Way without Unity Android Pro

bakman23

Hello,
How sould I do if I want to create and join room on my own Photon server with android Basic?
Thanks

dreamora

You will not be able to use PUN
you must use the native android SDK and write a Unity Plugin for it.

Reason is that Unity removed the .NET Socket Support in Android / iOS Basic on which any networking relies thats not Unity Networking or WWW

dubbreak

Hi dreamora.. do you know when this happened? I'm still on Unity 3.5.x (updated to latest, which is 7?) and now I can't build my Android project. Seems weird that they'd remove it on a point release. I could see removing it for 4.X.. but removing a feature you paid for .

dubbreak

Nevermind.. it was 3.5.6.

dreamora

You have explicitely not paid for the feature unless you own Unity Android Pro
UT simply didn't get around to fix the bug earlier on but technically and license wise no Android Basic license ever supported .NET sockets.

dubbreak

At the time of purchasing I verified Photon would work with Android Basic and purchased it based on that (rather than pro). There was no talk of, "It works now, but it'll get pulled when we get around to it."

Unintentionally exposing a feature can hardly be classified as a bug. That's a marketing/differentiation mistake (and I've dealt with that before.. big crazy matrix of this is what features users that are X get). Going back and "correcting" that in a bug fix update is questionable business ethics wise. You are basically holding a gun to your customer's head with, "Pay us more money to have this feature you were using or live with the bugs." (assuming they didn't go back and remove it from earlier versions as well.. in which case it's just "pay us more money").

Anyhow, you can't help me with the issue. I'm talking to my license exec to see what can be done.

dreamora

You can talk to whoever you want but the license comparision table since Unity 3.0 stated that Networking is an Android / iOS Pro feature I fear.
Only WWW and Unity Networking are present without that.
Just cause someone was unable to properly implement the limiter on that licensing restriction unluckily will not change this fact independent of how much I would welcome if UT finally would remove this 'joke limiter' (joke due to the thing below) on iOS and Android.

As mentioned, you can always use Photon Android and write a JavaObject - JavaClass (in Unity) based wrapper around it. That way it will work again as plugins are no Pro feature on mobile.

dubbreak

Excellent point. I think what may have been the issue was when I was purchasing I was looking at Pro vs Free and Free had socket support. I most likely assumed that Android basic had all the features of Free + the ability to deploy to Android. That's the normal way for stacking features.

My original car analogy was: taking a car in for service (ecu firmware update) and them removing the traction control because they decided base model cars would no longer have that feature.

My modified analogy: buying a car that had traction control when you bought it, then the next time you take it in for service they remove it claiming, "It was clear in the sale materials that wasn't a feature of the base model, we have fixed that on your vehicle now." They can argue all they want that it wasn't an included feature in my purchase price, but in reality what I bought had that feature, intentional or not. Removing it after the fact is ethically questionable as is witholding bug fixes if I want to keep that feature, "Oh you can have the traction control still, but you can't have the ecu update that stops your vehicle from suddenly accelerating as well."

Claiming what they did is a "fix" on customer facing documents is beyond laughable (in the 3.5.6 release notes it stated "Android: Enforce that System.Net.Sockets use is only allowed with an Android Pro license."). It's a change, but not for the better. I'm sure sale/marketing thinks it's a fix.

Anyhow, just more belly aching on my behalf. Unfortunately I don't have the time to write a plugin currently. Not a bad idea for the asset store though. I'd pay $50-$100 for that in a heartbeat.