2018.3 with Particles, without New Prefabs?

I'm reliant on the old way prefabs work.

But want/need/desire/lust for the new features in Particles.

Is there any chance 2018.3 will be branched in a way that makes New Prefabs optional?

 

I can't link to it right now, but I'm pretty sure they said the new workflow is so different, that there is no possibility of the old one and the new one to coexist.

 

I'm curious as to why you are reliant on the old system. Can you share more details?

 

They've said this on multiple occasions, it's not possible to put it as optional. Even if they now just blocked the nesting on code for people who didn't want it (I can't think ANY good reason why you wouldn't want it if it works), but this would bring a lot more issues, for example it would bloat the codebase they need to maintain and for silly reason that would never fly (resist change).

I'm also curious what exactly is your issue with the new system being there? You can still use it the old way and not nest things. If it's the bugs you are afraid of, afaik most of the current bugs on the system appear mainly when actual nesting happens.

Also, Unity will not branch their final releases, that's a huge no no. A lot of people now keep posting "please give me 2018.2 with this single new feat", this is not how Unity operates. If you are afraid of betas, you can just wait for the real release (or attend beta and report issues you specifically have with it and actually get final release that works also for you).

TL;DR: if you have issues with any new feats, report them to Unity, that's only way the issues can be taken into account (and get hopefully fixed) in upcoming releases. Unity's QA doesn't spot everything.

 

The problem with new prefabs are many.

Mine: that I can't mass edit from Project.

 

you can make a base, then a bunch of variants. editing the base will automatically update all the variants.

or you can try to make an editor window that mass-edits whatever prefab you want.

 

First idea good.

Second idea... I'm using Unity to do less work, not more

 

Doesn't "Revert All"/"Apply All" work like the old system? Or am I missing something?

Looks like you get more granular control as well

 

The main issue... there were really cool, simple ways, to edit from Project... gone.

That's the main issue for me. But there are many other niggles and deprecations of simple stuff and elegance gone.

 

btw, thanks for this. I'm going to give it all another try... nesting, variants, and whatever the other type is that I've forgotten the name of...

Simply because I must get at those new particle features. They're SEXY!

 

To the ones saying why would you avoid new prefab system if it just works...

Well, is not the fact it does not work now, its understanable as for a beta, but it has simply it boomed the workflow of many people on its final form.

Removing mass prefab editing is a HUGE pain. in return for features that TBH don´t add much. And if you badly needed nested prefabs you could simply grab a 5 star asset from the store and a very reasonable price.

I'm possitive to new/extended features as long as they're not so agresive with perfectly working productive workflows, that in return, at the end of the day, bring not too much into the game.

And as I said we can judge in depth because new prefabs have just boomed my (obviusly backuped) projects to a point can´t simply test the beta.

MAY BE.
When current issues are sorted, and we can port our projects to the beta and test it, the new workflows issues may be minimized by improvements such as the physx (that I tested in teh experimental editor and yes they make a HUGE improvement).
Me and many other issues are reporting stuff for this to happen and trying to provide materials for reproduction of the many issues.

As a note for the devs, please make an effort to bring back mass prefab editing.

 

@TooManySugar, if new prefabs removed some functionality that makes things worse, file an issue report (if there is not one already), then report the issue number to the prefab forums and tell there's a regression.

Sooner these gets handled, the better for all. Just telling you want the old thing will not make any difference (you can then just keep using the old thing).

 

These things were all discussed within these forums during the beta phase of prefabs in 2018.2

The responses of Unity employees are there for everyone to see. The summary, for those bothered by Improved Prefabs limitations, obligations and regressions, there's no immediate light available.

Hence the nature of this post. A very simple question:

Can Improved Prefabs™ be part of Package Manager and, therefore, optional?

@Gametyme, @LurkingNinjaDev and @Ostwind

There are many other reasons, other than mine, why Improved Prefabs™ aren't fun, aren't compatible, aren't better than the existing Prefabs 1.0™. If those aren't applicable to you, good for you. I hope you don't ever get tripped up by Improved Prefabs™

 

The assets don't give half the amount of productivity the new integrated workflow gives you.

I wouldn't even know why you would need to mass prefab editing in project view. The view was only one level deep.

 

It's precisely because you don't know that your other comments about how the new workflow is is so great are misleading. It's great for you... great. Please understand that others work in other ways on other things, in other ways.

 

I know that other people work in other ways, but your vague information implies that you would scrub nested prefab and prefab variants just for a multi edit feature, which was limited in itself. You could only edit one level and for everything else you had to drag it in a scene, where you again could only edit one prefab at the time, just like now.

 

It was ONE of the reasons I don't like it, and that it doesn't work for me. Weird as that may seem to you, there's lots of other reasons.

1. NO SORTING!!!

And there's signs this is NOT going to be fixed for YEARS!!!

I'm constantly shuffling the children of prefabs. Let's hope you can understand this particularly vexing issue and its ramifications to a creative, design oriented workflow.

2. HUGE issues with UGUI, not least of which is the above, but also, generally speaking, incompatible with the way folks want to work to separate out functionality and zones within their UI systems.

3. Infant level code, with lots of weird bugs and limitations, and uncertain API and usage, etc

Personally, I thought it weird that anyone would question why I'd not want it, as though new prefabs are in some need of defending.

Fixing whatever problems you perceive me to have doesn't fix the general issues of regression and weirdness and oddities and peculiarities that aren't wanted by MANY others.

Hence the question... in isolation, in a thread title, can the new prefabs be split off?

Others have revealed for all sorts of reasons, they'd like to gain access to the benefits of 2018.3 without nested prefabs, too. eg, some want access to the new physics, which is a HUGE step up in physics performance and functionality, but comes bundled with Improved Prefabs™.

These complaints and issues were all registered months ago. That Unity's not listening to them, or not interested in solving them, or otherwise unable to solve them easily (see sorting in point 1 above) means the easiest resort is to break out new prefabs and make them optional.

That's probably not possibly all that easy. Hence the question... can it be done? Any chance it will be done?

 

Detailed information about some of the issues were given in no uncertain terms in prior posts in prior threads for the 2018.2 beta.

So there's no indication that providing information of any sort ever leads to a positive outcome.

The opposite, however, is demonstrably true. That there's no point spending time on articulating points repeatedly... I mean... how long were people making the case for nested prefabs?

See how recursively that works?

The base point is simple.

There are a bunch of welcome additions and huge features in 2018.3

Improved Prefabs is the most contentious and the most life changing of them all, and in its infancy.

It would, for a lot of reasons, be wise and wonderful if they'd break it out and make it an optional package.

Who knows if this is possible, and likely?

Is that you?

Why are you so busily making the case for NOT considering this option, at all, like an ambassador or advocate for Improved Prefabs?

 

I am an "ambassador for improved prefabs"™ because I see some posts with deep hatred and no reasons why that is. In this thread alone it seems that you hate them because you want to, nothing more (at the moment of the last post I made, now you have explained some things and it is easier to understand you).
I just want to understand why you would hate the new workflow (which isn't THAT different to the old one), either to help you cope with it; help you find the button you have to click or alternatively join you in rallying against bad things.

I told you in literally the first answer in this thread that unity said that the new workflow is so fundamentally different, that splitting up is not an option, so there is no need to ask it repeatedly, but louder.

It doesn't sound weird to me that you have other problems with prefabs, but none which I have seen here in this thread. There is the subboard for improved prefabs and most of the stuff that comes up there was answered with "we'll fix that", other than the multi editing which won't be changed for now.

Sorting works right now, but you can't change sorting in variants or children. So the worst thing in this is "it works like before", because you can still have a prefab with a specific sort order.

UI (order was mentioned before): they wanted to implement different prefab preview scenes to make ui easier, but not in the first release; a buggy behaviour with recttransform-overrides was mentioned and unity wanted to look into that. There are several fixed bugs which should be available in beta 3 (was mentioned somewhere else in this board before).

3: I have over 10000 prefabs in my project, some of them in a 5-level-deep nested hierarchy with variants and everything just works. I don't want to imply that it is bugfree, but there is a reason for beta testing (I had betas where I had to
reimport my library over and over just to start unity, which always takes about 2 days so I usually don't say betas are bug-free..). The prefab-only build before was apparantly good enough to try it with a broader beta public so when you call it "infant level" and "weird bugs and limitations" it looks like your hate is more emotion driven instead of fact based.

 

10,000 prefabs is pretty shocking. I would expect that to grow quite a bit bigger with the new system given you can't do certain things without embracing the new system. Why do you have 10,000? that seems like a job for actually avoiding prefabs.

Prefabs are for human-made constructs, and for 10,000 prefabs, I'm not sure that makes sense. Could you elaborate what they are so I might understand better how any (let alone improved) prefabs even fit a job of that size.

I would be looking at scriptable objects and a factory pattern long before our prefabs went to 3 digits.

 

It grew with the new system, because with the old system I couldn't even use it like that.
Lets say buildings for example:
BuildingBase
- CommercialBuilding
-- MidRise001_Base (001 - 250 are the different buildings I have)
--- MidRise001_01 (_01 - _30, one for each position in the scene with color variations and interior)
If I now want to change something, I can do it in the base prefab. If I had 30 instances in scenes with different materials, I'd have to start over every time I want to add something.

Example for that: the base prefab has glass panes. Nothing special, just a model with glass. If I want to implement shattering glass later, I just change the "Glass Pane" prefab and all buildings have new glass Features in about 2 minutes. With the old system, I'd have to open all 30 prefabs, mark all x-thousand glass panes, delete them, add the new prefab, change scale and position accordingly (maybe with an editor script) and save everything, which takes an hour and a new editor script. It gets worse if you have buildings with interiors with shelves with stuff on it...)

 

Wow, that's a workflow that would be pretty harsh even on the best DCC packages designed for it (CAD etc)...
You guys must be enterprise level.

 

I'm alone. That's why I don't want to waste time with wrong nesting. The modelling software doesn't need to do the heavy stuff, unity does. That's what it is made for, right?

 

I see, well seems like you have it all in hand. I'd have probably gone with a building generator I guess, so that I would only need to store some numbers per building and get all the variations like that. Would fix the import times too. But I don't know your workflow and if new prefabs have helped you, then that must be a success.

 

I didn't have enough control with seed-based systems (or buildings with more properties or scriptable objects), so I chose the other workflow but that's not really on topic right now.

 

Whoever moved this, my point wasn't about the new Prefabs, it's about the old Prefabs and the other new features of the 2018.3 beta...

The new particle features are a huge positive. And getting undersold, I think.

They're sexy!!!