Why does Unity support suck so bad on the forums?

This is not a troll post and I am not trying to attack Unity. I really wonder why I don't see many (if any) good responses to questions on the support forums. I see so many questions going without answer or the only response being the OP saying "anyone?". Is everyone posting stupid questions, if so how are they stupid, I don't know? Was my question about self-illuminated shaders stupid (twice), I did quote the docs even? I would love to help others asking questions, but I don't know the answer myself.

 

I don't think you're reading the same forum I am. If what you're really saying is "why doesn't anyone answer my question", I don't think this is the most productive way of going about it.

--Eric

 

I think the topic could be more general:

"Why does Unity support suck so bad" full stop.

I think the forums are really an "unofficial" support channel - i.e. Unity staff are not obligated to offer assistance via the forums but they help out here and there. Other users are of course completely free to contribute to, or ignore posts. So really, posting on the forums doesn't guarantee any sort of answer.

 

Well, I do understand your criticism. I guess I already had one or two topics without any answer as well. But you shouldn't blame anybody for this, especially not the "official" Unity team, because you cannot expect them to answer every question on the forums, not even partially.
There are always very specific questions that people come up with and it's pretty unlikely that User X who is online and willing to help immediately has the right answer. However, don't be mad and try something else to solve your issue if there aren't any answers. Or write a pm to a user who came up with a similar questions.

 

You posted the same question about self-illuminated shaders twice, without any change to the content of the post. The second one even has a horrible title saying it is a huge bug, while the question is about something that you don't understand.

Now, the reason why those posts were mostly ignored, is because it is about a very specific bit about shaders and because the question/description itself is quite rubbish. In general, if you want to have a good reply/answer to a question, first write down the situation and problem you have and then describe what you have done and what was different to your expectation.

What you did, was take 1 line from the documentation and asked a very general question about it without showing any initiative to check or solve it yourself. You could have checked yourself how the self-illumination maps work by doing what was in the docs, or by experimenting with the parameters in the shader. That would have taken you at most half an hour instead of the 4+ days you have been waiting for an answer.

 

It's nice to have forums, and Unity Answers. But I feel they are often seen as a substitute for good documentation. Many parts of the Unity docs could use some love. It would also be nice to see more oomph put into the wiki.

 

It's also the week before Unite 2012, pretty much all the staff must be running around the office like headless chickens as it is before huge events.

Also, by tradition, they tend to show (or release soon after) their major versions during Unite, in this case Unity 4.0, which means they are cranking as much as possible to have something to present.

 

I understand if the stuff is having not much time at the moment but there are thread like this one : Asset-Server-Hangs-on-Starting-commit that does not get a answer or even a hint since 10-05-2011!

By the way the bug report and the email support are more responding but not not even a bit more helpful so -> no useful support in some areas. Does not make me happy.

On the bride side I'm surprised how good and friendly the community is trying to help if the can. Thumbs up for that.

 

i have a feeling your just going to get flamed pretty bad for this post and not find a lot of support... the forums and the people on it are usually very helpful, i personally check the new posts almost every day and answer where i can... but what you have to understand is that the people on the forum, and the unity team, are not your personal teachers. if there is a legit bug then it is unitys responsibility to assist, but otherwise your "generally" on your own unless you pay for professional training sessions.

 

I believe you can also pay Unity for premium support...

 

support can sux, this is true. I also agree if the docs were better, some questions wouldn't need to be asked. Other times, I feel the more knowledgeable people who use unity either don't use the forums, or they ignore questions they feel isn't worth answering. Other times, it does feel that any question that's not a basic one has a low chance of being answered.

 

Personally, I tend to ignore questions which are one of the following:

1) Useless title like "help!" I'm far more likely to take a look if the title gives some indication as to the topic.
2) Incomprehensible post, including the usage of excessive txtspeak (quite possibly a biased reaction, but my experience shows that people who write like that rarely seem to understand answers I write).
3) A topic about a subject I have little or no knowledge of (multiplayer stuff being a big one for me since I have done exactly zero in that area, also shaders to some extent except the basics).
4) Has been done to death, and a simple search can find plenty of answers. If I point this out, no matter how politely, people tend to get mad, so I mostly stopped doing that and just ignore the topic now.

--Eric

 

You should go to Torque. The board support is overwhelmingly... Bad. That is where I came from. Here is like a Lexus, there, a used, 93 Toyota with no air conditioning. Perhaps you are not asking questions in a way people feel like helping you with.

 

When I was starting in Unity and programming, I got a lot of help on the Unity forums. I see people still getting a lot of help. I try to help others when I can to pay back for the help I got. But I do follow similar rules to Eric on which posts I reply to. I also make a mental note of how each person responds to help. Be polite and show that you have done some research before posting, post what the answer is if you find one before someone responds, and bump a thread with new info rather than start another thread. I've noticed people who post so many questions that they seem to use the forums as the first step, rather than doing some research first, and others who are rude to people trying to help.

Now that I know more, my questions tend to go unanswered. Probably because there are fewer people who could help, but that is to be expected (although some help with the keyboard thread I bumped earlier would be nice ).

 

My 2 cents (pence) worth. I must confess I'm not suitably experienced to make a judgement though I confess I myself have posted a request for help (same issue) over a period of 18 months and never received a single reply, but therein I am in danger of self pity ;-)

I think the first post was back in 2010 (!) eeek. I think at the end of the day one has to accept the forum for what it is, "help if anyone thinks they might know the answer' I've just this evening posted an unrelated call for help. Fingers crossed

 

This.

Some other points:

Questions take time to read and understand—especially if they're not well-written. (I tend to cut people who are obviously not native English speakers a little slack, but I do feel that Unity has grown big enough now that UT should consider a "Multilingual" sub-forum for those who find it easier to read and / or write in other languages. I'm trilingual myself, for example; my native language is Italian, not English.)

Replies take time to write. There are many here who started out as newbies, but who have "made it" to a greater or lesser extent. They're people who make a living at this and have a good thing going. But this means they're likely to find less and less free time to give back to the community. You tend to see people responding in fits and starts, squeezing in a bit of community support between crunch periods, or DLC releases. After a while, you tend to drift away from such forums as, often, the last thing you want to do after 16 hours of plugging away at C# code is to read someone else's C# code and try and debug that as well. For free.

But the most crucial thing is the quality of your questions. If you're not getting the answer you wanted, chances are, you're not asking the right questions.

I don't touch questions that can clearly be answered by a simple Google search. (With occasional exceptions if the poster appears to be a non-native speaker of English.) Generally, if your post implies you suck at even basic problem-solving and research, you're not going to make it in software development, because making games is problem-solving. That's all it is. Seriously. If you can't even manage that much, it would be better for everyone involved for you to find another career.

*

Yes, the docs could do with more work, but that's always the case for complex applications that change as rapidly as Unity does.

Unity's docs team are constantly playing catch-up. Often, they'll be told that a developer has only made "a few, minor, changes", but if those changes include tweaks to the GUI, such as moving icons around, or new graph node designs, the docs team might have to re-take hundreds of screenshots, rebuild dozens of diagrams, etc. All, naturally, at the very last minute, with the release due in mere days.

Managing the documentation is easily one of the most thankless jobs in the industry, despite it being, essentially, pre-emptive customer support.

 

I think I answered your most recent cry for assistance. And I've just posted to your request for an iOS port of your "lightsim" app. (I wasn't active on these forums back then.)

 

@Zerot: First, thanks for taking the time to look at my question(s). My first attempt was genuine and I did quite a lot of research and I quoted the line from the manual that didn't make sense to me and I explained why. My second attempt, was just see what would happen if I changed the subject to something that might get a click. I spent a lot of time searching for information, reading the documentation, and playing with settings in Unity and creating textures with or without various things in the alpha channel, etc. I still do not understand why the illumination map is coming from the alpha channel of the normal map (per the docs) nor what the Illumin (A) texture is for since the illumination map is coming from the normal map (does it determine the color? do I need the illumination map in the alpha of the illumination texture?). How is my question rubbish? I guess it is rubbish to you, but I don't feel it is and I was asking so that I could understand how the shaders are supposed to work and be used.

I have just come back to these forums after long lapse and it just seems like there is less support going on now, maybe I am wrong. I don't remember a lot of posts going with zero replies when I used to frequent these forums. Also, the search function doesn't seem to have improved, so searching the forums is still problematic.

 

And again you are asking the same thing here in this thread. As I said before, experiment. Make multiple textures with stuff in alpha and not in alpha and then see what happens. That is basic problem solving.

 

God, please, bless Unity Team to create a closed forum for paying customers only...

So that professionals could actually have a quiet dedicated place for serious adult discussions without reading annoying 16 years olds.

 

@Zerot: I have experimented and I have looked at the shader source code and even created a custom shader using the source code. My question is why the docs say that the illumination map needs to be set as the alpha channel of the normal map, when that seems to not be the case. This is not a unique question, it has appeared several times in he forums and on Unity Answers, without a good answer. I am asking how to use these shaders correctly. I understand basic problem solving, thank you very much.

@Vincent Pride: fu.

 

If you had indeed looked at the shader, you would see it is getting illumination from the illumination map:

Why are you so upset about a line in the documentation? One that would take all of 10 seconds to verify?

Indeed, reading the documentation, it appears it is correct, and you have MISREAD it:

Read that line again: The alpha channel of a secondary texture

Hmm - that means, not the main texture. Let's think about it - there are two other textures, a normal map and an "illumination map".

Which one could it mean? I'll leave that as an exercise for the readers.

 

Again, I am not "so upset about a line in the documentation", I am asking what is the correct usage of this shader.

 

If you read the documentation, or looked at the shader (like you claimed you did), then you would see that it is to put the illumination data in the alpha channel of the illumination map:

o.Emission = c.rgb * tex2D(_Illum, IN.uv_Illum).a;

You read something wrong:

It doesn't say that. It helps when reading the documentation to not make assumptions, but to actually read what they say.

 

@Jaimi: so what?

 

The point is that you posted two accusatory threads based on a error you made while reading the documentation. The point is that you were the one in the wrong.

Plus, i answered your question.

A more useful post from you would probably have read like this:

You: I'm not sure where to put the illumination data when using the self illuminated shaders, can someone help me?
Lots of People: Sure! Put that in the alpha channel of the illumination map!

Problem solved, No anger, no "Huge Bug!", no "Unity Sucks!". No posting over and over again where you claim that the docs say to put it in the normal map (it doesn't), or that you read the shader and made your own (you didn't, or you would have seen).

That's "so what".

Now, with the knowledge you've hopefully gleaned from this thread, go make your game, and let this thread die.

 

My original post read:

How is this accusatory?

In addition, the manual specifically says the illumination map comes from Normal map even though that is not the case. You should read the docs again.
Here's a screen cap for you:



Also, I never said "Unity Sucks!", I said support on the forums sucks (and I mean from Unity, not users). Big difference.

Thanks.

 

You have to understand that there are a lot of new threads every day. Chances are that if someone without the know-how or time to answer doesn't read your thread in the first few hours after it's posted, your thread will be lost forever in the background noise of this forum. Simply bump it a few days later and see if anyone helps that time around.

I also find that most questions I have are already answered on the forums or on Unity Answers and can be solved with a quick search. If they are not already answered on the forums or unity answers then chances are, what I'm doing is pretty unique and not many people have done it before and would know how to solve it.

 

Not gonna lie---most of the questions are stupid.

Not that I haven't posted similar stupidity before, but, Unity is very easy to get started with but hard to master, as, as you'd expect, mastering means basically mastering 3D game development in general, which takes quite awhile. Probably 1-2 decades. Plus Unity is free to start.

Most of the questions here are about

a) the language, which is better answered elsewhere
b) 3D graphics/games in general, which is better answered elsewhere
c) managing 3D file formats (models, etc.), which is better answered elsewhere


In other words, most people posting questions are expecting Unity to be drag/drop and don't realize that, yeah, you are really going to have to put a ton of effort on your own to understand the basics. Unity is just a tool. It's not some magic solution. Just because you are using Unity doesn't mean this is the best place to ask question XYZ about 3D graphics.

I'm not knocking you in particular. I'm sure you have a valid issue. Just saying. The amount of people here asking things like "HEY HOW DO I MAKE A BUTTON IN MY GAME DO THIS?" is ridiculous. Which is what you'd expect with such an easily accessible engine that's free to start.

Now, as far as official support, well, I'm sure if you're a dev studio with money to spare (let's be serious, the Unity license is CHEAP) then you can afford to buy direct support and don't have this issue.

Plus, the community here is pretty helpful, in my experience. If you make the effort to explain your situation then you'll probably get at least one decent answer that will point you in the right direction. And there's always Google, which, if you can't find an answer to your question there, then you're probably not asking the right question and need to go back to the basics.

 

On the one side I'm clearly agreeing with you , that would bring the talk at a more business Level, but on the other side, I started wit a free version my self and not having a nice place to talk to other Unity users would be very bad for my start. Its against unity goal to democratize the game development.

Maybe an additional forum for Unity pro user would be nice.

 

I can't speak for unity staff but when they're not busy I notice they at least try to answer. They've helped a lot of people but a forum isn't really what you need, what most people need (9 out of 10) is to read the docs.

Also I don't generally bother replying to ANY question that's solved by googling and the first page of hits, or the docs. Sadly, that's most posts since most posts are of a beginner nature, and while that's fine and expected for a forum, it isn't a substitute for spending 5 mins looking for an answer.

 

Note that below the picture in the actual text it does say "a secondary texture". It's just a doc bug - just submit and go on. It remains true that if you would ask pertinent questions without accusing, that you would get better and faster answers.

 

A pro only forum only guarantees that people with the money have access. It doesn't guarantee that they will be mature OR professional.

In this case, I think your response is just as bad as the OP's post, or worse because you're showing the same behavior that you have an issue with.

 

It's an age long debate...

I believe there are benefits to have more "serious" sections to the forum, linked to a pro license. Saying that people who paid can still be immature is evident but the answer to the question of "Will generaly people with a paid license have more experience and be more serious about development"; is a big YES.

Also, nothing stops that forum to be read-only for non-pro users, so all the info is shared. Win-Win.

 

ok its not a guaranty that they will be mature OR professional but in general someone who just likes to gamble around with a tool and does not relay like to spend time reading tutorials or Docs , in differ to people who spend 1 - 3 thousand dollar and mostly take that a lot more sirius.

btw: cant imagine that a child / teenager spend about 1000$ just for gambling around.

I have seen that the most kids running around with a pirated Unity pro version , so a unity pro user who makes a thread like "HOW TO MAKE FPS DOWNLOAD" does not makes me wonder anymore.


I have seen the Pro forum Solution on Maxwell and Chaos Group (Developer of render software).
Read for everyone and write for Pro only.
So everyone can learn from that but the pro users have a Spam free place to post.

 

And now remember that nearly everybody of us has started as such a kid, toying around with some free stuff to learn the basics. Those kids are the future customers.

I have also seen Pro Forum solutions. Besides making money for the company the stuff that gots posted was nearly the same. But the stuff that gots posted in the pro section was much more arrogant. "We have paid for it, you know ..." . I would hate to have such a behaviour here. Splitting the community is never a good idea. And since the collab playground gots closed from trolling there is no more reason for a pro section really.

Most of the trolling there was from pro users by the way ...

 

@Jaimi: LOL! The page you linked to shows the exact quote I gave: "One consideration for this shader is that the Alpha Channel of the Normal map also defines the Illumination Map." And the normal map is a "secondary texture". Taking what I said out of context only makes you look like a fool.

@Everybody else: I did read the docs, I did search the forums and google and found several others asking the same question without a good answer, and I did investigate on my own (as I have documented, above) and was asking for clarification. My question may have been ignored for the reasons you say, but I think the reasons were invalid, not that it matters much. I find it really interesting to see how many people posting here think I am a young adolescent, I guess my behavior is not considered adult. Since I didn't get an answer to my initial (valid and polite) question, I thought I'd step it up and see if I got a response. All I really have gotten in response is "you can figure this out for yourself in 5 minutes by googling and reading the docs", while the docs are apparently wrong and the illumination map comes from the illumniation texture and not the normal map (which might be expected, except the docs say otherwise). You might have already known the answer to the question and thought it was stupid, but if you actually do what you say (i.e. read the docs and google) you will not find the answer.

 

It's a conspiracy yo.

 

If you'd done all this research, how did you miss this line?

o.Emission = c.rgb * tex2D(_Illum, IN.uv_Illum).a;

Maybe you're not a shader writer. Maybe you have no clue, that's Ok, you don't have to be. But then why did you claim you did, and claimed you wrote a custom shader based on it?

And "Huge Bug!" and "Why does Unity support suck so bad" is not polite, they are indeed accusations. You are clearly trying to provoke responses.

 

@Jaimi: My question was about the docs and the correct usage of the shader. Clearly the shader code shows the docs are wrong. Why do you continue point out that the shader code shows the docs are wrong. And you continue to quote me out of context. Give it up.

 

Yes, you win, I give up. Unity sucks so bad, because one line of code in the docs was wrong, even though everything else was correct. The term "illumination map" was too confusing to understand it meant that the the illumination data came from there. They should definitely stop sucking, and fix that one line. I'm 100% with you now. You've opened my eyes. I won't bring up you claiming to have read the shader or having written one based on it again. You are the winner.

 

Not to jump in here but you have just contradicted yourself.?. Or something. This is odd. I think you need to be a little more polite and except people ARE trying to help you. You, of the million users of Unity are the only one claiming such things. Majorties rule homie.

 

@Jaimi: I did create a "custom shader" to test using the source code provided by Unity just to verify that the source code they provide does work the same way as the shaders they provide. My custom shader does behave exactly the same way as the Unity shader.

 

@renman3000: how so?

 

Man, I said you won, you don't have to keep this up. you are the winner. I'm pretty sure I would have missed that line of the shader when retyping it also. Seriously, I'm on your side.

 

@Jaimi: I have never said Unity sucks. I think Unity rocks, that's why I'm here. I don't want to win here, I think we can be friends.

 

Who ordered crumpets??!