Question on downgrading Unity version

I was following online tutorials when my java went missing in unity. After playing around with unity - installing, removing and updating, I posted many questions. A recent one suggested that I should go back to 2018.x as it's more suitable for beginers. My question is now as follows:

My projects works well in 2019.2.1 BUT I want to reinstall 2018. I am planning to use this in the long-term but many or almost all my projects have already migrated to 2019
So is it worth my effort installing 2018, copy and paste all project notes, scripts etc to 2018 and re-creating them?

Or just leave them in 2019 and continue learning new things in 2018? What's the best thing?

Should I remove 2019 if it's not suitable?

Please take note that I have created the .apk for many and they are working perfectly in my old devices BUT I might consider writing new codes as I learn more. This is the part where my effort to re-create might be required.

Note: All suggestions are welcomed, including those who criticised my questions or topics in previous entries. As I stated, I'm not here to pick fights, but to learn.

 

Just backup the project and open it with an older release. Unity doesn't recommend this for the simple fact that they don't have anything in to protect against problems, but that doesn't mean it won't work and I have done it myself a few times for normal projects. I can't imagine you're working with anything odd that would foul it up. But always backup just in case.

 

Always use version control. Save your work in there and then you can test if you can downgrade without major headaches. Although it is not supported, it sometimes works without problems, sometimes you need to do modifications to accommodate the older API, but it is possible. But do not forget, this is officially not supported.

But honestly I would really leave my real projects on 2019 if you are already there and would download 2018 just for the tutorials. And after you learned whatever you want to learn from the tutorials you can implement them in the 2019 project. But I already told this to you twice in your other thread about the same topic.

 

From your other thread, you're doing a tutorial that was made for 2018 but your projects are in 2019 and using features only in 2019, right? I'd just have both versions installed, and do projects in the appropriate version. Unity Hub specifically supports doing this.

In the past I used to support projects for clients across Unity 3.x, 4.x and 5.x, so I had each client installed.

Edit: Wait... are you doing the tutorials in fresh projects, or are you doing your tutorials in the same Unity project as other development?

 

All the projects in my tutorial aren't that big in size. So it's more a question of how hardworking i feel and how much time i have to copy and re-do in the older 2018 version. It took me about 6 months to complete nearly the entire course but I had massive problems as the instructor either couldn't answer or the code didn't work. In cases where the instructor didn't reply, i knew the codes were correct because when he scrolled up, it was quite slow and all the codes could be seen so i know it's not my code that's the problem. In other cases, the project was only a few lines of code here and there and unless a person really typed wrongly, the editor would catch all errors with red lines even before the play mode was done..

 

Yes I was thinking of the same thing. The thing is earlier the unity hub screwed up and refused to give the java tools. After i complained to the team they fixed it but only the latest version of 2018 can be installed now. But still better than earlier. The 2019 that i'm using has some silly error message. It no doubt works and .apk can be created but i personally just don't like the global apk error. 2018 didn't have this problem. But bear in mind that some features were already not there when i first installed it so it's not going to be so easy as just to say "get 2018 and all my problems will disappear". The QA team that got my reply already admitted some features were removed. I just wish things were easier.

 

Why not try doing the tutorials here on unitys website like most of us do to learn, rather than taking paid udemy courses?

Udemy is a mixed bag, some are great, some are bad, some are updated and some are old.

You can trust you will have a better time using the official tutorials as unity actually create and maintain them, meaning you will be able to ask questions and get answers.

https://learn.unity.com/?_ga=2.75550288.496664582.1566197676-494826927.1555401661

Try the micro karting new user tutorial : https://learn.unity.com/project/karting-template

or the beginner platformer: https://learn.unity.com/project/2d-platformer-template

or my favourite, this full course on a 2d rpg which will really teach you a lot : https://learn.unity.com/project/ruby-s-2d-rpg

Youll get much better support from those tutorials in this forum as they are actual official tutorials instead of maintained by various 3rd parties

 

From their other threads, they're doing a bunch of things in different versions of Unity, and have run into different issues with each.

Broadly I agree. Picking one and asking specific questions about how to resolve issues is probably the best way forward. We can't help a lot with vague descriptions of issues.

 

Well the story goes like this. Although the course is in fact a paid one, i got it for free due to problems with other courses. So technically to me it's free. That's why i used it. Yes i checked unity and found the courses. So now I'm checking out what's suitable or looks nice to me. Looks nice means what i think is suitable or what i think looks easy, even if my judgement might be wrong.

 

All this brings me to the next question also related to the downgrade. Perhaps one of you know this better - its not asked yet. In the process of going back to 2018, which is the best unity hub to use? Or just install the latest since they are about the same in size? If no reply, i will just maintain my latest one and install the 2018 editor.

 

Download the latest unity hub. Then use the hub to download whatever the latest LTS release of unity is. That will likely be 2018.4.X

LTS means long term support and recieved lots of bugfixes and is the most stable version of unity at any given time. Trying to do everything in any other version will probably cause you headaches.

All the tutorials here on unity website even ones written for Unity 5 work with 2018.4.

Dont use 2019 if you are going to be doing tutorials and are not proficient at unity (meaning you are able to make what you envision without using tutorials).

2019 is still in development, at the end of the year 2019.4 will come out which will become the latest LTS version at which point it will be deemed the most stable version.

Hopefully that clears up how to go about this.

If for some reason you find a specific thing is removed in 2018 that is in a tutorial, come here and ask the question as likely its not removed, just renamed.

 

I am attaching what happens after i downloaded 2018.1.9. I opened my project a few times and the scrips were missing - cannot be loaded. This happened earlier. Now I get a totally blank screen. All my objects gone. So is this my luck OR is the entire project corrupted? This is so you can understand why sometimes i get fed up and just update unity. This is the kind of problem i had earlier - before i joined the forum to ask. This time, i even restarted the computer after installing java ndk - something just to make sure no errors happen. See the background - all objects just done. So next question - where did they go to?

 

Did you even read at all what I said? why are you downloading 2018.1.9 when I explicitly explained to you why 2018.4.X is what you need?

Also stop messing around with trying to get android and java etc working and just do the official tutorials as everyone keeps saying. You dont even need any of that for the official tutorials.

 

Is that the same scene you were in in the 2019 version? And if you could share the script errors (i.e. a screenshot of the console) that'd help in trying to pin down where the issues are. When you say the objects are gone, do you mean that the assets folder is empty or that they're not in your scene?

 

Is unclear, but I am guessing OP means hierarchy tree and missing game objects there.

Since OP struggles with basics technical aspects, should definitely leave alone android, until gain enough experience. Every thread seems circulates around it, rather than pinpoint single issue. Without that, it will be hard to move onward. It feels like OP is is scattered all over the place with thoughts.

 

Because at best he's only halfway listening to what any individual tells him. You can see this in every thread he makes.

 

I ve recently downgraded a project from 2019.1 to 2018.4 , the only way to get it to open was to delete the Packages folder, Temp, Obj, the packages manifest and of course the Library.
Seems packages (at least the default ones) used are version specific. Probably you can directly manipulate the packages manifest so to fetch proper package versions in case you are using other than the default ones.

 

Gitflow is a good method to follow. We have right now

feature/2019
feature/2018
feature/ai


Sometimes we even combinate the branches like

feature/2019-ai

In this case we develop the ai on 2018 because thats our dev branch, if we want to test the AI in 2019 we create a new branch based on 2019 branch and merge ai branch into it.

This way there never is a need to downgrade anything

 

This is not officially supported, nothing which changed between versions will be automatically downgraded to the way it was saved in the old version. What exactly breaks will entirely depend on what changes went into Unity between the two versions. The larger the jump, such as between major versions, the more things can break.

For example, if you go from 2018.3 to 2018.2, I'd expect problems with all your terrains and prefabs, because two of the big feature changes in 2018.3 were upgrades to both those systems. If you were going from 2018.2 to 2017.4, you're less likely to get problems with those two systems, but problems in other features which changed. Etc, etc

 

Yes 2018.4.7 LTS has been downloaded and used following other threads from other posts. I found that although 2019 can be used and can create the .apk file the 2018 performs better. TQ for the information.

 

Hi GameDevCouple_I,

I finally found what you gave earlier BUT I already did the roll a ball that @Murgilod mentioned but it only works on my computer. Not on my mobile. Perhaps it's my failure to let you know I already used it that made you think I ignored your advise. Anyway now I don't want you to spend any more of your time. You do you own work and let the Unity team handle the tutorials. Note: As stated in another thread, I do not expect your reply here.