VS Code is a disaster. The C# extension keeps crashing and the only way to get autocomplete to work is by periodically installing and uninstalling it.
I was trying to find alternatives out there. It looks like the only thing people mention is Rider, which costs money. I saw some posts saying to use Atom-- which I already had downloaded-- and saw that it’s now been discontinued and it looks like the Unity package for Atom is no longer available.
I’m on a Mac, so that might be part of the issue, since VS Code seems to really work terribly on Macs, especially the C# plugin.
Anybody got any recommendations for software that will actually work out of the box and doesn’t cost a fortune? I’m a beginner here, not a professional coder; just looking for something that will get the job done. All I’m looking for is basic C# and Unity compatibility with autocomplete and debugging. I don’t need anything fancier than that.
It really seems like kind of a big deal that the go-to IDE for one of the largest game dev platforms out there is such garbage.
I’m not going to lie, the only IDE that works well for Unity on Mac is Rider. Visual Studio for Mac is a performance disaster and VSCode’s integration with Unity is terrible. Unfortunately Rider is not free. So you get to pick two:
Script Inspector 3. It’s an editor extension meaning it will exist in your project as an asset but it runs on every platform supported by the editor. It’s very lightweight too only consuming around 5 MB of disk space.
I’m currently using it in a work project that is being developed on both Windows and MacOS (M1 MacMini).
My mate boots his Apple into a windows environment to do work in, is this an option for you? That way you can develop in windows (and use the magnificent MS visual studio which works great in windows) and then maybe test run it on the apple side at the end of the project?
Note that Visual Studio and Visual Studio For Mac are two different products. Visual Studio For Mac is a rebranding of Xamarin Studio, that Microsoft bought.
So if somebody tells you that they’re happy or not happy with Visual Studio, and they’re talking about the PC version, that doesn’t actually tell you anything useful about the product you can use on Mac (:
If you think that naming scheme is horrible, wait until I tell you about this thing called XBox…
I’ve been using VSCode with Unity on a Mac for a long time. While the C# extension is a bit fiddly to get set up with Unity (always check the GitHub readme), once it works it has worked quite well. There are some idiosyncracies but I’ve gotten used to them and they’ve generally decreased with updates. I’ve given Rider a try a few times but always went back to Code because I preferred the overall experience and there weren’t any killer features that Code lacked.
Unfortunately, Unity has deprecated the VSCode integration. It still works totally fine for me but it’s a bit unclear what the near future will bring. Once Unity switches to .Net and adopts standard .Net projects, specific Unity support will hopefully no longer be required for external editors.
Glad it’s working for you. Hopefully I get there. The C# extension seems to be crashing a little bit less now. I only have to reboot it once or twice a day. Sometimes uninstall it and then reinstall it. It doesn’t seem to be giving me that annoying message saying I need to install Mono (even though I already have it) anymore, and the autocomplete seems to work most of the time. (When it crashes I disable and re-enable the extension a few times, quit VS Code, reopen it, and hope that works. If not, I have to uninstall and reinstall the extension.)
Good to know. There are a lot of these naming schemes that are really annoying.
TextEdit (the macOS equivalent to Notepad) is fast and free too but that doesn’t mean it’s useful. The OP wanted an IDE with autocompletion which means Unity integration is a necessity therefore the only option available is VS Code.
He hasn’t even logged in since October and his only threads were about getting a code editor working so chances are he’s long gone.
