Authentication Overview

In almost every game, a player needs an identity. They assume this identity and can access resources they have access to.

This is done by authentication.

For this tutorial, we're going to have a very simple authentication process. For other purposes, this might not be ideal and proper auth services should be utilized like Auth0, Firebase or a custom backend.

Interfacing Unity with these services is a tutorial in itself so for this, we're going to use a GraphQL service I created and hosted on Glitch

You'll clone this service and add in your own project secrets!

The service has one Query, GetJWT(id: Int!, username: String, password: String) which takes in a users id, username and password, cross checks it with our Hasura backend and returns a signed jwt

We shall then use this token in all our subsequent requests to our Hasura backend. Without a valid token, our Hasura backend will not return any data.

The whole authentication process goes thus:

For a new user

• User starts the game and Unity queries GetJWT with a mock user's id, username and password.
• The token returned is set as the Authentication header for all our further requests,
• Before being allowed to play online, User is asked to create a profile.
• User provides their preferred username.
• A random password is generated and the username and password are used to create a new entry in our users table in our Hasura backend.
• The id of the newly created user is returned and the id, username, and password are sent to GetJWT to get a new token for this new user.
• The id, username and password are also stored in PlayerPrefs.
• The new token is set as our new Authentication header for subsequent requests.

For a returning user

• We check PlayerPrefs for the id, username and password of the user.
• We send these to GetJWT and get a jwt returned. = The token is set as our Authenttication header for subsequent requests.

Of course, this method of authentication has some problems but it is ideal for this tutorial.

You can learn a bit more about Authentication with Hasura