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Feedback Suggestion to improve Unity UX when reloading scripts, assets,...

Discussion in 'Editor & General Support' started by ssyuha, Apr 17, 2022.

  1. ssyuha

    ssyuha

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2021
    Posts:
    9
    Hello everyone,

    I'm a mobile dev just get into Unity for some hobby game dev recently. After several months of trying different versions from 2018 to 2022, I found that Unity has a big change when transitioning from 2018, 2019 to 2020, especially in terms of UI/UX.

    New Unity looks prettier but have some drawbacks compared to previous versions. One of that is the annoying POPUP when reloading assets after changing scripts or do some heavy operation which blocking the editor main thread. In version 2019 or earlier, Unity will freeze for some seconds without any indication of whether the operation was done or not. From Unity 2020, the editor will show the POPUP and user can do nothing except watching at it and doing somethings "offline". Despite the fact that the editor will freeze without any progress bar in 2019, i still found it more pleasant to work with than newer version where the popup keep showing out of nowhere randomly, which cause an impression of Unity being slow and buggy. (The fact is Unity 2019 still hang frequently but i did not notice it and don't have the negative impression like with Unity 2020). And i think one major source of complains from community is because of this POPUP.

    The new progress indicator is a welcome change, and nothing wrong with it if we can make it right. The only thing wrong with it right now, the thing that make me and many people feels frustration is the POPUP which pop out randomly which blocked our workflow.

    Take a look at Rider, whenever it do some heavy stuffs like compiling, refactoring, connecting to network... the main thread is not blocked and a progress indicator of all background operations is being showed at the bottom right corner of the IDE. This UX design makes user feels very comfortable and it is just right. I work with Android Studio (also a similar IDE to Rider from Jetbrains) for Android development which is way more slower than Unity in term of compiling time (It took 1 minutes to build a Hello World Android app), but its UX is very responsive and i still feel very comfortable with it. Unlike with Unity which i lost most of my motivation and wanting to do my laundry after seeing the deadly POPUP a few time in a row!

    Another thing which i also want it to be fixed is in Unity 2021 LTS and 2022, whenever i drag a file from Finder to the Editor the mouse cursor become laggy and very unresponsive, it doesn't happen in previous version (I'm on Mac btw). I have reported it here: https://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?1419697_5u2fdotmfqr2cu0s

    It is very sad that Unity UX become worse than before after every new version. I hope that Unity team will consider my suggestion and improve UX of the editor for better experience.

    Currently i'm using Unity 2019 in the hope that it will be changed someday. Thanks!
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2022
  2. spiney199

    spiney199

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2021
    Posts:
    7,610
    If Unity is blocked for whatever reason, it's blocked. I don't get why a pop-up to inform why it's blocked is such a turn off. I would rather know what it's doing than just sit there watching it hang.

    Besides, you can modify the time it takes before it pops up in the preferences menu. No idea why it's such a big deal.
     
  3. ssyuha

    ssyuha

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2021
    Posts:
    9
    Thanks for your information. But the editor will still freeze after that. It would be nicer if it does all heavy lifting operations in background instead.

    Maybe if the main thread is blocked then the only thing Unity can do is spawn another process for its popup, so a progress indicator like Rider would be impossible. (Could be the reason why sometimes this popup still appear when i switch to another app)
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2022
  4. spiney199

    spiney199

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2021
    Posts:
    7,610
    If it could be a background operation it would be, or they're working on it being the case. In any case Unity does need to fully recompile for your code changes to take effect so it's unavoidable.

    You can turn off the Auto-Refresh too to not get pop-ups in other applications. I only ever refresh manually at this point.