Hi,
I have been noticing alot of problem with Unity over the years. It was avoidable but has become to much of a pain to ignore and would like to know if these issues are actually being fixed or even acknowledged.
Examples:
The Unity Hub barely works and likes to not login anyone, not install an editor, fail to install an editor and Auto-Update when we never want one. The Unity Hub updates constantly break everything.
Why is the Unity Editor a hot mess. The Package Manager installs packages no one ever uses. Most of the packages that are available cause hell for anyone who isn’t good at remembering what versions of a package actually work on their Editor. And sometimes the Unity Editor will just refuse to launch the Package Manager entirely. It tends to not generate a project. sometimes it won’t activate even with a active license.
The Asset Store was fine where it was. Removing it and moving it to the browser was OK but leaving the Menu Item in and active so new people click on it and find out they have to open up a web browser to access it is ridiculous and just adds more steps than required.
When installing a Unity version through the Hub, there is a chance that the Install, Verification or download will fail. The only way I could fix this was by Closing the window and letting it install in the background. Unity Hub also will reject activating a personal License sometimes. This HAS happened to many people other than myself.
The Unity Editor imports tons of packages that on one uses or wants and when you do Install one you need, there is a chance of getting 100+ errors preventing you from Building or Testing the game. E.G: When I was using Unity, I needed to install ProBuilder. When it finally installed it, a looked at the console to see around 100 error messages and had to keep installing versions until i found one that worked.
I was so used to using 2018 before updating that i had not realised that the Unity Asset Store was moved. I went to open it up just to be met with: The Unity Asset Store was moved to the Web Browser. or something like that. I didn’t like the change but am now using 2019 because it’s not as bad as 2022.
You are echoing the worries and complaints of a vast majority of Unity users.
The Asset store move is annoying to say the least. Attempting to find/search your asset is a lesson in futility itself!
Most of the time you get a negative result until you find the correct wording!
Pity about it all. Guess it’s still loads of fun and certainly passes the time. But 2017 and even 2019 were so much more fun and certainly faster and certainly less error prone.
Our teams have found unity hub to be quite reliable across Mac and Windows workstations and it has solved a ton of problems we used to have before it existed. We are very happy with it.
I agree that too many packages are included by default when you start a new project. But how often do you start a new project? Remove those you don’t need when setting up a new project and then move on. This seems like priority to me and I understand unity’s reasoning for it (to improve the experience for new users who wouldn’t know how to install a new package yet). I don’t see how this complaint means the “editor is a hot mess”.
Whether a menu item links to the asset store is honestly a pretty trivial matter isn’t it?
None of this has any real importance when it comes to making and shipping games. There are some very real things to complain about and some very commendable things that this engine does very well, but you’re nibbling around the edges.
Animations - Animations are a nightmare on Unreal.
Easy to learn Interface - It’s simple and straight forward.
Unity’s Error catching is very smart and can catch almost every type of error.
But Unity isn’t perfect. No Software ever is.
Okay, The “Editor is a hot mess” statement was an exaggeration. It really isn’t but I wanted to give the argument through the eyes of someone who already knows Unity. For beginners, Keep the Installed Packages as a new User might not know what the packages do. But Unity doesn’t give an option to install packages that you want. It can be a small Button or switch on the Unity Hub so it doesn’t bog down Project Creation with Resolving Packages you’ll never use.
In my opinion (Which doesn’t matter), I feel that the Unity Asset Store shouldn’t have been moved in the first place.
Honestly, Alot. I do have a project I am constantly working on but I don’t want to experiment on that project as I have been prone to borking the whole project accidentally. So I make a new Project to experiment with to mabye find a potential solution to my problem.
HUB issues will come and go. But 2019 LTS really is the current best version, in general (asset and feature support). 2021 aint bad, but 2022 is a dumpster fire, stay away. Not really Unitys fault, as pressure to push releases and other factors = unfinished/tested features, but they do work it all out in time. So its best to use a LTS a few years older for best support and compatibility of assets…
We just keep pristine “template” projects sitting around, version controlled. Import an asset store package, play with it, extract what you want to keep from it, whatever … then revert all changes. This empty project is always ready to use. You don’t need to create a brand new one every time (only when you are upgrading to new Unity versions - keep an empty template around for each Unity version you use often).
Little unrelated promotion (for someone I am not afiliated with, lol), your workflow might profit from “Asset Inventory”: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/asset-inventory-226927
It builds a cache database outside of the project which allows to quickly search in the downloaded assets and only import what you want (including dependencies).
That approach affords many efficiencies that have nothing to do with Hub. Whether Hub allowed you to choose fewer packages or not, it would still never be as fast as opening a project that already exists.
Our experience across many teams and geographies and workstations:
barely works
This has not been our experience- what does this mean exactly?
like to not login anymore
We’ve not had any significant auth problems with Hub, no. Does this mean people are getting logged out spontaneously?
not install an editor
We’ve not had this problem, whatever is being described. How does it “not install an editor”?
fail to install an editor
We install quite a bit in aggregate on Windows and Mac. No serious issues.
Auto-Update when we never want one
What is this referring to? Auto update when you never want one? Really? How exactly is that happening? No, we do not have this problem.
That is only our experience. If you’re having these problems, please report specific bugs to Unity to help them resolve them.
Of course not. If people are encountering these issues then they need to be fixed. It’s difficult to imagine how someone would frequently run into these when I work with so many people every day using the same tools who do not encounter them, but it’s certainly possible. It means bug reports on them are going to have to be specific and actionable because they’re clearly not universal (so maybe not easy to reproduce and maybe highly dependent on how your local environment is setup).
It’s interesting, to me, that your experience is so different that you aren’t sufficiently familiar with what the OP’s writing to sometimes know what he’s writing of. I understood exactly what every word meant in that sentence, through painful personal experiences that mirror exactly what the OP’s saying about the HUB, and have seen dozens of others commenting on similar (and worse) experiences being commonplace during their usage over years.
It’s to the point that I begin avoiding using the Hub, completely, more than 2 years ago, and was a little dismayed to see it’s still seemingly got all the same pain points.
@ALEXWARELLC I sympathise! Terribly sorry to hear you’re suffering in this way, and know exactly what you’re talking about. It seems some people are truly oblivious to the pains and sufferings the Package Manager processes, Hub and Editor frequently can be. I am deeply envious of the experiences they must be having with Unity.
I’ve had issues with hub not keeping your license key and wanting you to enter it again, but when you enter it, it doesn’t do anything, no error or anything but you have to sign out in hub and sign back in before it will work even though it shows you signed in and you signed in on website to get your license key.
Someone said it was probably my new hard drive failing, but then I haven’t had to sign in for weeks now and it seems to be ok, where for several weeks it made me enter the key each day, and it wouldn’t just accept the key I had to also sign out in hub and sign back in before it would accept the key. Seems like it happens to more than just me and my hard drive.
Also yeah it does add crap to packages manifest that isn’t used and is annoying.
Newer NVIDIA drivers cause a Swapchain related crash in Unity 2021.3 LTS, this is a massive issue as the game may look running fine in one machine and fail in another at random. This happens only in DX11, D12 and Vulkan work ok.
The Hub holds only 40 projects, after that some previous projects dissapear at random from the list, making a mess of the whole idea of having a hub and having to manually keep the location of all projects than in the hub. I see zero reason why should be 40 and not just unlimited or a very high number.
In Unity 2021.3, making a new project, doing some work, closing and opening the project may result in all the work be erased and the initial template be reinstalled. This is a massive issue if not know it and work directly in a new project before test it for this bug. Now i always make a tiny change, exit and reenter a newly created project first before do any work, to make sure is not erased or my change altered. This only happens once after first exit and reenter the project.
Delays in Editor and URP pipeline. Everything is just slower, i have a fluid simulator that is not even using URP features and in URP is massively slower than in Standard Pipeline, all code same ! The Editor is also has massive slow downs with popup windows that come up all the time and disrupt the work. This was not an issue in Unity 2019, same machine. Generally Unity 2021.3 and pipelines are a Beyond Massive downgrade in performance, in both editor and runtime, image effects especially. HDRP is also massively slower than URP or SRP, without any particular reason.
Sometimes the project hangs forever due to lock from antivirus, this never happened in Unity 2019. Usually get this when try to export a project part to unity package or upload to store. Disabling the antivirus allows the process to proceed directly.
Hopefully some of those will eventually be addressed, are all long time issues too.