Unity Collaborate Update v1.3.2

Does this means we will eventually be able to use the new UI/UX for diff compare with other backends like Plastic SCM, Perforce and Git?

 

So the new solution will be based on one or more existing version control systems. Will these systems itself be included in Unity Teams Advanced? Or will we have to buy a Perforce, SCM, git, ... (e.g.) subscription on top of Teams?

If you cannot give a clear answer right now, when will you be able to?

I guess a lot of people like me are sticking to Collaborate right now in the hope the system gets upgraded in the near future (branching etc). We've already been left in the dark for too long now. Please do shine some light on this matter, so we can at least move on in the meantime, instead of waiting another half year for yet another vague message.

 

@marie-unity honestly we need more info here.

Why an update to 1.2.7? Did anything change beside [COL-930] [Editor Compliance] Replace Collaborate UI Framework. ???

Does it still start scans at random?
Does it still start scan when its able to login right after failing to do so? (see attachment)
What happened to collaborate V2 ?

 

@marie-unity are there any change logs for v1.2.17 and 1.3.2 we can look at?

 

One major reason I have unity plus is for the extra storage for collaborate teams. Knowing If we need to buy a git subscription is important

 

That's where it is! I was trying to find it on your main website not the forum.

Thank you.

 

The tool tips are both for the 3rd button, which is an arrow pointing up (which is the "Upload" symbol used elsewhere in collaborate).

I understand this new gui was made in a hurry, but...

Is it designed to cause errors in conflict resolution?

For some reason the arrow pointing UP button is keep remote changes in 1.3.x, while it was keep local in 1.2.x (which is the one that makes sense).

It seems the functionality switched positions, while everything else (even the icon) stayed the same.

I'm hoping it isn't on purpose, but it being an oversight is almost as bad.

 

Are the Unity 2019 releases going to get some updates for the new Collab versions eventually too, or are we stuck on older versions till we update to 2020?

 

@marie-unity @ryanc-unity

This seems to infer collaborate will be deprecated in the near future? Should we begin moving projects to Helix? It would be nice to determine what we should do with projects that are a year to two years out in terms of version control. Furthermore, lately it seems UT wants to move any native integrations outside of the editor itself. What would this mean for the current built-in support for PlasticSCM and Perforce/Helix?

 

Same. It alarms me. Are you deprecating Collab? give us a BIG heads up or you'll burn a lot of bridges.

 

They are deprecating the Collaborate backend. The service will remain, but it will switch to a more standard backend at some point in the future. (and hopefully they will provide us with a way to transfer our file history, although I wouldn't bet on that)

At least that's how I understand it and how it was explained to me in the past.

The current backend has been already deprecated. Have you seen anything improve in years?

I don't know if it was a flawed design from the start, or if the team that designed it are no longer at Unity and no-one knows how it works any more, but ever since Collaborate left beta, nothing of consequence has changed for the better (other than Collab becoming a package... which... uhmmm...)

 

Well it's a bit hit and miss at times but I do depend on it.... so a heads up if it will stop is important to me. If the same service unity offers continues and only the backend changes then I'm cool.

 

BTW I don't believe I'm wrong, but at this point, official clarification would be appreciated @marie-unity @ryanc-unity

While you're at it, a roadmap would be nice as well.

 

There was a blog on this but i cant find it. I was under the impression it would only be the back end. This bring up the question of will we be asked to pay additional fees ?

 

Big surprise. Wasting so much of their, and especially our time with this Collab mess.

We have evaluated several options on how to best reach our stability, performance and scalability goals for the future of the product. In taking an honest assessment of our roadmap, it has become clear that leveraging proven backend solutions such as Plastic SCM, Perforce, and GitHub is more likely to succeed at reaching those goals within a reasonable time frame. The Collab backend as it exists today will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future while we are working on a new solution.You can reach out to us via these forums or at collabsupport@unity3d.com if you and your team need assistance in the meantime.Thank you for your patience and we are looking forward to sharing our plans with you in the near future.
​

aka, in taking an honest assessment, we're continuing, after several years, to screw over anyone who pays a teams subscription with joke-like support for a feature that had plenty of promise but zero effort and consistency by our lack of professionalism in any shape or form; mostly now because we are opening IPO and want to be able to toss several bullet-points of features inside our engine (but don't tell anyone, they're all in alpha-like state).

I know I'm sour, but this on top of all the countless days, weeks, months of our team working around obnoxious unity bugs, especially on 2019.3, and the service-industry-smile responses that are so falsely backed by Unity...it has honestly harmed us horribly financially from all the instabilities in Unity compared to our previous days of working in Flash. I thought flash was terrible before working with Unity.

Would love to just develop on what I expected and hoped would be a top-notch engine from the past where everyone talked about Unity being great. Not much of that anymore.

Reverting away from a rant, is this to tell us you're just going to keep promising that you're working on a new solution every 8-12 months with zero results and communication between and after?

How about some actual information?

 

If any of you are still having issues with Collab and especially if you are paying for it... just move on to Plastic SCM. I have been using it with my colleague for a few months and I realize now how much Collab had affected our workflow (and our motivation).

We were wasting half our time fixing synching related issues. Now I can actually rely on my version control software instead and cant stress enough how AWESOME it is to have a tool you can rely on.

Did I mention how its already integrated into the editor? It's not a unity asset, its fully BUILT IN (you have it already). Additionally we can do amazing things with branching and merging now.

Cheers!

F.

 

I'm interested in it.. how difficult is it to set up? I tried running a local P4 server and it was a rather terrible experience.

 

We're using their Cloud version not a local server. When you subscribe to their trial period they offer a 1-hour one on one training over remote desktop. He gave me a tour of the software and In bonus (I asked nicely ) he also helped us move the project to their service, so we could get started right away. FYI they don't go over 1 hours though so make sure you don't waste too much time on the software if you want help to set up... Although I'm sure you could beg - I mean negotiate.

As for using it, it's not very hard. Only had to go read about branching and merging has it can do all sorts of crazy merges like merging a branch in the past and propagating it all the way up to the present change set OR removing a change set in the middle of your timeline, etc. It helps you through the entire process but you need to understand what you're doing before undertaking this.

One last thing, it is in CONSTANT development. I mean, I updated the software only a few weeks ago and I'm already 9 versions behind. They really are taking care of business (Q the song).

Makes a difference when all your attention is pointed towards a single product.

 

The problem for us switching to PlasticSCM is that we have invested so much into the collab commit system's hooks in that we have it contact our lambda functions to generate and distribute both builds and changelogs in a very sophisticated way. To switch all that over would cost us a major, major setback.

It's obviously a setback having relied on Unity to be professional, but now we're stuck with this mess.

Not to mention, after all this time we finally have our main artist working directly in Unity for us, and having to retrain is yet another bit of workflow change that would likely be a setback within a live development environment.

PlasticSCM looks and sounds amazing; and we truly wish we went with that to begin with. This is why (one of the very many reasons) I'm extremely annoyed with Unity.

Even some of our player-base has knowledge of Unity being disgusting in their lack of professionalism. How bad is that? Good luck fixing this PR.

 

Oh boy... You guys are knee-deep into it. All I can say is it doesn't matter how great your integration is if you can't get work done and unless you have a large team you can be very productive without all of that if you're all on discord.

As for the changes it would bring to the work flow... not that much really. It can look and feel intimidating at first, especially the main Plastic SCM interface but once it's set up your artist never has to look at it again. You can submit and sync from the built-in version control window (which is just the list of changes you made). If you set him up to work on the main branch you guys can branch and merge all you want without him ever needing to know.

If you INSIST on keeping your integration and the cloud build, I'm sure there is a way to setup a pc to keep pushing to collab while using Plastic but if you do that you won't get to go into the package manager and uninstall collaborate. Which is the best part

 

Hello @tcz8, Im trying to move from collab too. Now Im trying to move to github but its a nightmare (tried to clone my local repository, created a github account and repository, associated the cloned local repository to github remote repository and finally tried to make a whole project commit just to face a 2GB commit limit error).
What is the process to move an existing 5GB project from collab to Plastic SCM?

 

Also, how Plastic SCM compare with Perforce? It seems that Perforce offers a free tier for indie developer (https://www.perforce.com/indie-studio-pack) with 5 users included while while Plastic SCM seems much more pricey. (https://www.plasticscm.com/plasticscm-cloud-edition/pricing) It cost 7$/user per month! More, 15Gb of cloud storage costs another 5$ per month! Total, for 5 users, is 42$ per month.

Edit: it seems that Perforce indie pack doesn't include cloud space, only Perforce Helix TeamHub does, but as far as I know Helix TeamHub doesn't support Unity.

 

For non-unity client source, we use AWS code-commit, which I find so, so much quicker and less limited than github. Just a personal thing though.

 

We also need Unity Cloud Build support, which further limits our choose, cause plastic SCM is not supported. Only perforce and git is supported.

 

@newlife sorry I didn't reply sooner, been lagging behind on my forum posts. I will try to answer your questions the best I can:

1-How Plastic SCM compare with Perforce?
I can look into it with more detail if you want as my colleague uses Perforce in a large environment daily but so far he's very satisfied with plastic and hasn't once complained about anything missing or being better with Perforce, he's even complimented it once or twice. When looking into it before making our choice I didn't find that Perforce had anything more to offer that justified the price for us and maybe not even to large companies.

2-It seems that Perforce offers a free tier for indie developer
I remember seeing this vaguely at the time, if I remember correctly we didn't go for it because the price ended up being more with perforce even with the extra 15gb. Don't forget to look at how the pricing scales when your repo starts growing and you add extra users. If you still find Perforce less expansive, let me know! Maybe I overlooked something

3-We also need Unity Cloud Build support, which further limits our choose, cause plastic SCM is not supported.
Honestly, I haven't looked into it as we don't use it. Nothing is stopping from pushing to collab to do a cloud build and it wouldn't be too complicated to setup a pc to automaticly pull form plastic, build and then push the result wherever you want (even in a plastic repo). This way you get the same thing for free. BUT I have years of experience in IT and Sysadmin + I code so YMMV.

Extra
As far as reliability and support goes I can give Plastic a 5 stars rating and I know a lot of well established game companies are using it. What I liked a lot was the free one on one training they offer to all their new customers, they even helped me do our initial setup and upload.

As for GitHub... A lot of people use it, some have issues some don't. The general feeling is perforce and plastic are superior but I think the biggest difference is the size of the support team that does all the maintenance of the backend for you. GitLab and Atlassian does it right, but they are not exactly cheap and plastic's feature set is just better.

 

Hello tcz8, thank you for your reply. I'm definitely going to use plastic cause the news is that now unity cloud build officially supports plastic!
Just for curiosity, why don't you need cloud build? Do you make your build locally?