It feels like dark side of Unity is forcing me to buy 4.0
This is why I run parallel installs, I work in 4.x but deliver asset store packages in 3.x to my clients.
Other developers should be doing the same for a little while longer.
I have been moaning about this a bit recently, although I dont blame devs for not realising.
Whats even more annoying is when I get an update for an asset I’ve already bought, only to discover it crashes unity on import because there is some 4.x stuff in the package that 3.5 doesnt like.
I have noticed huge gaps in functionality between 3.x and 4.x. It is extremely frustrating when you’re trying to work with someone and test things only to have them unpredictably break down between versions if not in large ways in small buggy ways that make it difficult to asertain if it is a version gap problem or actual bug problem.
It’s a real pain. 4.0 adoption among users is slow. Unless you’re specifically doing something ‘Mecanimish’ why bother? Sure there are a few small pluses, but nothing that would precipitate doling out the upgrade cost (at this point).
Big shout out to the Asset devs who still support 3.5. Cause that is where many of us with Pro and Addon licenses are staying for the foreseeable future.
Exactly this !!!
Today I wanted to buy some assets and almost all of them needed unity4 although they had no 4.0 functionality.
Also many of my bought assetes were allowed to get updated even if they were unity4 only and bought for unity 3.5.
Frustration …
I do this as well as it takes no extra effort and I’m not using any 4.x features in my assets anyway.
I can understand why many devs haven’t upgraded to 4.x, its expensive, especially when you have multiple platform licenses.
Expense is one issue of course. But if you are doing mainly, Word games, Match Threes, @D games, or any of the majority of non Soccer character, type games. 4.0 offers minor additional usefulness…(thus far). Why bother updating?
The fact that almost everything in the store requires 4.0 now (not my stuff though 
) would seem to prove that wrong.
Because there’s a lot of stuff in 4.0 that makes 3.5 kind of primitive to work with. I haven’t even touched Mecanim yet.
–Eric
Last time I checked 2/3 people hadnt upgraded yet, I thought the adoption rate was alot higher. You cant really convert it back unless you have an older build, you have to create everything from scratch, all the prefabs, for example my golf kit has 72 scenes and there is no way I am going to recreate all 72 scenes again from scratch.
If you’re referring to this, that’s not scientific, and out of date (it was started almost 6 months ago). It would be interesting to see what the editor analytics say, which would give a much better idea.
–Eric
Yeah that is what I was referring to, and I bet most people would have upgraded by now considering they arent updating unity3 anymore.
are those issues also present with most basic assets like static models or textures? i don’t wanna make it impossible for some people to download my stuff but i don’t have an old version of unity installed.
Yes, the way Unitypackages are generated in Unity 4 means they can’t be imported into Unity 3. You can download Unity 3.5 here.
–Eric
And hopefully community conscious developers continue to support Users that have not found a persuasive reason to upgrade.
+1, I don’t see any good reason to upgrade to 4.X yet, none of the projects I’m working needs any 4.X feature, nor even a pro feature
That hasnt been my experience, not by a long shot. There is still plenty in the asset store that works fine with 3,5, but over time this is obviously starting to change.
Nor would I want to see this thread become too much about the reasons why people havent upgraded, perhaps underplaying the improvements and new stuff in version 4 in the process. It’s not just Mechanim, stuff like DX11 interests some and has already spawned some interesting assets (eg particles) that are obviously never going to work on 3.5. I would upgrade if I had the spare cash.
No, all that I find depressing is assets that are still capable of working perfectly well on 3.5 not being available to us simply because the developer didnt realise that if they upload a version of their asset using 4, we are locked out from buying the asset, or if we already own it we may have import issues.