Question on Unity e-mail

Some time ago, I checked the internet and an e-mail address for unity staff did exist. However, as time went on, it was removed as the number of users for Unity for unity was too big. Is this available again or the e-mail won't come back? I was told only the people in this forum can answer despite the obvious fact that my questions might not get a satisfactory, useful answer or possibly even no answers at all. All this because they are working on high level problems and issues that cost tens of thousands of dollars. So I'm wondering if an e-mail can be brought back at any point of time.

 

Instead of trying to imagine what is going on in the lives of strangers located around the world from you (hint: this is a bad life strategy), let me offer you some guidance on how to report your problem productively in the Unity3D forums:

http://plbm.com/?p=220

If you're NOT getting good answers, it's almost certainly because you're not putting the effort into a) researching what you're doing to learn the correct words to use, and b) accurately reporting EVERYTHING about what you are doing in a clear and concise manner. Nobody here can read your mind, so it is entirely up to you to clearly communicate your specific problem detail.

Remember: NOBODY here memorizes error codes. That's not a thing. The error code is absolutely the least useful part of the error. It serves no purpose at all. Forget the error code. Put it out of your mind.

The complete error message contains everything you need to know to fix the error yourself.

The important parts of the error message are:

- the description of the error itself (google this; you are NEVER the first one!)
- the file it occurred in (critical!)
- the line number and character position (the two numbers in parentheses)
- also possibly useful is the stack trace (all the lines of text in the lower console window)

Always start with the FIRST error in the console window, as sometimes that error causes or compounds some or all of the subsequent errors. Often the error will be immediately prior to the indicated line, so make sure to check there as well.

All of that information is in the actual error message and you must pay attention to it. Learn how to identify it instantly so you don't have to stop your progress and fiddle around with the forum.

Tutorials and example code are great, but keep this in mind to maximize your success and minimize your frustration:

How to do tutorials properly, two (2) simple steps to success:

Tutorials are a GREAT idea. Tutorials should be used this way:

Step 1. Follow the tutorial and do every single step of the tutorial 100% precisely the way it is shown. Even the slightest deviation (even a single character!) generally ends in disaster. That's how software engineering works. Every step must be taken, every single letter must be spelled, capitalized, punctuated and spaced (or not spaced) properly, literally NOTHING can be omitted or skipped.

Fortunately this is the easiest part to get right: Be a robot. Don't make any mistakes.
BE PERFECT IN EVERYTHING YOU DO HERE!!

If you get any errors, learn how to read the error code and fix your error. Google is your friend here. Do NOT continue until you fix your error. Your error will probably be somewhere near the parenthesis numbers (line and character position) in the file. It is almost CERTAINLY your typo causing the error, so look again and fix it.

Step 2. Go back and work through every part of the tutorial again, and this time explain it to your doggie. See how I am doing that in my avatar picture? If you have no dog, explain it to your house plant. If you are unable to explain any part of it, STOP. DO NOT PROCEED. Now go learn how that part works. Read the documentation on the functions involved. Go back to the tutorial and try to figure out WHY they did that. This is the part that takes a LOT of time when you are new. It might take days or weeks to work through a single 5-minute tutorial. Stick with it. You will learn.

Step 2 is the part everybody seems to miss. Without Step 2 you are simply a code-typing monkey and outside of the specific tutorial you did, you will be completely lost. If you want to learn, you MUST do Step 2.

Of course, all this presupposes no errors in the tutorial. For certain tutorial makers (like Unity, Brackeys, Imphenzia, Sebastian Lague) this is usually the case. For some other less-well-known content creators, this is less true. Read the comments on the video: did anyone have issues like you did? If there's an error, you will NEVER be the first guy to find it.

Beyond that, Step 3, 4, 5 and 6 become easy because you already understand!

Learn how to use source control. It's 2022... if you lose data that's on you.

Please consider using proper industrial-grade source control in order to guard and protect your hard-earned work.

Personally I use git (completely outside of Unity) because it is free and there are tons of tutorials out there to help you set it up as well as free places to host your repo (BitBucket, Github, Gitlab, etc.).

You can also push git repositories to other drives: thumb drives, USB drives, network drives, etc., effectively putting a complete copy of the repository there.

As far as configuring Unity to play nice with git, keep this in mind:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/prefab-links-keep-getting-dumped-on-git-pull.646600/#post-7142306

Here's how I use git in one of my games, Jetpack Kurt:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/2-steps-backwards.965048/#post-6282497

Using fine-grained source control as you work to refine your engineering:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/whe...grammer-example-in-text.1048739/#post-6783740

Share/Sharing source code between projects:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/your-techniques-to-share-code-between-projects.575959/#post-3835837

Setting up an appropriate .gitignore file for Unity3D:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/removing-il2cpp_cache-from-project.1084607/#post-6997067

Generally setting Unity up (includes above .gitignore concepts):

https://thoughtbot.com/blog/how-to-git-with-unity

It is only simple economics that you must expend as much effort into backing it up as you feel the work is worth in the first place.

"Use source control or you will be really sad sooner or later." - StarManta on the Unity3D forum boards

 

unity direct support is available for people/companies that pay for this advanced support. In some way they need to earn money so it make sense. They give a lot of stuff for free so if they don't answer fast and direct to your specific questions is not something you can force them to do or pretend for them to do.

But I see staff answering questions on these forums when they have the time to do it so you can always try asking your questions here.

 

I've just reviewed your posting history.

You have a consistent pattern of writing about 6 to 10 lines of rambling unformatted text prose, complete with off-topic irrelevant backstory, perhaps some self-deprecation and various random history and how you tried this and that and the other and oh my goodness.

It's no wonder you're not getting any responses.

Try this formula:

1. What you think it should be doing (perhaps describe it in terms of an existing popular game, or at least use the correct terminology)

2. What it actually is doing (again, use the correct terminology! Learn terminology by doing relevant tutorials)

3. What things you have tried in order to fix it (use

Debug.Log()

liberally throughout your codebase; it wil give you FREE information to investigate further!)

4. Any other interesting tidbits you think might be relevant to solving the issue

This pattern will draw the reader's attention and clearly indicate the area of expertise required.

 

I think you don't need support, you need a mentor / tutor. Check out Udemy or something similar where you can hire someone to teach you or answer your questions. Unity also had a system in test run where you could hire people to answer you on 1:1, but I don't know if it ended up on the chopping block or it's just not advertised that much anymore. Maybe it would worth the research for you.

 

I was in Udemy long before I came here. For your information, Udemy has removed all the free courses because I complained almost none were up-to-date. Whilst I CAN use some old Unity version and match it with the old courses there, it would not be worth my effort trying because any bug report sent to the team will give an auto-reply to automatically update the Unity version to try solving the bug. So now I'm back and looks like the replies here doesn't help much. What @Kurt-Dekker stated is probably the only useful advise I have.

 

I dunno about paid courses; I tried one who shall rename nameless (not Udemy) and it was not a useful experience.

Do know a fair amount about learning from tutorials online, and I personally recommend these guys as GREAT content makers in the Unity3D tutorial space.

Be sure to keep in mind the "How to do tutorials in 2 steps" above. Hint: you don't just watch them.

Imphenzia / imphenzia - super-basic Unity tutorial:

Jason Weimann:

Brackeys super-basic Unity Tutorial series:

Sebastian Lague Intro to Game Development with Unity and C#:

 

Yes, this is what I did. Sometimes, following the instructions 100% doesn't show the same results compared to the tutorial I follow. Perhaps you didn't know this. Your answer is not 100% useful.

 

Please don't recommend these as they are too long and the chances of some error messages taking place something is almost certain to happen. I already tried tower defender - about 25 tutorials and somewhere after tutorial 10, the code started to show error messages even though I followed it 100%. I have given up and moved on to other shorter tutorials which are more recent and works and I have learned more things.

Update: I have completed brackeys but it's too basic. I'm searching for others now.

 

This method is like writing a 200-page novel and the instant you make a single typo, you stop and delete the entire file, close the world processor, then open it up again and start afresh on a new novel from scratch.

You cannot do programming this way.

Error fixing is an integral part of programming.

It's called debugging.

You can learn more amazing and interesting edge-case things when debugging than when doing anything else programming-related.

I would go so far as to say this: "If you are NOT interested in debugging your programs, including tutorials, you need to abandon computer programming." It's that integral.

So if you want to play gamedev, you need to learn how to debug. That's not optional. More importantly for this forum, learn how to describe in terse common technical language:

- what you're doing
- what you expect to happen
- and what is actually happening.
- anything else you noticed.

 

Oof. Okay, you don't want to pay for people to teach you, you don't want long tutorials, because you lose focus and make mistakes... and then you're complaining that people don't want to keep you teaching. Good luck, my friend.

 

Yes. So for now, I'll focus on the shorter ones. I notice that once I know the basics of the really simple short ones, I can repeat them when the version changes because I understand how it works. The only thing you have taught me so far is to use the Debug to show where the error is. I think that's good enough for now.

 

Do you mean repeat the tutorial when the version of Unity changes?

Because if so, that's actually not how it works.

99% of the basic stuff you might use in a simple tutorial today has existed unchanged (or almost unchanged) since Unity4.6 back in 2013.

You're learning concepts and relationships and interactions and ways to think about your problems. That stuff barely changes over time.

 

Focus on what @Kurt-Dekker said. Your comments are very insulting when you don't know that I did. In the future, if you can't write anything respectful, just don't reply. Thanks.

 

No. I mean when I follow a new tutorial and I know that the syntax is no longer the same.

 

Like what?

Unless you are doing tutorials about specific Unity features that are very new and keep changing (and so the API around them may be changing as well), everything else coding wise hasn't really changed that much in the last 3-4 years, if not more.

 

Feel free to check my post history. I'm usually glad to give free advice and even show people how to do things. But when someone is so disrespectful that they start to demand free things, and they don't want to put in the real effort, suddenly only my snarky comments become available for free. Sorry.

So, if you want to move forward on these forums, the best advice you can get is what you already got from @Kurt-Dekker, as always: do the things, debug the things, if you got stuck, leave your ego and grufti mood at the door and explain your problem with your code, your error messages and your goal and we're usually very happy to help.

 

Lurking-Ninja, I'm not trying to find fault with what you say and openly criticize you. All I'm asking is the same as what everyone else would expect. Polite, respectful and useful replies. You said you helped many others. If that's the case, how come @Kurt-Dekker can give useful information like Debug which you clearly did NOT offer? What's your defense now? You can say anything you want. As far as I'm concerned, this thread is done as I got useful information and I know how to check for problems in Unity now. Even if you did help others, you couldn't help me. You can't even admit this. As far as I'm concerned you came to this thread to suggest impractical ideas like paid courses thinking everyone is rich and has time. My tutorials are way more important than whatever history achievements you have.

With the information that @Kurt-Dekker has given, I might be able to share information if I happen to return to the forum for whatever reason. You achieved nothing in this thread. End of story.

 

What you are experiencing is something that doesn't have an easy fix that works all the time. I also have the same problem.

The tutorials, paid or free get outdated after some time because unity changes stuff inside the engine/editor and the tutorials don't match anymore.

Issue is that you find out about this after maybe hours or days of trying to follow a tutorial, and you end up with errors you are not able to figure out by yourself.

I can provide some solutions but before I do this you need to change your perspective and understand that this game engine, and the same with unreal, is an advanced experimental piece of software. They always add new stuff to the engine, something that we didn't had before. This is great but have a downside. Sometime, actually quite often, is hard to mix the old with the new so features get removed because they don't work with the new stuff, changes are made that broke something that worked before. This is the price to pay unfortunately.

Some solutions

A. When learning from a tutorial, use same editor version the author tutorial is using, if possible, if you know this information, use the same packages versions that the author use. Newer editor models are not an improvement of the old versions but are different editors. Think as new car models from the manufacture. They may have the same model name as a previous car from 5 year ago but it looks different, have a different engine, interior, features. Is the same car improved? yes and no. Is an improvement but is not compatible with the old car. Same with the game engines, both for unity and unreal. Is why they let you download older versions.

B. Learn to use google to figure out how to fix errors. You can't go over this step as is a main tool each developer have. Nothing works perfectly and you get errors after errors all the time. You need to learn how to read the error and how to use google to figure a solution for you particular problem.

C. Try a mix of tutorials that teach specific parts of a game, that focuses on specific parts of the development and then you can also try those tutorials that teach how to create an entire game. You can apply what you have learned from the smaller tutorials, when you have problems with the longer tutorials.

 

Well said. We are all play-testers for Unity, finding issues and working around them, ESPECIALLY if you're running anything on the latest tech releases.

But even LTS has its issues. Every piece of game software is like this. Game engines are complicated beasts, and the more they do the more ways they have to do it and be different.

 

Yes I'm aware of all these issues and I always follow the same version. I have sent multiple bug report to the team and the auto-reply is always to update the LTS. What @Kurt-Dekker says is also correct. I've come across cases where old projects suddenly have problems in new LTS. I waited for many months, then when I tried the LTS, my project suddenly just worked. So the only thing I learned is Debug besides the obvious checking the error message.

 

years ago I wanted to learn how to code in C++

I had no experience in programming.

Lost one week to figure out how to make the C++ compiler work on my computer. It was not so easy like it is now downloading visual studio and just works. The compiler need to have a bunch of stuff manually set to make it work.

So to compile the "hello world" example I've had to figure out environment variables, paths, various modules, libraries. It was hell, I had no knowledge of programming except that hello world example.

The frustration in trying to learn something but get sidetracked in figuring out some other advanced stuff can be demoralizing. Fortunately now there are many resources, if one particular tutorial doesn't work and you can't figure it out why, just try another one.

Part of own unity published tutorials don't work anymore or have bugs.

There is the LEGO example that should be an introduction for beginners that have some issues that may not be simple to deal for someone just trying to learn unity using this example.

 

What you are saying only theoretically true. That's what I've been doing : checking out short simple examples I can find and even then, some don't work so well. That's why I came here. Your words "if one particular tutorial doesn't work and you can't figure it out why, just try another one" is easier said than done. Sometimes, I have to wait many months by doing some other activities, then coming back and checking and hoping that there are new, better and more useful tutorials that can work. You must not forget that besides all this, it depends on what I consider difficult or easy. What's difficult for me might be easy or medium to you. What's easy for me might also not teach me much or I can't use it for whatever projects I might want to create. You must understand this.

 

@Unity-Student0 If you have a question, you can use support@unity3d.com also. It would be considered inappropriate to send direct messages to any company employee unless you have been asked specifically to do so.

 

Hi Unity team,
It's good that you have taken note. I've done this by sending you bug reports. I'm only hoping that you can re-create the system where you had e-mails. The internet did say this existed in the past. I would be happy if you find some way of bringing this back. You can penalize those who don't check the internet first. In my case, I find the tutorials difficult to understand and your build-in tutorials don't teach much / properly so I can create my own games. You must understand my point. Look at what people like @Lurking-Ninja said. It's very insulting. You should have blocked him/her.

You should also realize that not everyone can afford paid tutorials. Surely you don't expect everyone to be equally rich? I don't believe you can't agree with this. Can you try to fix the tutorials which are not working? Put much more. What you all have is still too little. Not enough.

For your record, I have never sent any e-mails directly to anyone as I don't have their e-mails.

 

What emails are you referring to? "The internet did say..", what are you referring to? I provided the public support email. All employees have an email address, but you should not send a message unless you are instructed to do so. @Lurking-Ninja is here to help you, you should listen! They have helped hundreds of others. You would be advised to listen to the advice given here.

 

If what Lurking Ninja said in this thread was worthy of a ban, we'd all be banned by now.

To get the most out of the forums, please ask more specific questions.

If you're following a tutorial and you get an error at some point, you are more likely to get help by posting the relevant code, the error message you get and what you're trying to achieve. <- I feel this is a better starting point on how to use the Unity forums.

Very general and ..."existential" questions are unlikely to have constructive results. The forum regulars will get frustrated trying to make you form a more specific (and answerable) question and you will get frustrated because you can't find solutions to your problems.

 

Up until now you only mentioned you were sending them emails asking questions about things you were experiencing. Reporting bugs happen differently, there is a tool for that.

The support email never went away, others use it for legitimate purposes all the time. Although it is not for bug reporting or asking to teach you things.

ROFL.

You have choices: pay up and hire a tutor or work harder. Like everyone else. Or sometimes there are organizations in many areas where they organize "meetups" and things (nowadays these are on hold or held online though). Go for that, get to know people and when you know them, you can ask them to mentor you.

 

I don't get this story about paid tutorials. From my experience most of the paid tutorials is just someone that used google to add together a bunch of info that one can easily find online for free. They have no other experience more than that and most of the time they can help you fix errors because they don't actually know that much about unity.

you must had not seen my message earlier. I will tell you what unity staff will not tell you for corporate reasons and whatever. There is a Pro version with various monthly payment tiers, and when paying, one benefit is that you can contact unity directly unity support with issues you have. Is called Unity’s Premium Support Team.

So obviously unity staff can't provide for free what the company is selling as a premium feature.

And just to be clear so there is no misunderstanding, there is nothing wrong with this. Is a way to make money to pay for company expense like continue to develop the engine and give it for free.

So you are losing your time asking for unity team emails. They will not talk with you even if they wanted to do it.

I'm posting these messages for future readers if the thread/forum will still be online in the future. Who have the common sense to understand what is the lesson to be learned, will understand it. Others can't be helped. Not everyone can get it. Is fine like this.

 

Actually Pro licensing is not related to Premium Support. Also there is no difference in levels of service, we are not purposely withholding information for Personal and Plus users. We have a support organization to help with customer questions so developer time is not randomized. I work for this service, which is free for everyone. Services Support is the voice of the customer into the engineering team which I am proud to work for. This is a typical organizational structure. Messages to support@unity3d.com will be properly routed based on priority and severity.

 

That's common sense : redundant and completely unnecesary. Whilst I make more effort to check where the error comes from and how to check, you can watch your back by making sure you reply in a more respectful way. Honestly speaking, if you did say something respectful like asking me to learn more about errors, I would not have retaliated and filled some portions of this thread with unnecessary angry replies. Perhaps you should try that in future replies. My lesson is to learn more on errors, something everyone can understand because not everyone in the forum is an expert. Your lesson is to learn to reply respectfully. And if you cannot reply respectfully, please leave my future threads alone because I don't believe you like to read angry responses. I'm still waiting for you to reply and admit that you could not help me. You have no humility to admit your mistake. That's your current problem.

 

I was referring with contacting the unity team directly to speak with them which is not included in what you are pointing above. probably I was not clear. Talking with the dev team in real time for issues you have with the engine, which is what the OP asked. Not contacting the normal email support with issues. he wanted to contact people inside the company to have a discussion with them to help him fix the issues he has. That was what I was referring to.

And even for the normal support that you are talking about, you are not correct, as it clearly stated that PRO users have priority support over FREE users. Is in the Pro features list. I have nothing against this. Time is money. Somehow the company needs to earn money else it gets bankrupt and no more game engine for everyone.

regarding of withholding information, that is also not true (or at least not a priority to release the information immediately) as many unity features are not properly documented on how to mix them together. and you need to be a high level developer to understand what is going on, or, if your company budget allows it, you can ask for more information trough the high level direct support. The phone line basically. Else you are left struggling to find the solution yourself.

I've lost months trying to figure out how to implement the depth pixel for the hair shader. Meanwhile while the shader have the option to support this feature it was not implemented by unity team in the hair shader example. I've asked the forum basically two years ago how to have the depth pixel like in the unreal hair, and got a reply for a unity developer that the option is available and I should use it, (the option was hard to find in the shader editor anyway) but I've had no clear answer on HOW to do it. for me it was not easy to do it, and I've had to learn a lot of stuff about shaders and whatnot. Instead of focusing on the game I was trying to create I've lost months to make it work.

Then is my opinion, so don't worry, I'm not asking you to comment on this, you may even not be aware of this. You can ignore this. Is my opinion that some of the bugs/information may be purposely withhold or not fixed, so high level game team feel they got value out for the high level support support they are paying for. Again I'm not talking about normal support mail, but the one where one talks with the company directly. While it may take week or months for a fix to be delivered to normal users, high level game developer will get a fix under the table way more quickly. I can't imagine for a company with 100 people having the development of a game stop for months waiting for a fix. That is a sure way to annoy them and make them switch to a competitor.

Anyway, the OP have many alternatives, that he didn't understood he can't take. Nothing we can do about it. Asking for unity team to help him fix issues with his specific tasks can't be provided for free. If he doesn't get it, he doesn't get it.

 

You are deviating from the topic. I'm asking for an e-mail, not speak directly to the team. Show me which part of my previous comments mentioned anything about speaking? I used the words "e-mail", not phone and not "contact" which can be misterpreted.

 

You generally should not email developers directly at any company. If you have a question, contact support and your question will be routed accordingly. You can also ask here on the forum. And to reiterate and hyperbole aside, there is NO difference for level of service between Unity license types.

Edit to clarify - Services Support treats all licenses the same, Customer Support does indeed prioritize Pro users as mentioned at this link. Sorry about that!

 

Hey folks, locking this thread now as many different examples of resources and routes have been provided.