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I'm a newbie in this unity world, exciting about everything in it.

Days ago I came up with this idea:

  1. One day someone finds this android app, naming "Blahblah Game Engine" or anything else. This app has to be very small, containing only some simple activity and Unity runtime, without further resources related to any specific game.
  2. He installs it and sees an android activity, maybe a webview, showing a list of unity games the server currently hosting, produced by the very same Blahblah company.
  3. Then he clicks on one and this "Blahblah Game Engine" loads the game build via network, starts an Unity activity, without prompting an installing dialog.
  4. He can exit the current game whenever he likes, returns to the previous game list, and plays another, all working well in one app's lifetime.

In a word, the user experience is very much like how we play games on www.kongregate.com with pc browsers: light-weight app, mutiple games in one list, all loads via network, playing right away and installing-less.

Any game that listed in this app should not be installed as a standalone android app, it should be part of the "Blahblah Game Engine", stored as a file inside data folder of "Blahblah Game Engine", run as an activity of "Blahblah Game Engine".

Is it possible with Unity 5, both technically and legally? If I were to start this "Blahblah Game Engine" project, should I choose Unity 5 personal or pro licence?

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You can do this using AssetBundles, although the games would essentially end up merged into one game, and you would host each inside.

So imagine building all of your games into one game project, with a special selection stage being the first thing loaded. Then, you'd break up the games into asset bundles. You would then trigger the asset bundle to download when the game was selected, and then you'd load the included Stage asset when it was finished.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea, though, because I don't think you can remove those bundles without removing the entire application.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thank you for your advice, but I still want something more indepent to Unity: When user launches this app, it will show an android activity without Unity first, maybe a webview, showing all games that my server currently hosting, after user selects one of them, this app then loads game from server, starts it and switches to this Unity activity. Is it possible at all, both technically and legally? \$\endgroup\$ – Rufus Mar 6 '15 at 13:35
  • \$\begingroup\$ In other words, you want an app that doesn't involve Unity to download Unity based games and start them? That would pretty much just be a webpage with the Unity player on it. So yes, you can build an application that downloads other applications and runs them. \$\endgroup\$ – jzx Mar 6 '15 at 18:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ Not just that, I want every game listed in my app to be downloaded to this app's storage, and to be run as part of this app. The games should not be installed as stand-alone android application, and not web player based. \$\endgroup\$ – Rufus Mar 10 '15 at 7:09
  • \$\begingroup\$ That's exactly what you could get with a stand-alone Unity based application and AssetBundles. Not sure why you don't want the host app to be Unity, too. \$\endgroup\$ – jzx Mar 10 '15 at 20:09
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    \$\begingroup\$ I'm going to second @jzx's idea here. A native unity interface as your front end would be more user friendly than a web view. 9/10 a native interface is much nicer. If I were to download an app that started off with a web view, I would probably uninstall it pretty quickly (that's just me though). You could easily design an expandable base menu with Unity 4.6's uGUI that wouldn't take more than 30 minutes to add a game to the list. Just my 2c. \$\endgroup\$ – Ryan S. Mar 13 '15 at 14:21
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Seems like you want a "Unity emulator" for android. I don't think that kind of thing even exists; but keep in mind that you can play every unity application in webplayer, so opening local file on an embedded web browser is an option if game is not "big".

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