Struggling to understand how saving projects works.

So, I'm very new to Unity but have a lot of computer experience yet I'm really struggling to understand how Unity Projects are saved.

Specifically, I'm trying to learn through tutorials and small projects I think up. I'd like to work on these projects and tutorials both at home and at work during my lunch and breaks. But for the life of me, I can't figure out how to get a project I start at home to open in Unity at work, and vice versa. When I got to add a project I've saved to my Google Drive I get an invalid project path error message.

So what am I doing wrong? What info am I missing to make this work?

Thank you.

 

Try using repository solutions. For example github. This way you can export/import changes, rather than full project.

Btw, where you store your project on the drive?

 

I'll take a look at GitHub, but it sounds like several extra, potentially time consuming, steps every time I want to load the project.

I'm just saving in a Projects folder on my Google drive.

 

Copy the projects to your local drive from your Google drive, and provide a screenshot of the directory structure here.

 

Not sure what difference it makes whether it's on Google drive or local, but here ya go...I notice the case sensitive test file and have a recollection of getting an error at some point that UNity doesn't support case sensitive operating systems or something...So, is it simply that I can't use Google drive at all? That's kinda sucky. Hehe

 

Differences could be R/W permissions, etc so best to rule it out. At any rate, you would open the CharacterSheet folder on your desktop in Unity (or via the Unity Hub). Please provide a screenshot of the error that you are receiving.

 

K, so this example I started at work, but when trying to add it to my UnityHub at home I get the error shown here.

I've messed around so much with stuff the last couple days I'm a bit confused as to where I'm at now so I'm going to start a fresh project from work specifically for figuring this out.

 

Yeah, I'm not seeing where you are trying to open the copy on your desktop.

 

Yeah, I've buggered something up somewhere. Starting fresh.

 

In the Hub, you would choose Add project, and then browse to your desktop folder. You probably want to get things working locally on your C: drive before trying Google Drive.

 

Use a ZIP archive. You don't need to use compression but it's far easier to transfer a project through conventional means when you simply bundle it all up prior to moving it around.

That said I highly recommend you become familiar with version control. Everything only seems unnecessary when you don't have any real experience with it, but there are tons of advantages like being able to see every change you've made over the life of a project when trying to hunt down weird bugs.

Version control is a must have for me. I wouldn't even consider using Google Drive or similar solutions. It's not just a lack of features either. We've had countless threads in the past about systems like Google Drive (eg Dropbox) eating a project and the user was only able to partially recover from it if they were able to recover at all. It's just not worth is using them.

 

for github/bitbucket you can use these gui interfaces, so never have to do any commandline stuff. (its only couple of clicks to sync project)

https://desktop.github.com/ , i use this one https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/ (i prefer downloading the old 1.9.x version, it has better UI..)

 

Okay so,

- Created New Project at work, to my Google drive. Gave a window listing about a dozen errors about certain files already existing, but after clicking "Continue" on that window, Unity opened fine and was ready to work.
- Added the project from my Google Drive to my Unity Hub at home and while it added fine, it indicates the Unity Version is Unavailable so won't load the project.

- Copied project from Google drive to local drive.
- Added Project to Unity Hub from local drive, and again, it added fine, but won't open because the Unity Version is Unavailable.

- Installed updated Unity
- Project loads fine from local drive
- Project complains about being on case-sensitive file system and case-sensitive file systems are not supported at the moment.

So, while incredibly inconvenient due to the time required to copy files and move files between local and Google drives, at least I have an option.

I'll also take a look at this GitHub even though I'm pretty sure that's just going to be an even slower process.

Thanks for the assistance.

 

Thanks for the heads up. How does version control work for storage space? I'm already getting a bit annoyed that I've got to have 3 different versions of Unity installed (so far) just to get through these tutorials. I've got the storage space so it's not a huge deal, but I can see even a small project getting way bigger than it probably needs to be. At least until I learn how to deal with it.
thanks.

 

Version control is about monitoring for changes between files editing. Its mainly oriented for text data types, like scripts, configs etc., which also is including Unity GameObjects in scene setup.

So basically you just sync for changes, rather downloading whole project each time.

 

I would suggest to follow my directions. And a project doesn't get "larger" if you are using multiple versions of Unity. I think others suggesting to use source control is not a good idea until you understand how the Hub works and get Unity working correctly locally first. Don't use Google Drive until then, and you "learn to deal with it"

 

Don't use solutions like Google Drive or Drop Box to store your project folder. They resolve conflicts by making duplicates of files instead of merging changes, which the Editor then treats as new assets to be imported or worse. This quickly becomes a disaster to sort out manually. Try sorting out 500 duplicate files in your library folder, or half of your scripts duplicated with changes you need from both versions, all because you worked on your project while offline and forgot your computer hadn't yet picked up the changes you made from the other computer earlier.

If you use these services you use zip files, and you name them in a way you will know it is the latest update or not.

As already mentioned though, the industry way of doing this is a version control system. All you do is when you're done working for the day you use version control to upload your changes, and on the other computer you use version control to quickly download the latest changes. That's how people do work on multiple computers without copying gigabytes of data every time they make a minor change, and how multiple people work on the same project at the same time.

 

Awesome! Thank you!