Question API 31

Hi, I have an Android App made with Editor "Unity 2017.3.1f1" Api29

The question is: Is it possible to upgrade the Api to 31 and keep the Unity 2017.3.1f1 ?

Thanks,

 

No not really, and here are some reasons:

- hard reason: you'll need IL2CPP for Android to ship to GooglePlay as 64bit. Not sure if this existed in Unity2017

- hard reason: there's an Android 12 sound bug that was not fixed until Unity2020.3.40f1

- soft reason: there was some change to how Python2 is integrated and now Android builds fail. There may be a way to work around this.

Don't upgrade beyond what you need and DO NOT UPGRADE until you have fully backed up and source-controlled your project.

I am using Unity2020.3.41f1 for my Android release.

PROPERLY CONFIGURING AND USING ENTERPRISE SOURCE CONTROL

I'm sorry you've had this issue. Please consider using proper industrial-grade enterprise-qualified source control in order to guard and protect your hard-earned work.

Personally I use git (completely outside of Unity) because it is free and there are tons of tutorials out there to help you set it up as well as free places to host your repo (BitBucket, Github, Gitlab, etc.).

You can also push git repositories to other drives: thumb drives, USB drives, network drives, etc., effectively putting a complete copy of the repository there.

As far as configuring Unity to play nice with git, keep this in mind:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/prefab-links-keep-getting-dumped-on-git-pull.646600/#post-7142306

I usually make a separate repository for each game, but I have some repositories with a bunch of smaller test games.

Here is how I use git in one of my games, Jetpack Kurt:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/2-steps-backwards.965048/#post-6282497

Using fine-grained source control as you work to refine your engineering:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/whe...grammer-example-in-text.1048739/#post-6783740

Share/Sharing source code between projects:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/your-techniques-to-share-code-between-projects.575959/#post-3835837

Setting up an appropriate .gitignore file for Unity3D:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/removing-il2cpp_cache-from-project.1084607/#post-6997067

Generally the ONLY folders you should ever source control are:

Assets/
ProjectSettings/
Packages/

NEVER source control Library/ or Temp/ or Logs/
NEVER source control anything from Visual Studio (.vs, .csproj, none of that noise)

Setting git up with Unity (includes above .gitignore concepts):

https://thoughtbot.com/blog/how-to-git-with-unity

It is only simple economics that you must expend as much effort into backing it up as you feel the work is worth in the first place. Digital storage is so unbelievably cheap today that you can buy gigabytes of flash drive storage for about the price of a cup of coffee. It's simply ridiculous not to back up.

If you plan on joining the software industry, you will be required and expected to know how to use source control.

"Use source control or you will be really sad sooner or later." - StarManta on the Unity3D forum boards


ISSUES RELATED TO UPGRADING PROJECTS (eg, changing to a higher Unity version)

Upgrading to a later version of Unity is a one-way process. Any project that has been updated should NEVER be reverted to an earlier version of Unity because this is expressly not supported by Unity. Doing so exposes your project to internal inconsistencies and breakage that may actually be impossible to repair.

If you want to upgrade to a newer version of Unity, do not even consider it until you have placed your project fully under proper source control. This goes double or triple for non-LTS (Tech Stream) versions of Unity3D, which can be extremely unstable compared with LTS.

Once you have source-controlled your project then you may attempt a Unity upgrade. Immediately after any attempted upgrade you should try to view as much of your project as possible, with a mind to looking for broken animations or materials or any other scripting errors or runtime issues.

After an upgrade you should ALWAYS build to all targets you contemplate supporting: iOS and Android can be particularly finicky, and of course any third party libraries you use must also "play nice" with the new version of Unity. Since you didn't write the third party library, it is up to you to vet it against the new version to make sure it still works.

If there are issues in your testing after upgrading Unity, ABANDON the upgrade, revert your project in source control and be back where you were pre-upgrade with the earlier version of Unity.

Obviously the less you test after the upgrade the more chance you will have of an undiscovered critical issue.

This risk of upgrading is entirely on you and must be considered whenever you contemplate a Unity version upgrade.

Do not upgrade "just for fun" or you may become very unhappy.

--------------------

How to troubleshoot build failures:

First, make a blank project with a single blank scene and prove that it builds successfully.

If the blank project does NOT build, go fix your Unity installation or your other tools, such as Android SDK, NDK, JDK, etc. It may even be necessary to change to a different version of Unity3D. It is generally best to stay with LTS versions of Unity3D.

Until you can build a blank project to the target platform, don't fiddle with anything else.

Once you can build a blank project, now bisect the problem by bringing over parts of your current project and building it one subsystem at a time, perhaps stubbing things out that might trigger compiler errors.

Most often things that prevent building are third-party libraries such as Firebase.

Once you identify the subsystem, go to the documentation for it and make sure you are doing it correctly.

It may also be helpful to work through a tutorial or two for whatever subsystem is making the build fail.

Android build not building:

Recently (circa July 2022) there have been reports of Unity's installer failing to install the Android Tools.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/cant-build-for-android.1306098/

Here was how I brought up Unity2020.3.41 and the Android SDK 31 on October 30, 2022:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/aab...y-2021-3-8-with-jdk-1-8.1322211/#post-8551193

Android Gradle errors and other related stuff:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-gradle-bug-please-help.1368018/#post-8625789

 

Wow Kurt thanks for such a complete answer.... I really don't want to upgrade it for fun... In fack, the reason is because I need to upload a new version of the game fixing some bugs and when I try to do it, Google says that my API is 29 and the minimum is 31 for new uploads... so... :-( I made it a long time ago and I have forgotten too many things about programming, SDK and so on.... I guess my game will die

 

If you care about the game, spend a time-boxed day and see if you can fix it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing

Almost every issue you hit will just be a google search away from fixing.