Feedback Collaborate Is Killing Us

Hello,

We are a mobile game development studio. Our project is around 15 GB (I know it's too much but we are too busy/lazy to clean it up) and Collab has been a pain in the a** for a while. Here are the reasons;

• Opening a project is such a hassle because that checking for changes dialog is too annoying. I know it has to be done but it works quite slow.
• No branching, no branching at all.. That's quite a problem. We want to branch and develop different stuff at the sime time... But no, we can't do that.
• Collab is literally deleting our references in our project (or even code sometimes). Like I said earlier, we have a big project so it gets hard to keep of references after some time. When we build the project and start testing it, we see that stuff we fixed earlier blew away after the build. It gets so annoying, I can't even tell you right now.
• No proper way of rollback. Meaning; we can't go back and explore our project through browser or something... We have to rebase ENTIRE project and look for our previous project and this happens a lot thanks to Collab who's killing our references away.
• No on-premise version. This is not a huge problem actually. But it'd be good if there was such a thing. We all work in the same place, in an office room. But we transfer files through a random server from far away, back and forth. If there was an on-premise solution, we'd love that.

Anyway, there are probably countless more stuff like this, but because of i'm writing this out of frustration, I can't remember all of them. We currently use Unity 2019.1.4f1 and Collaborate 1.2.16. Thanks to this, I'm currently moving our entire project to Github (We won't use on-premise version right away) and see how things go.

Edit: Another huge problem is, sometimes one of our build PCs go out of collab's track. Like even if the PC's local files are 5-10 commits behind, Collabs thinks that, that PC never got commit and shows as if the buildpc didn't even get the initial commit (I'm not sure about this though as it doesn't show more than 200 commits). But, we cheat out by copying a snapshot file from another pc to that build PC and fetch again instead of to rebase entire project. But it's still annoying.

Edit2: I start to remember more and more problems. Our biggest nightmares are conflicts on commits. If we get a conflict then one of the changes has to go and this happens many times. We are so tired of re-doing what we did in the past. Smart merge doesn't help at all...

 

Hi @umityayla, I'm sorry that you and your team have had so many issues while using Collaborate. I'd like to try to address each of your points:

• I absolutely understand this annoying check, which our team removed in the Collab 2.0-preview package. This version has proven to be more useful at handling larger projects like yours. But this is only a stepping stone to the more robust version of Collaborate that we're still working on.
• I hear you and we have plans to add branching in the future. The new UX is being designed around supporting and being able to quickly switch between different branches.
• That is awful! I understand that it must be hard to pin down when those references get lost, but any info you can provide around this, from what types of references tend to get lost to how often this seems to happen, would really help us in debugging this issue.
  
• This is also something that the new UX will address. You'll be able to diff and rollback individual files from inside the Editor, to help mitigate the damage of if any unexpected changes
• Our team actually just released something that should help out with this: Unity Accelerator! It doesn't allow you to disconnect from Collab's servers, but it will save your team lots of bandwidth if you all work in the same office. You can learn more about it at https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/09/11/speed-up-your-team-with-the-unity-accelerator/
• Are you saying that your build PC is unable to pull the latest changes from Collab sometimes? Do you not see the latest commits in that machine's Collab History or does it think that it's up to date?
• What types of assets are you constantly dealing with conflicts on? Does your project's workflow have your teammates working on the same assets simultaneously often?

Please let us know if you recall any other issues during your experiences with Collaborate.

 

Thank you for you detailed answer, we really do appreciate it.

• Branching feature sounds really good, we can't wait.
• Any kind of inspector linked references gets lost time to time, we suspect meta file getting reset or deleted?
• Being able to rollback individual files sounds REALLY good, thanks for that!
• We will definitely try the Unity Accelerator once we update our Unity Version. It's kinda hard to update the Unity because our project is rather big so we are kinda afraid that somethings gonna get messed up in the meantime.
• Sometimes our build pc loses its Snapshot file and collab gets all messed up. Problem is obviously snapshot file getting reset.
• Biggest problem is changing small things in a scene and whole scene getting conflict. I understand that this may be a difficult thing to handle because of Unity's fundamental features but nevertheless we would like to address it.

Again, thank you for your time

 

The concept of what Unity Collaborate is supposed to be is amazing. It is something Unity really needs. Sadly to this day it is still not something I can rely on or recommend to any team I work with. I tried it again with a new project and I will now be going back to Git after only a few days of Collaborate causing me headaches every single day.

Using Collab v2

1. No branching as mentioned
2. Collab randomly loses connection to Unity Services for no clear reason
3. Changes not detected or changes detected when there are in fact no changes
4. No offline version. My "day job" is in a VFX studio with no connection to the internet. They'd love to use Collab but can't.
5. No easy management tools like gtik or even terminal abilities
6. No way to integrate with popular web platforms like I can with Github
7. Files randomly being marked as changed when they aren't

 

Now that I have a product on the market... lack of branching is a giant problem. It basically makes Collaborate unusable in a commercial setting.

Its a shame because being integrated into the Editor is great, but unless this feature is added and solidly support by the end of the year I'm going to be forced onto Git (etc.) for the next project, and with the investment into that, probably won't come back.

 

Hi @umityayla , I was in the same situation as you earlier this year. I'm currently using Plastic SCM and here is why I choose it.

Pros:

• Actual support: With collaborate, I only got empty promises (we're working on it), with plastic, I get them on the phone, they take control of my computer if needed and solve things the very same day. Bug fixes are fast and done.
• Branching.
• Big project compliant. This is why I choose plastic over Git. Git was unclear about storing my +100GB project and I had no idea if it was sustainable on it and at what price. Plastic answered that right away.

Cons:

• Not the easiest to set up and use. Collaborate has one big pro, you could be dumb like a rock and still use it (when it works). Plastic has a lot of nerdiness to it and I hope they can make it more accessible so beginners can be autonomous for simple tasks.
• Still rough on the edge: Plastic is still a work in progress and most issues I encountered are from missing minor features or rare bugs. But so was Unity few years ago and I'm confident that with a growing user base they'll have everything sorted out.

Overall, I recommend Plastic butt warn teams about leaving inexperienced users on their own.

 

I am an avid complainer about Collab. I want to point out that the reason for that is because it feels like Collab is only a few steps away from being an absolutely amazing solution for Unity. Devs can use git no problem but collab makes for a better streamlined solution for teams.

The problem is, as Marc above describes, "Empty Promises". Before switching projects to Unity in the past I always assumed Unity was top-grade, with top-grade developers behind it.

I'm finding that everything is holding on by a thread and those 'Empty Promises' are far beyond just Collab service.

It seems like whoever is supervising the lead development lost their steam a while ago.

What they don't realize is how many people this affects and how important these kinds of things are. We aren't asking for McDonalds to bring back the hotdog, we're just asking for our food to consistently be served at least warm, but it keeps getting served cold, and with random new menu items added that cause detriment to the rest of their menu.