Google Play Games plugin for Unity

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
turn-based multiplayer (new)
real-time multiplayer (new)

All features are available on Android and iOS.

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

System requirements:

Unity® 4.3 or above
To deploy on Android:
- Android SDK
- Google Play Services library, version 4.2.42 or above
To deploy on iOS:
- XCode 4 or above
- Google Plus SDK for iOS
- Google Play Games SDK for iOS

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.

Please note the following pieces of information when creating your client IDs, as they will be necessary later:

Android

Your package name (e.g. "com.example.awesomegame")
Your application ID (e.g. 123456789012)

iOS

Your bundle identifier (e.g. "com.example.AwesomeGame")
Your application ID (e.g. 123456789012)*
Your client ID (e.g. "46798138751-afwa4iejsfjskj.apps.googleusercontent.com")

[*] The application ID is the number that Google Play Developer Console assigns to your project. Please note that is not the same as your Apple application ID.

Note: Do not forget to add your test accounts (the accounts with which you will try signing in) to the Testing section of the Developer Console, otherwise you will not be able to sign in to your game.

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").

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. In Unity 4.2 and 4.3, 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). After importing, you should see that two new menu items were added to the File menu: "Play Games Android setup" and "Play Games iOS setup". If you don't see the new menu items, refresh the assets by clicking Assets | Refresh and try again.

Android Setup

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 Google Play Services package. The Android SDK manager is usually available in your SDK installation directory, under the "tools" subdirectory, and is called android (or android.exe on Windows). The Google Play Services package is available under the Extras folder. If it is not installed or is out of date, install or update it before proceeding.

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

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).

Next, click the File | Play Games - Android setup menu item. This will display the Android setup screen, where you must input your Application ID (e.g. 12345678012).

After filling in the application ID, click the Setup button.

Important: The application ID and package name settings must match exactly the values you used when setting up your project on the Developer Console.

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:

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

To configure your Unity game to run with Google Play Games on iOS, download the Games SDK and the Google+ iOS SDK, which are available from our downloads page. Unpack the downloads into a directory of your choice. The necessary bundles and frameworks are:

GoogleOpenSource.framework
GooglePlus.bundle
GooglePlus.framework
PlayGameServices.bundle
PlayGameServices.framework

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 **File | Play Games - iOS **setup menu item. This will display the iOS setup screen, where you must input:

Your application ID (e.g. 123456789012)
Your client ID (e.g. "46798138751-afwa4iejsfjskj.apps.googleusercontent.com")
Your bundle identifier (e.g. "com.example.AwesomeGame")

All of these settings must match exactly the values you used when setting up your client ID on the Developer Console previously.

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.

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 a subset of 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.

Initialization

To initialize the plugin and make it your default social platform, call PlayGamesPlatform.Activate:

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    ...
    
    // 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.

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) Social.Active).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 leaderboards, 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) Social.Active).ShowLeaderboardUI("Cfji293fjsie_QA");

Saving Game State to the Cloud

To save game state to the cloud, use the PlayGamesPlatform.UpdateState method.

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    using GooglePlayGames.BasicApi;
    public class MyClass : OnStateLoadedListener {
        void SaveState() {
            // serialize your game state to a byte array:
            byte[] mySaveState = ...;
            int slot = 0; // slot number to use
            ((PlayGamesPlatform) Social.Active).UpdateState(slot,
                mySaveState, this);
        }
        public void OnStateSaved(bool success, int slot) {
            // handle success or failure
        }
        ...

The OnStateSaved method of the OnStateLoadedListener will be called to indicate the success or failure of the cloud save operation.

Loading Game State from the Cloud

To load game state from the cloud, use the PlayGamesPlatform.LoadState method:

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    using GooglePlayGames.BasicApi;
    public class MyClass : OnStateLoadedListener {
        void LoadState() {
            int slot = 0; // slot number to use
            ((PlayGamesPlatform) Social.Active).LoadState(slot, this);
        }
        public void OnStateLoaded(bool success, int slot, byte[] data) {
            if (success) {
                // do something with data[]
            } else {
                // handle failure
            }
        }
        ....

Resolving State Conflicts

A conflict happens when a device attempts to save state to the cloud but the data currently on the cloud was written by a different device. When this condition occurs, the OnStateConflict method of your OnStateLoadedListener will be called, and you choose between (or merge) the two states and return a new byte array representing the resolved state:

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;
    using GooglePlayGames.BasicApi;
    public class MyClass : OnStateLoadedListener {
        public byte[] OnStateConflict(int slot, byte[] local, byte[] server) {
            // resolve conflict and return a byte[] representing the
            // resolved state.
        }
    }

Using the Cloud Cache Encryption Hook

When the user is offline, cloud save data is stored locally on the device for later synchronization. On Android, this cache is maintained by the Google Play Services application. However, on iOS, the cache is implemented by the plugin itself by writing to files. If you are concerned that a malicious user might try to tamper with those cache files, you can install an encryption/decryption hook to provide code that the plugin will use to encrypt the buffer before it is written to disk and decrypt it once it is read from disk.

Important: the encryption/decryption hook will be called only when saving files to local disk on operating systems where this feature is not already provided by the underlying library (currently, only iOS). Data will not be encrypted using this method when saved to the server.

    // Define our encrypter/decrypter method:
    byte[] MyEncrypter(bool encrypt, byte[] data) {
        if (encrypt) {
            // data[] is the plain data that we must encrypt.
            byte[] encryptedData = ....; // your encryption code here
            return encryptedData;
        } else {
            // data[] is the encrypted data that we must decrypt.
            byte[] plainData = ....; // your decryption code here
            return plainData;
        }
    }

    // Set the cloud cache encrypter/decrypter
    // (Do this on your initialization, before attempting to sign in,
    // but after calling PlayGamesPlatform.Activate())
    ((PlayGamesPlatform) Social.Active).SetCloudCacheEncrypter(MyEncrypter);

Multiplayer

If you wish to integrate turn-based multiplayer in your game, refer to the Getting Started with Turn-Based Multiplayer.

If you wish to integrate real-time multiplayer in your game, refer to the Getting Started with Real-Time Multiplayer.

Sign out

To sign the user out, use the PlayGamesPlatform.SignOut method.

    using GooglePlayGames;
    using UnityEngine.SocialPlatforms;

    // sign out
    ((PlayGamesPlatform) Social.Active).SignOut();

After signing out, no further API calls can be made until the user authenticates again.

Building for Android

To build your game for Android, do as you would normally do in Unity. Select File | Build Settings, then select the Android platform and build. If you are signing your APK file, please 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.

Building for iOS

To build your game for iOS, do as you would normally do in Unity. Select File | Build Settings, then select the iOS platform. Click Player Settings and make sure that the target iOS platform is 6.0 or above.

Then, click Build and select an output directory to save the XCode project. Do not use the Build and Run option, since there are some manual steps you must take in the XCode project before your project can run.

After building the XCode project, the Play Games postprocessor will run to configure the Info.plist settings on your project. You will see a log of the operation, which if successful, will give you additional instructions to finish configuring your XCode project.

The additional steps are:

Add these frameworks. To do this, click the top-level project (the item on the list labeled Unity-iPhone, 1 target, iOS SDK), then click the Build Phases tab and expand the Link Binary with Libraries item. Then, add the following frameworks to that list:

AddressBook.framework
AssetsLibrary.framework
CoreData
CoreLocation
CoreMotion
CoreText
MediaPlayer
QuartzCore
Security
SystemConfiguration

libc++.dylib
Add the following bundles and frameworks from the Google Plus and Google Play Games SDK that you have previously downloaded. If you have not downloaded these files yet, they can be found in the downloads section of the Google Play Games developer site. To add these frameworks you can simply drag and drop those 5 files on the top-level project item (labeled Unity-iPhone).

GoogleOpenSource.framework
GooglePlus.bundle
GooglePlus.framework
PlayGameServices.bundle
PlayGameServices.framework
Add the "-ObjC" linker flag. To do this, select the top-level project object, then go to the Build Settings tab. Search for "Other Linker Flags" using the search tool, double click the Other Linker Flags item and add "-ObjC" to that list (attention to case!).

Note: If you export the project a second time to the same XCode project directory, you can use Unity's Append option to avoid overwriting these settings. If you use Replace, however, you might have to reapply some settings.

Common Build Errors on iOS

"The current deployment target does not support automated _weak references". Make sure your target iOS platform is 6.0 or above. If the target platform is below 6.0, this error will occur during build.

"Dsymutil error". Depending on your version of XCode, you may need to disable dSYM file generation. To do this, go to Build Settings | Build Options | Debug Information Format | Debug. Select DWARF instead of DWARF with dSYM.

URL errors while signing in. This is often a sign that either the client ID or the Bundle Identifier is not correctly set up, or that your Info.plist file got corrupted. Check that your client ID and Bundle ID are correctly configured in the project and that they correspond to the data in the Developer Console.

Building for iOS to run on the simulator

To run your game in the simulator as opposed to a real device, you must export it from Unity with the "Simulator SDK" instead of the "Device SDK". To do this, open your game project in Unity, select File | Build Settings, select iOS, then click on Player Settings. Scroll down to find the "SDK Version" option, and change it to "Simulator SDK".

Then, export your project and perform the post-export steps as described above.

Next, you must manually enable some API entry points that are used by the plugin, but which are by default disabled in the Unity runtime code. To do this, open the Libraries/RegisterMonoModule.cpp file in your exported project.

You will notice there are two sections near the top of the file that
are delimited by #if !(TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR) and** #endif**.

    extern "C" {
        ....
        #if !(TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR)
            ...declarations... (zone A)
        #endif
    }
        
    void RegisterMonoModules()
    {
        ...
        #if !(TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR)
            ...function calls... (zone B)
        #endif
    }

To enable the simulator to make the necessary C function calls, you need to:

Find the line that declares the mono_dl_register_symbol() function in Zone A.
Move it to the outside of Zone A, right after the #endif (but still inside the extern "C" block)
Find ALL the calls to mono_dl_register_symbol() in Zone B.
Move them ALL outside Zone B, after the #endif (but still inside the RegisterMonoModules() function).

The final structure should be similar to the following:

    extern "C" {
        ....
        #if !(TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR)
            .. declarations .. (zone A)
        #endif
        void mono_dl_register_symbol(const char* name, void *addr);
    }
        
    void RegisterMonoModules()
    {
        ...
        #if !(TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR)
            ...function calls... (zone B)
        #endif
        mono_dl_register_symbol("GPGSFooBar1", (void*)&GPGSFooBar1);
        mono_dl_register_symbol("GPGSFooBar2", (void*)&GPGSFooBar2);
        mono_dl_register_symbol("GPGSFooBar3", (void*)&GPGSFooBar3);
        mono_dl_register_symbol("GPGSFooBar4", (void*)&GPGSFooBar4);
        ....
    }

Note: If you are using the current version of Unity (4.2), re-exporting to an existing XCode project path will overwrite Libraries/RegisterMonoModule.cpp, even if you use the Append option. Therefore, you must perform these changes every time you export the project. To simplify your workflow, consider copying the files to a different location before re-exporting, and copy them back after the process is complete.

(Advanced) Using the Plugin Without Overriding the Default Social Platform

When you call PlayGamesPlatform.Activate, Google Play Games becomes your default social platform implementation, which means that static calls to methods in Social and Social.Active will be carried out by the Google Play Games plugin. This is the desired behavior for most games using the plugin.

However, if for some reason you wish to keep the default implementation accessible (for example, to use it to submit achievements and leaderboards to a different social platform), you can use the Google Play Games plugin without overriding the default one. To do this:

Do not call PlayGamesPlatform.Activate
If Xyz is the name of a method you wish to call on the Social class, do not call Social.Xyz. Instead, call PlayGamesPlatform.Instance.Xyz
Do not use Social.Active when interacting with Google Play Games. Instead, use PlayGamesPlatform.Instance.

That way, you can even submit scores and achievements simultaneously to two or more social platforms:

// Submit achievement to original default social platform
Social.ReportProgress("MyAchievementIdHere", 100.0f, callback);

// Submit achievement to Google Play
PlayGamesPlatform.Instance.ReportProgress("MyGooglePlayAchievementIdHere", 100.0f, callback);

Using Production APNS Certificate (iOS)

In the GPGSAppController.m file, you will notice within the application:didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken method that there are two calls; one for using a push notification in the sandbox environment, and one for using a push notification in the production environment. You should make sure to comment the first call (and uncomment the second) when you're ready to switch to a production environment and push notification.

Note from Maintainer

The plugin was developed and is currently maintained by Bruno Oliveira. Feel free to add me on Google+ and nag me to fix bugs or take a look at your questions on Stack Overflow!

Acknowledgements

The iOS library makes use of the MiniJSON.cs class developed by Calvin Rien (originally based on a parser by Patrick van Bergen), available under the MIT License.

Special Thanks

This section lists people who have contributed to this project by writing code, improving documentation or fixing bugs.

Dgizusse for figuring out that setting JAVA_HOME is necessary on Windows.
antonlicht for fixing a bug with the parameter type of showErrorDialog on the support library.
pR0Ps for fixing an issue where OnAchievementsLoaded was not accepting an OPERATION_DEFERRED result code as a success.
friikyeu for helping debug an issue that caused API calls to be queued up rather than executed even when connected.

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README.md

README.md

Google Play Games plugin for Unity

Overview

Upgrading

Configure Your Game

Add Achievements and Leaderboards

Load Your Game Project

Plugin Installation

Android Setup

Additional instructions on building for Android on Windows

iOS Setup

Run the Project

ISocialPlatform Compliance

Initialization

Sign in

Revealing/Unlocking an Achievement

Incrementing an Achievement

Posting a Score to a Leaderboard

Showing the Achievements UI

Showing the Leaderboard UI

Saving Game State to the Cloud

Loading Game State from the Cloud

Resolving State Conflicts

Using the Cloud Cache Encryption Hook

Multiplayer

Sign out

Building for Android

Building for iOS

Common Build Errors on iOS

Building for iOS to run on the simulator

(Advanced) Using the Plugin Without Overriding the Default Social Platform

Using Production APNS Certificate (iOS)

Note from Maintainer

Acknowledgements

Special Thanks

Files

README.md

Latest commit

History

README.md

File metadata and controls

Google Play Games plugin for Unity

Overview

Upgrading

Configure Your Game

Add Achievements and Leaderboards

Load Your Game Project

Plugin Installation

Android Setup

Additional instructions on building for Android on Windows

iOS Setup

Run the Project

ISocialPlatform Compliance

Initialization

Sign in

Revealing/Unlocking an Achievement

Incrementing an Achievement

Posting a Score to a Leaderboard

Showing the Achievements UI

Showing the Leaderboard UI

Saving Game State to the Cloud

Loading Game State from the Cloud

Resolving State Conflicts

Using the Cloud Cache Encryption Hook

Multiplayer

Sign out

Building for Android

Building for iOS

Common Build Errors on iOS

Building for iOS to run on the simulator

(Advanced) Using the Plugin Without Overriding the Default Social Platform

Using Production APNS Certificate (iOS)

Note from Maintainer

Acknowledgements

Special Thanks