Gaming

Unveiling the Overhauled PubNub Unity SDK

3 min read Oliver Carson on Mar 5, 2024

Excitingly, the PubNub Unity SDK, a crucial tool for Unity developers powering their online game development, underwent a significant overhaul in 2022. This upgrade in our real-time APIs has revolutionized capabilities such as configuring UserId(UUID) parameters, managing custom JSON metadata, compatibility, and mobile push notifications for Android and iOS builds enhancing the user experience.

Devoted to enhancing the PubNub platform, we improved the SDK's user-friendliness, optimized the backend functionality, and streamlined the application development process for Unity developers. Ali El Rhermoul, Co-Founder & CTO of Beamable, lauded this enhancement, emphasizing how the updated Unity SDK—complete with streamlined setup requirements and improved Unity-specific functionality—empower developers to make better games faster and easier, reducing vulnerabilities and improving the development workflow.

“As one of the leading platforms for building and scaling the operations of live games, Beamable is thrilled to be capitalizing on the expanded capabilities of PubNub’s new Unity SDK for real-time interactivity in chat, guilds, commerce, and more,” said Ali El Rhermoul, Co-Founder & CTO of Beamable, “from streamlined setup requirements to improved Unity-specific functionality, all help to support our mission of making it easier for developers to build better games; faster and with fewer barriers to success.”

The Overhauled Unity SDK

Our latest PubNub Unity SDK launched in 2022 brings substantial improvements and exciting new features:

  • Easy Configuration: After cloning the SDK from our GitHub repository, you'll find an intuitive configuration window that guides you through a swift setup process. We've incorporated several upgrades and new features to make this experience even smoother.

  • Rewritten Documentation: We’ve fully revamped our HTML-based documentation to include the latest updates, set-up processes, and usage of new features.=

  • Compatibility facade: We've introduced a compatibility facade to ease the transition from the old SDK. This feature ensures your current source code remains functional while exploring the new SDK's features. You can also use vanilla C# code with our open-source C# SDK.

  • Unity-specific functionality: The latest SDK now offers even more Unity-tailored extensions and methods, following the best Unity practices for a reliable, efficient, and user-friendly experience.

  • Async/Await: This feature, while remaining the same, continues to return data using standard methods to handle any number of messages that arrive.

  • PN Debugging tools: The overhauled SDK extends the Unity Editor with PN Debugging tools, with added improvements to enhance tooling capabilities for Unity developers.

These improvements, combined with our ongoing commitment to providing the best possible experience for Unity developers, make the overhauled PubNub Unity SDK an essential tool for creating real-time applications and games.

  • Ready-to-use building blocks: The updated SDK comes with a bundle of ready-to-use building blocks for creating features like Leaderboards, Chat, Friend Lists, and more, enabling developers to create engaging experiences faster.

  • Integration with common tools: The new SDK integrates seamlessly with popular Unity tools, such as Visual Scripting and dependency injection frameworks, simplifying the development process.

What Will the New Unity SDK Mean for Me?

For developers creating real-time applications and games, the overhauled PubNub Unity SDK delivers:

  • Rapid Prototyping: The new SDK enables developers to transition from installing the package to a working prototype with a few clicks. We've included a plethora of updates and improvements to enhance this process.

  • Improved Reliability: The updated SDK boasts increased reliability, ensuring consistent, high-quality user experiences. We'll continue to provide updates like push notifications as needed to maintain this reliability standard.

  • Interoperability: The SDK's focus on interoperability, which makes integrating PubNub services into a wide range of mobile apps easier, remains intact in the new version.

What's Next

The overhauled Unity SDK ensures an easy installation and setup process, reliable resource handling, solid performance, and adherence to Unity best practices. Looking ahead, we have exciting plans for more improvements and features to further enhance your experience with Unity SDK. You can check out the fresh resources and tutorials below:

How can PubNub help you?

PubNub provides developers with the means to build, deliver, and manage real-time interactivity for web apps, mobile apps, and IoT devices. Our platform, supported by the industry's most scalable real-time edge messaging network, has grown, now boasting over 1 billion monthly active users. With 99.99% reliability, you can confidently create without worrying about outages, concurrency limits, or latency issues.

Experience PubNub

Take a look at our Live Tour to understand the essential concepts behind every PubNub-powered app. We've added several new features and tools to this Tour since its creation.

Get Started

Start by signing up for a PubNub account for immediate access to PubNub keys for free. Next, browse the updated PubNub docs to get you up and running smoothly with your preferred SDK including AWS, Python SDK, Javascript, and more. Discover the power of PubNub in game development and app development today.