Shouldn't we be on RC's by now for June release [Roadmap]?

Unity Engine
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Shouldn’t we be on RC’s by now if you are still aiming for the a June release date [Roadmap]??

Or does the road map target date need an update?

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Roadmap needs an update, but getting close.

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Hi, it would be awesome as well to have a kind of log about of each feature in the roadmap, so we can see how the features are evolving, milestones, eta… and to have the possibility to comment them.

Personally, I’m really looking forward to hear about .net integration and new profiles…

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Thanks for the feedback! We’re trying to keep the roadmap fairly simple else it might get pretty cluttered. We could link back to more of the feedback.unity3d.com points where further commenting might be possible. As for keeping running logs, we let devs blog where they feel appropriate.

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And if I’m not mistaken, 5.4 will lead to more iterative smaller releases after as everything migrates to subscription rather than big releases?

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How will this be different to patch releases, and then just .point release…

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First step is trying to get back to a rhythm, but taking less change in each iteration. Working out what future cadence/periods are, and that’s still subject to change sitll.

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Yeah good luck with it! I know it’s a bit of struggle especially so many teams working on different things that might rely on other things!

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I say screw the roadmap; don’t switch to RC until 5.4 is actually ready for release. Right now there are still way too many major issues. Unity needs a truly solid, stable release before they switch to subscription-only, otherwise it’s going to lead to a lot of griping and anger. Subscription should be for new features, not for required fixes in existing features that have been broken since 5.0.

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+1 Agreed as raised in few other threads asking for 5.4 final. Dont get some people on here, moan about the bugs yet dont wish to wait for stable release. I really wish for a stable release like 5.3.5 is pretty stable, I wish for same quality in 5.4 final public release.

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So, 5.3.5 has more issue reports against it than 5.4, but people stating it is more stable.
Also, I also have people shipping games and final-ing on 5.4 beta releases already. I’d suggest that’s a measure to consider for shipping quality.

Supporting 28 platforms that are all on the move, while also trying to fix some parts without breaking others, and adding improvements and optimizations (and even with leaving out features) is work that will never finish. I have 3rd party libraries fixing one thing, but breaking another. Do I take it? Do I leave it out? Do I wait for something that might never come?

All of this, while other fixes and refactors are waiting in the wings and creating up another pent up set of changes (not even including features!) that people want but need some amount of time to vet in beta more than can be offered in 5.4. Waiting begets more waiting, and waiting also means more change tries to come in even if I don’t want it. (macOS, Windows updates, VR plugin updates…)

Just to note, yes, there are some key issues we’re looking to iron out before we cross to RC, and we look to this forum and others to help catch what these key issues are. So, please post away and offer specific bugs we can chase down. However, without knowing what you’re looking at and saying it’s not stable without specific bug reports isn’t something we can actively work on.

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The things I would like to see before Unity moves to subscription-only:

  • All major graphical glitches in Deferred Linear should be fixed. Unity needs to stop releasing features that only work in Forward Gamma. If anything, Deferred Linear should be the primary method and Forward Gamma should come second.
  • SpeedTree needs a working shader and fixed LODs and/or removal of LOD transitioning that breaks LODs; overall it needs to be much faster.
  • Multi Scene Editing should work in at least the majority of basic scenarios. For example: having objects in one scene reference objects in another scene; combining scene-specific information like lightmaps and lighting, dealing with DontDestroyOnLoad correctly, etc.
  • Lighting model and Standard Shaders should be finalized. Are you doing Lambert or not, are you tweaking normals or not, are you backface culling or not, are you sticking with GGX, etc. I don’t like how the lighting keeps changing every minor version.
  • Some extremely long-standing bugs that appear to have been given up on really should be fixed: the broken string serialization when importing prefabs and assets into large projects; the “open every single window in Windows when importing” bug, etc.
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And this is Unity’s problem in a nutshell.

I switched to 5.4 back in March just 2 weeks before the original roadmap had it released. I made all the changes needed making it hard to go back. Then Unity slipped, and slipped and slipped and is still slipping.

I cant go back to 5.3 and I cant rely on 5.4

But. I have a job making games, its a full time job, I have development, I have demo’s and games to release. If I don’t do that I don’t get paid and I don’t EAT.

So what you take as “a measure to consider for shipping quality” I take as sheer desperation.

Your main market may be giving this away to people who do it as a hobby and can wait six months for you to get a stable version, but many of us have our backs against the financial wall and dealing with broken betas and unstable systems makes life very stressful. I spend most of my time finding workarounds for your bugs rather than actually making progress on the game.

My confidence in Unity right now is near zero.

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In the future, since there’s not going to be Unity 6, how are you going to handle changes that break backwards compatibility? Will you be avoiding those or will they just be point releases with time to prepare, like 5.4 beta vs 5.3 stable?

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May I assume given that subscription charging for existing perpetual users only hits next year, that this means there’s room until then to keep making the improvements and shipping 5.4 is just a stepping stone towards that?

Thanks for the list. I’ll pass to our Product Management to track and we’ll do our best to address these things. Though concrete bug #s for some would be really helpful.

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I see your point of view, but I’m also getting other customers pointing at it to as validity. It’s another data point, as is tracking all the key issues I mentioned earlier. Many of us here have been in the game studio life, and we’re consciously trying to balance it all as best we can.

While the hobbyist is a large audience, they are not the paying audience that keeps the lights on. We equally have similar decisions to make, and helping people ship games and be able to consider paying us is part of what we aim for.
So, we understand that concern, but can you offer specific bug reports here so I can assess and track them?

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We’re doing our best to make sure projects upgrade cleanly. As for future cases where compatibility breakages may become necessary, we’re looking to give as much forward notification, parallel compatibility during deprecation and other such practices when those scenarios arise.

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Well wait till 5.4 goes final and we see if the amount of bugs be more than 5.3.5…right now even with the bug bashing competition people dont wish to test because of worry, fair enough no force needed.

I get personal mails asking me what version I think most stable as there is fear of people upgrading from 5.2 to 5.3 version, not my job to help with upgrade process and make it clear that there are many benefits to upgrading…

I do not feel 28 platforms to support should be a talking point as most these platforms there not been any work done on or you fix a bug once in a blue moon- lets be clear here the standalone, ios and android are the main money makers for Unity currently, vr not matured… And apart from the hardcore standalone developers who wish for perfection like Adam demo - us mobile developers do not have need or wants for hardcore features and such bugs as mentioned above not priority for us.

Hence mobile performance and mobile bug fixing most welcome…these are the platforms that are constantly on the move…

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For me shipping quality means there is no major bugs in any platform. And by major bug I mean anything that can affect a high percentage of developer.
Unity 5.3 was shipped with several rotation issues on Android that was very likely to affect most Android devs.
When every day on the forum there is somebody new reporting the same exact issue over and over, I guess that’s a major bug. You don’t see many threads like that anymore about 5.3 now.
I’m sure there were several Desktop, console or iOS devs that shipped games just fine, but that didn’t mean the release was stable then.

This is something that Unity need to address, because it’s really annoying.
I reported a few bugs myself, one of them took two full days for me to isolate(cause I won’t share my code, sorry) and to make it as clear as possible to the QA team.
After spending so much time on it, I didn’t see any progress on it for 3 months and then I see read about several other bugs that have been reported multiple times and never fixed for years. I tried to ask for an update two times and no one answered ever. Would I report any more bugs? Very unlikely now.
No wonder you have to do contests to motivate people to reports bugs.
In case you are wondering, the bug is 784161 and make onAudioFilterRead allocate continuosly memory, quite a deal breaker in my opinion.

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I understand your situation but professionals really don’t do what you do. You are doing precisely what a hobbyist does - move to a version prematurely. Professional developers do not move. In fact you will have a very hard time convincing them to move unless it works perfectly beforehand. And where is version control here? I hate to nag but…

Otherwise I agree with you, it would be nice to depend on Unity. But heck, why are you moving products your business depends upon, to a beta version of Unity? Even mild testing of 5.4 back then would have told you it was far from stable. I nag because your situation is painful, one I can identify with that I wish you didn’t have to suffer.

This is true of my Unity experience since 3.0. I’m hoping nowadays there’s a real drive to make things a bit more fucking stable. With 1000 staff, I feel confident I can demand stability.

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