Would you use an Asset Store asset that depends on Preview Packages?

From the Unity Manual:
“Preview packages can go through many changes before they are ready to be verified for a specific version of Unity.”
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/upm-lifecycle.html

I am developing a tool that I plan to put up for sale on the Unity Asset Store. This tool will do work both in the editor and at runtime. I am considering using ECS in this tool, but ECS is currently a Preview Package. If I did use ECS, it would be “under the hood” and so users would not need any knowledge of or be required to code with ECS. I can create the tool with only Verified packages, but ECS has some really useful features that are perfect for the tool. Also, whenever ECS is verified I would probably want to rewrite my tool to use it if I had written it without ECS in the first place. So I want to get an idea of how willing Unity users are to use a tool from the asset store that requires Preview Packages to be installed in their project. If you could select an answer to this poll and reply with any thoughts you have that’d be great. Thanks!

 

It really depends on my skill level as to how practical preview packages are. As some one with part time about 2 yrs of working in unity, I'm hesitant to use preview packages for two reasons:
* I likely don't have the skill to fix issues when I bump into edge cases that the preview package will have.
* I likely don't have the skill to upgrade from a preview package to the release package when it finally hits release.

So if you are targeting less experienced developers for your tool, avoid preview package dependencies if you can.

With that said, if I were working on a giant RTS with multiplayer (or anything that DOTS would greatly benefit) and I knew it was a multi-year project, I'd assume that starting with DOTS today will cost me some time at the upgrade point, but be worth it in the long run. But again, with only a few years of part time working in unity, I don't think I'd be ready to take on that scale/scope of a project yet.

Is your asset targeting specialized niche cases which only experienced developers would need and understand, go ahead, but my advice for us less experienced developers, help us keep the packages as much in the stable branch as possible, or else we risk derailing and abandoning our project altogether.

 

Awesome! Thanks a lot for your reply. My tool will basically use ECS under the hood and not require the user to interact with ECS at all. You are right to bring up edge cases as that is the main issue with Preview Packages. My main fear is that people will not want to use my tool since it uses ECS under the hood which is a Preview Package and may therefore suffer from random edge-case type errors stemming from the Preview DOTS packages. Given all that, do you think an inexperienced Unity developer would be ok to use my tool? If random edge cases do come up resulting from ECS, I could just update with fixes/workarounds.

 

I chose the third answer although it doesn't actually reflects my real opinion on the matter. I use preview and experimental packages to test them, I would certainly not SELL anything made with packages that are not production ready and verified. I would not put them on the Assets Store for free either for that matter.

 

Thanks for your reply! I saw at least one asset on the asset store that was built on ECS and expected its users to understand and use ECS in their code. It had good reviews. Here’s a link https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/network/dotsnet-102633
That of course doesn’t mean it’s always ok to sell assets relying on Preview Packages. Why do you think it’s a bad idea to sell (or put of for free) assets which rely on Preview Packages?

 

If you can take on the burden of supporting it whenever preview packages break things then it could be fine. For your own sake a subscription type model might help you maintain your sanity if maintenance is more involved than you expected. See how https://odininspector.com/ do things for example.

 

For my personal projects, I wouldn't use preview packages, but that is mainly because I can't afford the time to keep things up to date or fix those edge cases, but again, that's just because I'm still a novice. If your tool is meant to be purchased and used by novices, don't bake in the requirement for ECS yet if you don't have to.