Integrating with Google Play & Game Center

Getting Started
1

Hi all,

I’m currently learning up on Unity with the intention to release a mobile game (or games) on the Android and iOS app stores.

One area I’m struggling to find best practices for is app store integration. Since so many games do this, it seems like there should be some resources out there.

I know about the Game Center integration and Google Play plugins, and I’m happy to study up on them, but is there a particular tutorial/repository/asset that is widely regarded as a solid starting point for this kind of integration?

I’m mainly interested in learning about implementing achievements, leaderboards, and cloud saving.

Thanks,
Chris

2

I’ve just found an asset called “Cross Platform Native Plugins - Ultra Pack” that seems quite popular: Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making.

Has anybody used this?

3

I meant to respond to your post when I first saw it, but got distracted.

I can’t comment on the asset you’ve linked to, but if it does everything it says it does, that’s a great price. When I integrated iOS multiplayer for my game, many of these plugins didn’t exist. I paid for a low-budget option first, which ended up being a broken mess before switching to prime31’s plugins, which are expensive but work as advertised.

At $20, you’re not risking much, so I say give it a shot!

4

Thanks Schneider21, I’ve purchased the asset but haven’t yet gotten around to testing it out. It looks promising though!

5

For a small project, it’s the best fit. All in one, easy to use, works as expected.

But, on a larger project, where I have 5 ad network and adapters, and Facebook Analytics, this package installs so much unneeded stuff that Unity can’t build for Android anymore, I had to export the project to Android Studio, and I never succeeded to build it. It broke my Android build permanently and after two whole days struggling I decided to remove it and find other alternatives. Now I’m using unity-native-sharing for sharing and Very Simple Rating System for rating.

Did you find anything for Game Center and Google Play Games yet?
I also tried Very Simple Leaderboard and it lacks fetching scores and reporting/fetching achievements.

6

Hey @rsodre , I’ve been using the Cross Platform Native Plugin without any real issues, though I agree that it installs a lot of junk.

I think the most popular plugin for this stuff is Stan’s Assets, but I think it costs about $80 AUD.

I haven’t tried building my game for iOS yet though, so I could hit some snags there…

7

I did. Did you?

8

I’m still developing my game, but I’m using CPNP and it’s been working fine on Android (haven’t tested on iOS yet).

I have cloud save, achievements and leaderboards implemented so far.

9

good. because I did buy it and I had a problem with building it. A multidex issue… I asked for support but I didn’t receive it. So I am not using it anymore in my game…
Maybe next game I will try again to figure it out.

10

I’ve found their support isn’t the greatest. Stan’s Assets, the most popular (but more expensive) alternative to CPNP doesn’t appear to invest too much effort on their support either. Their forum site has an invalid SSL certificate and it’s been spammed with hundreds of thousands of gibberish forum posts.

One of the biggest shocks for me when getting into mobile dev using unity was the lack of out-of-box integration with Game Center and Play Services. A pity we have to rely on third parties to provide a unified API, none of them seem to be doing a great job of it.

11

Found this, and loving it!
Sometimes we forget there’s life outside the Asset Store

http://jizc.github.io/CloudOnce/gettingStarted.html

6 Likes
12

Nice find @rsodre ! The CloudOnce API looks really nice, and it looks like it spews much less junk into your project than CPNP does. I think I’ll have a crack at moving my game over to use CloudOnce instead. I’ll post back when I’ve had a chance to play with it.

13

I’ve finished replacing CPNP with CloudOnce. My initial integration caused my game to crash on sign in. I upgraded my Android SDK from v24 to v25 and that caused an “Error while saving blame file” issue, which I fixed by adding the following line into my Android manifest file (thanks to http://answers.unity3d.com/answers/1370675/view.html):

xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"

After doing that, everything worked fine. There are a few things I’m really liking about CloudOnce:

  1. The API is much simpler and more logical than CPNP’s
  2. After configuring achievements, leaderboards and cloud variables, CloudOnce generates some C# classes with this information in it so you can access and manipulate these things in a type-safe fashion
  3. It’s open source!
14

Are the leaderboard in this plugin unique to all the platforms?
As in, does this have a global leaderboard to show both Android and iOS users? :slight_smile:

15

Nope, the leaderboard displayed is a native iOS / Android one.

16

Hey guys, this plugin looks cool, but the documentation seems pretty sparse and scattered. All I see are test mono behaviors that I add – like that leaderboard button (main reason I’m doing this) – and it brings up the Game Center login screen, but then tells me the Game Center doesn’t recognize my app, so I’m clearly missing a step.

17

i can help you to build ur project without exporting it to android studio , i used gradle and enabled multidex , and the new version of unity now uses gradle as default building system . (If you still have any trouble )

18

for the multidex issue u can switch to gradle in build , and enable multi dex to reduce the limit count

19

This looks a shame, as try loading the asset into the latest build of Unity 2017 and also Unity 5 and the asset does not create any editor menus to work with this.

This is a real shame as looking at the documentation this looks like a really good asset to have and use.

Not sure if others have had issues, or maybe I just missing something obvious?

Thanks

Max

20

Hi, I have been looking into CloudOnce. But I’m getting a build error:

'C:\Users\username\Documents\UnityProjects\project\Temp\StagingArea\android-libraries\GooglePlayGamesManifest.plugin' is missing AndroidManifest.xml file.
UnityEditor.BuildPlayerWindow:BuildPlayerAndRun()

I’m not sure if this is because I am not meeting the requirements from the “getting started” guide:

  • Android 4.0 (API 14) or later

  • Android SDK Packages

  • Google Play services

  • Android Support Library

  • Android Support Repository

  • Google Repository

  • Android 6.0 (API 23) (doesn’t affect min SDK version)

The guide is not very clear what these things are, or where to get them and how to install/add them. - I mean I have the android SDK pointed correctly as I was perfectly able to build my game and run on my phone before, but I’m not sure if i have these packages… :s

Did any of you have success building after adding CloudOnce? What did you do?

Cheers!