Unity Cloud Build beta open for Pro users.

Unity Cloud Build Open Beta

Currently open for Pro users, sign up and let us know what you think. Please keep all conversations about Cloud Build within this forum.

https://build.cloud.unity3d.com

 

Are there any plans to support Unity Asset Server?

 

Will you support other platforms like standalone PC and Mac in this beta ?
is there a way to specify custom defines (Scripting Define Symbols) as part of the configuration for builds ?
is there support for PostProcessBuild Attribute ?

 

Getting empty page with "Application error" (after clicking login).. maybe too much traffic?

*ok, got in after few tries

 

This is so exciting.

I just tested a small demo project and it works!

The build time was a little slower than I expected but it wasn't terrible.

I could get back to work while the build happened in the cloud.

Looking forward to the day when I can use this to build all 17 platforms at once.

I haven't configured iOS yet. I have to get back to the office for that. I might go back tonight just to try it.

 

This is fantastic!

Quick question, is it ok to only have the "Assets" and "ProjectSettings" folder on the repo to keep thing small and tidy?

 

@hypeNate @Aurore Can you please reply my question about the support for Unity Asset Server?

 

@hypeNate Thanks for replying. Unfortunately, that doesn't make ANY sense... So Unity basically lures users into buying the incredibly over-priced Team License for a half-baked versioning system and now, one of the coolest features of Unity doesn't even support it and there are no plans for it?!

 

Thank you for your reply!

It did build! But weirdly enough, one or two meshes became completely transparent in the executables. I looked in the build logs for any mentions of the mesh, material or prefab but there were no warnings related to them.

 

Is the service still accepting new users? I had a break and went to try it out and got sent to a /WAITING page. I have a Unity PRO + iOS Pro license.

Gigi

 

@Gigiwoo

For me, the wait list was quite underwhelming.

I was all set to be annoyed but it ended up being less than 2 hours between when I signed up and when I got the email telling me I was granted access.

So far, I'm quite impressed.

 

A clean build produced no such errors. We do have a couple of frameworks integrated tho! Soom.la (which actually does a post-build operation ! ) GameAnalytics, and Parse.com. I will try disabling Soom.la for now, and see if that solves the issue. Thanks!

 

Sure makes me glad we haven't shelled out for the Asset Server, at any rate. (Which, from Unity's point of view, is certainly a sentiment that should be avoided at all costs...)

If you're not going to support Asset Server on UCB, then perhaps it's time to declare the Asset Server a failure and/or make it free. The only reason to even consider not supporting Asset Server in UCB is that not enough customers have bought Asset Server to make it worthwhile - which is to say, it's an abject failure. Making it free would probably make it an overnight success, and make it worth adding to UCB. Discontinuing it on the grounds of it being such a failure would be sensible as well.

 

I have 2 thoughts on this:
1) They're hosting it locally because there are no decent cloud services that host Unity Asset Server projects, certainly none affordably. Since they have to set it up themselves, it may as well be local.
2) Unity Cloud Build would be a huge killer app for UAS if it worked with it, drastically increasing the number of people/studios willing to pay for UAS.

I would think the obvious move here would be to not merely add UAS support as "another place UCB can get its version data from" (although I would expect that as a bare minimum given its cost and the fact that it's made by the same company), but go a step farther: Make that $500 license include a UCB account which itself serves as your UAS server. That would be a killer app. That might be a reason for our studio to get UAS, even.

 

Actually, that would make UAS viable to me, if it basically served as a cloud hosted build system and asset/code repository all in one. As it is, there's so many other free alternatives that I don't see how UAS stands on its own, but being cloud hosted and directly rolled into Unity Cloud would, I think, dramatically increase its popularity.

 

What kind of Android/IOS build it will generate? Will it manage permissions as well?

For Android, I am assuming it'll generate APK - shared with specific people. Can you please confirm?
For Ios, Will it generate the Adhoc beta IPA ? Does user need to upload beta provisioning profile for signing IPA?

For user sign up during beta, does they have to pay later when the product is released? Or is it lifetime free?

 

I can understand that it could be hard to access internal networks. Just make it a requirement to have the UAS on an "public" server then.

Just don't make everybody else that also paid $500/seat blocked out of UCB just because most people are using it locally...

 

@hypeNate - No entry into the Unity Cloud Beta yet. Tagging you, as requested.
Gigi

 

Unity Cloud Build is very handy. I run a Jenkins build server but prefer this simpler and Unity-friendlier approach. I do find it unusual builds take so long though. More than 10 minutes for web builds and sometimes more than an hour for iOS/Android builds.

Some good feedback has been posted above. I would like to see Unity Cloud Build remember the Web Build Player resolution on a per project basis (EDIT also this setting could be used when sharing builds with others). Also the Web Builds seem to be wiping out the preferences with each build.

The Unity Cloud Build servers are stock installs of Unity. So if you have meshes with .blend or .C4D files Unity Cloud won't be able to import these files and they will not appear.

 

Been using Unity Cloud Build Beta for a couple days and love it. Can't wait until it is out of beta and it is even something I'd pay for dedicated, etc. If is to be part of Pro without pay awesome as well.

We use CI for almost everything except Unity builds until recently with the no ui command for server builds, but Unity Cloud Beta also has that distribution/testflight side for both iOS and Android (Testflight removed Android when Apple bought them) that is nice as a one stop for all. Plus web builds all in a very nice CI system. We are also using Everyplay and love it. Seriously good services that I hope get lots of focus.

After setting up the builds do take a while to run (20-40min each platform - YMMV depending on project size) so some way to make that faster would be cool or switch it to 'ship mode' where builds fly out for a few days faster on some premium. Locally they take about 10-20 minutes but parallel on the cloud is nice, currently looks like 2 in parallel. Another area you could juice for 'ship mode' builds when needed faster. It is nice though with CI to be able to keep working on something while your builds are running and reporting in when ready. Makes sending it out to clients and testers easy as well.

Unity Cloud Build Beta +1

 

Could we add a timestamp to the mobile build page? The build numbers are not specific enough to tell if a recent push was built. Also auto-pushing iOS builds to TestFlight would be great (along with auto-updating the build numbers on TF)!

 

I bought a new iOS device and restored it from a backup of another device and am noticing Unity Cloud Build now thinks I'm using the same Device (it lists the old device's UDID) preventing me from installing builds. I had this same issue on TestFlight but it allowed me to re-add the device; here I seem to be stuck.

 

I just realized that I cannot use UCB for my UAS!! What's going on there?? Don't you think you should consider UAS as top most priority?? I hope you don't forget it's your own commercial product. Make it possible or do NOT sell it.
I seriously started to consider switching source control from UAS to SVN.

 

For what it's worth, we've been hosting our Unity Asset Server on Amazon EC2 for about a year and a half. The first year was free, and now it costs about 14 bucks a month. Not bad in my mind... I'd say that's plenty affordable. I honestly think this has a bit more to do with whether Unity truly wants to be in the 'full featured version control' business or not. Asset Server works smoothly and wonderfully for about 95% of what you wanna do day to day, and then occasionally you start cursing because you want to roll back something specific or create a branch spec or something. It's obviously also not viable for large teams that mandate these more advanced features. My personal feeling is that initially they thought the road to success was easier to have fully integrated version control, but now they don't believe that to be the case anymore.

Once we upgrade to Unity 5 sometime this year, we'll re-evaluate things and likely move over to Cloud Build and start a new era of version control.

 

@dizzlebomb The more you use other versioning control systems (I personally recommend Git), the more you'll see how bad the UAS is. The list of missing features and quirks is so large that the lack of support for Cloud Build was just the final nail in the coffin. Unity should have stopped selling it several years ago.

 

Well, I originally got involved with UAS because of the .meta files, and it's ability to manage them. This was a point of contention about 3 years ago or so regarding UAS vs other version control software. I have lots of experience with PerForce, I understand how large the list of missing features is... but I also work with a team of 3 and UAS does in fact suit our needs 95% of the time. I haven't been following closely what the plan is... is there a plan yet to abolish UAS?

 

The lack of support for it in UCB tells us more than anything else possibly could about UAS's future. And if that weren't enough, it hasn't been updated in more than 2 years, DESPITE the missing features. It's done.