Facebook Gameroom for PC gaming

Overview

Facebook Gameroom for PC gaming (Arcade project) is a Windows-native client available as a free download for players worldwide. Within the new Facebook Gameroom, players can experience both web games and also native games built exclusively for the platform. Building native games for Facebook Gameroom brings many benefits for you and your players:

  • Facebook Gameroom for PC gaming focuses on gameplay for players, ensuring an exclusive and immersive gaming experience
  • Developing in Facebook Gameroom natively takes less time: it's easier compared to HTML5 and gives better solutions around threading, debugging, networking and memory management
  • Facebook Gameroom provides better performance in terms of app launch timings and memory consumption in native games.

Download Unity with Facebook Games

Download and install the Unity 5.5 beta with Facebook build support:

Download Unity 5.5 for WindowsDownload Unity 5.5 for Mac

Demo Video

Here's a short video showing how to integrate your Unity game with Facebook Gameroom:

For a more detailed explanation, please refer to the documentation. This is broken down into the following sections:

1. Requirements

2. Build

3. Launch

Must Haves

Make use of keyboard and/or mouse, with tutorial to explain usage.

Detect web games in Gameroom client via an additional user-agent string. E.g. FacebookCanvasDesktop [FBAN/GamesWindowsDesktopApp; FBAV/1.0.0.2]

At a minimum, use the Public profile of the current player.

Links to FB Pages or external websites open correctly in a browser.

Comply with the Facebook Platform Policy.

“Guest mode” for players.

Allowing players to Log Out of Facebook in your game.

Best Practices

Continue the player's progress on different platforms. (e.g. mobile, Facebook.com and Gameroom)

Maximise graphics area in the Gameroom client.

Allow player to choose between low, medium and high quality graphics.

Keep the loading time to less than 10s.

Skippable and replayable tutorial with easy learning curve.

Configure all required Permissions under App Center.

Upload all creative assets in App Center.

Promote your Gameroom page from your FB Page and Website.

FAQ

All of the above. The Gameroom client supports many different formats:
  • HTML5 or Flash content that is hosted on your game server
  • Standalone Windows .exe that is zipped and hosted on Facebook's hosting (which we term as Gameroom native)
  • Unity WebGL that is zipped and hosted on Facebook's hosting.
Yes, if you are using Unity 5.0 and above. You may download the latest Facebook SDK for Unity and import the FacebookSDK.unitypackage into the version of Unity that you are using.

If it’s a native Windows game, then the Facebook Unity SDK is required since we don’t support any other engines now. (We plan to do so in the future)

If you already use the Facebook Unity SDK for mobile games, you need to update the SDK to have Facebook Gameroom support. However, to get both mobile and Gameroom integration, you will need to configure your game manually, see sections 4-6 for details.

Mac and Linux platforms are currently not on our immediate roadmap, but we will consider it based on player demand.
Currently, we have 30+ Windows-native games on Gameroom and many more in the pipeline:
  1. Sandstorm Pirate Wars
  2. Empires And Allies
  3. Critical Ops
  4. Oz: Broken Kingdoms
  5. Might and Mayhem
  6. Path of War
  7. Pirate Kings
  8. Cooking Adventure
  9. Battle of Gods
  10. My Konami Slots
Developers have gave us feedback that it was an easy integration, with efforts ranging from 1-2 weeks, and with resources varying from 1-2 engineers.
No, the Gameroom installation process does not install any .NET framework, although the client targets the .NET 4.0 Client Profile, which is part of the automatic updates for Windows 7.
Currently, there is no Facebook Gameroom payment support in Unity IAP. You will have to refer to the payments section above to implement Facebook IAP via the Unity SDK. However, in an upcoming version of Unity, we plan to support Facebook IAP within Unity IAP.
No, you do not have to use the SDK. Currently the Audience Network SDK only supports mobile platforms. In the future, we have plans to support the desktop platform.
Before calling a Facebook dialog (e.g. Login, Sharing, API, Payments, etc), you can start showing your progress indicator. Once the Facebook callback is completed, you can hide your progress indicator.
// show your progress indicator
        
FB.ShareLink(
  new Uri("https://developers.facebook.com/"),
  callback: ShareCallback
);

private void ShareCallback (IShareResult result) {
  // hide your progress indicator
}
        
You may call Application.Quit(0) to return to the Gameroom homepage.
You may follow these steps:
  • Copy devtools_resources.pak from Chrome to the Gameroom installation directory.
  • Launch Gameroom with /debuglog as an argument.
  • Click the top left icon of the window, and then select the "Debug" option to open a command prompt.
  • If you type in devtools then it'll open the Chrome devtoold console where you can check console messages.