Remote Configs

Introduction

Lion - Remote Configs package is designed to help your game studio gain insights into your player base and identify actionable opportunities for growing your audience and revenue.

The features that Remote Configs provides are,

Remote Configs automatically:

• initializes selected Remote Configs solution (e.g., Firebase)

• Sets essential properties

• Logs important data (experiment name, etc.) to Analytics

• Fetches and stores Feature Flag values

Remote Configs also provides simple functions to:

• Access Feature Flag (remote configuration) values

• Fire Events (to assign payers to audiences)

• Set Custom Properties

Installation Guide

• Make sure LionSDK is installed. Complete the steps in Getting Started first.

• Install Lion - Remote Configs from the Unity package manager.

Setup

Remote Configs solution has three types. Either of them can be configured in editor, but only one of them will be used at runtime. The three types of Remote Configs solution are:

• Firebase (recommended)

• Local Testing (For local testing)

Setup instructions for each solution are provided in the links above. After setting it up, you can select it by going to LionStudios → Settings Manager → Remote Configs .

Remote Config Adapter Selection Menu

The Remote Configs solutions need to load their values before the gameplay starts. The easiest solution for this is to integrate our Loading Scene module.

Usage

Remote Config package methods must be called after the Remote Configs package has been initialized. The module is part of LionSDK’s initialization cycle; you can use RemoteConfigsController.IsInitialized and RemoteConfigsController.OnInitialized to ensure that it is ready.

Example usage of waiting for remote configs to be initialized:

if (RemoteConfigsController.IsInitialized)
{
    SetRemoteConfig();
}
else
{
    RemoteConfigsController.OnInitialized += SetRemoteConfig;
}

1

Remote values

Remote values give the ability to change the behavior and appearance of your app without publishing an app update for users.

• For Firebase, Remote value means Parameters

• For Test, Remote value means the local list of values present in the editor window

Function signature

 RemoteConfigsController.GetValue<T>(string flagName, T defaultValue)

This will return the value of the remote values for the current player.

Examples

// If no flag exists for that key or if offline, it will return the 
// default value (3).
int showAppReviewAfterLevel = 
	RemoteConfigsController.GetValue<int>("show_app_review_after_level", 3);

// Any type can be used. The flag value will be parsed to that type.
// For complex types, the remote value has to be formatted in json.
bool bonusLevelEnabled = 
	RemoteConfigsController.GetValue<bool>("bonus_level_enabled", false);	

2

Log Event

Events allow you to send data for a given user to the server for processing.

• For Firebase, the events are created at runtime, so you just need to call the “LogEvent” function with events.

• For Test, the events are just Debug logs.

Function signature

LiveopsController.LogEvent(
	string name, 
	string value, 
	Dictionary<string, string> metadata = null)

Example

// This will log an event named "iap_purchase", with a value of "verified"
LiveopsController.LogEvent("iap_purchase", "verified");

3

Fetching data

• For Firebase, by calling the “FetchAndUpdateRemoteConfig” function, only remote configs are updated by fetching them from the server.

• For Test, By calling the “FetchAndUpdateRemoteConfig” function, it will fetch the latest values present in the editor window. But in runtime, this won’t do anything as values in the Unity editor will be the same every time.

Function signature

The given function is an async task function; “await” can be used here, which ensures that the code waits until the data is fetched completely from the server.

LiveOpsController.FetchAndUpdateRemoteConfig();

Example

bool isFetchedCorrectly = await LiveOpsController.FetchAndUpdateRemoteConfig();

if (isFetchedCorrectly)
{
    //Do something here after fetching
}

4

Custom/User properties

Properties are an important tool used to define and enrich a user identity profile, and ultimately used to define the audience segments.

• For Firebase, more information can be found here: Firebase user properties

• For testing, there are no user properties. Setting them won’t do anything.

Function signature

//Key parameter is the property ID
//Value parameter is the property's actual value
public static void SetCustomProperty(string key, string value)

//Another way to set properties is to send the whole dictionary
//Dictionary's first 'string' denotes the key of the property
//Dictionary's second 'string' denotes the value of the property
public static void SetCustomProperties(Dictionary<string, string> customProperties)

Example-1

LiveOpsController.SetCustomProperty("Age", "23");

Example-2

	Dictionary<string, string> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>()
  {
      { "Age", "23"},
      { "Name", "Anything"}
  };

  LiveOpsController.SetCustomProperties(dictionary);

5

Existing user

A boolean value that’s used to identify players who have previously played the app in a version without Remote Configs (Firebase). These players must be processed differently internally because the Remote Configs SDK (Firebase) has incomplete data on them.

So at the start of the first session with Remote Configs, you need to let us know if the player has existed before that session. You can use your own persistent data to check this.

Make sure to call this only once.

Pass “true” if the user existed before.

//Send a boolean value as a parameter indicating whether this is a new user or not.
public static void SetExistingUserProperty(bool value)

Example

if (!PlayerPrefs.HasKey("HasSetExistingUserProperty"))
{
    bool userExistedBefore = PlayerPrefs.GetInt("CurrentLevel", 0) > 0;
    LiveOpsController.SetExistingUserProperty(userExistedBefore);
    PlayerPrefs.SetInt("HasSetExistingUserProperty", 1);
}

6

Set up experiments

Below are the instructions to set up AB Experiments on the dashboard so that the module can send appropriate events to Lion Analytics:

• For Firebase: AB Experiments (Firebase)

7

Generating JSON Remote Config Values

The Remote Config provides a feature which can help you generate formatted JSON for your complex data. Refer here for more information.