Adding features, eg online multiplayer android/ios

Hi,
So this is my first post and I’m generally a bit of a noob not least about Unity which I’m yet to use at all. But…

I have a game out for Android which I wrote in Andengine using eclipse. I want to use Unity for the sequel, but I’m being a bit put off by the fact that Unity seems a bit of a closed/black box package that will be very good at doing what it does, but, because you seem to get an apk at the end, you can’t do anything else with it. I could easily be wrong. I am a noob after all.

For example. I’ve just added an online multiplayer feature to my game. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious way to do this, in unity. Would I be able to take the java code from my existing game and run it along side whatever unity gives me.

Also I have sdks and .jars from various advertising networks and other partners. Can I somehow use these alongside Unity, or does it have to be specifically supported by Untiy?

There is some really good information here about the default, built-in networking in Unity:

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Components/class-NetworkView.html.

There is also a reference guide here:

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Components/NetworkReferenceGuide.html

You can also use something like SmartFoxServer: SmartFoxServer: massive multiplayer game server for Flash, Unity, HTML5, iOS and Android games, MMO, virtual worlds and communities (I highly recommend this, since you are a Java developer) if you want a lot more ability to refine the server-side workings, whereas in Unity, you’re pretty much stuck with all of the default stuff in the “MasterServer”, since their communication protocol between Unity, and RakNet is not publicly exposed.

So there’s that for the networking side, but I still didn’t get what you meant by “non-standard Unity features”, however, I can tell you this much: Choosing Unity for your sequel will be a great treat – the workflow in Unity is so much better / faster than working with Android.