We’re thrilled to announce the kick-off of our new Unity Gaming Services (UGS) tutorial series. In this 10-part series, you’ll learn about how to integrate key UGS features into your mobile game or project, including the required steps for integrating third-party SDKs.
Newer and intermediate Unity developers will get the steps for building a basic project with UGS services; you can also see these services in action in a new sample project, Gem Hunter Match – Cloud Edition (GHM – CE). The demo project is aimed at advanced Unity developers who have solid experience with core Unity development, but have yet to use UGS features in a functional game and are looking for tips on how to do so.
Where to find all of the content in the Unity Gaming Services tutorial series
The UGS series consists of 10 sets of tutorials, with each set comprising a video and written tutorial.
Video tutorials
The full video tutorial series will be here. We’ll add the video tutorials to this playlist throughout October.
Written tutorials
You’ll find links to all articles in this series in this Introduction post, as they become available, so remember to bookmark it:
- Welcome and Introduction
- Player login
- Facebook login
- Google Play Games login
- Apple Game Center login
- Player data
- Player economy
- Virtual purchases
- In-app purchases
- Rewarded ads
Demo project and scripts
You can find the GHM – CE Gem Hunter Match – Cloud Edition demo project in the GitHub page.
The scripts used in the tutorials are available here:
UGSTutorialSeries_Scripts.zip (1.6 MB)
The video version of Part 1 is here:
By watching each video in the series and/or reading through its companion article, you’ll learn how to build a base project that handles authentication, inventories, and monetization. Additionally, you’ll get line-by-line instructions for how to integrate services like Cloud Code, Cloud Save, rewarded ads, in-app purchases and many more.
A new sample: Gem Hunter Match - Cloud Edition
Different views of the Gem Hunter Match 2D sample with Unity Gaming Services integrated
The sample builds upon the original Gem Hunter Match sample, available in the Unity Asset Store, which showcases 2D lighting and visual effects in the Universal Render Pipeline (URP).
Note for experienced developers: We recommend starting with GameInitializer.cs – this is the single entry point for initializing the metagame systems and naturally provides a comprehensive overview. The project code includes documentation links and code summaries to help you navigate.
You’ll need to examine both the client-side scripts in GemHunterUGS/Scripts and the server-side Cloud Code scripts in the GemHunterUGSCloud project folder.
What do we cover in the UGS series?
The first tutorial is about setting up player logins because you need an authenticated player to be able to save and load player data. Following the first tutorial will be three more dedicated to how to set up login through identity platforms like Facebook, Apple Game Center, and Google Play Games.
After the login tutorials, we move on to player data, where you’ll learn how to set up Cloud Code and use saving player usernames to introduce the concept of server-side validation.
Next, in player economy, you’ll add some potions and gold to a starting player’s inventory, and establish architecture for new and returning players.
From there, you can move on to implementing virtual purchases with in-game currencies, like buying a new health potion with gold.
The final two tutorials in the series cover setting up the Unity In-App Purchases service for real money purchases, and then using LevelPlay to implement rewarded ads.
By the end of the series, you’ll have something like a starter pack, a foundation that can be used in any game, and you’ll be ready to check out the full GHM – CE project.
We hope you find this series helpful and as always, please share your feedback in the comments.
