Deploying Unity for Corporate Customer - platform problems

I am developing a training game for a corporate customer using Unity Pro (currently 4, can move to 5).

I am looking for creative solutions to the deployment issues that have arisen.

The Customer is a PC shop, Windows 7, IE9, and geographically dispersed. Being a corporate customer, they have IT issues about employees installing software, as many customers do.

Current Options are to open a project with the IT department to allow the installation of the game, standalone. Second option is to open an IT project to allow Webplayer to be installed. Both of these options increase dramatically increase the time to deployment and are not ideal.

Third option is to convert to Unity 5 and reply using WebGL, but the customer is only IE9 and doesn't look like upgrading anytime soon. Hence also a problem.

The customer does use a LMS system (Cornerstone) and perhaps this could be used to allow access, but I am still exploring this option.

Anyone out there have similar issues with conservation corporate customers and would like to share their solutions please?

 

We faced a somewhat similar issue several years back with some training software and multiple sites. After a variety of proposals, we ended up getting inexpensive laptops, installing and setting up locally and shipping 2 of them to each location around country. Strangely that ended up being the cheapest solution in the end. 2 low end laptops were cheaper than 2 days of IT billing (best case). Faced with the same situation today, I would probably use tablets.

Might not fit your needs, but it was amazing how quickly labor costs added when faced with corporate bureaucracy, our solution was to just step around it. Also, the remote IT staff became really helpful once they found out they didn't need to do any work and were getting new toys.

 

Hey zombiegorilla,
Thanks for the input. I agree about the IT costs, that and the fact they are difficult to work with, is why I need other options. Buy tablets is worth a thought. I was hoping for some innovative web based solution.
Thanks

 

Innovative web based solutions and corporate IT are not often compatible. Best of luck! Also would love to hear back when you find a solution that works.

 

I posted this thread to some Game Dev Groups on LinkedIn. Lots of horror stories, at least I know I am not alone.

Sadly, that doesn't help my situation. Ideally (and I presume it isn't possible), the web player would download, load temporarily, stream the game, then delete. No need for admin rights, no changes made to the system.

I know the web player structure is not designed to do this, but I cannot see why it would not be possible. Have the web player in cache, stream the game...

I am surprised that no game company has addressed this issue. WebGL from Unity and HTML5 from UnReal are probably the best they can do. But very few corporates install the latest browsers. They always seem to have the oldest (to their mind the most stable...but not) installed. Hence no WebGL nor HTML5. I guess they are all in the game industry and don't see corporate sector as a customer.

 

Coming from the supposed greener side of corporate infrastructure management, I can see what hurdles you are facing...

but, you do have another option and that is with VDI. If, they already have the infrastructure in place to support it, it is really just a matter of you providing them with the installer for desktop, or package for webplayer... and let "them" be responsible for managing its' access and distribution.

If they have the budget, setting up Microsofts' VDI is fairly simple... however, in reality it generally is not less expensive then shipping out a dedicated machine or two or three... but if you have dozens to manage globally, in the long run it would be easier for IT to centralize versus distribute and grant access over RDP for session or pooled desktops, or via a remoteapp (like for webplayer).

I've setup and tested the scenario, and it works (even with a modern/cheap NVidia graphics card)... the key being how the graphics are handled on the backend... and I would definitely look at a high end, professional solution to handle it.

 

Shouldn't distribution to systems be their own responsibility once you've handed over the developed product? Unless they're paying for you to do that too.

 

On a related (semi), note, does anyone have experience with delivering IOS B to B training apps? I think I read that there is a B to B version of iTunes (or the like), curious how that would work. Does the client need an account or could I become the pseudo 'store' and their clients or employees could download the training or end user app from my account.

Thanks if anyone has a clue,
B.

 

Yes, deployment is their problem, but if it is the kiss of death, what do I stand to gain. If they can only deploy the game to a few thousand users, do I consider it as a success? If they deploy it to their entire 100k users, it will certainly look good on my resume.

 

This is an option worth exploring, thanks. If the user already has Virtual Desktop installed, that may definitely be an answer. But wouldn't it create major bandwidth problems? The 3D graphics, voiceovers, etc, would need to be streamed and this would be prohibitive on the network. Or does it not work this way?

 

not entirely, the audio is streamed but as a single composite (like how we stream Pandora or Spotify), the graphics are a frame based capture and are also a composite stream (like how we stream from YouTube). The VDI environment builds the composite and streams it using some encoding technique. Just like how we RDP to a server or another desktop, it doesn't send the entire operating system and cpu instructions to use.. just the image of the desktop.

For higher quality image stream, it does take bandwidth... for example a 720p over Netflix or the like may take 5Mbps per session.

[edit]
just a note, the webplayer streaming (or remoteapp) may stream differently... I have not tried streaming a Unity webplayer game myself, but have seen other streams (like Silverlight) and they worked pretty well. The graphics performance were independent of the client, but rather heavily dependent upon the backend services (the graphics power behind the server providing the streams).

 

It's doable if the VDI environment uses 3D accelerators, and especially if it's a corporate campus LAN versus Internet. I came across this link of someone playing the Bootcamp demo at a good framerate over VDI: http://www.ervik.as/citrix/xendeskt...oth-with-xendesktop-7-5-and-citrix-hdx-3d-pro

I'd provide a native Windows build if they let you. However, they may be more amenable to installing the Unity webplayer plugin than a native Windows program.