New GitHub repo: Using Firebase to add cloud-based features to games built on Unity
Dane Zeke Liergaard
A while back, a group of us Google Cloud Platform Developer Programs Engineers teamed up with gaming fans in Firebase Engineering to work on an interesting project. We all love games, gamers, and game developers, and we wanted to support those developers with solutions that accomplish common tasks so they can focus more on what they do best: making great games.
The result was Firebase Unity Solutions. It’s an open-source github repository with sample projects and scripts. These projects utilize Firebase tools and services to help you add cloud-based features to your games being built on Unity.
Each feature will include all the required scripts, a demo scene, any custom editors to help you better understand and use the provided assets, and a tutorial to use as a step-by-step guide for incorporating the feature into your game.
The only requirements are a Unity project with the .NET 2.0 API level enabled, and a project created with the Firebase Console.
Introducing Firebase Leaderboard
Our debut project is the Firebase_Leaderboard, a set of scripts that utilize Firebase Realtime Database to create and manage a cross-platform high score leaderboard. With the LeaderboardController MonoBehaviour, you can retrieve any number of unique users’ top scores from any time frame. Want the top 5 scores from the last 24 hours? Done. How about the top 100 from last week? You got it.
Once a connection to Firebase is established, scores are retrieved automatically, including any new scores that come in while the controller is enabled.
If any of those parameters are modified (the number of scores to retrieve, or the start or end date), the scores are automatically refreshed. The content is always up-to-date!
With the same component, you can add new scores for current users as well, meaning a single script handles both read and write operations on the top score data.
For step-by-step instructions on incorporating this cross-platform leaderboard into your Unity game using Firebase Realtime Database, follow the instructions here. Or check out the Demo Scene to see a version of the leaderboard in action!
We want to hear from you
We have ideas for what features to add to this repository moving forward, but we want to hear from you, too! What game feature would you love to see implemented in Unity using Firebase tools? What cloud-based functionality would you like to be able to drop directly into your game? And how can we improve the Leaderboard, or other solutions as they are added? You can comment below, create feature requests and file bugs on the github repo, or join the discussion in this Google Group.Let’s make great games together!
