Web Player Streaming

Streaming Web Players allow your Web Player games to begin playing as soon as Scene 0 is finished loading. If you have a game with 10 levels, it doesn't make much sense to force the player to wait and download all assets for levels 2-10 before they can start playing level 1. When you publish a Streaming Web Player, the assets that must be downloaded will be sequenced in the order of the Scene file they appear in. As soon as all assets contained in Scene 0 are finished downloading, the Web Player will begin playing.

Put simply, Streaming Web Players will get players playing your game faster than ever.

The only thing you need to worry about is checking to make sure that the next level you want to load is finished streaming before you load it.

Normally, in a non-streamed player, you use the following code to load a level:

Application.LoadLevel("levelName");

In a Streaming Web Player, you must first check that the level is finished streaming. This is done through the CanStreamedLevelBeLoaded() function. This is how it works:

var levelToLoad = 1;

function LoadNewLevel () {
	if (Application.CanStreamedLevelBeLoaded (levelToLoad)) {
		Application.LoadLevel (levelToLoad);
	}
}

If you would like to display the level streaming progress to the player, for a loading bar or other representation, you can read the progress by accessing GetStreamProgressForLevel().

Offline webplayer deployment

If the Offline Deployment option is enabled for a webplayer then the UnityObject.js file (used to interface the player with the host page) will be placed alongside the player during the build. This enables the player to work with the local script file even when there is no network connection; normally, UnityObject.js is downloaded from Unity's webserver so as to make use of the latest version.

Building standalone players

With Unity you can build standalone applications for Windows and Mac (Intel, PowerPC or Universal, which runs on both architectures). It's simply a matter of choosing the build target in the build settings dialog, and hitting the 'Build' button. When building standalone players, the resulting files will vary depending on the build target. On Windows an executable file (.exe) will be built, along with a Data folder which contains all the resources for your application. On Mac an app bundle will be built, containing the file needed to run the application, as well as the resources.

Distributing your standalone on Mac is just to provide the app bundle (everything is packed in there). On Windows you need to provide both the .exe file and the Data folder for others to run it. Think of it like this: Other people must have the same files on their computer, as the resulting files that Unity builds for you, in order to run your game.

Inside the build process

The building process will place a blank copy of the built game application wherever you specify. Then it will work through the scene list in the build settings, open them in the editor one at a time, optimize them, and integrate them into the application package. It will also calculate all the assets that are required by the included scenes and store that data in a separate file within the application package.

• Any GameObject in a scene that is tagged with 'EditorOnly' will be not be included in the published build. This is useful for debugging scripts that don't need to be included in the final game.
• When a new level loads, all the objects in the previous level are destroyed. To prevent this, use DontDestroyOnLoad() on any objects you don't want destroyed. This is most commonly used for keeping music playing while loading a level, or for game controller scripts which keep game state and progress.
• After the loading of a new level is finished, the message: OnLevelWasLoaded() will be sent to all active game objects.
• For more information on how to best create a game with multiple scenes, for instance a main menu, a high-score screen, and actual game levels, see the Scripting Tutorial.pdf