Feedback The State of Unity & Packages in 2020

Also wasn't the point of 2 releases a year to not rush releases? I would expect 2020.1 and 2020.2 to take roughly the same portion of the year and wouldn't be surprised if the release candidate stage went on until closer to mid-year

 

I've gone through a few pages here and most of the comments are from people that have been around for a while and while their opinions are super important, we're new to Unity so I just wanted to give you a little taste of what we have gone through in the past week as someone that doesn't have years of working with your engine.

This is what you have for first impressions:

Day 1: Grab Unity Hub and try to figure out how to start a project. See that we can add different versions which is... odd, but whatever. We grab a variant of 2019.3. There are no real good walkthroughs anywhere from Unity that we can see. All Unity Youtube videos are advanced tutorials on things that we don't care about right now. We just want to start a project from scratch.
Day 2: See that there is a new version of 2019.3 that came out after we made our project yesterday and we grab it. We convert our project to this latest one. Everything breaks. Revert back. Can no longer build our prototype at all. We can run from the editor but building fails every time with some namespacing issues with UIElements and Animator stuff.
Day 3: Say screw it, lets grab 2020.2, move our prototype code over and see how that goes. Create a new 2020.2 project, move some of the code in, it runs just fine from the editor. Still fails on build. Create a brand new 2020.2 project, redo all our work and everything is fine.
Day 4: Get wind of ECS, get excited about it, create a new project in 2020.2 and can't figure out how to add Entities and Hybrid Renderer. Create a new 2019.3 project to see how to make it work, tick the Show Preview Packages box and get stuff added no problem. Click play button and Unity crashes on some overflow on allocator or something.
Day 5: 2019 project crashes on startup every single time. Do some google searching to find out that the "Show Preview Packages" in 2020 has been moved to Project Settings so we go back to the 2020.2 project, enable that, and grab Entities and Hybrid Renderer. The INSTANT that the Entities package installs, the demo construction scene goes Magenta and I can no longer do anything at all with the hierarchy. Clicking play doesn't do anything and I can't move objects around my scene.

Day 6: Install Unreal Engine and within an hour of downloading and following their tutorials we have a working project with no issues. Not a single crash, and no crazy branching and figuring out what version to work with.

I understand now that I walked face first into all the problems you have as a game engine. I know now that upgrading/downgrading a project in Unity is like shooting yourself in the face with a piranha launcher. I know now that hidden within the FOUR different branches of your product (2018.LTS, 2019.3, 2020.1 and 2020.2) there exists a unicorn that is actually stable (I'm seeing that 2020.1 *may* be stable, and it's seems outrageous to start a project with 2018). All I'm asking for is that you take a good hard look at the experiences that someone has coming into your engine completely cold. It's really not a good look.

I want to use Unity, I've been a C# programmer for 18 years. But you sure are doing everything in your power to stop me. I guess I have to start re-learning C++ again.

 

About 2019.3, you don't need to find a tutorial that exactly matches your version. If you want to find good beginner tutorials, there are guided learning projects in Unity Hub under the learn tab. The Roll-a-Ball tutorial on YouTube is still massively popular even if it's old. Brackeys makes good beginner's content too. Finally, Unity has been making new beginners content in the form of microgames. For example, search up "Unity kart microgame".

My favourite is the Unity Hub Learn content, it was the best onboarding experience for me. Everything was very guided.

I'm intrigued by everything breaking once you upgraded 2019.3 though. I have minimal UIElements experience so I'm afraid I can't help here. Did you use any UIElements in your game? Or was it more of an internal error?

2020.2 is not even a beta, it's an alpha, and its expected to crash. Though I understand your frustration in the current stable version 2019.3 not working for your case, upgrading to an alpha isn't really the solution.

Not only that, Entities and Hybrid Renderer are still heavily in development. I'm not really surprise that it broke, especially in an alpha version of Unity.

And for day 6 to be comparable to your Unity experience, well, you would have to download an experimental build of Unreal and use an experimental feature. I'm not sure if it'll be that stable then.

However, it doesn't matter if it was your fault or Unity's fault. You are a newcomer, and you had a bad experience. And that is something that can be improved. May I know just a few things?

1. I'm confused by you needing to find a tutorial specifically catered to 2019.3. Why did you feel the need to do that?

2. Did you understand the difference between LTS, stable, beta and alpha for Unity versions?

3. Did you understand the difference between verified and preview packages, and the risks of using preview packages?

4. Did anything push you towards using preview packages like Entities and Hybrid Renderer instead of tried-and-true ways of doing things? (e.g. marketing material)

Thank you

 

While unity has its issues, a programmer of 18 years should know better than to grab the latest alpha editor and preview tech and expect beginner material to exist for it and also a smooth ride. I was against unity putting the preview toggle in another place but maybe they didn't hide it well enough.

If you are actually interested in using ecs there are plenty of people who would be more than happy to help you along in the dots subforum or unity dots discord, provided you keep an open mind about it being work in progress.

 

I don't think those that are replying understand my gripe here. I'm not concerned that preview packages aren't working, but rather that not a single version of Unity that we tried worked. I feel like everyone just glossed over the fact that we tried so many different versions and they all had build or fatal errors.

Everyone that commented about Brackeys or other game tutorial suggestions is ignoring the core of what I am saying. Our comments are not about how easy or difficult it is to make games with Unity, or about the lack of tutorials on game creation. Our first impressions of Unity were bad because of the experiences we had. Go back and re-read what I wrote before you jump to Unity's defence. I thought this was a good place to explain these experiences as a way to push constructive criticism.

 

Well I did ask about what your error was specifically. Plus, it does seem like a huge reason why you had a bad experience was due to using alpha versions and preview packages.

 

All I am saying is that it's not about the errors. It's about the experiences we had trying to get it to work. I'm thinking had I not mentioned our Day 6 people would have paid more attention to what I said.
Not that it matters but every time we load up the empty 2019.3 project it instantly crashes with :


Please note that I am not looking for help from you in this thread, I am trying to convey the experiences we had with using Unity for the first time to try and improve it. We have reported the error already.

 

Unity 2018.4 ("LTS", as Long Term Support) is the latest version that can be considered stable at the time of writing this.

This is a miscommunication on behalf of Unity. Actually versions not labeled LTS are equivalent to betas, and Unity betas are equivalent to alphas. Alphas are unstable nightly builds at best. In packages, anything labeled "Preview" is equivalent to unstable alpha / nightly build where it may or may not work and breaking compatibility changes may happen anytime, even with minor releases.

It hasn't been always like that. But in the past 2-3 years things within Unity have gone that way. We veterans have learned the hard way to stay at LTS versions (.4) and use verified packages only. Personally I even try to stay away from packages when possible.

 

That's insanity. Also doesn't this:


Completely undermine that? If that was the case why is 2019 in the "official releases" section?

Also: https://unity.com/releases/2019-3?_ga=2.112088580.1850301948.1589922991-1242800123.1586127104

 

Exactly, Unity 2018.4 LTS is the latest stable version supported. Everything else about Unity 2019 is marketing and miscommunication on behalf of Unity. I speak for experience.

The .23 is the patch number, as 2018.4 receives bi-weekly patches with bug fixes (no feature updates).

Unity 2017 should have ended its lifecycle this spring with the 2020.1 release, but it's delayed. Each year version receives 1 year of development and 2 years of Long Term Support.

(from: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/04/0...g-the-tech-and-long-term-support-lts-streams/)

 

Thank you, that gets your point across a LOT clearer. Mentioning 2020.2 and Entities in your original post definitely distracted from your intended message.

To solve this error I just deleted the Temp and Library folders from the Unity project, but yeah this shouldn't really happen at all, especially with an empty project.

 

I knew you were going to try and solve this issue. I've also googled it just like you just did and we tried that as well to no avail. Ultimately it doesn't matter since we aren't using that project, again it's not about the error it's about the experience. You aren't fixing the experience by simply googling the error and replying with the first result you found.

 

That makes things much clearer, thank you. I think this just emphasizes our first impression problems. So if the person from Unity is still watching this thread let it be known that this right here is a problem. Just have one official release, make it clear that this is the release that everyone should use and don't say things like this if it's going to cause issues:

(Note that the emphasis is mine, not from the original page)

 

I'm aware that Unity staff is taking all this feedback very seriously and already discussing the situation and possible solutions. My own estimation is that we might begin to the see results in Unity in one year from now. Until then, the best practice is to adhere to LTS versions and verified packages exclusively.

 

Well, wasn't really my intention, I was just telling you what worked for me in the past, though I'm sorry that did not work for you. As I said, your screenshot makes your criticism a lot clearer on what sort of errors you were facing and I'm sorry that you had to deal with this.

Either way, I really don't have much else to add here so I'm out.

 

The point that @Chronos_Errata was making in their post is that Unity does an absolute S*** job communicating that the latest "LTS" is the actual only fully supported/recommended version of Unity. To their point, the Hub screenshot they showed states the following:

Latest Official Releases

• Unity 2019.3.14f1
• Unity 2018.4.23f1 (LTS)
• Unity 2017.4.40f1 (LTS)

​

Unless Unity changes something with their next release cycle, this will soon become:

Latest Official Releases

• Unity 2020.1.0f1
• Unity 2019.4.0f1 (LTS)
• Unity 2018.4.26f1 (LTS)

​

And suddenly you'll see the latest TECH release (a release "equivalent to a beta" in your words) at the top of the list of official releases. It was barely a year ago wherein that list was simply "Latest releases" and put the Alpha and Beta releases at the top. During that period, people tended to install "the latest and greatest" without understanding the consequences of using an Alpha/Beta release, let alone a non-LTS one.

Unity should adjust this so that there is ONE recommended release: the most recent LTS. They should then relegate the previous LTS to "Legacy LTS" or something. TECH should appear below LTS releases and effectively marketed as "Preview". The alpha/beta labels can be applied within the TECH section.

Such organization would improve usability tremendously and save lots of users from some of the pain that @Chronos_Errata has experienced (and extremely helpfully shared!).

 

There is a conflict of interest in regards to promoting the TECH versus LTS: Unity relies heavily on user bug reports because they do not have internal teams who use Unity to it's full extent; they only make one-off demos and samples, and do not have to ship and support games. So their QA depends on the engine blowing up on the face of as many developers as possible (and said developers taking their time to craft repro projects for uploading), and pushing LTS over TECH would undermine that.

 

And yet they have roughly 2 times as many people working from them apparently? Something's not right here.

 

You've already posted this exact thing in the general discussion forum and the thread got closed. You were told to be clearer and use the bug report tool. Posting the same thing again in an unrelated thread is against the rules. Please don't do it.

 

Please dont derail a thread with unrelated topics. If you have an issue please submit a bug report as it appears you have already been told, rather than polluting other threads or opening unnecessary ones in incorrect places.

 

@Chronos_Errata some of the people responding to you here (myself included) are some of the most critical towards Unity on this forum. Which begs the question... why are we still here? Here are some reasons to pick / stick with Unity:

- you want to do 2D
- C# not C++
- you’ve invested too much in assets from the asset store
- you’re not on a strict timeline and won’t be financially ruined by delays
- you come from a design background and can’t cope with Unreal’s fugly GUI
- you’ve seen promising new tech in the marketing materials

My advice, is:
- Disregard that last point... the tech is still some years away at the rate things are going.
- If you’re doing 2D, Unity is still the go for now, and won’t be quite so painful.
- If you’re not doing 2D, hedge your bets... By doing as much as possible in apps that are neither Unity or Unreal... Use Blender, Houdini, etc. Also, buy from external asset stores whenever possible, so that you can change your mind at any point. The Unity store is badly managed, with no proper refund policy and a review system that is easy to cheat. Having said that there are some really top-notch developers in the store, who seem to be sticking with Unity despite recent ordeals. They’ve long been a major selling point for Unity.

Of course there are plenty of other considerations to take into account before you choose UT or UE. Do you want do a big open world game, are you prepared to spend hundreds for a decent character controller and environment system, would you like a package management system that doesn’t suck, etc.

I’m using 2020.2a11... described above as being of “nightly” quality. I find it to be more stable than past versions of Unity I’ve used. We’ve all complained a lot here and Unity has finally realised they can’t survive without a real focus on stability, and so - touch wood - that’s what they’ve told us they’re doing now. So despite endless frustrations, we’re still here because we still have hope. When it works as expected, it’s quite fun, with millions of possibilities and a friendly albeit occasionally grumpy community.

 

I would humbly add one more:

- trying not to participate (with low success rate) in engine wars and like (or hate) both equally, although the better flame-wars are here, on Unity's forum

 

I agree, fingers crossed things are on the mend now.

Its a shame it took so much huffing and puffing from the community to get to this point of understanding from unity, but I am glad we got here eventually.

I also want to add that another reason to stick with unity is if your not making a firstperson shooter, or third person action style game. Yes there are tons of games made with unreal that dont follow this, but in personal experience if your trying to make the engine make a game that isnt of these strict archetypes, things can get really difficult very quickly and becomes similar to current unity experience - fighting against the docs and engine.

I definately think if your making an FPS or 3rd person action style game, you really should consider using unreal, but if not, then I think both are still good options even including all the fiascos that have happened the last year or two with unity.

I am also interested to hear about your 2020.2 experience, I had not tried it out after fingers being burnt by alphas so often, but I am definately going to boot it up now to give it a whirl! Very heartening to hear the version seems more stable

 

Unity just released 2019 LTS and announced in the blog post that they are promoting LTS versions as the default Unity version to install in the hub:

They also announced a new subscription scheme over the current subscriptions though, so it seems future features may be behind pay walls of additional subscriptions:

Complete non-sense.

 

The Unity Hub has all the tutorials and projects you would ever need to get started. Most are aimed at the novice user. Did you look at the left hand side of the Unity Hub where it has the Projects, Learn, Community and Installs links? It sounds to me like you missed it completely, otherwise you would not have run into so many problems.

 

Hi all,

I wanted to come back full circle and close out this discussion. Thank you for all the great feedback and discussions. The team is currently synthesizing the notes and conversations that we've gathered from the thread and survey. Once we have some concrete next steps we'll be sure to share those in another thread to keep the flow of information between the product teams and users.

I'll leave the thread open until EOD later today in case there are any last pieces of information that are pertinent to the discussions.

Best regards,
Shawn

 

I think some of these issues are trigger by a roadmap and actual state of the art

ACTUAL



and somehow can be mitigated by:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...-be-unity-2022-to-be-clearer-is-a-wip.644740/

EXPECTED
Or Suggestion

 

Seriously, I couldn't care less about how they name it as long as it works.

 

I completely agree