Unity Feedback on Open Projects?

Yes, they are really informative. We learn a lot of things from videos and the project itself. This project itself is a great initiative for both the community and Unity. I have learned from this project and implemented the nearly same pattern of event system and scene loading system in my own project (sorry about that).

But I am having a problem with the editor Initialisation loader, which some times returns from the start method without setting the is Editor initialisation mode to true and therefore not raising the inSceneLoaded event and therefore not spawning the player(which is being discussed here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/scene-loading-system.980178/


One personal request, please take a look at this thread: (it had been a month)
https://forum.unity.com/threads/edi...uctively-find-scriptable-objects-sos.1030345/
Thanks.

 

I was really excited about this idea, but I was late to the party and thought maybe I missed my chance (having heard the 6 month timeline). Now I'm trying to get up to speed and finding it easier than I expected. Even if I don't end up participating, I've already learned a lot just from checking the updates. And the livestreams have been really enjoyable to watch, Ciro, Chema, and Amel have a great rapport, making the whole project feel fun and welcoming.

I didn't expect as much video content as there already is, but if you were considering adding to it I would suggest maybe a monthly high-level update. Less detailed than the livestreams, less focused on one feature than the devlogs. Essentially a way to catch up without reading dozens of forum threads, especially to make it easier for people to stay on top of things across disciplines, or from the outside. Along the lines of "Username suggested x, but it didn't work, so we're doing y to solve the problem instead. Meanwhile in the story, we changed out this character, so we're changing this feature". That might overlap a bit with the opening of the livestreams, but please don't stop trying to commentate videos in realtime, it's great!

 

I think that the livestreams are fantastic. I only caught episode 7 live, but I've watched all of them (a few times, actually). They were great since I got a bit of a late start in contributing to this project. It helped bring me up to speed on what systems were implemented and gave a good overview of the overall architecture...perfect jumping off point for making contributions. You guys have really nailed the livestreams. Fantastic job.

As I mentioned elsewhere on the forums, I think the Open Projects initiative is a stroke of genius. It's great for all skill levels. For me, it provides a structure that forces constant forward movement. I know that when I work on my own projects, I'm always taking one step forward and two steps back because I focus on perfecting systems before moving on...and that's when the dreaded scope creep comes in. But because there's a team behind this project, forward progress is always made. And I appreciate being able to contribute to a project that might ACTUALLY be completed some day.

One thing that I do think might help a bit is if the maintainers of the GitHub repositories posted on this forum how they are planning to evolve the major branches over time. I'm not talking detailed posts for every little thing, but it might be helpful if there was a thread were you guys could post a one-sentence explanation of a change you are going to make...something like: "I'm working on a change that's going to move the DialogueLineSO component in ActorSO to another script." And that change might not happen for a few weeks or so, but at least we know it's coming. It's just a way to give a general idea of how parts of the main codebase are shifting around so that those submitting PRs can anticipate this. I just think there should be some place where we learn about implemented or planned changes to the main codebase which updates us more than every two weeks, which is what we get with the livestreams. Sure, we can keep up-to-date with the main repository, but that doesn't account for soon-to-come codebase changes.

The reason I say that is because if I'm working on a system that interacts with many other systems (as I have detailed in this post: https://forum.unity.com/threads/localized-phoneme-mood-pose-expression-system.1044784/), I'd like to stay on top of what changes I need to make to my codebase so that its compatible. I don't want the PR-merging team to have to take care of this because it's my submission. I'd like to submit something complete and working, and make sure it's not a headache for those testing it out. Furthermore, if I know how a codebase is going to change in advance, I might decide on a completely different architecture for my contributions.

Also, since it takes a lot of effort to keep our PRs up-to-date with the latest version of the ever-evolving codebase, I think it would be great if we would have a little early feedback on whether the team generally likes the contribution or doesn't see it fitting in with the project. I get that everyone is busy, but just a simple like on a forum post could be an indicator that the team generally likes the direction the contribution is going, but hasn't had time to review the PR yet. Or maybe a comment: "Before you develop this system further, please wait for us to give you feedback on the PR"...which is basically a nice way of saying I'm not sure this is going to fit. It doesn't have to be definitive either way, but just a hint of right track / wrong track would be helpful. But then again, this is my first contribution and it was only within the last couple days...I'm not sure how long it normally takes the team to review a PR. I just don't want to put in a lot of time maintaining something if it's going nowhere. Limbo is a hard place to be in and with very sporadic free time, I want to make sure that I'm spending it doing useful work.

But I get all of that is adding more on top of a team that probably has more than enough to deal with right now. And if that's the case, then that's okay. Just wanted to give my two cents...you guys asked for it, after all! =D

At any rate, thank you. You guys have changed the game with this new initiative. I'm looking forward to continuing to evolve this project and see what else is in the pipeline for Open Projects!

 

Here is my feedback about the different topics:

The game development process of Chop Chop
- I know it is difficult to manage all the community contributions, but given the time it takes to review PRs, it is really difficult to do incremental delivery. Maybe it is fine but it will be good to have just a bit more feedback from the core team when you start looking at a PR, just to stop working at it (refactoring it / continue to add more functionalities on top of it)
- Given the core team is key in the integration of community contribution, maybe share a bit more transparently what the core team is busy on (working on a particular part of the game, livestream preparation, other unity task (GGJ?)) just to understand your capacity to interact with the community over the week.

Handling of the forums, communication
- Forum is really active and you already do your maximum to reply to most of the posts and the community is helping a lot here too.
- About Codecks, I have the feeling that is a bit too static between 2 livestreams and tasks are not enough split according to me. I know it will require extra time for you to maintain them, but I think it would help on focusing the community on what can be really do and see things progressing.

The bi-weekly livestreams ("Open Projects: The Journey")
- They are just really cool!
- It is cool also to see more and more big sections related to community based contributions

The monthly Devlogs and related demo branches
- They are really good and the short format balanced very well the long livestream content.
- They provide a valuable and precise insight on key features of the project. I guess it helps people to join the project after it started.
- Also When this project will be over they will remain a mine of information on particular aspects of the game development.

 

Lives and devlogs are going great but sometimes the topics are a little too technical to grasp if it is the very first time hearing about it.

For the forums, some restructuring is needed.
If you could divide the open projects forum further into project 1, 2, 3 and so on.

And then every project could itself be divided into a brainstorming thread, an official discussion thread and two development threads, one each for code and art.

You can appoint most experienced members of the community to moderate the forums, this way some of your load can be taken off.

 

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy this project and the live streams too - but to be told please follow the discussion on twitter on top of the live streams, the codecks, the wiki, the ever increasing number of forums threads and discord is putting me off somewhat...
Can't we at least keep the discussion somewhat together?

 

Hi, l am loving this project awesome job to everyone l have been following the project from the being and watching the Live steamers and devlogs. l have a suggestion could you please small devlogs that show in full detail how to set up the characters to make them move when l download the project on git nothing will be setup so have to rewatch the live steamers just look on how you have set the chief character to move which scripts l need to attach to the chief prefab of which you don't go upstep by upstep in detail on how you got the character to move or which scripts l have to attach to enemies to make them attack which is why we need the less technical smaller devlogs.

 

Ciro,

The project has been a lot of fun to work on.

The live streams are a really great tool for so many reasons. As a contributor, it really helps me to see the status of the contributions at a given time so I can allocate my efforts accordingly. It is also especially helpful in such a visual and user-based project such as this because we all can easily see the visuals and hear the audio and get the core team's take on these types of things.

It is also cool to see a lot of little UI/UX considerations flagged by contributors. It makes it feel like we are almost user testing and contributing at the same time, which is a huge advantage this project has. On that note, I think having this game as an open source project has been a major success from my view.

Thanks!