Awful Editor Game Start Time

Is it me, or after moving from 2019 to 2020, start time for playing has increased dramatically?

I know there is experimental play mode which I can disable domain reload and all that, but honestly, these options are rarely used, because most of the time you have changed either scene or script itself, or both. And having this option in the project setting is worst, because you have to have this window open to change the option so often.

And I am sure, updating project from using 2017 to 2019 then 2020, it keeps getting slower to start playing. And I am not saying that the scene is a lot heavier to load than before. The reloading of "whatever" seems to take really longer than before. And everyone I am working with says the same thing.

Is this something that will be improved over alpha, beta stages? or will it just get slower and slower?

Or is it just me that feels this way? (am I crazy? going mad? )

 

You still use same packages on 2020? DOTS and burst, HDRP etc do add a bit to the play in editor start times.

 

I do use dots and burst. But I used to use that on 2017 and 2019. But on 2020 it is noticeably slower.

 

I once found game start time in editor go from like 5s up to 20s+ over the course of several days and hundreds of starts, editor restarts, system restarts etc it just kept getting worse. Nothing significant enough had changed to warrant such a difference. In my case (at least), there seems to be a connection between this problem and the Library folder. After deleting this folder and restarting Unity Editor (which will take a while the first time after due to reimporting everything etc.) it dropped from like 20s down to 3-4s. Make sure to close Unity Editor first. Also make a full backup of the project in question before doing this just in case - the only things I've noticed as "issues" after this are that the build target platform isn't always what it was before (just need to click "switch platform" back to previous one in build settings), and the previous Scene that was open doesn't open automatically again from the project link in Unity Hub (just need to click File->Open Scene then the next time it does). The first thing I do now when things get sluggish is delete this folder - works every time.

 

Interesting.. and I wonder why deleting Library folder to retrigger import helps.. is this really true?

 

Mine seems to mention sprite atlas packing when I hit run when the loading dialogue comes up, does it several times a day too. Backported to 2020.1 beta and it doesn't happen there.

 

Wild guess.. is Project Settings->Editor->Sprite Packer->Mode set to Always ?

 

That's probably a setting which is on by default in 2020.2 alpha but in 2020.1 beta it's actually not there! Makes sense why 2020.1 beta works fine and 2020.2 always does it at the start of play mode.

 

My guess and guts tells me that it is this asset databse version 2 that is causing some significant reloading time... this is by looking at the start play dialogue popoup displaying what it is doing.. also that is one thing that is different than from say Unity 2017..

 

Yeah, I can understand why you would like to get a repro report... But you normally ( and it was for me ) to notice and really feel like so after using it sometime after upgrading, and going back version to make it work again just takes too much time off my development plan. I just wish I had some backup, but then it isn't going to be a fair comparison again.

I just feel like the game should not take like 13-14 seconds to enter playmode... I had way more complicated game running with 5.x 2017.x version of Unity and they don't take as long as the one I am developing right now. And I am running it with much much more faster computer than before.. 2017 era.

 

It's not you. Time to enter playmode from a script change has increased quite a bit since 2019.3.

This is probably the best thread covering the issue: https://forum.unity.com/threads/cas...ty-project-takes-significantly-longer.691996/

Some people including myself got the old enter playmode from script change times back by switching back to asset database v1 (this was on an older version of the editor from around the times mentioned in that thread not the latest beta/alpha).

I then had to go back to v2 anyway because the latest DOTs requires it.

It sounds like Unity aren't going to do anything about it unfortunately. I skimmed the thread again to revive my memory. Someone opened an issue but it got closed because QA couldn't reproduce enough of a slowdown or something.

 

Yeah, like I said too, I highly suspect it has a lot to do with assetdatabase v2.... I bet my 2cents on it.

 

Thought I was the only one that noticed this. I'm on 2020.1.0b15. When I deleted the library folder everything was actually pretty fast and slick. However after about an hour or two of work the project was taking 10+ seconds to enter playmode, and had like 3 - 5 minute build times, where before it was only a minute build time. Pretty much everything was slower and sluggish. I have a decently big project size but nothing crazy so this is annoying and actually a threat to productivity.

 

Ok, so after upgrading to 2020.2a18 and then upgrading to the latest addressable has improved game start time! After reading the update note on Addressable, there was mention about fixing stuff that affecting the start time indeed!. So in my case it was partially due to bug (or issue) in Addressable. I still feel it can be improved... the release note on a18 version indicates that there is known issue for AssetBundle Loading is slower, and Addressable is based on AssetBundle so hoping to see even more "improvements"

 

Agree to the bundle loading times being an issue. I switched from resource folder to addressables and loading became significantly slower.

 

I've noticed this but when moving from 2018 to 2019.4. Ridiculously long start times, like 2-3 minutes

 

I have project which started from 2017, migrated all the way to 2020.2 (2017, 2018, 2019 2020.1, 2020.2) in relatively short period of time. During this transition, there was not that much added in terms of assets and scripts but had many third party assets already and took long time to make sure they work on each versions so going back to 2017 to test it again is impossible now. My starting time gradually seems to have increased from anything from 2-3 sec to now almost 15 seconds.

My current guess is that it has to do with upgrading package assets as per migration requirements and also asset database v2.

Only "improvements" I got was from updating to the latest Addressable which fixed some delay in starting time, (like 2 seconds) but it also has mention that AssetBundle right now has some issue as well.

So my suspicion is :

1. Texture Atlas V2
2. Addressable
3. AssetBundle
4. Package assets (all from Unity ones)
5. Asset Database V2
6. New Editor UI "improvements" ( the slim font and all that came out a while ago )
7. Maybe .Net version? from 2.0 Subset to 3.5 to 4.0 to Core 2.0 ...
8. The new debug editor mode. ( So Visual Studio can attach to Editor )

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/introducing-the-editor-iteration-profiler.908390/

Maybe this can prove your suspicions!

 

Hi Martin,

I just tried this. I added a space in a C# script, saved it and switched back to the editor with the standalone profiler running and targeting the editor. The first time I saw 99% in Editor loop... with no more drop down details available beyond that. Do you know why there would be no more details of the callstack showing in the profiler than this?

Tried it a second time and got 'long running job' errors spammed in the standalone profiler log window. The profiler didn't record anything after that.

Tried it a third time and got 'Sending message header failed' warnings spammed in the Unity editor log window. The profiler didn't record anything after that.

I might try the editor integration profiler next when I have more time, as I am bit curious, however, in either case it sounds like bug reports have been raised before for the ~40%+ speed regression script edit and enter playmode time and closed as by design.

Unity QA (quote from post linked above)

 

Ok just tried once more with the standard profiler rather than standalone. Here are the results showing AssetDatabase V2 script compilation taking the bulk of the time. I'm still wondering why the added 40% compilation time using the new asset database system?

A little while back I reverted back to V1 and got my faster script compilation times back - although I didn't profile that but the total time to enter playmode from a script edit was about 6 seconds, which is less than the script compilation alone with V2.

 

Thanks, maybe I didn't set it correctly the first time before the errors. As for the errors I'm on an old 2020.1 beta so you're probably correct that its already fixed if you've seen this issue before. I'll raise a ticket if I see it after upgrading but for now the built-in profiler seems to have shown what takes the bulk of the time anyway.

 

I am not sure and I could be wrong, but I think I saw somewhere that alpha release was supposed to be once a week. I am not trying to be picky, but was not that the plan?

-- Edit --

Here...

"
Continuous Updates
New incremental alpha iterati ons and features will be published once a week until all major content scheduled for this version is included and the transition to beta is made."

 

Since they're readying the beta, seems like the consider the above as done.

 

Fair enough. But the updates was not exactly per week in the past neither. I am not going to drill this further since it is in the past now. Hopefully, the future alpha / beta updates are released as scheduled.