Official Workflow Case Study - Show us your pain!

Sometimes I get these weird memory crashes, possibly Profiler related (I'm in 2022.1 messing with VS Interpreter so issues to be expected). Unity tells me I haven't got quantum memory installed!

 

Unity: Use the assetstore to add functionality to your development! (Shows amazing screenshot of fire and trees and an amazing game).

Experience:
You decide to add a tree with snow to your scene.
You download an asset which has a 3rd party shader for HDRP 7.2
Three months later you update your project to 2020.3, which has HDRP 10.6
Custom shader no longers works because HDRP is not forward compatible
Asset store developer says an update is coming soon, so you move onto other development.
You decide to add fire to your torch, requiring another 3rd party shader.
Six months later an update comes out for the custom tree shader to HDRP 10.7
You update to HDRP 10.7 so that you can use the tree again.
Now you discover that the fire shader only works on HDRP 10.6
Asset store developer says an update is coming soon for the fire shader, so you move onto other development.
<repeat loop for everything requiring an HDRP shader>

 

Yeah, but its called UNITY. What do you want, something unified???

 

My pain is I am constantly getting bugs in Unity, magic enable this optionb disable this look at this long video try the magic non explained fix that did work on the previous version but does not work for me constant crashes constant blocked builds constant frustration

 

I cant even select things in the Scene view now.

 

I am using Unity since 8 years now and except for version 2019.2 (I think), I never encountered such bugs. IDK if it was 2019.2 but one version was very unstable, constantly crashing - but they fixed it with newer releases.

This thread is more of a "I am using unity since a long time, I know what I am doing and this is my workflow pain and it could be fixed with [insert feature]"-thread.
Bugs should be sent as Bug Reports, using the Button in the Editor.
-> https://support.unity.com/hc/en-us/articles/206336985-How-do-I-submit-a-bug-report

And btw. I am so, so happy how this thread turned out, a lot of the suggestions here are acutally implemented.

• contextual shortcuts
• scene view overlays
• unified scale in transform inspector
• performance optimisations
• copy and paste in Hierarchy and Project window
• property inspector
• reorderable lists
• ..

 

could be related to this, or at least i had this similar issue:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/cant-select-ui-elements-through-scene-without-enabled-gizmos.984792/
its unity 2020.x "feature", Gizmos needs to be enabled to select some of the objects..

 

There's an icon in the Layers panel which disables selection. Took me ages to find it.

 

I thought for a long time garbage collection was an issue causing lag spikes in my game. Turns out it was "other", specifically "editor profile".

Why did I get those confused?

Well, the profiler, for some reason, for nine colors, chose to use four which are a shade of cyan or green, two or three of which are a shade of olive green / gray, and then there is an orange.

It's only nine colors, guys/gals/otherkin. You really could have used 9 very high contrast colors.

 

You can ctrl click on a texture in a material, to view it a little closer. Instead of a 64 x 64, you get a 128 x 128 (maybe 256 x 256). either way, it is pretty much useless in most cases. Need a zoom or button to increase size.

there also is no "X" in the upper right to close the window. So I either often hit the "A" or look around somewhere on screen to click to make the window close that wont mess with the game or what I was viewing in the inspector originally.

 

Pain? Almost everyday on console will crash if played long enough.
Unity has no compacting garbage collector, even if the standard .NET offer this feature.

 

I'll add just a bunch of simple small issues with the project view that I really would expect to have been solved after using unity for 5 years;

• With the project view focused, you should be able to press any key and jump to files/folders starting with that key.
• Mouse button 4 and 5 should behave like back/forward buttons.
  
• We should be able to control whether the project hierarchy view expands or stays locked when opening a folder. I would love to have the hierarchy view only displaying level 1 no matter where I am in the project view. Right now I have to alt-click close the "assets" folder and reopen it after every folder interaction to get the structure I want.

These are features of almost all file explorers and they never made it to Unitys.

 

I think I've seen it before mentioned here, with people saying how you can change it, not sure.

But probably the most aggravating thing for me of all is the scene view camera clipping when I want to get up close, detailed look at things. I start zooming in in scene view to look at something, and it clips out way too early. I don't know if this is because I am looking at tiny things on giant maps or what, but it kills me, and I have never been able to figure out why its that way, or how to get around it.

 

We work on a huge project with tons of FBX's and textures. Lots of characters, costumes, animations, etc. One of our big pain points is project startup time. It takes us an average of 10 minutes (!) just for the "Initialize Asset Database" phase of startup, and that's before any actual asset importing takes place!

Peeking around in Resource Monitor it looks like this is where Unity loads

Library/ArtifactDB

, which is a 2GB file in our project. I suspect there's no easy fix for this without some kind of massive rewrite of Unity's asset database internals, but I thought I'd share anyway.

One obvious suggestion is SSD's for everyone (I can already hear the higher-ups: "SSD's for DATA STORAGE!? We just bought the artists 10TB HDD's because their 6TB drives were filling up!"), but to be honest it still takes forever even on an SSD...

 

Hit F to focus some object that's about the size of what you want to look at, that resets the near clip plane of the scene camera.

There is for sure a bug where the near clip of the camera, and other camera settings in general, just drift. It's always been there.

 

I do that all the time, but it does not help.

I am guessing part of the problem is a map 500 units large, and things on the map 0.5 units large.
Also, mixing UI with 3d objects is part of it too, probably. Whatever it is, I have never been able to get it to work well, at all.

Mostly, it is when trying to look at, say the collider or navmesh on my map. I don't know if it is because I spawn those at 0,0,0 and Unity is assuming meshes with center pivots or what.

 

I just loaded a project from my backup HDD, and it took way more time to load than from SSD. (by a magnitude of I'd say about 4).

 

Have you tried changing the clipping planes manually?

 

Have you tried using addressables? Maybe it would help? IDK

Or having the ArtifactDB (what kind of DB is it?) outside of Unity and accessing it from code? Then in a BuildPostprocessor adding it manually to the build/resources folder?

 

One small thing that happens all the time is mistaking the console for the Project search bar
So many times I write in the console by mistake because it looks the same at a glance
This could have some more visible indicator in the search bar

 

It's not one of our assets; it's a file that Unity auto-generates in the Library folder. I have no idea what format it's in; my guess is that it's the main mapping of all the assets in the project (the Assets folder) to their internal cached representations in the Library/Artifacts folder, but only a Unity dev could say for sure.

 

Oh, yeah, our project definitely loads a lot faster on an SSD! It still takes a few minutes due to the sheer content volume though. A couple of our machines are using SSD's but the majority of the artists are using 6TB-and-up HDD's for their data. I guess I'll see if I can convince whoever's in charge to buy some for everyone...

 

Oh another one - when hovering over the "window-tab-bar", we should be able to use the mouse wheel to scroll through. It's such a hassle to move the pointer over to those small arrows.

 

Hi,is there any possibility to save the size and position for Unity Editor windows?

My desktop screen was a wide one( 3440*1440 )，So I set position and size for every Editor window(Including the main one),which are suitable for me. But it looks like the position and size info for each window was not recorded in saved layout I guess,cause I need to reset those positions everytime when reopen Unity..(Loading saved layout was not helpful)

 

Clicking an object field should bring the Project window into focus if it's not already.
If that's not possible, make it so a double-click does it!
It's extremely frustrating to have to manually manage tabs to perform basic navigation like this.

 

The backspace shortcut used in the Project window should either be changed to be a bindable shortcut, or it should not fire if holding a function key.

There are plenty of shortcuts that need porting, but there should at least be a pass to remove integrated bindings that take up a key +combinations from being usable shortcuts!

 

One thing I really want to hone in again, which is such an essential and key thing done hundreds of times:

When you CTRL+D duplicate something in the hierarchy
It keeps inserting it at the very bottom of the entire hierarchy
This can often be hundreds or even thousands of assets apart from the original
and warrant a lot of scrolling and confusion, reordering of your hierarchy to fit back into view and all sorts of fiddling and is just very messy. This is also so easy to fix. I do understand code inserting at the bottom but by manual arrangement it really should not.

This can also cause unwanted behavior. Per example if I duplicate a background, it will insert it at the bottom of my hierarchy, and be infront of the rest, hiding the other elements, while it should just be.

A manual CTRL-D copy should always be next to the original, and inserted on the next below position. This is also the behavior of most other softwares I know.

 

Also please can we fix the text - we have enough space in the Project window to display 2 lines without even adjusting the spacing even on the smallest possible setting!



Its been over 10 years and half of everyones names are cut-off for no reason.
This is such a fundamental part of the project and the entire engine and would be such a low hanging fruit to improve

 

Hi Unity Team, is there an update whether Serializable Dictionaries will be on the roadmap without having to resort to workarounds? This is the biggest pain affecting my workflow for 8 years and it still is with the latest version of Unity. The quoted post has support from other users. Thank you.

 

An hour... seriously??

 

It took them 8 years to add variable speed to the scene camera... it's not like these quality of life changes bring in any immediate improvement to the share price, so no, you can't have it. But instead you can have one of these things: https://unity.com/products

 

First things this morning was only to change one TextMeshPro atlas (I switched the rendering mode to SDF) and now Unity got stuck on entering Play Mode. Something must be really broken in Unity.
I lost so many time waiting on the Reload Script Assemblies. Basically my productivity is cut into half if not even more, atleast with the 2021 LTS.
Is Unity aware how much financial (time == money) loss is created for devs around the globe with such a slow editor?

 

Imma go with a little list. Sorry if some suggestions will repeat what was already mentioned.
First of all, it would be really nice to improve object field, since it's kinda bad.

• There is no "clear" in context menu. So you may have to scroll A LOT to select "empty"
• When using on assets and type filter is MonoBehvaiour, you can not select prefabs, but dragging them works for some reason. Which means you must always use typeof(GameObject) for prefabs which leads to mess in object picker.
• Object picker should use grid-based layout by default for Textures. And in general, maybe it should remember layout by type and not by last usage?
• This should be built in feature, better with some sort of API so you could see this selection process in your own tools and interact with it (e.g. filter your own selection suggestion based on whatever user currently wants)
• Just clicking on stuff once in object picker changes value of a field. Which is kinda annoying because you may have custom editor that does something when field is changed, but I just wanted to preview asset
• Why SearchService.ShowObjectPicker is not used by default? It looks like an improvement in every single way except speed. It would be amazing if this picker would show results instantly like default one and replaced it eventually

General notes:

• Assets/Create menu is a nightmare. As for now it has more options than my screen can even display and I don't even have that many packages. Maybe we could have better context menus, similar to ones in Blender, that look nice and have icons to help navigation? Also maybe you could even include search there
• Maybe we could have inspector locking mode that locks on scene objects. Meaning if you select scene object then inspector changes accordingly, but when selecting in project view then inspector stays the same. This is also useful when you're assigning fields and want to preview assets. I'd suggest you then open assets using "Properties..." conext menu option
• Currently we have 2 different snapping tools in scene view for some reason. They have different snapping sizes, and one works only when holding CTRL and other only when you rotation pivot is set to global. Why? And also why don't I always see snapping values? Why not simplify it to something like this? Please stop abusing dropdowns for scene overlays

• Even better, one of these snapping options is not accessable through API because it's internal
• When you close the scene window it looses all overlays you've opened for some reason, so you have to setup them all over again
• If scene overlay on top of the window gets overflown, you can't scroll it
• Undo history window is not a drop down window. Which is understandable since you may want to dock it, but it makes it annoying for how I use it, making me press X each time. Why not allow us to turn undo history into dockable window by using context menu or button or some other thing? This is totally possible to do using current API.
• Stack traces in console window are selectable but also clickable. Which is understandable, but sometimes I find myself confused whether or not did unity actually register my click or VisualStudio just being slow. So maybe some better feedback?
• Also if unity seeks to improve console window (which seems to be the case looking at roadmap) you should really look into what needle-console does. The only problem with it is that it's slow (in my experience)
• Maybe we could have icons for Project folders? Special icon for test folder, editor folder, etc with ability to set your own custom icon like you do with Game Objects
• Speaking of custom icons, please consider allowing to make your own preview for prefabs. There are a lot of prefabs that have no MeshRenderer but I still would like them to have at least some component icon, to not be this "blue cube" that tells you nothing

As a side note. Can someone from Unity FINALLY look at this thread? The way unity ignores so many people is just not right

 

I justr upgraded from a GTX1070 to an RTX3080 and my build performance is much worse!!

 

The overrides list does not have a search. I have to manually scroll through literally thousands of lines to find what i want

 

Of course Unity cares. They give you all these nice things: https://unity.com/products

 

I thought you were serious for a second.

 

Just trying to get myself familiar with editor scripting, set up some serialized properties managed to read non-array/non-list properties with a kind of hacky in my opinion solution with property.intValue/boolValue/floatValue/stringValue etc. but i see no possibilities to read property that's array/list and it makes me go nuts.

- and its 2k22

 

Trying to get accustomed to using new APIs and functions - specifically Search and Toolbars - I find the documentation lacking and sometimes confusing, and the features themselves not ready for production use.

Just today I wanted to add a Dropdown to my Toolbar Overlay.

Here are the docs search results for "toolbarvverlay dropdown".
This is the first result - no mention of "dropdown" at all.
A few results down there's the generic ToolbarOverlay, if you read through all the code in there you can spot it's using
EditorToolbarDropdownToggle (as a developer I don't understand if I need that - as the class name has Toggle in it, and I just want a dropdown).
After finding what I actually wanted - I realised it's essentially just a button with an On Click event that creates and shows a GenericMenu. Is that what I need to be using? What's the purpose of this class being a "Dropdown" if I'm listening to a click event and showing a menu? Why is the menu not aligned to the button showing it (like normal dropdowns)? As a programmer I would expect the workflow to be something like:

1. I create a class and inherit from EditorToolbarDropdown
2. I start typing "override" into my IDE, one of the results should be "Get Children", the other "OptionSelected"
3. I implement those two - and done - I get a dropdown behaving like normal editor dropdowns.

This might seem nit-picky about a very specific thing - but I find similar issues with any "new" Unity feature I'm trying to test. As someone with a lot of Unity experience, it's very frustrating to keep telling my team "yeah that feature is cool but we don't use it because of this and this and that". (we'd love to use the Plastic integration, but it crashes the editor and sometimes prevents entering play mode, which is less than ideal)

 

Not really the correct thread for this as it is meant of the UX of the editor, not really the creating process. However a short answer would be GetArrayElementAtIndex(..) and other methods similarly named. A quick google search should give you numerus results of how to do it. Feel free to make a separate thread and @ me if you have more questions or hop on the Unity discord and ask there

 

After 13 pages of peoples pain, perhaps now it is time to turn it around, and have Unity show us what they are doing to fix these specific pains??

 

They are buying lots of companies!!!


Can't you see that?


New companies will totally help the basic nuances of your daily independent game developer workflows!

The future is BRIGHT!!! -- SO BRIGHT, I tell you!!!


SO BRIGHT it might just BLIND YOU and BURN YOUR EYES OUT.

Didn't you know that Speedtree will fix and futureproof tool development workflows like ShortcutManagement and Workspace API? And Weta will make HDRP easier to use? Oh and don't forget that new IronSource merger will make app development easier by making you able to bleed more money out of your whales and make it easier to manipulate their basic human instincts, also making Unity more money in the process when you and I successfully complete and publish a project!! -- Who cares how many external companies and applications you must use to do that!! -- Unity is easy!!!!!


How clueless could one person be?
Didn't you know we all use Unity to make AAA movies and throwaway mobile apps! -- And Unity is sooo easy to use that we _always_ complete our projects with it -- and always before our spirit dies or our motivation to continue runs out due never having to worry about half-complete workflow and tooling solutions or extremely sparse (or completely nonexistent) documentation!!! -- Besides, the Asset Store exists for that sort of stuff, and people ONLY upload useful solutions there!!

Workflow pains don't matter! -- We ALL just pay somebody else to create tools and functionality for us and all is right in the world!!!

What indie game company can't afford to do that?? -- Surely all the important gamedevs can do this! -- Why can't you??


Who needs a game engine???


Just remember:

Don't do anything _too_ ambitious (like trying to implement large open streaming multiplayer experiences -- Gigaya wasn't even that, and we still couldn't finish it!) -- You gotta make a lot of tools to do that kind of thing, and Unity isn't really good at that sort of stuff anyway.

Why don't you just go make a movie or a simple mobile app instead?


PS: -- A mobile app is a "game" too!! -- Who needs quality immersive game experiences anymore! -- Especially with the new movement toward VR and XR devices! -- We need more 2D mobile developers and big-budget 2D movie creators!!! -- Otherwise Unity won't be profitable!!!



/s

 

I remember saying the following many many years ago, summarizing Unity.

"Unity is Stubborn, Incompetent, and Lazy"

It is still valid these days and nothing has changed.
Actually, it's getting worse after going IPO. Their only interest is to keep the investor remain interested. The developers are second-class citizens.
If, perhaps, their stock dips below $10, they will turn their head around and try to find what's going on.

Anyway, dealing with Unity was unbearably painful and I left for Unreal a few years ago vowing not to piss toward Unity unless something (at least one of the three above??) changes.
The biggest pain now is to watch Unity getting screwed by THE (fall) GUY and it's getting worse and worse.
Yeah, it's possible for a big company gets screwed by a single person. We all watched what happened to Intel.

My last hope? I don't expect Unity will fix all the pains anytime soon.
But at least we can remain hopeful that THE GUY gets removed.
It will be the sign that Unity is trying to change and we will all celebrate then.

My two cents!

 

Can't even rage quit properly...

 

Remember the days when wanting to stop meant flicking a power switch? Bang, done! Now it's ask permission and wait a while or three.

 

So have ANY items from these 13 pages of pain actually been addressed? Even a single one????

 

Read this and let me know if I am ignorant or just way too pissed off but this sounds like if you get caught bleeding you will be executed before you die.
https://forum.unity.com/threads/informational-google-play-metrics-november-2022-update.1373505/
I have halted all Android and Oculus development for over a year now as I will not fix any more nor be involved and sleuthing of the push problems any more. I can wait because this is not my only rodeo. I do not work for anybody that does not pay and the investment in this platform failure is a rabbit hole.
The last solution I saw was to run Unity in admin mode but I have yet to try because all the other shorts and sweets did nothing.
Also the new investors think they can run the show better. Unity we are watching and we all know corporate failures when we see them.
Like said before Blender is gaining ground on you and they ARE going to eat your lunch. They have nodes in all the working categories and now they are introducing animation. Unity, you better wake up. Columbo has spoken.
Back to the problem at hand: 13 pages? what the hell are efforts happening? Have all the devs fled? Is there no one on board that can manage systems correctly?
Oh I see. Ask for inclusion by proxy for that good feel expose and then beat up anybody who cares who thought this was a platform for solutions. From some of the posts I have done before I should have be kicked off because I dont hold back to deceit or lying. So this tells me that maybe these posts arent being read by the powers that be that could make a choice.
I have 41 years of development on ALL computer platforms so my view of things that fail in other's hands is quite extensive. For this Unity effort I bought 5 phones, the Quest, Oculus headset, a $4,000.00 gpu based laptop then the platform push failures started. I have pushed 5 apk before. I have a public apk that was rejected for gambling even though there is no sign on nor asks for funds. My last work failed the push midstream in publishing.
If I am incorrect then crucify me. I will gladly bleed out in public.

 

Yes, a lot of them:

• ReorderableLists and Arrays (Page1 xarismax)
• In Engine Asset Store Tab was removed (Page1 sonicviz)
• "Just make the Editor works faster" (Page1 chrisk)
• "quick ways to search" -> QuickSearch Package (Page1 JohnHudeski)
• "fix [...] random behaviour of Object and Prefab XYZ origins when dragging into the hierarchy" -> there is now an option in the preferences to place prefabs always at (0,0,0) (Page1 Flow-Fire-Games)
• "making objects unselectable" & "hide it" -> hierarchy picking/visibility mode options (Page1 illinar)
• "Scrolling through the list of Scripting Define Symbols when you have more than a dozen define symbols. It's a pain!" -> it's now a properly structured list in the player settings (Page2 transat)
• "having to use a third-party image host to share the above image with you." -> images can be posted directly into the forum now (Page2 transat)
• asset browser cut/paste (Page2 oxysofts)
• Fullscreen playmode (Page2 Lars-Steenhoff)
• "When you build a player, Unity processes scenes, assets and shaders before actually trying to compile the code" -> that's not the case anymore (Page2 Neto_Kokku)
• "not having any way to know which of my assets need updating" -> works now in package manager (Page3 transat)
• "THE MULTI-INSPECTOR WORKFLOW" -> implemented with property inspectors (Page3 awesomedata)
• Transform Scale: locking x/y/z via lock or link button and when you enter eg x, it's applied to y and z automatically" -> this button exists now in the Transform Inspector (Page4 Rowlan)
• "I suggest suppressing all editor hotkeys while in fullscreen mode." -> Hotkeys can be disabled in when the game view is focused (Page4 Ne0mega)
• "No cut & paste in project or hierarchy panes!!" -> this is now possible (Page5 oxysofts)
• "I can drag and move components around, but if I don't drop pixel-perfectly on the line between two other components, the action is ignored. I almost always have to try multiple times." -> line is now a bit bigger (Page6 tomblind)
• "I'd love to be able to create multiple prefabs at once with drag and drop game object to project folder" -> this is now supported (Page6 Antony-Blackett)
• Workspace concept -> more or less included with SceneView Overlays, mentioned multiple times in the thread, I'll reference it at (Page8 awesomedata)
• "Could we have an "Empty" template in Unity Hub" -> exists now (Page8 Djayp)
• "when trying to move things around in hierarchy, if one of your objects are "open" "showing children", and you try to drag to reorder, you can not drag an item underneath that object without it becoming of child of said object" -> this is fixed with the blue line now, you can just move your mouse to the left and it will show if it's added as child or at the same hierarchy level (Page11 Ne0mega)
• Contextual Shortcuts -> partially implemented (in game view) partially still WIP on the roadmap (Page11 requested by me)
• "Or this: [Picture of long list of Scene-Gizmo-Toggles with no search bar]" -> the scene gizmo window now has a search bar (Page11 LightStriker)

A few others are planned such as searchable context menu and I've probably missed a few because I don't use everything unity has to offer (XR, ECS specific requests).

Also I have skipped a few of the very long posts in this thread, so maybe Undo History was also mentioned somewhere, idk.

But overall - a lot of things made it from this thread into the editor and I do hope that more of those QoL Features/Suggestions are added in the future.

 

You list 23 items, however there's 650 posts in the thread, meaning that approximately 4% got dealt with.. Granted, not all comments equal a point of pain, but its far from a LOT.

Im still suffering from that stupid script execution order list with no scrollbars. How hard is it to add a damn scrollbar?

While were on scrollbars, what the hell is the package manager doing, it actually has a working scrollbar, however it only adds some items and makes you click an "All" button for it to add the rest of the packages into the window. That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen.