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Need help. Addressables with Vuforia AR Book DLC

By coolsac32 on Wed, 03/04/2020 - 01:32

Hello,

I am having a bit of trouble for the past few weeks and have been running into a wall trying to figure out how to do downloadable content for this app I am working on for android and ios.

The app is an augmented reality app that I am using the vuforia sdk with. The AR part is for the books I am publishing for my comic book series. I currently have one scene that houses all the AR content: image targets, target database, animated videos, 3d models, audio, and sprites. The problem now is that the more content I add to the scene, the larger the build will be and I won't be able to load it onto the app stores because of the large file size.

What I am looking into is using Addressables to minimize the file size of the app and create a structure where people can open the AR book menu screen, choose the chapter they want to read, and they app would download the chapter scene from a remote server like Firebase, and play that scene.

My question is can I use Addressables to build a scene for each chapter, load it to a server, and have the app sync with the server to show the user which chapter scene are available for download? When the user clicks the button for the chapter, the scene downloads to the device, and runs. I also want the scene to be saved on the device or in the cache.

I have already build the AR app and it is available on app stores now, but I don't want to have to republish the app every time I want to update the content for future books. I just want to export a scene  with the new content, upload it to the server, and have the app recognize that there is new stuff available for download. I suppose this is very similar to DLC for games, but I am only about 4 months into the Unity dev scene and I can't seem to find a solution that I understand.

Would I need to package the addressables separately for android and ios, or have one package for both ios and android. Also, do I need to package all the assets with the scene, or when I package the scene, will the content within the scene export with it?

Any help, example scripts, or video tutorial references would be greatly appreciated.

Yes this should be possible.  Big caveat is that you won't be able to include scripts in any external packages because iOS doesn't allow external code.  (you can get around this by using non-code scripting like Playmaker)