We are in the process of switching our game from our own canvas page, to using the Unity integration on Facebook. However, during our development tests we have occasionally run into a problem where the webplayer binary gets loaded from the browser cache, even though a newer version was uploaded to the server.
Manually clearing the browser cache solves the problem, but that's not exactly a solution we want to present to our users all the time. Previously, when we embedded the unity object ourselves, we also passed in a ?version flag with the url, which would keep it up to date, but we can't exactly do that anymore with integration turned on, unless we manually update the binary location link in our app settings every time we do a build (Kind of a pain in the butt, since the rest of our build process is automated)
Is there any way around this?
Thanks.
We have exactly same problem and I can say only solution is to change the binary file name everytime you made a build but only for your production environment. Here is our solution:
We have development (sandbox mode)and production environment and one app for each one.
For development, we ran everything locally, we have buildpipeline that builds and copies the binary file to appropriate place with the same name always like MyGame.unity3d, and we have set our browsers not to cache anything, that solves the problem for testing.
For production, our buildpipeline constructs the binary name with:
YourGameNameMainVersion.SubVersion.TimeStamp like: MyGame0.3.1006-1004.unity3d and this one is manually set from facebook's app settings page in every build. But this is not a big problem as you won't want to make a new build more than once/twice a day for production.
We've found that all that needs to be done is to add "?version=xxxx"
This works, and perfectly fine. I do now, is only change version (?version=1.52) in main link:
<a href="http://cometoplaynow.com/Labyrinth3D/Labyrinth3D.html?version=1.52">
Have advantages using it:
Changing only 1 number - link is still the same (if people open game from your site)
Savings will stay as it was (if you change .unity3d you will lost PlayerPrefs).
Related
Very new to Google Actions. Testing out tutorial stuff.
I have tried this in a couple of test projects just to double check. After initial run of any project I do not get any updates on draft projects. No changes show up in draft projects for me for both simulator and real device.
Started new project
Even blank project has basic conversation telling you where to add things next.
Change text.
Notice prompt does not change in testing environment.
In below pictures I have changed the words "hello world" with "Hey Dude" for both fulfillment and console output. I would expect Testing Prompt to respond with "Hey Dude from fulfillment and Hey Dude from the console!" But it does not. Instead it does not reflect any recent changes.
I think there may be two slightly different (but sometimes related) issues going on here.
The first is that there are known problems with the simulator being slow to pick up on updates, or them not seeming to show up. The second has to do with making sure you're deploying changes from the build-in code editor.
I don't have a clear answer to the first problem, although I know they're looking into it. I find that I can make some changes and they may not be noticed, but I know they have been picked up if I see the "Your preview is being updated..." spinner appear. There are other spinners that sometimes appear, but unless it explicitly says that it is being updated - the updates aren't always picked up. (Sometimes they are, however.)
Usually, if I don't see this, I'll go back and force an apparent change (delete a character from a webhook handler name, then add it back) and go back to the simulator. In general, this time it will say it is updating.
If you're using the Cloud Functions editor, you need to do three things:
Save the changes. You'll do this by clicking the "Save Fulfillment" button, but this only saves it so you can leave the editor. It doesn't mean that the simulator has access to it yet.
Deploy the changes. This deploys your code to Cloud Functions so they can be run. Note in the illustration that it says the code is saved, but not yet deployed.
Wait till the changes are fully deployed. Deploying takes time, and until it is completed, it won't be available in the simulator. While deploying, it lets you know.
Once it has deployed, however, the message changes, and you the impacts should be available through the simulator (although you may still need to see the "being updated" message to be sure).
Remember, however, that you don't need to use the "Cloud Functions editor" in order to deploy a webhook. You can deploy a webhook on any web server where
The host is public (so has a public IP address that Google can reach)
It can handle HTTPS with a non-self-signed certificate
You can even deploy yourself to Cloud Functions for Firebase, which is the same service that the Actions Builder uses. This way you have the URL set once in the Actions Builder and, once it is set, you won't need to change it.
But you'll still be able to change your code by managing your own deployment separate from Actions Builder.
Theres a few questions similar to this, so I'll try to be clear as possible.
We have an existing, fairly large and complex, GWT webgame I have been asked to make work offline. It has to be offline in pretty much the strictest sense.
Imagine we have been told to make it work off a CD Rom.
So installation is allowed, but we cant expect the users to go to a Chrome/Firefox store and install it from there. It would need to be off the disc.
Likewise, altering of the browsers start-up flags would be unreasonable to expect of users.
Ideally, it would be nice if they just clicked a HTML file for the start page and it opened in their browsers of choice.
We successfully got it working this way in Firefox by adding;
"<add-linker name='xsiframe' />"
To our gwt.xml settings. This seems to solve any security issues FF has with local file access.
However, this does not solve the problem for Chrome.
The main game starts up, but various file requests are blocked due to security issues like these;
XMLHttpRequest cannot load file:///E:/Game%20projects/[Thorn]%20Game/ThornGame/text/messages_en.properties. Cross origin requests are only supported for protocol schemes: http, data, chrome, chrome-extension, https, chrome-extension-resource.MyApplication-0.js:34053 com_google_gwt_http_client_RequestBuilder_$doSend__Lcom_google_gwt_http_client_RequestBuilder_2Ljava_lang_String_2Lcom_google_gwt_http_client_RequestCallback_2Lcom_google_gwt_http_client_Request_2 MyApplication-0.js:34053
Now I was aware same origin policy issues might popup as during development we often tested locally using flags in chrome to bi-pass them.
Thing is...now I dont know how to get around them when we cant use startup flags.
Obviously in the example given its just the .properties file GWT uses to get some language related text. I could dump that inline in one way or another.
However, its only one of many,many,many files being blocked.
The whole game was made to run off *.txt game scripts on the sever - to allow easy updating by non-coders. Really the actual GWT code is just an "engine" and all the XMLHttpRequested files supply the actual "game".
These files are of various types; csv, txt, ntlist, jam.
The last two being custom extensions for what are really just txt files.
All these files are blocked by chromes security. It seems from what I can make out only images are allowed to be accessed locally.
Having all these files compiled in would just be impossible, as they are not fixed in number (ie, one central .txt file determains various scene .txt files which in turn determain various object files and directory's...).
Putting all this into a bundle would be nightmare to create and maintain.
So in essence I need some way to supply a offline version of a GWT project that can access a large number of various files in its subdirectories without security issues.
So far all I can think of is;
A) Theres something I can tell chrome via html or gwt that allows these files to be read in Chrome like FF can. (I suspect this isn't possible).
An alternative to XMLHttpRequest maybe?
B) I need to somehow package a game+a webbrowser in a executable package that has permission to access files in its directory's. (http://www.appcelerator.com/titanium ? ?? ).
C) I need to package and have the user run a full webserver that can then deliver all these files in a XMLHttp accessible way.
D) Bit of a funny one...we cant tell the user to add flags to browser start up...but Maybe I could write a game installer which just detects if they have Chrome or Firefox. It then opens up the games html in their browser with the correct flags for them? This would open up security issues if they browse elsewhere with that instance though, so Id presumably need other flags to disable the url bar if that's possible.
I am happy to make various changes to our code to achieve any of this - but as mentioned above theres no way to determain all the files needing to be accessed at compile time.
And finally, of course, it all has to be as easy as possible for the end user.
Ideally just clicking a html file, or installing something no more complex then a standard windows program.
Thanks for reading this rather long explanation, any pointers and ideas would be very welcome. I especially will appreciate multiple different options or feedback from anyone that's done this.
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I accepted the suggestion to use Chromiumembedded below.
This works and does what I need (and much much more)
To help others that might want to use it, I specifically made two critical changes to the example project;
Because CEF needs a absolute path to the web apps local html, I wrote a c++ function to get the directory the .exe was launched from. This was a platform specific implementation, so if supporting a few OS's (which CEF does) be sure to write dedicated code for each.
Because my webapp will make use of local files, I enabled the Chrome flag for this by changing the browser settings;
browser_settings.file_access_from_file_urls = STATE_ENABLED;
These two changes were enough to get my app working, but it is obviously the bare minimum to make a application. Hopefully my finding will help others.
I'd suggest going the wrapper route. That is, provide a minimal browser implementation that opens your files directly. Options are Chromium Embedded[1]. If the nature of the application absolutely requires the files to be served as non-file urls then bundle a minimal webserver, have the on-disk executable start the server and open the bundled browser with whatever startup arguments you want.
[1] https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef
I have started creating my first project with GWT. In first lines of code, it worked normally and I had no need to GWT Compile every time to see a simple change in my browser.
For client changes, a save file was enough and for server a save and refresh server. But now it has stopped working like before.
For the smallest change like adding a "Window.alert("msg")" I need to reGWTCompile the whole project to see it! What could have issued this?
Make sure you're running in DevMode (i.e. have ?gwt.codesvr= in your URL)
a former coworker (artist) and myself (programmer) are currently developing a small game together in our free time. Since he is not at all interested in learning how to use XCode, save making his own builds (I don't blame him, he is a great artist, but with only little understanding for technical stuff), this is how we have been working so far:
We share a dropbox folder where we store all the ingame artwork
Once enough or important changes have been made, I'd create a build (ad hoc distribution) and send it to him
From time to time we'll meet and work together a couple of hours, maybe once a week since we live in different cities
This was ok for most of the time. However now we're busy finetuning the content and game mechanics. In this development stage, our workflow is just to slow and "disconnected". Whenever he is working on the artwork, he'll have to wait for me to make a build to be able to see the changes reflected in the actual context. Since we're not always working at the same time, this sometimes means he'll have to wait for days - not at all satisfying.
So, what I'd like to know..: What would be the best way to allow him to change the content without the need to rebuild the game?
I know the contents of an iOS app bundle cannot be changed once compiled. So here's what I was thinking about so far:
move the content to the documents folder during development so that it can be accessed via iTunes (handling propably awkward in light of the amount of files in question)
incorporate dropbox into the game, so that the content could be loaded right from our shared folder (extra work needed to implement this, dropbox restricted to 5000 API calls per day while not in production status)
load the content from a webserver (even more complicated compared to using the dropbox)
What do you guys think? Are there better and more comfortable ways to achieve smooth collaboration in our case? Am I missing something?
Thanks alot!!
Edit:
At the moment, I have no plans whatsoever to teach my artist how to make his own builds. You can seriously consider this to be an option only as long as you don't know him in person. He's a great artist, though.
So this question boils down to:
How do I modify files / get new files into an iPhone app after it has been built - as easily as possible and, again, without rebuilding the app?
This has to work during development only, by the way, so dirty approaches are welcome.
In some of the WWDC 2010 videos, Apple discusses this. They advise loading artwork from the web and applying it to UIKit elements or OpenGL contexts programatically.
This is complicated, but a good method, because then you make NO changes to your binary and then your artists can work freely, upload the art to a server and you're golden.
I suggest a good HTTP library, like ASIHTTPRequest, to make those requests easier.
Go with the Web server/dropbox option. You might be able to do this by subclassing or extending UIImage and using the subclass throughout your app.
Jailbreak your iPhone, Then you can ssh into the device using Cyberduck. That way you can navigate to the app's Resources folder (or) App's document folder and change files as you want.
You will have to make sure the folder permissions are proper, or else you need to change them.
Also in your game, in the first run, make sure all your resources are getting copied to the App's documents folder.
I would say that your first option is probably the best. You state the issue with transferring a large number of files through iTunes. To fix that I would to the following:
Create an app to create "package" files. It can take a folder of data and save it in a single in file in the following format:
int - length of name string
char[] - filename
int - length of data chunk
char[] - data chunk
Do this for every file in the folder, and you'll be left with a single image file. Copy that through iTunes, and have your game look at that same folder.
So now his workflow is as follows: 1) edit art 2) run your asset compiler 3) copy the asset file to the device 4) load the game
I hope this helps.
You could also do something like this:
modify the app so on its first start it copies the images into the document folder
load the images from the doc folder instead than from the bundle
with a tool like iPhone Explorer you can then overwrite the files in the document folder
it's a bit boring to find the actual app in the list that iPhone explorer gives you, but then it's just a matter of dragging and dropping the files into the right folder.
It may work also with some file in the .app bundle, but I didn't found any suitable app to try it from there.
Anyway if you want to keep the thing almost hassle free for your artist you may want to put everything in a Documents subfolder nonetheless :)
EDIT
I just tried to edit something into the .app folder and it worked OK, so you don't even have to change your code if you use iPhone Explorer to replace images.
Just remember to disable the PNG optimization if you're using PNGs. Look here for the explanation (search for "PNGs:")
good luck :)
I would say set up a CVS repository. When you're happy with what you have, you can commit your code. He can update his code and change the images however he wants. When he's happy, he can commit his changes so you also have the latest images (as long as he doesn't mess around with out files, it should be fine).
Teach him how to update the images, how to deploy to a device, how to commit to the repository and it should go smooth (albeit I think there'd be some teething issues).
I'm working with a designer friend on an iPhone app and he likes to refine all sorts of images relating to the project we're working on. All these images have been added to the project previously (and added to the project folder by xcode) and then are modified in their new location. When I preview the images in xCode, the updated images show up but building and running in the simulator or on a device doesn't pick up the new image. In fact, if I do a clean build it seems to ignore the image all together and blank spaces appear where images should be.
Now, I can delete these files from the project and re-add them and everything works peachy again. But there are a lot of them and I'd rather not do that every time an image is updated. Is there a way to get xCode to review and "learn" about these modified images? Is there a good reason for why it's not doing that automatically?
You didn't specify how you're including those image resources into your project, but I'd guess you're including them directly. So unless there's an underlying process that's changing the file in-place (are you using an SCM like Subversion or Perforce?) you're going to be forced to manually overwrite the files whenever your artist friend updates them.
You should include art assets in the project using a folder reference instead. (I'm still assuming you have some sort of SCM set up to handle exchanging data -- if you don't, set one up ASAP.) However, there are still some outstanding Xcode bugs related to picking up changes to files in a nested folder hierarchy included by reference, but at least you can work around that by doing clean builds when necessary.