Feedback What's the current New Input System Roadmap

Just curious here what seems to have stalled on this project? During its belated development, seemed to be lots of action, bugfixes, releases, etc... up until the 1.0 release.

It's definitely a great and needed improvement, but there also still seems to be a long way to go, with lots of complaints, clearly documented bugs and possible improvements.

....and yet, the Unity staff presence on the forum seems to have noticeably decreased, but the most obvious evidence is no updates/releases in 5 months.

Not a complaint, I use the new input system and for its quirks and iffy learning curve, it offers a lot...but what's goin' on folks?

 

I don't know if it is normal but the Unity UI package is still at 1.0 since several years now.
But clearly there is a lot of room for improvment with the new input system. What really troubles me is how this input system looks complete when you see the deep doc, but in practice it lacks of simple features. Developping a local multiplayer game is still too much challenging at this state to me.

 

It’s typical for Unity to release something as 1.0, in a promising state but with obvious flaws, and then drag their feet for several years, while their users become increasingly frustrated.

Eventually, they start working on a completely new solution, which they eventually release as 1.0, in a promising state but with obvious flaws, and then they drag their feet for years, while users become increasingly frustrated.

So to remedy that, Unity people decide to come up with a completely new solution, that they eventually release as 1.0, in a promising but flawed state...

 

Im sure they are doing their best, I don't know how is behind this work, how many they are, what are their experience and budget, but when I look at some of the work that as already been done, it is still a huge amount and I am light years behind. Sometime people are a bit rude and don't realize Unity team are also simple humans with a lot of pressure. Although the new input system is not perfect, Im still using it in my new project because its free and I believe it can do a lot.

 

The problems with Unity are systemic, lots of talent goes in, little of it comes out. I am obviously not blaming the team of the Input System for a pattern that emerges from Unity in many different systems and for many years.

Unity is a multi billion company, they could have whatever budget they wanted for the input manager.

Unity has done this many times in the past decade, they just half ass and then abandon features.

 

Well, I'll say a couple things, 1.0 has not been out for years, just the 5 months I mentioned. There is a 1.1 preview package that I did not know about because Unity made it a PITA to enable preview packages in the 2020 version. Woulda been nice to know, but at least something's being done.

I didn't intend this thread to flame the devs, just see if we can get some sort of update. Some of these things are understandable and agreed, not up to the devs themselves, but other things kinda stick out. There are many threads here with the "BUG" flag in bright red and not even a reply from staff. The community Unity has does a lot of leg work that I think they could start taking better ownership of. In a way, Unity's pretty lucky 3rd parties create stuff like Rewired that keep more people interested in this engine.

I wouldn't expect a major release in 5 months, necessarily, but it's quite overdo for some bugfix releases.

 

Its a mess. Where are the tutorials? I hate having to get the latest explanations from 3rd party YouTube developers. I'm sure there is someone at Unity making 100k/year who can take 10 minutes out of their busy day to come up with a video on how the current system works and how to program a GENERIC gamepad properly.

Currently every video does this:

Step 1, Step 2, Skip a few, Step 99, Step 100. And that's how it's done! Get it? No? I don't care, like and subscribe, bye!

 

Rene did just admit that the area that's lacking is an intuitive way into the functionality. No need to kill it until it's dead.

That said, I haven't tried more "touchy" stuff like mobile input or VR or anything, but can't say the old system did those better lol . But the action map system itself actually seems pretty sweet and intuitive to me. The sticking point is the Messages/Events/UnityEvents stuff. I think the push to give users options there might have backfired... I found it confusing at first, but the way the events and interactions work together seems to be buggy. Like if you use the events, the interactions become irrelevant, at least that's how it seemed when I used it.

Everyone, myself included, has fought with local multiplayer. The PlayerInput component does its job, and I think can work fine, but the thing I found wanting the most was persisting players across selection screens and simultaneously understanding how it will handle disconnect/reconnect events. Having to do that manually (if, of course, I'm not mistaken) is definitely a shortcoming

Notwithstanding, thanks Rene for your continued efforts. I haven't lurked on every forum, but I can't say I've seen anyone take complaints on the chin and continue to address their user base as you have. I'm sure we all have worked places (or currently do lol) which limit our ability to create ideal scenarios .

 

For me there is nothing intuitive about it and the code is messy and difficult to work with, even completely bizarre in some places. It seems like there are no developers who can actually agree on standards and with every new update comes a completely different control scheme with brand new C# syntax and 0 HELP. After my next game is out, I'm switching to Unreal.

 

This looks like an emotional reaction. Unity is better than before with this new Input system. Changes in updates are normal and should be welcome if you want to see changes.
Yeah I complained too myself, it still need some refinement and clear documentation for specific cases, but you can do a lot now, once you get the basics.
You can switch to unreal, but the perfect game engine does not exist and you will certainly have to learn more new things.

 

@Rene-Damm is there any ETA on when it is expected to get 1.1 Release version of Input System?

Unfortunately I can not use 1.1 preview samples cause using Unity 2021.

Thx in advance!

 

So nothing has been fixed. The new input system is STILL garbage. Unity for the love of god, please release some documentation that illustrates step by step how to setup Keys/Gamepads/Mobile. Its like you guys write code and interfaces and then just leave everyone in the dark about how they operate. I haven't found a SINGLE tutorial yet that approaches this system in a methodically similar and reproduceable way that explains what is happening. This is not good design.

What's next GOTO statements?

So I made that post LAST YEAR inputchaos.... I'm still having the same problems THIS YEAR. That tells you that this NEW INPUT SYSTEM SUCKS.

 

I just hope that in the newer updates they add a way to change an active control scheme or detect events of new devices and disconnected devices more "friendly" when using C# class wrapper, as they really enforce you to use the PlayerInput class for almost everything