Little cube icons on Hierarchy :(

The little boxes in my hierarchy are quite annoying. I knew they were coming but I did expect them to be optional... we use a custom hierarchy display and have no need for redundant little boxes on every single line. Can we have pre 2018.3 hierarchy window style back please, it's making our custom hierarchy ugly.

 

Hi,

Sorry to hear you're not fond of the icons.

The information provided by the icons is not redundant. How they work and look is a design we've worked out iteratively based on a lot of feedback.

See here for more information:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/new-icons-in-hierarchy.554368/

 

Doesn't fly for me, would like to remove them.

 

Can we at least have a tickbox in the Preferences to turn them on/off? I find them rather annoying and distracting.

 

For me, I do see the difference from the older view of the Hierarchy, but I do not feel an annoyance or repulsion. I am sure that the icons can be improved. I also approve on the idea of having options in the editor settings, so people have more freedom to customise the editor to their liking. I understand that sometimes change is hard, but if it comes with the mindset of improving the editor, the engine, the workflow, I am sure the change will be much easier accepted.
P.S. There are many thing to improve. Is this the most pressing of them all? What would we need the most right now? We got nested prefabs, what is next?

 

Bloat noise, options for removing please.

 

Well the nested prefabs icons could be placed in the inspector. Why is it I need to see this data in the hierarchy without it being optional?

Frankly I found the whole nested prefab approach here to be not really my cup of tea. I did mention some but not all of the things in alpha (as I don't like to make things about me) however this is a fresh round of feedback.

 

They set me out of new prefab system when they said you could no longer select prefabs in project and modify in bulk in the inspector, I do this sooo often... may be they fixed tho, downloading to give it a go.

 

Configurable options are surely the best, but the icons add nice feedback to the hierarchy, which I wouldn’t want to miss from now on.

 

Heh, enjoy. I think there's a fold out thingy for it (it's confusing to me, but what do I know).

 

Agree with the icon noise dissenters. It's very noisy.

Would love an option to remove all icons in hierarchy, as per before. No need for all that noise to communicate prefabs.

And the situation gets worse the bigger and busier the project/scenes.

 

OK how is this an improvement?


Seriously, I can understand without the cube that every single object without that cube already means that is a regular gameobject.

 

Are prefab variants in this version? I've forgotten how to make one... I thought it was when right-clicking a prefab in the hierarchy/assets.

If you only had them for prefabs it would make the indentation weird in some cases. Also, new prefabs have the + icon to the left on child gameobjects that have been added, so what icon would that added gameobject use? A box with a +? But then regular gameobjects wouldn't have the box...

Anyway, I was for being able to disable them in preferences.

 

You don't see any benefit because all your components are of the same type, but if some of them where prefabs o prefab variants or (I don't know which others are available on this new version), you could easily find them useful. In the past there was no use to have them because there was only one type of element available. Personally I think this change is positive.

 

Its fine that specific components like the ones you mention have an specific icon, but for the regular ones is just unnecesary noise imo. They could still do the color thing like in previous version and make the text with an specific color and they could avoid the icon thing.

 

I think standardization is the name of the game, however if you don't like/need it there should be a way to disable it.

 

This is what I meant
edit:What is different is what you whant to make stand from the noise, if you add stuff to the regular things that are the norm you bloat the tree

 

Yes, optional and relevant.
This was discussed during prefab preview.

 

I remember and I see it painfully ignored bye Unity.

 

I really don't mind being ignored if the result it better and at least, if it breaks my mucle memory, that it respects how human perception works.

Speaking of which, I like how your mock-up highlights important stuff but the box shouldn't offset the entire row because you then lose information density along the horizontal axis.
Have a look at this, I think visually it's the best of both worlds.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/nested-prefabs-84495

 

Yes, it was a concept, like I drag drop on photohsop and quick colored but I agree.

 

I still had it open on photoshop, flip horizontal did the trick XD

 

That's quite cool actually. I could live with that, it actually communicates without noise. Even fixes the formatting and would work with my hierarchy mod.

 

Is it really that bad? How often do you have every game object hierarchy fully expanded?

The Project explorer has icons for every object and no one complains about that. I don't see this as a problem. In fact I think it's a step forward, clearly seeing what types of objects you're dealing with.

I find ToyyoWarfareProject's mockup more distracting. Those colorful icons begging for my attention!

 

Ew, you're not putting the arrow ahead of the icon. There is no software on the planet that does that.

The single icons also look a mess. Most assets will put their custom icons on the right hand side.

 

+1 this is purely functional and in a hierarchy that has a mix of different types of gameobjects it's very useful. It does it's job well.

 

I probably should be migrating away from prefabs entirely to SO's if only for the inevitable ECS future. It's really something that level builders need more than the structure of dynamic objects.

 

The higher the resolution worked in, the less useful these icons are.

This is something I've been spending some time thinking about, too. It seems, to my rather naive perspective, that committing my design and work processes to nesting within prefabs means I'm going that way. More freedom and ease of iteration in design by mouse activity, much harder to eventually strip it all down and make it ECS-able.

On the other hand, going SO's is a little more initially rigid, and requires a lot more initial setup, the payoff being eventually easily "porting" to ECS performance advantages.

To this end, I kind of think there's a need for a means of visually signifying objects with SOs in the hierarchy. I'd be cool with text colour changes. The icons do my head in. I have LOTS of objects in my levels, and am using a flatter hierarchy due to the performance gains discussed by Ian Dundore regarding this.

 

When I first saw that the icons couldn't be modified, edited or removed/turned off, I was instantly reminded of the furore over Microsoft's Word Ribbon.



// The number one feature requested for the ribbon; easier, more obvious ways to turn it off.
// Microsoft knows this path well. Anyone remember the PaperClip 'guy'?

It's that level of belligerence, but worse, because some of the very best asset store products are hierarchy functionality plugins. Their creators could have (and probably should have) been consulted as experts on how to utilise the hierarchy's space and potential, something Unity's ignored for (from my quick research) about a decade.

 

Who spends the most time using the hierarchy? I as a programmer don't spend much time there.

I believe level designers spend a lot of time in that window and appreciate those icons. It makes it look more fresh. And beside from the look, those icons actually communicate important information.

 

I'm not a programmer. I'm a designer. Of UIs and Games. And I can assure you, we don't love icons, as any kind of general rule. The move towards text-as-buttons and interface wasn't a bad idea. Time and place for everything.

The hierarchy is one such place where icons aren't necessary.

 

I do level design.

I don't appreciate those icons.