Question .NET profile support

Hi,

On the .NET profile support documentation page (https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/dotnetProfileSupport.html) it states "If you need broad cross-platform compatibility, then set the Api Compatibility Level to .NET Standard".... "Although some platforms don’t fully support the .NET Standard profile, the .NET Framework profile is less suitable for cross-platform compatibility."

It'd be great to know:
1. What does it mean by "broad cross-platform compatibility" - are we talking about compiler issues or runtime differences?
2. Which platforms don't full support .NET Standard
3. Why is .NET Framework less suitable for cross-platform compatibility

We are working on PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch and (I'm being aware confidentiality agreements) it'd be good to know if the compatibility issues involve any of these platforms and what the issues are

Cheers!
Andy

 

Probably a little of both.

There's another axis too, Mono vs IL2CPP. For instance System.Process will throw NotImplementedExceptions in IL2CPP.

Don't worry, you'll soon know.

Not trying to be flippant about it but if your engineers are writing nice simple code you probably won't have any issues. On the other hand if your engineers are reaching for every possible new bell and whistle and gee-gaw that just came out last week to the C# language (aka, Resume-Driven Development), then you're far more likely to run into issues.

This also applies to third party libraries, obviously.

At the end of the day, you're gonna have to test and work around issues.

This is why everywhere you read will tell you, Test early, test often, test on the actual target hardware.

It very well may be that you need conditional compiles, or that not all of your game's features will be truly fully supportable (or supportable identically) on all platforms.

 

So the conclusion is that we'd know if we had problems? Our game is live on PC & XBox at the moment.

And it's more to do with something either will or won't work, not that it'd work in two different ways on different platforms?

It'd be nice to have some definites, does anyone actually know what compatibility issues mean or is it just a "some things are different but we don't know what"

I am an engineer and we're not using modern language features like that, but we do have a cross platform multiplayer game so when I see something which influences "cross platform compatibility" my ears prick up and I want to find definite answers, so that I can be sure our game is running as well as it can across platforms.

 

Even if I told you 100% of every microscopic detail of what is and isn't supported, you STILL have to test your game.

Also, if I told you it supports X and then for some reason you find out it does NOT in your, has either of us improved the world by our actions?

Then you should be fine. But as an engineer it is incumbent upon you to test your engineered solution.

I suggest you review the broad documents that Unity publishes (or just google up other people's postings) and then make your game and do what you are going to do anyway: just test your game on the hardware targets you want.

 

Okay great, thanks @Tautvydas-Zilys