Unity Choosing between Collaborate’s 1.2.16 and 2.0-Preview-15 Packages

For large projects, what about some hybrid config that we could provide specific folders to be constantly checking for changes and others to be triggered manually?

Also,
I would add a rescan option on selected folders like you already have the See Diff and Revert opts

 

How come Git LFS manages to track changes just fine, but Colloborate 2.0 can't? Are there still large differences between Git LFS and Unity's Collab 2.0 backend?

Anyway 2.0 does look great, that little video of the new UI looks so much smoother Collab 1.0 ever was (die JavaScript die).

 

If I may ask, what is the performance of the two package options with respect to the 'long hang after updating' problem? For us, this is more frustrating than the 'checking for changes' issue. (Don't get me wrong, 'checking for changes' is pretty annoying, but *theoretically* it should only happen when I start the Unity editor in the morning. (The fact that Unity sometimes crashes and you have to restart, or the connection to Unity accounts is lost, makes it a lot worse. But that's enough parentheses))

The Long Hang (yes, capitals) happens after *every* update, and you cannot submit *anything* if you are not up to date, no matter how unrelated my changes are to the incoming updates. Does 2.0 help with this?

And then there is the 'Theirs Hang'. This does not seem to be quite as bad as the Long Hang, but still disturbing. The Theirs Hang happens if you select 'Choose theirs' to resolve a file conflict. I guess only noobs still use the 'Choose theirs' button, all the cool kids just click 'Choose mine' and then revert, both of which are nearly instant. How is 2.0 coping with this one?

 

Can we safely switch back and forth between the 1.2.16 and 2.0-P15 versions? At least once, to check which one actually works better for us in practice.

 

It doesn’t.

 

Dang it! But thank you for the reply

 

We tried 2.0 preview-8 and it actually did resolve this issue so I don't see why it wouldn't be the case with the newest version. However, you could never know what your current changes were and could even make empty commits because the editor just wouldn't update the state and different team members kept getting thousands of random changes in the project so we just rolled back to 1.2.16, the preview just seemed too unstable. We get 20 minute hangs with each update and if it's anything like that for you, it's probably worth a shot, maybe preview-15 won't be as messy.

Pro tip: When you open the project in the morning and are done checking changes, open the collab history and Restore to the latest update. You can update without the hangs until collab decides to disconnect or you have to restart Unity. Another thing to note is that the hangs never occur on OSX in our experience.

 

It does, it just lasts only a few seconds (which go away if you also do a restore).

 

I don't follow. Maybe Collaborate 1.2.16 doesn't have this option. My history looks like this:



Also, 'restoring' or 'going back to' are not very fast either, and of course you lose all local changes

 

You'd select Restore in the commit 5362 in this case and naturally lose your current changes as you said. We've already gotten used to this ridiculous workflow and always commit everything at the end of the day so that we can restore as the first thing after opening Unity. It's not fast, but the updates will be (as long as you don't disconnect or restart Unity).

 

Ah, and that will 'Restore' to the most recent version 5364 instead of 5362? Gotcha.

 

No, it will still restore to 5362 as expected. What I'm saying is if you do this kind of restore once, the regular update will no longer take forever and you can use it normally during that session (you won't experience "The Long Hang").

 

Ah!

That's pretty great. And that is why it is a pro tip!

 

Is there any chance you could show where the "rescan" button is supposed to be? I can't find it anywhere, my collab UI looks the exact same with 2.0-Preview-15 as it did with the non-preview version.

 

Is there anything I can do to recover from this?

Restarting Unity doesn't make it go away, restarting the computer doesn't make it go away.

I also occasionally get this error

Edit: Forgot my favourite

 

Thanks Ryan, somehow my version of Collaborate had reverted back to the previous package but still said 2.0 until I restarted. Upgraded again and I can see this button.

 

Hi,
Because I start to have a stack of very bad experiences with packages being only out of preview in future versions of unity and not backported, I would like to know: is Collaborate 2.0 (non preview - verified, all that) confirmed to release in 2019.1 ?
I'm very interested into its new aspects and the work you delve into it.
But can I expect a real support of the package on that version of Unity ?
I have zero interest into going to 2019.2 or 2019.3 to update a package.
Thanks

 

Ever since we updated our project to use Collab 2.0 Preview 15, there's been two collabignore files. One is

Code (CSharp):

1. .collabignore

and the other one is

Code (CSharp):

1. collabignore.txt

. I've tried looking at multiple places but I can't find anything about what this new .txt file's purpose is. Is it safe to delete it?

 

@ryanc-unity with Collab 2.0 is there a way to have a certain folder commit normaly but NEVER have it restored/overwritten when rolling back a commit? In other words I need to make sure that folder and its content gets backed up but it must never be modified to a previous state.

 

Thank you, unfortunatly that's not what I was hoping for.

We developped our own project & team management software that runs inside unity.
Its turning out really good, CRM features comming in later with mail connectivity etc...

I was hoping to find a way to sync a local DB using Collaborate instead of using an external DB server. Would have made an awesome product for the store. Unfortunatly I dont think this will be happening.

A Collab API to push and restore specific files would be really usefull right about now (of course we would need a way to set those files to manual push & restore only).

 

I'll second this but go further: A Collab API to push and restore arbitrary serialized data, rather than just files, and to have this API optionally (but not as the default) able to use a different Unity Teams project ID than the project currently open in the editor. The request by @tcz8 would be a specific case of my more general proposal.

The reason for allowing a separate project ID to be specified within the API is that now we have a framework for building custom tools (either for intra-team use or to sell on the Asset Store) for organization-level management of asset and settings reuse across projects.

Here are some use-case examples:

• A team in the AEC space creates a tailored VR character controller rig for visualization walkthroughs, something that is more approachable to non-gamers and includes a built-in HUD for settings that is tailored just to the visuals and audio without game-oriented settings (and therefore would work on any archviz project). As they begin a new customer-facing archviz project, they import the character controller as a Unity package, and it fetches the latest version of default settings for specific supported VR hardware, automatically keeping that data up to date across all of the company's projects.
• A team making large open-world RPG creates a complex system (along the lines of Ativism) for managing game-related data tables such as character attributes, perks, equipment stats, quests, dialog, etc. This data is managed using the Collab API as a separate but connected project. They can now use the Unity editor to create a streamlined editing tool for writers and gameplay designers to work on the data independently of -- or ahead of -- the development of the game world.
• In a simulation or training environment, several different Unity projects are developed to simulate different types of construction vehicle or medical facility or factory process. Behind these projects is a common data resource that contains factual data about the simulation domain, such as pharmacological and physiological model parameters for the medical simulation (things that relate to the human body and are independent of whether you are simulating a surgical suite or a pre-hospital EMS trauma response).
• An organization uses Unity to develop in-editor tools for their resource and schedule management across all of the organization's Unity-related projects.