How to Make Unity Web Player work offline?
Hello, I am unable to get Unity Web Player working offline.
I am on Windows 8.1 and using Firefox 40.0.3. I am building .unity3d files using Unity Personal version 5.1.0f3
The version information from the .plist files in the loader, mono, and player subdirectories in Users/eeger/AppData/LocalLow/Unity/WebPlayer is as follows:
loader: 5.1.3f1
mono: 5.1.1f1
player: 5.1.1f1
I have checked "Offline Development" in the Build options and have made sure that the .html
file that is loading my .unity3d
file is loading UnityObject2.js
from the local filesystem.
When I start the Web Player with my system online, it starts normally. When I start the Web Player with my system offline, I see the following error message:
Failed to update Unity Web Player
When I click on "Error Details", I see the following message:
A newer version of Unity Web Player is required,
but the auto-update download failed. Was trying to download
http://webplayer.unity3d.com//autodownload_webplugin-3.x/UnityPlayer5.x.x-win32.zip
Why is Web Player trying to fetch an online resource when it is actually running offline? Could the version mismatch between my mono and player directories and the loader directories be causing auto-update to be triggered?
A comment on this post seems to indicate that Unity Web Player will only work offline if built using the Professional edition. Is that the case?
Answer by Schubkraft · Sep 03, 2015 at 02:43 PM
There is a "closed network" version for the player. it can only one runtime and will never call the internet. It is not included in the Pro license but you have to contact your sales rep for it.
Answer by Schubkraft · Sep 01, 2015 at 04:12 PM
The label "offline deployment" is somewhat misleading. What it does is dumping the UnityObject2.js next to the html and referencing it locally.
You can't have an offline version of the webplayer since it always checks for updates when it starts.
There is a special closed network license for this case but you have to contact your sales rep for more info.
Are you sure? I see lots of questions online where folks that answer claim to be able to run Web Player without an active internet connection.
Here is one such question: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/411829/webplayer-working-offline.html
Is this the official response? Because the offline deployment is completely hosing our ability to run builds on machines that don't have any web access.
Is this a bug that was recently introduced? It was working prior to version 5.
It is the official answer, especially my comment to johndavid just above.
It is not a bug but has always been the case. There have been no changes to how the plugin works in Unity 5.
That is unfortunate - but thanks for the official response. Although, I'm not convinced this is how it has always been behaving.
Out of curiosity - according to a post :
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-webplayer-plugin-update-check.12838/
It would appear that the plugin would ping home once after installing, but not again after that. If this is the behavior you're saying has "...always been the case." - would that be an accurate depiction of the plugin's behavior regarding being "offline"?
Yes. But as you pointed out there are various ways if tricking it into running offline as mentioned in the linked post. This is however not officially supported as an "offline webplayer".
Re: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-webplayer-plugin-update-check.12838/
That is for the most part accurate. It will check for the latest runtime and download that. For any content fitting that runtime it not ping online but just play it. For any content not fitting that it needs to download a new runtime.
As the forum post mentioned we can also actively push updates to the plugins to force updates in case of security issues.
Schubkraft -
Thanks for the response, I understand why Unity would want to have the ability to force updates regarding security concerns.
Is there a conceivable way for devs to get the option for a full offline deployment? I've heard in some forums there might be an option for this on Pro licenses - but it seems like that's more for offline installation of the Web Player, not necessarily for playing said file without a connection.
Just trying to see what options there might be... thanks!