Is there any way to automate sharing builds to some email addresses for the free tier ? Since the number of extra collaborators is basically 0 for the free tier, the only way I found to share builds with the team is by manually passing the link to whomever.
If this is the only way, whole cloud build for free tier is useless as:
automated builds = manual emails
build process is orders of magnitude slower than local build
capped to 1/h
I understand EC2 costs must be offset and free tier shouldnt be abused but…
Interesting points! Would you prefer to acquire additional build time reduction or automated shared builds sent to specified emails independent of the main tiers?
I use the builds e.g. when working on games, I commit changes, continue working without testing it on the device, and when I go for a coffee I check my build list and download them and test them. So I don’t spend time waiting to build to the device but do some testing during breaks.
If my artist works on the game I’m usually not available (time zones) but as she does not use Unity, I need to make her builds to test the gfx which brings a delay of at least one day. But now with UCB, she checks in her changes in the sprites via a nice script I made for her and she get’s an email when the build is finished and then she can test it on her Galaxy without me doing anything :-}
I guess you’re not using the free tier then ? Currently I’m in a new team and trying to optimize a bit the workflow and I think this cloud build will really help. However, being still at the beginning I’m not fully sure if the gains we would get out of the cloud build are significant enough to warrant paying for it, for now at least.
I can understand your workflow with writing code and testing in coffee breaks and 1 build/h cap will definitely help your health on the long run (or keep coffee intake under control :). Anyway, testing can be done in local desktop builds for most features and UCB can help with automated builds for other devices.
Maybe I’m just too used to the mindset of CI and expected faster turnovers. However, the deal breaker for me, for free tier is the need to interact with the builds to make them available for testing. The workflow I envisioned is something in the lines of UCB acting as integrator:
we use version control tools
each team member checks in parts they work on, without caring much, for now, about what others do (no immediate pulling should be possible as team is distributed in different locations and we have somewhat clear cut topics allocated for each member)
UCB builds with whatever frequency free tier supports and makes builds available for all members (notice we are in different timezones and builds should be available and testable also while I’m napping)
in case parallel development breaks the build, UCB notifies build failures to all team members
team is happy with workflow and considers moving from free tier to get faster turnover, bigger project size, bigger team size (5+ lets say)
community sees UCB as something worth using, much more than a milking station
On a side note, are you using G2 instances on AWS ? If so, is GPU support really needed for headless builds ? I guess this really takes a hit on UCB’s running expenses.
Well, we are a small team and it’s free so that’s what you get and there are ways to make it possible if you look out of the box. For teams larger than 2 people, 25$ a month is no deal and if those are full time devs you probably need Unity pro anyway which comes with the pro tier of UCB, beside a lot of cool userful other stuff such as Level 11 and game performace reporter . The price for UCB is reasonable, especially, when I compare it with the prices I have to pay for my Amazon setup, hosting the repositories and running the Jenkins instances for a slightly bigger team I work with - where I currently rebuild the mobiles builds - not for desktops though- to use UCB, as the pro tier is totally enough for this team.
But yes we evaluate a lot of optins and there is much more to come, so it’s good to hear different opinions! Thanks for that!
I can not tell you details about the farms, but if you setup your own build farm - especially with Unity 5 and realtime GI, you will know the pitfalls which can occur making headless builds!
Would you prefer to acquire additional build time reduction or automated shared builds sent to specified emails independent of the main tiers?
@David-Berger :
I joined UCB expecting automatic share of builds to my coworker. Otherwise, it adds nothing to me, as I can build locally and send it to him.
@alvarog and @dqw_2 - thanks for trying out the service! If 1 person on your team purchases Cloud Build Pro ($25 per month) or buys Unity 5 (which comes with Cloud Build Pro) then you should get automatic build sharing in the form of emails with the install links and the build log.
It truly is magical, and if you don’t like it after 1 month you can cancel or downgrade back to the free plan.
Just to be clear: you don’t need $25 per person, you just need 1 team member with a Pro plan. The collaborators can all be free users. I hope you’ll try it!
If you don’t think it’s worth $25 per month, I’d be interested to hear what monthly price feels fair & valuable to you. Thanks!
Sorry to barge into the thread, but that’s an interesting point I’m hearing for the first time. That makes the Studio plan a very attractive proposition over Pro, even. So, to confirm, having one person on the team subscribed to the paid tier of the UCB and performing project management duties (creating, removing, etc.) and other team members on the free tier of the UCB in the collaborator role is a valid and encouraged setup?
Yes, absolutely. Cloud Build’s plans are designed around how many / how often / how fast it builds a project. There are collaborator limits, but there are no restrictions on collaborators needing to have the same plan to work on a project together. Project features are determined / inherited based on the project creators plan.
We’re should update our communications to make this point clearer, I feel like it’s an important point that has gotten lost amidst other discussions.?
Thanks for clearing that up! Yeah, I would agree that it might be useful to reiterate that point somewhere. I would hazard a guess that most Unity developers have the terms of Unity Pro licensing in mind when they see the words “Pro subscription” - at least, I definitely had. It’s probably too late to rename the second tier, but mentioning that question in the FAQ and/or on the plan selection page might be worthwhile.
. The price for UCB is reasonable, especially, when I compare it with the prices I have to pay for my Amazon setup, hosting the repositories and running the Jenkins instances for a slightly bigger team I work with - where I currently rebuild the mobiles builds - not for desktops though- to use UCB, as the pro tier is totally enough for this team.
