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Remove "Development Build" watermark without giving up the build option

Discussion in 'Editor & General Support' started by CPlusSharp22, Aug 3, 2020.

  1. CPlusSharp22

    CPlusSharp22

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    Is there any other way to disable the watermark? If you google this question, there's dozens of questions about it and the answer is "just disable development build!" That is obviously a very insufficient and non-solution.

    The solution suggested below is crazy. In short, after you build the executable, you hex edit the resource file to make the texture invalid LOL That can't be serious in 2020 is it?
    https://forum.unity.com/threads/removing-development-build-text-in-ios-simulator.232321/
     
    kyubuns, viseztrance and JesseSTG like this.
  2. DiegoDePalacio

    DiegoDePalacio

    Unity Technologies

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  3. CPlusSharp22

    CPlusSharp22

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  4. DiegoDePalacio

    DiegoDePalacio

    Unity Technologies

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    Just to be sure... Do you want to have a Development Build but without the watermark?

    If that's not the case, you should uncheck the "Development Build" checkbox on the Build Settings screen?
    You can find more information about it here: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/BuildSettings.html

    Otherwise... Why do you want to remove the watermark?
     
    salamlex147 likes this.
  5. CPlusSharp22

    CPlusSharp22

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    Yes as the title states I don't want to give up development build capabilities over a watermark. It's bit drastic just to remove text. I want debug builds.

    I want to remove the text for a bunch of reasons:

    - it takes up screen space. It blocks my Hud and gameplay.

    - my coworkers and I know it's a debug build, we don't need a 24/7 reminder.

    - if I want a reminder, I would like to either opt in or I can make a reminder myself. It's very easy to add UI text... I already have it being displayed as part of a debug ui. Now it's just redundant info.
     
  6. DiegoDePalacio

    DiegoDePalacio

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    In most cases, the "Development Build" is useful to easily recognize a build that contains a lot of not necessary debugging purpose stuff that affects for that reason the performance.

    The common practice is to test as much as possible on the non-development builds, due to the fact that are the ones that your final users are going to have in their hands, and only create the development builds to find bugs that were found on the non-development builds.

    Unfortunately, such a watermark is not something that was created with the intention of being easily toggled on and off.

    If you really want to have such functionality, my recommendation for you is to tag your thread as "feedback" in order to attract interest to have it included in Unity.

    You can check how you can do it here: https://support.unity3d.com/hc/en-us/articles/205692319-How-do-I-submit-feedback-about-Unity-


    Thank you!
     
  7. CPlusSharp22

    CPlusSharp22

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    Thanks for the suggestion, I'll tag it. Seeing as I'm not the only one asking for it so many times over the years, hopefully it's taken more seriously.

    I've never worked at a studio that does not develop and test outside of a debug build until very late in development.
     
    Farage and DiegoDePalacio like this.
  8. Baste

    Baste

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    @DiegoDePalacio this popped up for us as well just now.

    We're shipping development builds for beta versions of the game, so we can include proper stack traces from bug reports. At the same time, we have third parties that want to take in-game screenshots without the label.

    So we'll need to ship two completely different builds, adding a bunch of additional cruft in our workflow, simply to get rid of a simple label. That's a bit absurd!


    There's three different things that comes with development builds - stack traces with line numbers, the development console popping up for Debug.LogErrors, and the label. We only really ever wanted the first one. The development console isn't useful for our testers, and if we wanted a label on the screen, we're perfectly able to put one in ourselves. So this is somewhere Unity could show some flexibility.
     
  9. Farage

    Farage

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    Yep, having the same exact "issue" as the two gentlemen above.
    I want to have a development build out for beta testers without the watermark cause honestly it's just ugly and I want to chose where to put it myself.
     
  10. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

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    The first one comes from scripts being built in "development mode". The second and the third one comes from development/non-development UnityPlayer.dll. It's not exactly elegant. but you could build "Development build" from Unity and then replace the DLL from the non-development folder of Unity installation.
     
    NotaNaN, skullthug, JesseSTG and 2 others like this.
  11. cdr9042

    cdr9042

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    this is only for Window build right? What about Android?
     
  12. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

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    I think that file is called UnityPlayer.so on Android? Not 100% sure.
     
  13. sdpgames

    sdpgames

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    +1 guys. 20 years making games, we need ability to have development builds without the labels
     
  14. Robdon

    Robdon

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    Yeah, I'll +1 for removing that label.

    I want to have dev builds set at the moment for some players as I'm getting intermiant crashes and need the traces. But I really don't want that text there.

    Surely, this is a simple flag we can have?
     
    viseztrance likes this.
  15. snackycactus

    snackycactus

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    Yes, I want this as well
     
  16. aromana

    aromana

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    Chiming in here as well, the Development Build watermark poses a major usability issue for my game since that area has critical HUD elements and it obscures text. The idea I'm having to redesign my HUD to work around this "feature" is ridiculous to me.
     
  17. kyubuns

    kyubuns

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    +1
    I want to use build for record PV with debug commands.
     
    revertan likes this.
  18. viseztrance

    viseztrance

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    I write some information about my build in a text file updated via a prebuild command, and wanted to print it there. The development build text gets in my way.

    It would be nice to be able to hide it completely, or at the very least replace it with our own custom text.
     
    CPlusSharp22 and aromana like this.
  19. CPlusSharp22

    CPlusSharp22

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    Yep that was another reason the watermark is detrimental
     
  20. skullthug

    skullthug

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    +1 on this as well. In fact having more control over what watermark graphic to display (if at all) in debug builds alone would be a great way to revisit this feature.
     
  21. abeldantas

    abeldantas

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    +1 we have our own pipeline info for debug builds and the label covers other game UI elements.
    Having the watermark prevents grabbing promotional footage from dev builds.
    Should be settable programatically.
     
  22. abeldantas

    abeldantas

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    It's more like the common workaround. That requires you to test and/or build the same thing twice to know what is going on. Development builds contain various debugging features that are useful for CI/CD and QA testing.
     
  23. tangyinglin0228

    tangyinglin0228

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    Today, when I built and run the game with Development Build checked on my pixel 2. It's way more performant than the release build. So I want to publish the development build instead of the slow release build. I saw several people mentioned about the performance thing since 2013 during my search. The performance difference is significant. It would be easy for me if I could hide the Development Build label.
     
  24. Aurimas-Cernius

    Aurimas-Cernius

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    If Development Build is actually faster than release, it's an indication of problems in your project. Likely you have a bunch of exception that are thrown in release but not if development. Try looking into log cat.
    Development builds are slower than release in normal circumstances.
     
    tangyinglin0228 likes this.
  25. smilemanunity

    smilemanunity

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    Is there any way to remove the label when building on android? I'm making a game using DOTS, and there's still not solved the problem of the game crashing when starting without development mode.
    https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...on-null-pointer-dereference-when-launching-it
    Please help me find a way to solve the problem, the game was released with the build development label and even though the icon is very small, it is still annoying
     
  26. crdmrn

    crdmrn

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    +1.
    Development Builds are super useful to record gameplay videos, as it's way faster to implement (for example) debug warps or savegame overrides to be DevelopmentBuild-dependent, since Unity offers API support for it.
    Implementing code to mark official builds to activate debug features means rewriting something that is already there.
    This is such a basic feature, please don't hide behind the "usually one wants development builds to be easily recognizable": yes, what you say is indeed true, but give users some credit and at least allow them to make choices; we're not all newcomers to the engine and to game development in general.
    Plus, there's plenty of checkboxes that might output a build that's not suitable for release, one more won't be a big deal as long as there's an exhaustive Tooltip ^^
     
    CPUCPU likes this.
  27. CPUCPU

    CPUCPU

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    +1

    And here is one more reason to allow game devs to control this feature (in addition to everyone's above). It's ugly as hell! I already have my own UI of notifying my beta testers that this is a development build. Unity shouldn't have aesthetic control of my game, especially if I'm a paying Unity Plus or Pro user.
     
    Ruslank100, viseztrance and boddle like this.
  28. lloydv

    lloydv

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    +1
    I also would like this option. I need to do a screen recording with a debug build but the text is ugly and unprofessional to show to clients/community.
     
  29. lloydv

    lloydv

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    How about letting people set custom development build text? People to display a version number instead, which would be more helpful in a lot of cases. And people who don't want to display anything could remove it.
     
  30. kyubuns

    kyubuns

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    Any updates?
    Even with a useful game engine, this specification has increased man-hours.
     
  31. AutoFire-II

    AutoFire-II

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    Hmm they seem pretty stubborn about this. I'm going to jump on the bandwagon as well, though. Even with the DLL-swap workaround, I'd like to be able to control the development build stamp. A toggle is fine, optionally showing the version would be even better.

    On one hand, yes, development builds have some overhead. As a mobile developer, though, most things only work in-build and not in-editor. I rely heavily on full stacktrace/debug support when tracking down issues. It's too inefficient to have to manually swap files during my development.

    I almost wonder if it would be possible to create some build-time script that does a patch on the DLL/so binary? That might be a way to get a more automated (albeit clunky) workaround.
     
  32. kyubuns

    kyubuns

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    I also needed to build a dedicated build to shoot a play video.
    I just need this "Development Build" indicator to go away.
    Just having that feature would save me a lot of work time.
     
    br0br0br0 likes this.
  33. dariuszdawidowski

    dariuszdawidowski

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    +1 This can help with promotional video recording. Usually we need cheats from debug version to reach recoreded level.
     
  34. PeachyPixels

    PeachyPixels

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    That's one of the main reasons I use it for.

    Tbh I've given up on Unity ever addressing this and moved to using a custom compiler directive to enable certain debug features.
     
  35. Saniell

    Saniell

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    +1
    It's really funny how many people asked about this and yet noone at unity seems to care. How hard can it possibly be to disable a single label based on toggle?
     
    tural_ likes this.
  36. digiwombat

    digiwombat

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    +1, because commenting on suggestion posts worked for .ignore files in Dropbox!

    Can we at least get confirmation that any human being at Unity has heard the valid complaints about the Dev Build text? Maybe a suggestion on what the human beings at Unity are thinking about this whole thing?

    Is it the marketing team? Have they taken you hostage? Tell them they can write a blog post about giving developers more choices than ever if they let you remove it.
     
  37. ThisIsDangerous

    ThisIsDangerous

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    +1.
    Final users DO get development builds from us because of stack traces and line numbers in bug reports. But the final users should NOT see anything indicating that the build is in fact a development one. It's easy as that. It's ridiculous how long this problem persists. For YEARS now.
     
  38. TheVirtualMunk

    TheVirtualMunk

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  39. miran-cl

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  40. hecker_de

    hecker_de

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    I can see how Unity might not want development build to be completely in stealth mode, some developers never building anything besides development builds, even for a "final" product, and stuff like debug traces etc. popping up giving Unity perhaps some bad reputation. (Or at least I think that might be one way of thinking for them...)
    To address the issues that had been stated about difficulties with promo videos and screenshots, or the screen tag interfering with the game UI, this could easily be solved if the tag was included in the splash screen at start, so the fact it's a development or debug build and not a finalized version would still be completely clear, but it wouldn't obstruct any screen features...
     
  41. Innovine

    Innovine

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    I would like to change the splash from "Made with Unity" into the more appropriate "Made despite Unity".
     
  42. Liderangel

    Liderangel

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    This is a highly requested feature on our team as well, there could be an option to "close" the Development Build label like there is for closing the actual console.

    Why? Because it's way too useful to have the console pop up when there is an exception, saves time on making multiple builds with and without that tag, asides from the obvious we need to record the game but also test it at the same time, thus saving even more time.

    It's more of a convenience rather than a project structure issue @Aurimas-Cernius.
     
  43. SalvatoreMobile

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  44. ihgyug

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  45. Mikhail1221

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  46. cubrman

    cubrman

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    O wow, still no solution? +1
     
  47. ThisIsDangerous

    ThisIsDangerous

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    Yeah, still. I wonder whether this is the right place to post feature requests such as these. I remember there was a feedback form somewhere... Probably they deprecated it.
     
  48. xVergilx

    xVergilx

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    Other than removing the label, it would be great to have an ability to adjust its position.
    Currently it can overlap with UI which makes testing a bit tricky.

    Exposing settings to the Player Settings would be great.
     
  49. Mafutta

    Mafutta

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    I suppose doing the 32-bit build at least gets it working for Cloth issue not working and uses a real production build, albeit 32-bit windows, but yes it is crazy not to be able to have a proper 64-bit windows production build working at this point for Cloth and other issues....in my case that was the actual issue to even used dev build. Obviously there are many reasons Why We want a Dev Build without the text saying 'development build' on the bottom right. People seem to confuse this with Unity's logo aka watermark. It is not the same thing and nobody using the free Unity expects to hide the Unity logo, We just want the 'development build' text to be able to toggle on/off or set a version We define or custom text.
     
  50. Kadooka

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