The focus of this journal entry is on how I integrated In-App purchase capabilities into my Unity game. I'm not going to discuss strategies for earning money from players, or how I used the IAP assets once they were integrated.
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Unity Setup for Zaubersee
[/color]I began by purchasing a Windows Phone 8 IAP Unity package by Zaubersee at https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/10890 to get things going. Like with other third-party Windows Phone 8 assets I've used, it didn't work out of the box. I also struggled a bit with my interpretation of the documentation. After creating a new Unity test project, importing the asset, and deploying to my Windows Phone, I got this error in the status window of the demo scene:
Exception from HRESULT: 0x805A0194
I overcame this error by submitting the test project as a beta app to the Windows Phone Dev Center. I believe the asset developer tried to explain this in the documentation, but I thought that submitting a beta version of the app was merely a suggestion.
Here's what I did to build a functional test project:
- I created a beta version of Hamster Chase on the Windows Phone Dev Center.
- For the beta version, I made a duplicate of every In-App product that already existed for the main version. I used the same product ID's.
- I made a new Unity project, imported the In-App purchase asset, and built the project for Windows Phone 8.
- I opened VS 2013 to the Windows Phone 8 project I built from the previous step, then opened WMAppManifset.xml under the Properties folder.
- I went to the packaging tab and updated the ProductID and PublisherID values to be those of Hamster Chase Beta.
- I made a Master build of the app, and submitted it to Windows Phone Dev Center. I made absolutely sure it was a beta, and not an app to be shown in public.
- About an hour later I got an e-mail from Microsoft with the download link. I went there from my phone, installed the app, and the purchases worked!
- Cleanup: From my phone, I went to the home screen, then Apps, then Games to find and uninstall the test app.
Taking this idea a step further, I opened the VS 2013 project for the real Hamster Chase, set the product ID to be that of the beta app, and then deployed it in debug mode to the device.
Since the test app worked well, I figured it would work the first time in my game...but it did not. The app crashed after the app was restored upon me dismissing Microsoft's purchase screen.
My guess is that in the onWP8inAppPurchased callback, I wasn't supposed to do stuff with Unity objects like changing TextMesh text values or calling Transform.GetChild(). I proceeded to move all that code into a function called DoStuffAfterPurchaseFinished(), and then I call Invoke("DoStuffAfterPurchaseFinished", 0.2f) within the callback. The crash went away after that.
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Unity Setup for Prime31
[/color]I was about to move on entirely when I discovered that Prime31 was offering a free Windows Phone 8 In-App package (while the offer lasted) at http://prime31.com/plugins . I've worked with Prime31's assets before, and I like their brand.
I decided to make a test app with Prime31's IAP package. Using the lessons learned from integrating Prime31's WinPhoneAds package and the Zaubersee package; I was able to quickly get a functional Prime31 In-App demo app.
I then imported the Prime31 package into the official Hamster Chase app, and tested it. To my surprise, I had the same crash I had with the Zaubersee asset when trying to manipulate GameObjects within the purchase completion callback. As before, the Invoke workaround made the crash go away.
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Conclusion
[/color]In the end I got both the Zaubersee and Prime31 assets to work; but I decided to stick with the Prime31 asset primarily out of brand loyalty and the expectation of continued upkeep.
