign your APK file, make sure that you are signing it with the correct certificate, that is, the one that corresponds to the SHA1 certificate fingerprint you entered in the Developer Console during the setup.

Next, click the Window |Google Play Games|Setup - Android setup menu item. This will display the Android setup screen.

Enter the Constants class name. This is the name of the fully qualified class that will be updated (or created) which contains the IDs of the game resources. The format of the name is .. For example, AwesomeGame.GPGSIds

Paste the resource definition data. This is the XML data from the Google Play Developer Console which contains the resource IDs as well as the Application ID for Android.

This data is found in the Google Play Developer Console by clicking "Get resources" on any of the resource pages (e.g. Achievements or Leaderboards), then clicking Android.

After pasting the data into the text area, click the Setup button.

Note: If you are using a web application or backend server with your game, you can link the web application to the game to enable gettting the player's access token and/or email address. To do this, link a web application to the game in the Google Play Developer Console, and enter the client id for the web application into the setup dialog.

⁠Additional instructions on building for Android on Windows

If you are using Windows, you must make sure that your Java SDK installation can be accessed by Unity. To do this:

1. Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to your Java SDK installation path (for example, C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_45).
2. Add the Java SDK's bin folder to your PATH environment variable (for example, C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_45\bin)
3. Reboot.

How to edit environment variables: In Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, right-click My Computer, then Properties, then go to Advanced System Properties (or System Properties and then click the Advanced tab), then click Environment Variables. On Windows 8, press Windows Key + W and search for environment variables For more information, consult the documentation for your version of Windows.

⁠iOS Setup

Install Cocoapods

Once Cocoapods is installed, the plugin will add a Podfile to the xcode project to manage the framework dependencies.

Since Cocoapods uses workspaces to manage the project and the dependent pods, you need to open Unity-iPhone.xcworkspace to build the project.

Note: If you are using a version of Unity less than 5.0, you may encounter a linker error when building the Xcode application. If you see the error: ld: library not found for -lPods-Unity-iPhone Then open the project tree, expand Frameworks, and delete libPods-Unity-iPhone.a and rebuild.

Next, open the iOS build settings dialog. To do so, click File > Build Settings, select the iOS platform, and click Player Settings. Find the Bundle Identifier setting and enter your bundle identifier there.

Next, click the Window > Google Play Games > Setup - iOS setup menu item.

Enter the Constants class name. This is the name of the fully qualified class that will be updated (or created) which contains the IDs of the game resources. The format of the name is .. For example, AwesomeGame.GPGSIds

Enter the resource definition data. This is the Objective-C data from the Google Play Developer Console which contains the resource IDs as well as the Client ID.

This data is found in the Google Play Developer Console by clicking "Get resources" on any of the resource pages (e.g. Achievements or Leaderboards), then clicking Objective-C.

When ready, click the Setup button to finish the configuration process.

Important: If you ever change your bundle ID, you must perform the iOS setup again in order to update the necessary files where this information gets replicated.

Note: If you are using a web application or backend server with your game, you can link the web application to the game to enable gettting the player's access token and/or email address. To do this, link a web application to the game in the Google Play Developer Console, and enter the client id for the web application into the setup dialog.

⁠Run the Project

If you are working with the Minimal sample, you should be able to build and run the project at this point. You will see a screen with an Authenticate button, and you should be able to sign in when you click it.

To build and run on Android, click File > Build Settings, select the Android platform, then Switch to Platform, then Build and Run.

To build and run on iOS, click File > Build Settings, select the iOS platform, then Switch to Platform, then Build. This will export an XCode project and will display additional instructions on completing the build.

The remainder of this guide assumes you are now attempting to write your own code to integrate Play Games services into your game.

⁠ISocialPlatform Compliance

The Google Play Games plugin implements Unity's social interface⁠, for compatibility with games that already use that interface when integrating with other platforms. However, some features are unique to Play Games and are offered as extensions to the standard social interface provided by Unity.

The standard API calls can be accessed through the Social.Active object, which is a reference to an ISocialPlatform interface. The non-standard Google Play Games extensions can be accessed by casting the Social.Active object to the PlayGamesPlatform class, where the additional methods are available.

⁠Nearby Connections Configuration

In order to use nearby connections, a service id which uniquely identifies the set of applications that can interact needs to be configured. This is done by clicking the Window > Google Play Games > Nearby Connections setup... menu item. This will display the nearby conections setup screen. On this screen enter the service ID you want to use. It should be something that identifies your application, and follows the same rules as the bundle id (for example: com.example.myawesomegame.nearby). Once you enter the id, press Setup.

To use nearby connections, the player does not need to be authenticated, and no Google Play Developer Console configuration is needed.

For detailed information on nearby connection usage, please refer to nearby connections⁠.

⁠Configuration & Initialization Play Game Services

In order to save game progress, handle multiplayer invitations and turn notifications, or require access to a player's Google+ social graph, the default configuration needs to be replaced with a custom configuration. To do this use the PlayGamesClientConfiguration. If your game does not use these features, then there is no need to initialize the platform configuration. Once the instance is initialized, make it your default social platform by calling PlayGamesPlatform.Activate:

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using GooglePlayGames.BasicApi;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;

    PlayGamesClientConfiguration config = new PlayGamesClientConfiguration.Builder()
        // enables saving game progress.
        .EnableSavedGames()
        // registers a callback to handle game invitations received while the game is not running.
        .WithInvitationDelegate(<callback method>)
        // registers a callback for turn based match notifications received while the
        // game is not running.
        .WithMatchDelegate(<callback method>)
        // require access to a player's Google+ social graph (usually not needed)
        .RequireGooglePlus()
        .Build();

    PlayGamesPlatform.InitializeInstance(config);
    // recommended for debugging:
    PlayGamesPlatform.DebugLogEnabled = true;
    // Activate the Google Play Games platform
    PlayGamesPlatform.Activate();

After activated, you can access the Play Games platform through Social.Active. You should only call PlayGamesPlatform.Activate once in your application. Making this call will not display anything on the screen and will not interact with the user in any way.

⁠Sign in

To sign in, call Social.localUser.Authenticate, which is part of the standard Unity social platform interface.

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    ...
    // authenticate user:
    Social.localUser.Authenticate((bool success) => {
        // handle success or failure
    });

Authentication will show the required consent dialogs. If the user has already signed into the game in the past, this process will be silent and the user will not have to interact with any dialogs.

Note that you cannot make any games API calls (unlock achievements, post scores, etc) until you get a successful return value from Authenticate, so it is good practice to put up a standby screen until the callback is called, to make sure the user can't start playing the game until the authentication process completes.

⁠Player Statistics

The Player Stats API let you tailor game experiences to specific segments of players and different stages of the player lifecycle. You can build tailored experiences for each player segment based on how players are progressing, spending, and engaging. For example, you can use this API to take proactive actions to encourage a less active player to re-engage with your game, such as by displaying and promoting new in-game items when the player signs in.

The callback takes two parameters:

1. The result code less than or equal to zero is success. See CommonStatusCodes⁠ for all values.
2. The PlayerStats object of type GooglePlayGames.PlayGamesLocalUser.PlayerStats

For more information see Player Stats⁠.

The player stats are available after authenticating:

    ((PlayGamesLocalUser)Social.localUser).GetStats((rc, stats) =>
        {
            // -1 means cached stats, 0 is succeess
            // see  CommonStatusCodes for all values.
            if (rc <= 0 && stats.HasDaysSinceLastPlayed()) {
                Debug.Log("It has been " + stats.DaysSinceLastPlayed + " days");
            }
        });

⁠Revealing/Unlocking an Achievement

To unlock an achievement, use the Social.ReportProgress method with a progress value of 100.0f:

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    ...
    // unlock achievement (achievement ID "Cfjewijawiu_QA")
    Social.ReportProgress("Cfjewijawiu_QA", 100.0f, (bool success) => {
      // handle success or failure
    });

Notice that according to the expected behavior of Social.ReportProgress⁠, a progress of 0.0f means revealing the achievement and a progress of 100.0f means unlocking the achievement. Therefore, to reveal an achievement (that was previously hidden) without unlocking it, simply call Social.ReportProgress with a progress of 0.0f.

⁠Incrementing an Achievement

If your achievement is incremental, the Play Games implementation of Social.ReportProgress will try to behave as closely as possible to the expected behavior according to Unity's social API, but may not be exact. For this reason, we recommend that you do not use Social.ReportProgress for incremental achievements. Instead, use the PlayGamesPlatform.IncrementAchievement method, which is a Play Games extension.

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    ...
    // increment achievement (achievement ID "Cfjewijawiu_QA") by 5 steps
    PlayGamesPlatform.Instance.IncrementAchievement(
        "Cfjewijawiu_QA", 5, (bool success) => {
            // handle success or failure
    });

⁠Posting a Score to a Leaderboard

To post a score to a leaderboard, call Social.ReportScore.

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    ...
    // post score 12345 to leaderboard ID "Cfji293fjsie_QA")
    Social.ReportScore(12345, "Cfji293fjsie_QA", (bool success) => {
        // handle success or failure
    });

Note that the platform and the server will automatically discard scores that are lower than the player's existing high score, so you can submit scores freely without any checks to test whether or not the score is greater than the player's existing score.

⁠Showing the Achievements UI

To show the built-in UI for all achievements, call Social.ShowAchievementsUI.

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    ...
    // show achievements UI
    Social.ShowAchievementsUI();

This will show a standard UI appropriate for the look and feel of the platform (Android or iOS).

⁠Showing the Leaderboard UI

To show the built-in UI for all leaderboards, call Social.ShowLeaderboardUI.

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    ...
    // show leaderboard UI
    Social.ShowLeaderboardUI();

If you wish to show a particular leaderboard instead of all leaderboards, you can pass a leaderboard ID to the method. This, however, is a Play Games extension, so the Social.Active object needs to be cast to a PlayGamesPlatform object first:

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    ...
    // show leaderboard UI
    PlayGamesPlatform.Instance.ShowLeaderboardUI("Cfji293fjsie_QA");

⁠Accessing Leaderboard data

There are 2 methods to retrieving the leaderboard score data.

⁠Using Social.ILeaderboard

This method uses the ILeaderboard interface to define the scope and filters for getting the data. This approach allows you to configure:

1. The leaderboard Id
2. The collection (social or public)
3. The timeframe (daily, weekly, all-time)
4. The rank position to start retrieving scores.
5. The number of scores (the default is 25).
6. Filter by user id.

If the from parameter is non-positive, then the results returned are player-centered, meaning the scores around the current player's score are returned.

Note: the play game services API only supports paging, so retrieving using a high 'from' position will have a performance impact.

    ILeaderboard lb = PlayGamesPlatform.Instance.CreateLeaderboard();
    lb.id = "MY_LEADERBOARD_ID";
    lb.LoadScores(ok =>
        {
            if (ok) {
                LoadUsersAndDisplay(lb);
            }
            else {
                Debug.Log("Error retrieving leaderboardi");
            }
        });

⁠Using PlayGamesPlatform.LoadScores()

This method uses the PlayGamesPlatform directly. This approach provides additional flexibility and information when accessing the leaderboard data.

    PlayGamesPlatform.Instance.LoadScores(
            GPGSIds.leaderboard_leaders_in_smoketesting,
            LeaderboardStart.PlayerCentered,
            100,
            LeaderboardCollection.Public,
            LeaderboardTimeSpan.AllTime,
            (data) =>
            {
                mStatus = "Leaderboard data valid: " + data.Valid;
                mStatus += "\n approx:" +data.ApproximateCount + " have " + data.Scores.Length;
            });

The parameters for LoadScores() are:

1. leaderboardId
2. start position (top scores or player centered)
3. row count
4. leaderboard collection (social or public)
5. time span (daily, weekly, all-time)
6. callback accepting a LeaderboardScoreData object.

The LeaderboardScoreData class is used to return information back to the caller when loading scores. The members are: 1. Id - the leaderboard id 2. Valid - true if the returned data is valid (the call was successful) 3. Status - the ResponseStatus of the call 4. ApproximateCount - the approximate number of scores in the leaderboard 5. Title - the title of the leaderboard 6. PlayerScore - the score of the current player 7. Scores - the list of scores 8. PrevPageToken - a token that can be used to call LoadMoreScores() to get the previous page of scores. 9. NextPageToken - a token that can be used to call LoadMoreScores() to get the next page of scores.

    void GetNextPage(LeaderboardScoreData data)
    {
        PlayGamesPlatform.Instance