setup

Setup

This guide covers installing the Photon extension and configuring it for your project.

Getting a Photon Application ID

Photon is a cloud service. Before you can connect you need a free Photon account and one Application ID per product you use (Realtime/LoadBalancing, Chat and Voice each have their own App ID):

1. Create an account at the Photon dashboard.
2. Create an application for each product you need (a Realtime app, a Chat app and/or a Voice app).
3. Copy each application's App ID (a GUID such as 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000).

Configuring the App IDs

The App IDs are credentials and must not be committed to source control. The extension exposes them as extension options so their values live in your local project settings only:

1. In the GameMaker IDE, select the GMPhoton extension in the Asset Browser.
2. Under Application IDs, fill in Realtime App ID and/or Chat App ID.

At runtime the demo reads them with extension_get_option_value:

var _app_id = extension_get_option_value("GMPhoton", "appIdRealtime");
photon_realtime_connect(_app_id, "1.0", new PhotonRealtimeConnectOptions());

Tip

Because the values are stored in the (git-ignored) project options rather than in your scripts, each developer sets their own App IDs and nothing sensitive ends up in your repository.

Other extension options

• iOS SDK Path (sdkPathiOS) — path to the vendored Photon iOS SDK, used by the build-step scripts to stage the static libraries when targeting iOS. The default points at the SDK bundled with the extension.
• Log Level (logLevel) — verbosity of the extension's own build/log output (1–3).

Supported platforms

The Photon extension supports Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. On Windows, macOS and Linux the Photon SDK is linked statically into the extension library; on iOS the static libraries are staged into the project at build time (see iOS SDK Path above); on Android the native libraries are built from the bundled AndroidSource.

Servicing the client

Photon dispatches incoming and outgoing traffic on the game thread. After you connect, call the matching service function every step for each subsystem you use — photon_realtime_service, photon_chat_service and photon_voice_service. Without this the client will neither send nor receive.