Unity and android emulator

Unity 3D: Testing Android builds with an emulator

Using an emulator to test your Android builds can really speed up your development. Unity can build the app automatically and push it to your preferred emulator. Testing your product with powerful hardware can be a key in production. There are several emulators out in the wild and I’ll review some of them.

Android SDK

Obviously, the source for an emulator is shipped by the Android SDK (only SDK download is at the very bottom). If you are already developing for android, the SDK will be already installed on your system. Open up the SDK-Manager and download one of the latest emulation images. If you are running windows as operating system, you may need to make sure, that Hyper-V is not installed. Otherwise, you will end with a bluescreen after starting the emulator. Hyper-V can be removed with the windows features manager.

UPDATE12.07.18: With the latest Windows 10 April 2018 Update and the latest beta image from google, the Hyper-V technology IS supported. As AMD user you may want to switch now, to gain the advantage of the hardware acceleration. If you use Hyper-V, do not install HAXAM!

To speed up the emulator, install Intel HAXM, but this should tell you the SDK-Manager as well.

Afterwards, open the AVD Manager and create a suitable virtual device. After starting it, the “Build & Run” command in Unity3D will now automatically push the app onto the emulator and open it. If the root folder of the SDK is not configured within unity, it will ask for the location. To manually change the path navigate to:

The only missing feature is the multitouch input. You can try to use an actual device as input device for the emulator. Install $android_sdk\tools\apps\SdkController\bin\SdkControllerApp.apk onto your phone and open it. Follow the instructions in the app to connect your device with the emulator.

*Nox Player

The next Android emulator is the Nox App Player. It is a feature rich player based on Android 4.4.2. Due to many optimizations it starts incredibly fast and runs very smooth. It offers many cool features, like a shared folder, video recording and the google play store. The player supports multiple instances, so the testing of multiplayer applications should be a lot easier.

The player has a way better input & sensor emulation as the other above. Multitouch events can easily be emulated. Keyboard keys can be mapped with clicks at specified screen coordinates. You can record touch inputs as a macro and replay it. Using “WSAD” and a map, you can walk the GPS system. The most of these inputs use nice overlays to display their configuration.

Enable ADB

You only need to activate adb within the instance:

Enable ADB within the NOX Player PT.1

Enable ADB within the NOX Player PT.2

Now run the following command within the shell

Bluestacks

The last emulator on my list is the bluestacks app player. This emulator is one of the first commercial ones for Android apps. The latest version(3) is based on Android 4.4.1. The startup is as fast as the Nox-Player. After the first startup, you are required to login with your Google account. The play store is preinstalled, but you can only install games. The player supports multiple instances and you can take screenshots. Important to mention, from time to time the player shows you an advert.

Multiple input events can be mapped with the keyboard and the mouse. Multitouch input can be difficult because you can only use the mapped events and your mouse. Pinch-To-Zoom is supported with Ctrl + MouseWheel. You can set your location on a map. It supports the emulation of the acceleration sensor.

Enable ADB

The player does not auto-connect to ADB. After booting up the emulator, simply run the following command:

Unity should now push the builds to the emulator.

Visual Studio Emulator for Android (not working)

Unity’s own tutorials provide us with an example of the Visual Studio Emulator for Android. It sounds pretty easy, but after trying it, I challenged with multiple errors. One cool thing about the “Visual Studio Emulator” is the nice support of multiple touch inputs and the one-click installation. It makes use of Intel’s Hyper-V technologies, which provides you with a really fast environment. Furthermore, the emulator can emulate multiple API levels and it auto connects to the ADB tool. This allows Unity3D to automatically push the builds onto the virtual device.

With the Verison 5.6.1 of Unity, the described way is not working for me. The first problem was, that any application built with unity crashes at startup without any useful logcat entry. Only the popup with the text “ has stopped.” showed up. After digging at the unity forums, two changes fixed the crash:

• Disable Auto Graphics API
• At Graphics API: Switch OpenGLES2 to the first position

But the game wasn’t starting either. The next problem was, that the unity game freezes at the loading screen. After trying out multiple build settings, the problem remained. So there must be another solution.

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Getting started with Android development

Building games for a device running Android OS requires an approach similar to that for iOS development. However, the hardware is not completely standardized across all devices, and this raises issues that don’t occur in iOS development. There are some feature differences in the Android version of Unity just as there are with the iOS version.

Setting up your Android developer environment

You will need to have your Android developer environment set up before you can test your Unity games on the device. This involves downloading and installing the Android SDK with the different Android plaforms and adding your physical device to your system (this is done a bit differently depending on whether you are developing on Windows or Mac). This setup process is explained on the Android developer website, and there may be additional information provided by the manufacturer of your device. Since this is a complex process, we’ve provided a basic outline of the tasks that must be completed before you can run code on your Android device or in the Android emulator. However, the best thing to do is follow the instructions step-by-step from the Android developer portal.

Access Android functionality

Unity Android provides scripting APIs to access various input data and settings. You can find out more about the available classes on the Android scripting page.

Exposing native C, C++ or Java code to scripts

Unity Android allows you to call custom functions written in C/C++ directly from C# scripts (Java functions can be called indirectly). To find out how to make functions from native code accessible from Unity, visit the Android plugins page.

Occlusion culling

Unity includes support for occlusion culling which is a particularly valuable optimization on mobile platforms. More information can be found on the occlusion culling page.

Splash screen customization

The splash screen displayed while the game launches can be customized — see this page for further details.

Troubleshooting and bug reports

There are many reasons why your application may crash or fail to work as you expected. Our Android troubleshooting guide will help you get to the bottom of bugs as quickly as possible. If, after consulting the guide, you suspect the problem is internal to Unity then you should file a bug report — see this page for details on how to do this.

How Unity Android differs from desktop Unity

Strongly typed JavaScript

For performance reasons, dynamic typing in JavaScript is always turned off in Unity Android, as if #pragma strict were applied automatically to all scripts. This is important to know if you start with a project originally developed for the desktop platforms since you may find you get unexpected compile errors when switching to Android; dynamic typing is the first thing to investigate. These errors are usually easy to fix if you make sure all variables are explicitly typed or use type inference on initialization.

ETC as recommended texture compression

Although Unity Android does support DXT/PVRTC/ATC textures, Unity will decompress the textures into RGB(A) format at runtime if those compression methods are not supported by the particular device in use. This could have an impact on the GPU rendering speed and it is recommended to use the ETC format instead. ETC is the de facto standard compression format on Android, and should be supported on all post 2.0 devices. However, ETC does not support an alpha channel and RGBA 16-bit will sometimes be the best trade-off between size, quality and rendering speed where alpha is required.

It is also possible to create separate android distribution archives (.apk) for each of the DXT/PVRTC/ATC formats, and let the Android Market’s filtering system select the correct archives for different devices (see this page for further details).

Movie playback

Movie textures are not supported on Android, but a full-screen streaming playback is provided via scripting functions. To learn about supported file formats and scripting API, consult the movie page or the Android supported media formats page.

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Android environment setup

To build and run for Android, you must install the Unity Android Build Support platform module. You also need to install the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) and the Native Development Kit (NDK) to build and run any code on your Android device. By default, Unity installs a Java Development Kit based on OpenJDK.

Note: Unity supports Android 4.4 “KitKat” and above. See AndroidSdkVersions for details.

1. Install Android Build Support and the Android SDK & NDK tools

Use the Unity Hub to install Android Build Support and the required dependencies
See in Glossary : Android SDK & NDK tools, and OpenJDK.

Add Android modules

You can install Android Build Support, the Android SDK & NDK tools and OpenJDK when you install the Unity Editor, or add them at a later time.

For information on adding the Android modules:

If you are using a 2018 version of Unity, see the Unity 2018.4 documentation for information on manually installing these dependencies.

2. Enable USB debugging on your device

To enable USB debugging, you must enable Developer options on your device. To do this, find the build number in your device’s Settings menu. The location of the build number varies between devices; for stock Android, it’s usually Settings > About phone > Build number. For specific information on your device and Android version, refer to your hardware manufacturer.

After you navigate to the build number using the instructions above, tap on the build number seven times. A pop-up notification saying “You are now X steps away from being a developer” appears, with “X” being a number that counts down with every additional tap. On the seventh tap, Developer options are unlocked.

Note: On Android versions prior to 4.2 (Jelly Bean), the Developer options are enabled by default.

Go to Settings > Developer options (or, if this does not work, on some devices the path is Settings > System > Developer options), and check the USB debugging checkbox. Android now enters debug mode when it is connected to a computer via USB.

Connect your device to your computer using a USB cable. If you are developing on a Windows computer, you might need to install a device-specific USB driver. See the manufacturer website for your device for additional information.

The setup process differs for Windows and macOS and is explained in detail on the Android developer website. For more information on connecting your Android device to the SDK, refer to the Run Your App section of the Android Developer documentation.

ADB debugging for Chrome OS devices

For information on how to set up your development environment for Chrome OS devices, and enable ADB An Android Debug Bridge (ADB). You can use an ADB to deploy an Android package (APK) manually after building. More info
See in Glossary debugging, see Google’s documentation on Chrome OS Developer Environments.

Connecting to your Chrome OS device

Before you can deploy to your device you need to manually connect with ADB via the device’s IP address.

To begin you need the IP address. Open up the Settings app and choose Network in the sidebar. Next click on the active network interface.

If the interface is wireless then next choose the SSID that you are connected to. In the details you will see your IP address. Make a note of it.

If you are using a wired connection your IP address will be shown on the first details page.

Now we are ready to connect. For the sake of this example let’s say that the device’s IP is 192.168.0.100. In a shell or terminal run the following command

adb connect 192.168.0.100

If the connection was successful you will see a message such as connected to 192.168.0.65:5555 . And adb devices should verify that the device is connected. List of devices attached 192.168.0.65:5555 device

From now on you may run ADB commands to target the device just as you would over a USB connection.

Note: If your device or host machine goes to sleep or loses network connectivity you may need to reconnect.

Customizing the Android SDK & NDK Tools and OpenJDK installation

Unity recommends that you use the Unity Hub to install Android SDK & NDK tools, to ensure that you receive the correct versions and configuration. Unity installs Android SDK & NDK Tools and OpenJDK respectively in the SDK, NDK and OpenJDK folders under /Unity/Hub/Editor/[EditorVersion]/Editor/Data/PlaybackEngines/AndroidPlayer/.

If you have multiple versions of Unity with the same required dependencies (be sure to check System requirements for the latest) and you want to avoid duplicating the installation of Android SDK & NDK Tools and OpenJDK, you can specify a shared location in the Unity Preferences window. To do this, go to Preferences > External tools and enter the directory paths in the SDK and NDK fields:

Preferences window showing external tools settings for Android

Warning: Unity does not officially support versions of the OpenJDK, SDK, or NDK other than the ones it supplies.

To change the OpenJDK, SDK Tools, or NDK that Unity uses to build Android apps:

1. Open the Project.
2. Open the Preferences window (Windows and Linux: Edit >Preferences; macOS: Unity >Preferences).
3. In the left navigation column, select External Tools.

Change the OpenJDK path

1. Uncheck JDK Installed with Unity (recommended).
2. In the JDK field, enter the path to the JDK installation folder, or use the Browse button to locate it.

Change the Android SDK Tools path

1. Uncheck Android SDK Tools Installed with Unity (recommended).
2. In the SDK field, enter the path to the SDK installation folder, or use the Browse button to locate it.

Unity works with the most recent version of the Android SDK available at the time of the Unity version release.

Change the Android NDK path

1. Uncheck Android NDK Installed with Unity (recommended).
2. In the NDK field, enter the path to the NDK installation folder, or use the Browse button to locate it.

Each version of Unity requires a specific version of the Android NDK to be installed:

Unity version	NDK version
2018.4 LTS	r16b
2019.4 LTS	r19
2020.3 LTS	r19

See the System requirements page for a complete list of requirements.

Updating the Android SDK Target API

Unity Hub installs the latest version of the Android SDK Target API required by Google Play.

If you need to use a more recent version, you can change the Target API from the Target API Level field in the Player Settings window (menu: Edit > Project Settings > Player, then select the Android platform). You can find the Target API Level option in the Other Settings > Identification section.

Selecting a target API for the Android SDK

After you select an option other than the default, Unity prompts you to update the Android SDK API. You can choose to either:

• Update the Android SDK
• Continue to use the highest installed version of the Android SDK

Note: If you select an older version of the Target API, the Unity Android SDK Updater will not be able to perform the update and will give you this message:

Android SDK does not include your Target SDK of (version). Please use the Android SDK Manager to install your target SDK version. Restart Unity after SDK installation for the changes to take effect.

In this case, to update the Android SDK Target API, you must use the Android sdkmanager from either Android Studio or the command line tool. Regardless of the method you chose, make sure to select the correct Android SDK folder for Unity in the Edit > Preferences > External Tools window.

On Windows, if the Unity Editor is installed in the default folder ( /Program Files/ ), you must run the sdkmanager with elevated privilege (Run as Administrator) to perform the update.

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