'Hold on' popup when pressing play... sometimes...

Hi All,

I've dabbled with Unity a little here and there and am finally starting to get a bit more serious and have noticed something, not a problem per se, but I'd like to know if I'm doing anything that causes something.

On a project I have when I press play in the editor now get a 'hold on' popup whizz in for a second or two before things actually 'play'. Its processing some files but I only catch one or two from the TextMeshPro package (its the only asset actually imported besides what Unity offer 'vanilla').

From the files I can make out I see some shader files in there. I don't think the time when I press play is greatly affected but not seen it before and wondered why its happening? I'm thinking if the time to process things is long unity pops that up so you know 'stuff' is happening?

I'm using a reasonably decent machine, i5-6600K 4.4GHz, 16GB RAM, GTX 970 4GB, SSD etc so it just shocked me that might be the cause? I've literally just got a scene and one TextMeshPro type object in it.

I've had the TextMeshPro package installed and was using it without the popup before I'm sure so just struck me as odd.

Anybody else have a similar issue or shed any light? Cheers all, enjoying the journey with Unity.

 

Ok, after a little more investigation I see a spike in the UnityShaderCompiler process when the 'Holdon' popup appears. I recreated my project etc as its so simple and the issue went away, no spike in the UnityShaderCompiler either. Opened the old project and the issue returned. Quit Unity and removed the Library folder and started it back up, issue went away. I use OneDrive and am thinking its syncing is causing Unity problems, also had a little blip with OneDrive which has got me thinking its a possible cause so I'm excluding where I store my Unity projects from its syncing. Still interested to hear if anybody else it seeing the same please.

 

Just a quick heads up if you're actively working on a project stored on a service like this you may want to reconsider. Under the hood Unity maintains a database that it uses to handle links between assets. If a file is changed by the file service it can mess with this database and you can lose data.

We've had people show up and ask for assistance on recovering projects because a simple blip that is relatively minor for other programs destroyed their project and unfortunately the solution is often either (a) recover from a different backup elsewhere or (b) rebuild the whole project from scratch.

Basically the only completely safe way to use a service like OnDrive is to use it as a backup service and not as an active project storage. For active development you're far better off keeping the project in a local directory and using a VCS. A proper VCS won't have these blips. Git and SVN are very common choices.

 

Hi Ryiah,

Thanks for your reply.

No was never using OneDrive for a backup or anything for my Unity. Just so happened I was creating my projects on my desktop which is being backed up to OneDrive, I just never considered that it might cause a problem.

I've been using Unity Collaborate as a starting point for a VCS as its easy to get going with the Unity Build service etc. If something gets more serious maybe move over to Git.

Thanks again for the help.