HOT RELOAD - Edit Code Without Compiling!

Announcement

Hi everyone. After becoming a Unity Verified Solution, we gather feedback from the community and decided to offer a limited-time flash sale!
You can grab your Lifetime Indie License right now for $34.99 (instead of $149/year subscription)

 

Some notes on recent changes:

1. To offer the Indie license on the asset store with the massive price reduce on the Asset Store, after we consulted with the Unity Verified Solution team, we had to create a new asset on the store.
If you downloaded the previous asset, you can continue using it indefinitely. If you purchased it, you can redeem your invoice to get the new asset for free.

2. Unity Personal users can support the development by buying it on the Asset Store, though it's not mandatory. From the asset's description:
Please note that while we don't enforce a restriction on the free trial for Unity Personal users, purchasing the asset really helps support us so we can continue developing the asset! Users that already previously downloaded the asset can keep using it indefinitely.

 

Hot Reload only works during play-mode right?
It would be nice if it could be used for most recompiles outside of play-mode as well - Usually, making changes during runtime isn't practical for me.
As it stands I don't think Hot Reload is useful for my big project because it significantly increases my domain reload times.

 

Hot Reload works both in play-mode and edit-mode.

However, the Unity Editor's auto-refresh setting is by default configured to recompile automatically outside playmode. The Hot Reload editor window displays a warning if you have this setting, as it practically prevents Hot Reload from being useful in edit-mode.

Regarding domain reloads; Hot Reload doesn't modify domain reload and by itself never triggers a domain reload. The Unity Editor manages that, though as explained above, you can modify this behavior.


I hope this helped, though I'm still curious about your use-case. If you don't mind, would mind elaborating why making changes during runtime isn't practical for you? I'd love to help make it work for you.

Regardless, thanks for checking out the asset!

 

My mistake, I hadn't set Preferences->Asset Pipeline->Auto Refresh to disabled.
The fact that hot reloading also works in edit mode is amazing! The longer domain reload time seems to only be an issue when I add or remove scripts from the project, which forces Unity to recompile and reload the domain. I wonder if that can be mitigated.

Do you have a Discord? I think that could be useful, searching through forum posts isn't always that fruitful.

The reason that changing code during runtime has often not been practical for me is because of temporal issues with variables. This isn't an inherent issue with the hot-reloading solution itself, it's because of imperative coding style.

 

We created a Discord just a few days ago: https://discord.gg/kAWUNxYp

Removing scripts is already supported (meaning you don't need to do a full Unity recompile, Hot Reload just keep working). Adding new script files without full recompiling is on the roadmap, and I hope it'll land in the public version soon, but unfortunately can't give a timeline.

 

Isn't unity supposed to be working on this already? We were promised sometime similar a while ago. At $41.99 per month PER SEAT... the price seems out of touch with reality.

 

Hi there! Yes, Unity still has a goal to reduce their overall compile times and iteration times significantly. What exactly that looks like, and when exactly that will appear, is still unknown. In the meantime, we had to develop this solution internally to bring our iteration times down because they were significantly hindering our development and preventing us from hitting deadlines (we were dealing with 2-3 minute iteration times on our project).

I do want to point out that $41.99 is only for teams using Unity Pro/Enterprise, which, generally speaking, applies moreso to larger companies and game studios. These teams will generally get a lot more out of something like Hot Reload, because they are dealing with extremely significant iteration times. For many companies the cost of these iteration times is in the tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands a year. For example, the largest studio currently paying for Business licenses previously had a dedicated developer whose sole job was to reduce compile times and iteration times for the company. Even then, they were still dealing with compile times and iterations times which were nontrivial. When they started using Hot Reload, they were able to save tens of thousands of dollars on that one developer alone - and this doesn't even include the amount of money saved by reducing the iteration times for all the other developers.

For other individuals and small teams, they can get Hot Reload for much cheaper. Right now we are currently offering a one-time purchase through a limited-time flash sale, so for these smaller developers who would get a lot less value out of reduced iteration times, the price is a lot more reasonable - and we believe it's quite fair!

Thank you for the feedback though!

 

Hey everyone!

We just released version 1.10.5.

Improvements:

• Package dependencies are now specified
• Documentation links now point to the appropriate section

Fixes:

• Resolved an issue where harmless compiler warnings were causing patches to fail
• Fixed a problem where valid patches were being dropped if one of the modified files was not part of the project
• Addressed an exception spamming issue that occurred when the temp folder was inaccessible
• Resolved confusion with "Get License" button being shown when license is not required

 

I've been struggling for the past 3-4 hours!!!
Easy to setup?!!!
Not really!!!
When I press "Run Hot Reload" it says "Starting Hot Reload" then a command-prompt opens up and before I can see anything, it just closes and says nothing!!! Then we're back to "Run Hot Reload"

I bought the package on Asset Store, I have no idea how to activate it (I can't see activation anymore)
I'm on Windows 11, running Unity 2021.3.25f1 Personal. Using Hot Reload 1.10.4

 

Hi there! We're really sorry to hear that Hot Reload isn't working for you.

For most people (probably around 99%), you start Hot Reload and it just works instantly without issues. Unfortunately it seems like you have run into one of the very rare edge cases which we have never been able to replicate. We would be happy to help you work through the issue and get Hot Reload working for you, but we will likely require a bit of cooperation on your end. Since we cannot replicate the issue, we will probably have one of our coders contact you to get more information from you and try to help resolve the issue.

I have alerted one of our coders. They will get back to you as soon as they're available and will try their best to help you get Hot Reload working.

Alternatively, we can also offer you a refund if you'd prefer to go down that route. However, we would be happy to help you resolve the issue if you would still like to get Hot Reload working!

 

Thanks for the response! I would also love to get to work instead of asking for a refund!
How can I get in contact with someone on your end?

 

Glad to hear it!

I was planning on having someone contact you here on the Unity Forum, but if you could contact us by filling out the contact form on our website, it would make things a lot easier for us to manage. Here's the link: https://hotreload.net/contact

You can just add a brief message explaining the issue like you did in your original message, and then someone on our team will get back to you with some additional questions or steps on how to move forward to sort out your issue.

Apologies again for the issues you're dealing with. We'll try to get it sorted out for you as soon as possible!

 

Thank you for being responsive and supportive. I will fill the contact form right away.

 

Apologies for the late response.
We recently introduced changes that should resolve your problems with restarting Hot Reload. Please let us know in case you continue to have difficulties with that.
Regarding your issue that occurs after switching branches, I can best help you after you send us the following information:
1. What did you do?
2. When did you do it?
3. What happened?
4. What did you expect to happen?
5. Screenshots/Logs.
Preferably via email to contact@hotreload.net .

 

My problem was solved within minutes via direct communication with one of the developers.
It was a silly problem (The downloaded server file at C:\Users<User>\AppData\Local\singularitygroup-hotreload\asset-store\executables_1-10-4 was corrupted) but spotted right away.
It is working like a charm now! Wonderful. (I'm so glad that I didn't have to ask for a refund, the working of this feels like magic)
Great support.

P.S: The server file is well over 230MB in case anyone had a problem. My problem was solved just by deleting the "CodePatcherCLI.exe" at the location I mentioned. Just got the file again within Unity using the plugin interface which knew the file wasn't there anymore.

 

Glad to hear it! If you like the asset, please consider leaving a review on the Asset Store - it helps a lot!

Also, if you run into any other issues, please don't hesitate to reach out again!

 

I'm using unity plus, I just bought it from the App Store. Now do I have to also buy it off the website? I can't figure it out.

 

I guess you're referring to the Asset Store? If you bought it off of the Unity Asset Store, you don't need to purchase it again from the website!

If you're still running into issues and can't figure out how to get the Asset Store version working, could you describe whatever issues you're running into? We'd be happy to help!

 

Oh okay, It's was saying that I was on the trial version and I had to activate the version but after a restart it seems to just say "You are running Hot Reload for Unity version 1.10.5.". I guess that's fine?
I wasn't able to activate anything, and I can't log in because I don't know my company id. It seems to be working though.

 

I see. Can you contact us through the support form on our website? Here's the link: https://hotreload.net/contact

That's the best place where we can help in situations like this!

 

Hey everyone!

We just released version 1.10.6.

Improvements:

• Added an option to use default project generation to improve domain reload performance

Fixes:

• Fixed several issues that were causing console application to crash on startup
• Fixed performance regression introduced in a previous version
• Fixed exception when opening a Unity project after deleting the project's library folder

 

I'm having an issue where Hot Reload is spamming out hundreds of error messages per second:

Code (CSharp):

1. NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
2. SingularityGroup.HotReload..‎‫‍‍‍‪‍‭‮‍‮‍‪‎‌‫‏‌‮‮[].Invoke () (at <d7fed710ec7f4f6f99aa8705ea787f5a>:0)
3. SingularityGroup.HotReload.RuntimeDependencies.OnDrawGizmosEventProxy.OnDrawGizmos () (at <d7fed710ec7f4f6f99aa8705ea787f5a>:0)
4. UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent(Int32, IntPtr, Boolean&)

It actually happens whether or not Hot Reload is even running! It started happening when I changed some code in an OnDrawGizmos and now it won't stop. Even having reverted the change and gone back to a working version the message is still spammed. I am not sure what to do at the moment as I can't work on my project even with Hot Reload disabled, I am completely cut off from working. Ugh. I'll keep looking around and trying to figure out the source.

 

Well that didn't take long, I've figured it out: HotReload somehow attached a component to one of my prefabs called On Draw Gizmos Event Proxy and the error was stemming from that. I removed it from the prefab and the error was fixed. Still an issue worth flagging, for sure.

 

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We will look into this immediately.

 

Hey everyone!

We just released version 1.10.7.

Fixes:

• Fixed exception logging caused by modifying event functions in specific scenarios

 

Thanks again for reporting this issue. We've released a new version earlier today that makes sure you will not get exceptions when adding new event functions. Please upgrade to the new version to get the fix.

We are putting all our effort into promptly addressing reported issues ensuring that you can keep using Hot Reload knowing that it will be useful to you.

Feel free to join our discord to discuss how we can make our tool better and get quick support.

 

When installing Hot Reload, the installer mentioned something about turning off Updates on assets? What was that setting, I can't find it again to turn it back on.

 

Perhaps it's "Auto Refresh" setting? If it is you can read more about it in our documenation: https://hotreload.net/documentation/getting-started#unity-auto-refresh

We are planning to improve Hot Reload compatibility with Unity's Auto Refresh in the future so please let us know if you have any suggestions.

 

Ahh, thanks. Yeah that was causing issues for me when I wasn’t using hot reload.

 

- Your discord link on the first page doesn't seem to work.
- Another quality of life feature that would be nice is to have an option to auto refresh all assets except scripts..With auto refresh off i have to ctrl+r if i change a sprite or something. Would be nice no to

 

Thanks for bringing to our attention expired Discord invite link. Here's a valid one: https://discord.com/invite/kgxAS4Bqxr

Good suggestion for only refreshing all assets, we will look into supporting this feature. I've opened gitlab thread where you can track our progress: https://gitlab.com/singularitygroup/hot-reload-for-unity/-/issues/23

For anyone interested in discussing Hot Reload compatibility with Unity's Auto Refresh feel free to join our Discord. I've created a separate channel for such discussions.

 

Hey everyone!

We just released version 1.10.8.

Improvements:

• Various user interface improvements
• Added Stop and Restart buttons
• Added Changelog in Edtior window's Help tab
• Improved list with applied patches

 

Hey everyone!

We just released version 1.10.9.

Improvements:

• Improved initial user experience
• Added setting to control Unity's Auto Refresh and Script compilation settings when Hot Reload is running (enabled by default for new users)
• Added setting to launch Hot Reload on Unity project open

 

Hey everyone!

We just released version 1.10.10.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue with some users being incorrectly identified as having Unity Pro tier

 

To keep everyone in the loop here is our current roadmap for the features that are likely to be released in the coming weeks:

• Improved user experience
  • indication for when patches are being applied and when Hot Reload is idle
  • indication for when unsupported changes were detected
  • getting rid of console window
• major features
  • reloading asset changes in addition to script changes
• addressing limitations
  • making possible to patch startup code

Other features like support for fields and debugging take much more time but they are definitely coming. And of course we will continue to actively fix all issues that currently exist until there are none of them bugs.

 

I just wanted to provide some feedback on your pricing model - we're an indie team of 5 coders and use Pro. However we're most definitely not anywhere near where $40 per month per coder is reasonable or affordable. This is more than literally any service or tool in our entire suite of infrastructure across the whole company.

I under the want to capture the what I'll call the enterprise market, but please find a way to do this that lets us smaller indies afford it.

 

Thank you for your feedback. We will discuss our pricing model and see if it can be improved.

You can send an email to contact@hotreload.net with the price you think is fair for our product and we will get back to you in case our pricing changes.

 

I've spoke to our founder, and offered to have a call. We want to make it work for you, but it's sometimes tricky to navigate as we have existing customers. But we totally understand that not every studio has a large budget -- we've been there!

I will DM you Calendy link in case you would want to schedule a meeting.

 

Hey everyone!

We just released version 1.10.11.

Features:

• Added support for asset refresh (experimental)

Fixes:

• Fixed slow startup times caused by unmerged git changes

 

Getting this error any idea?



Latest version installed. Not even stopping hotreload helps
It seems to be caused by a script called LateEventProxy that has been automatically added to a class with a LateUpdate method

 

Hey there,

This issue was reported in the past and we've made attempt to solve this but we didn't get a solid reproduce yet. If you have any information on what could've led to this error, please let us know.

LateUpdateEventProxy is added when you add `LateUpdate` event function without recompiling. The reason why you get nullreference exception is unclear. It is possible that you use some variable in your function that got set to null and you're still trying to access it.

Stopping hot reload indeed might not fix this as we attach Unity component to the game object in order to listen to events. What you can do to resolve this is to remove the event function in question when Hot Reload is running.

We would very much like to resolve this issue and make event functions work for you. If you can provide more details that would help us immensely. If you prefer, consider joining our Discord.

 

very bad experience...
How to completely remove it from my project?
I delete it but rider now can not auto compile my code anymore

 

Sorry to hear, if you remove the package from the project Hot Reload should be completely removed.

We have a section on our website that explains different auto-refresh settings other tools and IDE's have, you might find it useful: https://hotreload.net/documentation/getting-started#unity-auto-refresh

 

I have checked back 2 checkboxes, but unity can not listen code change.
I'm using unity pro

 

We would need more detailed information to help you. Please feel free to join our Discord where we and our community can provide prompt support for you.

 

Check the bottom of this page:
https://hotreload.net/documentation/troubleshooting

 

Hey, I have an update on the issue you've encountered: we found a bug that causes EventProxies to get attached to prefabs outside playmode. We are working on a fix and it will come out in couple of days.

Fixing this bug might not necessarily address you're issue so we would still appreciate more details.

 

Hey everyone!

We just released version 1.10.12.

Fixes:

• Added experimental file watcher client that fixes rare issue with existing client
  
• Patching event functions no longer adds components to prefabs outside scenes in play mode

 

I would say less than half currently. For example, Odin Inspector is currently $250 per year per seat for large orgs and for indies a 1-time cost per seat. We use Odin extensively so it seems fair.