Packages overview documentation is not up-to-date or too confusing for Scene Templates

[Xarbrough]

Today I went on a journey (again) to find out how to use the relatively new Scene Templates feature. I wanted to know how to instantiate a new scene from the template, so I landed on this doc page via Google.

I read a little and tried to use the information, but quickly realized that the page doesn’t apply to the version of Scene Templates that’s in my project, because the call “SceneTemplate.Instantiate” is now located in “SceneTemplateService”.

Hm, so is the doc page just an old version? It’s preview, but I don’t know what the most recent version is and what version I have.

So it looks like this is the most recent package version, but it’s not the one I’m using.

What else can I check?

I can’t find it listed anywhere here. Has it been abandoned? Is it builtin and no longer a package?

Ah so there’s another documentation page not related to packages, but builtin. Does that mean Scene Templates is no longer a package? I still don’t know and I couldn’t find the information on how to instantiate a new scene from a template via C#.

I could try and check the Package Manager in my project… but it doesn’t return any results for “Scene Templates” in the packages of my project, nor the built-in modules, nor the unity registry.

All of this is really confusing, so the best “solution” for me was to look at Unity’s source code and find the references used, which showed me that indeed Scene Templates are now a built-in module even though it doesn’t show in the package manager and I could find the call to instantiate templates by browsing through the DLL.

What I’m hoping for:

• A single official place in the documentation that shows all packages and built-in modules (this already exists, but it is missing things).
• From there, a link to a version overview of a feature (e.g. Scene Templates), so I can pick my version.
• Ideally, also a note about where this version information can be checked against in my project (e.g. Package Manager, built-in module, etc).
• The doc page for the specific version (and then we could start reporting missing information for each version, like in this case).

[system]

@Xarbrough_1

Is it builtin and no longer a package?

No, it is hidden, so people don’t use it, unless they know what they are doing.
You can install it if you click on the add button, choose the last option and type: “com.unity.scene-template” (without quotes) and hit enter. It will install the package as shown below (screenshot is fresh in 2020.2).

[Xarbrough]

It’s good to know that we can add hidden packages manually via the Package Manager git URL (kind of obscure since those are not git URLs, but simply package identifiers). Also possible to add to the manifest manually of course.

However, this doesn’t solve the confusion about where to get the official information about package/module status.

It looks like Scene Templates is a built-in module in my Unity installation:

But it doesn’t matter because the point is, that this info should be easily accessible via the docs. I’m sure Unity knows this, but maybe it’s just Scene Templates that slipped under the radar.