Custom software development kits (SDKs) bring immeasurable benefits for software developers, helping seamlessly integrate various functionalities, streamlining development processes, and enhancing overall project efficiency. In mobile game development, SDKs are also often used to simplify the integration of third-party services, like advertising networks.
At Mind Studios Games, one of our ongoing projects is a Unity SDK development for a service called Dubbz. The SDK will be used to implement multiplayer functionality into games to make them play-to-earn.
Quoting our Head of Game Dev at Mind Studios Games Ivan Dyshuk:
The main goal of setting up their own Unity SDK development for any digital product is to promote and simplify said service’s integrations into Unity projects, most of which are games.
Essentially, by providing your own Unity SDK to game developers, you offer them a hassle-free way to add your service to the game. How does that work?
Let’s say a game developer wants to integrate a certain service into a game. Usually, software products have their own APIs (application programming interfaces) that connect the service with the game. However, to integrate the API itself, the developer will need to write a code, which will take a lot of time and effort. And Unity SDK will remove the need for that.
In a nutshell, an SDK is a piece of pre-written code tailored to specific requirements of both your digital product and the Unity engine. This code will contain all the necessary resources and functionalities for the developer to just connect it directly into their product’s Unity code — and the SDK will smoothly weave the API connection to your service. Almost fully a hands-off experience for the developer.
When it’s this easy to integrate a service into the game, game developers and owners will choose to integrate such a service into more of their products.
Benefits of having your own Unity SDK
A lot of things can be integrated into games from a third-party service: assets for the in-game store, advertisement networks, functionality for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, non-fungible tokens, and more. If your service is available for integration into games, here’s what you can get out of building a Unity SDK for it.
| Seamless integration | As we mentioned above, having a custom Unity SDK provides a streamlined integration process for game developers, making it easier for them to incorporate the third-party service into their games. With clear integration guidelines, developers can quickly integrate your service without extensive coding or troubleshooting. This makes your service more readily available for developers, adding an incentive for them to pick your service among all your competitors. |
| Increased accessibility | This is, in a way, a subset of the previous point. A custom Unity SDK makes your service more accessible to a broader range of game developers and studios, including indie developers and small game studios. |
| Enhanced user experience | The SDK can provide access to specialized features, advanced functionalities, and performance optimizations tailored to your service's specific requirements, ultimately enhancing user satisfaction and engagement with the elements that tie your service to the game. |
| Scalability and flexibility | The technological advancement and constantly evolving market demands are always a challenge for services made for integration with apps and games. With a custom Unity SDK, you can adapt and evolve the integration capabilities of your service over time to meet them. For example, the SDK architecture can be designed to be modular and extensible, allowing for seamless integration of new features, updates, and enhancements as needed. |
| Brand visibility | Your Unity SDK integration can be a booster for your service’s visibility in the gaming community. And considering how Unity is the top game development engine with a huge and highly active community, the boost will most likely be significant. |
| Data and analytics insights | Your own SDK can provide valuable data and analytics insights. You’ll be able to better understand player behavior, usage patterns, and performance metrics within games. This, in turn, will help you make informed decisions, optimize your service's features, and tailor your offerings to meet the needs of both developers and gamers. |
| Security | With your own SDK, you as the owner of a digital product are able to implement a standardized and well-secured connection with your databases. This will ensure that your partners (game developers integrating your product into their games) will not be privy to your data beyond what’s necessary. |
Unity SDK development process
SDKs aren’t massive, in most cases, and creating a working prototype for Unity SDK implementation does not take long — and doesn’t cost too much. Which is why it’s a solid choice that brings more benefits than bears risks. In our estimation, Unity SDK development takes about two to three months with an experienced team. Here are the key steps we offer our clients when they approach us for this task.
5 key steps for Unity SDK development
Step 1: Define objectives. Clearly outline the purpose and functionality of your Unity SDK. Which parts of your service will the SDK access and integrate into games? What data will it bring back to you, if any? Determine what features and capabilities it needs to offer before you start building it.
Step 2: Design the architecture. Plan the overall structure and architecture of your SDK. Define clear interfaces for interacting with it — this makes it easier for developers to integrate and use your SDK in their projects. Choose design patterns and keep up with the best practices to ensure maintainability and scalability of your codebase. Consult extensively with developers and with the business side of your service to achieve balance.
Step 3: Implement core functionality. If yours is an advertising network, the SDK will connect games with your pool of ads and offer them to the games’ end users. If you’re selling NFTs, an SDK can integrate your store into games and let players trade.
Break down the implementation into smaller, manageable tasks to make it easier to track progress and identify potential issues. A modular code makes it easier for developers to maintain and scale in the future, so consider making it so.
Step 4: Test and debug. Thoroughly test your SDK to ensure that it functions as intended. To do that, you can ask your developers to create a simple game where they’ll be able to integrate your service via this new SDK for testing purposes. If you’re outsourcing this Unity SDK development to a game development company, they will most likely have their own games already, which will make things easier for you.
Step 5: Maintain and update. As any other piece of software, your SDK will need continuous maintenance and occasional updates to adhere to requirements and seamlessly work with new and updated games. At Mind Studios Games, we’re always advocating for maintenance and updates, and we keep tabs on the new technologies and trends so that our clients’ SDKs work smoothly.
Best practices in Unity SDK development
In a very broad sense, SDK development might seem simpler than developing a game, since a game is more than just code: there’s design, levels, animations, balance, sound, and so much more to consider. An SDK is just a piece of reusable code for connecting your service to multiple games. However, SDK development isn’t simple when you look closer. You need to consider a lot of things, high-level security and optimization among them. Hence, to get the best out of your product’s integration, and to entice more developers to use your SDK, you’ll need to follow the Unity SDK development best practices.
Maintain quality documentation
There’s no overestimating the importance of documentation in software development. It helps developers to stay consistent, adhere to the same rules, and overall create better software. However, as we’re talking about an SDK you will be offering to third-party developers (of the games you want your service integrated in), quality documentation needs to be your top priority.
Your SDK needs to be easy to integrate, that’s the incentive you’ll offer to game developers. And to make it easy to integrate when these aren’t the developers who built this SDK, you need to provide thorough instructions. Include in it installation instructions, usage examples, and explanations of key concepts. Even better if your SDK development team will add code samples and tutorials.
And, of course, keep the documentation up-to-date with any changes, properly log version history for future reference.
Optimize your Unity SDK
The SDK is created to make the implementation of functionality (in this case, integrating your service) into a game effortless and seamless. Hence, it must not disrupt the game’s performance in any way. Always test your SDK for performance bottlenecks, implement caching and reducing memory usage where possible. Consider the performance of different platforms and devices when optimizing your SDK.
Ensure platform compatibility
Unity is an engine for cross-platform game development. Hence, chances are high that developers who choose to integrate your service will do so on multiple platforms. Depending on what your service is, it could be mobile (Android, iOS), desktop, console, web, or even all of them. For this reason, it’s important to keep in mind the compatibility of your SDK with relevant platforms besides its compatibility with Unity. Research what platforms games you’re aiming at support and test your SDK for any platform-specific features.
Use a version control system
Version control systems are there to assist developers in case mistakes are made. By employing version control, you can “turn back time” for the code — rewind to one of the previous versions, before the mistake was made.
The go-to solution among developers when it comes to version control is Git, though there are other options as well.
Provide high-level security
Pay attention to security best practices when developing your SDK to prevent vulnerabilities and protect user data. Follow Unity's security guidelines and recommendations for handling sensitive information, such as user authentication credentials and personal data. Keep your SDK dependencies up to date to mitigate security risks associated with known vulnerabilities in third-party libraries.
Monitor performance and log errors
Monitor the performance of your SDK in real-world usage scenarios to identify bottlenecks and areas for optimization. Use Unity's profiling tools and performance analysis techniques to measure and optimize resource usage, rendering performance, and overall responsiveness of your SDK.
Implement robust error reporting and logging mechanisms in your SDK to help users diagnose and troubleshoot issues. Provide informative error messages and log entries that clearly communicate the nature of the problem and suggest possible solutions.
Challenges and mitigations for Unity SDK development
Here’s what to look out for when you decide to create a Unity SDK for your service. Mitigation for some of these challenges were already mentioned in the previous section on best practices.
Unity version compatibility |
Unity releases frequent updates, and different games may be built on different versions of Unity. Ensuring compatibility with a wide range of Unity versions can be challenging. Mitigation: Regularly test your SDK with the latest versions of Unity and maintain backward compatibility where possible. Monitor Unity's roadmap and release notes to anticipate changes and updates that may affect your SDK. |
Performance impact |
Introducing a new SDK can impact the performance of Unity-based games, especially if the SDK requires heavy processing or network communication. Mitigation: Optimize your SDK for performance by minimizing resource usage, implementing efficient algorithms, and optimizing network communication. Provide developers with tools and guidelines for optimizing your Unity SDK integration into their games. |
Integration complexity |
Integrating a new SDK into existing game projects can be complex, especially for developers who may be unfamiliar with your service or SDK. Mitigation: Provide comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and code samples to guide developers through the integration process. Offer dedicated support channels and resources to assist developers with troubleshooting and addressing integration issues. |
User experience |
A poorly designed or implemented SDK can negatively impact the user experience of games, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction among players, and, consequently, will lower interest in your Unity SDK from game owners and developers. Mitigation: Prioritize usability and user experience when designing and implementing your SDK. Provide developers with tools and features that enhance gameplay and add value to their games without disrupting the user experience. Gather feedback from developers and players to identify areas for improvement and iterate on your SDK accordingly. |
Case studies and success stories
Several services have benefited from having custom Unity SDKs, enabling them to integrate their functionality seamlessly into Unity-based games and applications.
Facebook Unity SDK
Most mobile and web games today use social integration, and that’s exactly what Facebook created an SDK for. The Facebook Unity SDK offers developers the integration of Facebook sharing and connecting features, as well as web payments and mobile invites.
Photon Unity SDK
Photon Unity Networking is a popular networking solution for Unity games, providing low-latency multiplayer capabilities for real-time multiplayer games and applications. The Photon Unity SDK simplifies the process of implementing multiplayer functionality in Unity games, including features such as matchmaking, room creation, and synchronization of game state.
Firebase Unity SDK
Firebase has a robust suite of tools and services for mobile and web app development, including real-time databases, authentication, analytics, and cloud messaging. The Firebase Unity SDK allows developers to easily integrate Firebase functionality into Unity games, enabling features such as real-time multiplayer, leaderboards, and push notifications.
Ready Player Me Unity SDK
The popular avatar creator system has an SDK to directly integrate with games built for almost any platform, including Unity. The SDK allows developers to load avatars into games, add an avatar creator, and configure user avatars to optimize the game’s performance.
Dubbz Unity SDK
Dubbz is a blockchain-based service and a partner for whom we at Mind Studios Games built a Unity SDK. In a nutshell, the SDK allows game developers to expand the monetization strategy of their skill-based games by introducing multiplayer competitions. The SDK is currently in beta, check it out at the Dubbz website.
Conclusion
With the rapid development of mobile games, everyone wants a piece of the market, its fame and revenue. If you’re an owner of a service that can be added into games — like an ad network or an NFT marketplace — having your own Unity SDK for easy integration will provide you with an edge to stand out from the competition. Moreover, owning an SDK means more control over the data, and data in today’s market is everything.
Besides, building one is not that lengthy or expensive. A game development company that works with Unity on a daily basis, be that making games or specializing in SDKs or APIs, can do that fairly fast. Our team of experienced Unity developers can analyze your service and provide you with an estimate for timeline and expenses to expect if you decide to go with your own Unity SDK development. Get in touch with us for a consultation if you’re interested or have any question on the topic.
