Remote Settings scripting

Note: Unity Remote Config is now available as a preview package. Remote Config is an improved offering that allows you to change the behavior and appearance of your game without requiring a new binary. You can remotely enable or disable features, change the specifics of your game to target specific audiences, or run special events by scheduling new content releases.

Use the Unity Scripting API RemoteSettings class to access your remote settings in code. The RemoteSettings class provides functions to access your remote settings, like RemoteSettings.GetString(), as well as events that you can use to trigger functions when your settings are fetched or updated.

You should register your handler functions for these events as early as possible during application launch, such as in the Awake() function of a MonoBehaviour loaded in your first Unity scene.

Because fetching the settings requires a network transaction, the RemoteSettings object dispatches its events asynchronously. Your handler functions might not be called in the same order relative to other events on every platform or even on every launch of the same platform. Always initialize your configuration variables with reasonable default values, and allow for the possibility that your event handlers can be called at different times during application startup.

Code example

The following example shows a class that defines a number of properties for tuning game difficulty and updates these properties based on remote settings:

using UnityEngine;

public class RemoteTuningVariables : MonoBehaviour {

    public float DefaultSpawnRateFactor = 1.0f;
    public float DefaultEnemySpeedFactor = 1.0f;
    public float DefaultEnemyStrengthFactor = 1.0f;
    public static float SpawnRateFactor{ get; private set; }
    public static float EnemySpeedFactor{ get; private set; }
    public static float EnemyStrengthFactor{ get; private set; }

    void Start () {
        SpawnRateFactor = DefaultSpawnRateFactor;
        EnemySpeedFactor = DefaultEnemySpeedFactor;
        EnemyStrengthFactor = DefaultEnemyStrengthFactor;

        RemoteSettings.Completed += HandleRemoteSettings;
    }

    private void HandleRemoteSettings(bool wasUpdatedFromServer, bool settingsChanged, int serverResponse){
        SpawnRateFactor 
            = RemoteSettings.GetFloat ("SpawnRateFactor", DefaultSpawnRateFactor);
        EnemySpeedFactor
            = RemoteSettings.GetFloat ("EnemySpeedFactor", DefaultEnemySpeedFactor);
        EnemyStrengthFactor 
            = RemoteSettings.GetFloat ("EnemyStrengthFactor", DefaultEnemyStrengthFactor);
    }
} 

Notice that the class provides default values in the RemoteSettings.GetFloat() method calls. If the RemoteSettings object cannot find the specified key (if you misspell a key name, for example), then the method still assigns your default values to the tuning variables. Otherwise, the GetFloat() and GetInt() methods assign zero to numbers, GetString() assigns an empty string to strings, and GetBool() assigns false to boolean variables.

The class also assigns the same default values to the properties in the Start() method in case another class accesses the settings before the remote settings are fetched and no previously cached configuration is available locally. Assigning the default values in the Start() method ensures that the properties always have reasonable values.

Ensuring setting consistency

If you have several classes in your game that access remote settings at different times, it is possible that some objects will access your settings before the asynchronous network request completes and some will access the settings afterwards, possibly resulting in inconsistent setting values. To avoid this inconsistency problem, you either have to wait for the asynchronous network request to complete before accessing any settings or you can simply use the existing settings you have at the start of the current session. In this latter case, the local settings are updated in the background and a player will see them in the next session.

The following example illustrates a provider class that assigns its properties based on the last version of your remote settings fetched from the Analytics service. The RemoteSettings class still updates the settings in the background, so any settings changes are used in the next session (rather than the current session). The following example uses a singleton pattern so that all parts of your game that use these settings get the same values no matter when the RemoteSettings class receives the remote update.

using UnityEngine;

public class RemoteSettingProvider : MonoBehaviour {
    public float DefaultSpawnRateFactor = 1.0f;
    public float DefaultEnemySpeedFactor = 1.0f;
    public float DefaultEnemyStrengthFactor = 1.0f;
    public float SpawnRateFactor{ get; private set; }
    public float EnemySpeedFactor{ get; private set; }
    public float EnemyStrengthFactor{ get; private set; }

    // Singleton pattern
    private static RemoteSettingProvider _instance;
    public static RemoteSettingProvider Instance
    {
        get { return _instance; }
    }

    void Awake()
    {
        if (_instance != null && _instance != this)
        {
            Destroy(this.gameObject);
            return;
        }

        _instance = this;
        DontDestroyOnLoad(this.gameObject);

        //Use the current settings, before remote update, or default values if
        //the settings don't exist (yet)
        SpawnRateFactor
            = RemoteSettings.GetFloat("SpawnRateFactor", DefaultSpawnRateFactor);
        EnemySpeedFactor
            = RemoteSettings.GetFloat("EnemySpeedFactor", DefaultEnemySpeedFactor);
        EnemyStrengthFactor
            = RemoteSettings.GetFloat("EnemyStrengthFactor", DefaultEnemyStrengthFactor);
    }
} 

Using this method, the default settings are always used the first time a player runs your game after installation.

You can also use a hybrid approach that checks whether local settings exist using RemoteSettings.GetCount(). If the settings exist locally, you can use them immediately, but if not then you add an event handler to wait for the settings Updated event:

SpawnRateFactor
    = RemoteSettings.GetFloat("SpawnRateFactor", DefaultSpawnRateFactor);
EnemySpeedFactor
    = RemoteSettings.GetFloat("EnemySpeedFactor", DefaultEnemySpeedFactor);
EnemyStrengthFactor
    = RemoteSettings.GetFloat("EnemyStrengthFactor", DefaultEnemyStrengthFactor);


if(RemoteSettings.GetCount() == 0){
    //If there are no settings, get them from remote
    RemoteSettings.Updated += HandleRemoteSettings;
    Ready = false;
} else {
    Ready = true;
}

Other classes that use your remote settings must check the Ready property of your provider class to determine whether it is safe to access the settings. The following example illustrates a class that waits for the settings and also uses a configurable timeout:

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class RemoteSettingConsumer : MonoBehaviour {
    public float SpeedFactor = 0;
    public float StrengthFactor = 0;
    public float SpawnRateFactor = 0;
    public float Timeout = 0.125f;

    void Start () {
        StartCoroutine(GetRemoteSettings(Time.time));
    }

    IEnumerator GetRemoteSettings(float startTime){

        while(!RemoteSettingProvider.Instance.Ready && (Time.time - startTime) < Timeout)
            yield return null;

        SpeedFactor = RemoteSettingProvider.Instance.EnemySpeedFactor;
        StrengthFactor = RemoteSettingProvider.Instance.EnemyStrengthFactor;
        SpawnRateFactor = RemoteSettingProvider.Instance.SpawnRateFactor;
    }
}

If the timeout elapses before the remote settings become available, then your default values are used. Using a timeout allows the game to get the latest settings in the normal case where the network transaction completes in a very short amount of time, while not delaying startup unduly by waiting for the request itself to timeout in the case of network failure.

• 2018–08–23 Page published
• New feature in 2017.1
• 2018–08–23 - Updated event no longer dispatched every session as of 2018.1.
• 2018–08–23 - Service compatible with Unity 5.5 onwards at this date but version compatibility may be subject to change.