Yes, my friends, when a put all objects on static the game don’t play and don’t build what I can do? I’m doing a mistake? What can I do?
Making things static often marks them as lightmap static which can then trigger lighting and if you have a crazy amount of objects / lights in your scene, build times can go through the roof. I’ve seen build times go from 30 seconds to 4 hours by doing this.
If you’re just getting an error on the other hand, well, start with this:
The complete error message contains everything you need to know to fix the error yourself.
The important parts of the error message are:
- the description of the error itself (google this; you are NEVER the first one!)
- the file it occurred in (critical!)
- the line number and character position (the two numbers in parentheses)
- also possibly useful is the stack trace (all the lines of text in the lower console window)
Always start with the FIRST error in the console window, as sometimes that error causes or compounds some or all of the subsequent errors. Often the error will be immediately prior to the indicated line, so make sure to check there as well.
Look in the documentation. Every API you attempt to use is probably documented somewhere. Are you using it correctly? Are you spelling it correctly? Are you structuring the syntax correctly? Look for examples!
All of that information is in the actual error message and you must pay attention to it. Learn how to identify it instantly so you don’t have to stop your progress and fiddle around with the forum.
If it’s an error during building:
How to troubleshoot build failures:
Obviously, if there is actionable data, clues or information within any of the errors, fix those problems. Each error entry may have more information than can fit in the console log so select each error and read the expanded view below it.
If that gives you nothing worthwhile (look to Google! You’re never the first one!), then…
First, make a blank project with a single blank scene and prove that it builds successfully.
If the blank project does NOT build, go fix your Unity installation or your other tools, such as Android SDK, NDK, JDK, etc. It may even be necessary to change to a different version of Unity3D. It is generally best to stay with LTS versions of Unity3D.
Until you can build a blank project to the target platform, don’t fiddle with anything else.
Once you can build a blank project, now bisect the problem by bringing over parts of your current project and building it one subsystem at a time, perhaps stubbing things out that might trigger compiler errors.
Most often things that prevent building are third-party libraries such as Firebase.
Once you identify the subsystem, go to the documentation for it and make sure you are doing it correctly.
It may also be helpful to work through a tutorial or two for whatever subsystem is making the build fail.
Android build not building:
Circa July 2022 here have been reports of Unity’s installer failing to install the Android Tools.
Here was how I brought up Unity2020.3.41 and the Android SDK 31 on October 30, 2022 (edited on August 23, 2023 to include Android SDK 33…) (and again for SDK34):
Android Gradle errors and other related stuff: