I’m not an avid forum user, aside from finding answers to my problems whenever my brain or the scripting ref isn’t enough but, I’ve been using Unity for quite a while now already (few years + some), so I hope my nigh negative post count won’t affect the ‘impression’ of what I’m asking/wondering/saying.
Anyway, I’ve looked every which way I could to find more info about this but, it looks like almost no one is talking about it. I.e. Unity ‘ditching’ Unityscript (and Boo). As of 5.3 → monodevelop 5.9, there is no autocomplete for US/js which is comparable to blindfolding someone driving a car. Doable but, it’ll take about 10 years longer to reach the goal. According to some posts/messages, it turns out unity/monodevelop will stop supporting unityscript at some point but, I haven’t found anything official.
While I suppose it makes some sense to eventually ditch the “inferior” js, I have hell of an hard time understanding why it’s being executed like some covert operation? Making js coding almost unbearable earns it just a tiny line of text on patch notes (which is obscure as well). It’s one of the 3 programming languages Unity has had for as long as I can remember and that’s what I’ve been assuming as well.
If they stop supporting js for good, close to 20 of my published ‘projects’ will amount to nothing but hundreds*n of hours of either ‘recoding’ or wasted time.
Even few (not even remotely cheap) assets I’ve bought will dwindle into obscurity apparently.
I know I can just use an older version of Unity to circumvent the ‘issue’ introduced in 5.3/5.9 but, this change has massive impact on my productivity (for a good while at least, since if I plan to use unity to it’s fullest I’ll have to get very comfortable with c#) and for the love of everything, I just cannot comprehend why there has been almost nothing about this.
Have I misunderstood things maybe? Is it perhaps some tiny hiatus that they are taking and in the foreseeable future I can expect monodevelop that actually works? Will I have to stop patching my games on play store? So many questions…
Edit: All of the above is pretty much pointless if it is as I have understood it to be so, if someone has concrete or even semi-concrete info that Unity will really stop supporting unityscript, I would appreciate it a lot.
Then I’d know for sure that I’ll have to transition over to c# instead of being in this limbo between “investing a LOT of time to properly learn c#” or “risk working my ass off for ‘nothing’ with js”.
Though Unity’s js implementation has indeed lost some popularity in the last couple years, it’s still a supported language. If they were to decide to actually drop support for js then you can be sure that there would be a lot of lead time and notice given, as well as a lot of hubub on the forum. They wouldn’t just try and sneak it by.
As for monodevelop, I can’t speak to that. I started using SublimeText2 last year and haven’t opened mono once since then.
Thank you!
I initially thought so as well but, some forum posts made a compelling(?) enough of a case that I ended up thinking that’s what’s really happening.
Many of us recommend C# because it’s essentially the same as C# outside of Unity. The only differences being that Unity is currently using a slightly older release and the APIs. Having the language be the primary focus of the tutorials certainly doesn’t hurt anything.
They are not currently discontinuing it but I feel like they’re trying to subtly draw attention away from it with the eventual hope of no longer having to maintain it once people largely stop using it. That’s just my own opinion though. I’m likely wrong.
C# really isn’t that hard to learn. I started with unity script. But once i switched to c# i was very glad i did. Much easier to do. Us is just ackward, more nonsense involved.
I have released a few games in both and C# was better for me, less bugs, much easier to just grab code off the net or something, unlike unity script/js
They do. They try to fade JS slowly away, and try to force the folks to use C# instead. That’s why i have left Unity. This happens without me.
That’s bollocks, sorry. It’s everything but efficient to battle with the language instead of writing code. Some people simply finds it easier and ways more comfortable to work with JS. I was half as efficient with C#, and disliked to work with it. JS was what made Unity comfortable for me.
The only thing where C# is better is that it has more fanatic fans that tries to praise C# where ever possible. No matter if it fits into the thread or not. And especially when it fits not. Like here again. The question was about the future of Unityscript. The usual and expected answer when there is just a slightly Unity js content in the thread: “C# is so much bettaaaa !!!” . Pavlov thread hijacking reflex. Who cares about the initial question …
Regarding the initial question. Version 5 will support Unity JS for its life cycle. So you don’t have to worry when you stick with Unity 5. And that should be good enough for minimum one more game. But i could bet that in Unity 6 Unity JS will be gone. JS has no big future anymore in Unity.
Personally I think dropping support for other scripting languages and just sticking with C# would be a good idea for Unity. … Now if only Epic would see the sense of doing the same, Tim Sweeney probably still haven’t gotten over UDK unrealscript being scrapped, but they really should have supported a managed language that is popular… now its just c++ and blueprints. sigh
“Then I’d know for sure that I’ll have to transition over to c# instead of being in this limbo between “investing a LOT of time to properly learn c#” or “risk working my ass off for ‘nothing’ with js”.”
yes just go learn to use C#/Java/C++ and stop wasting your time these other scripting languages like js, unityscript, lua etc they are good time sinks and have a place in the eco system for certain uses, but they are given way too much attention and eventually lead its followers to a development and performance dead end. Well except for js, which seems to live on the unicorn farts of industry giants desire to keep it around for the web and will pay anything to get developers to get creative and come up with new ways to squeeze performance out of it, the more obfuscated the better of course…can’t imagine why.
No, you mean UnityScript (US). If it were true JavaScript (JS) we would have one less reason to complain about it as it would be useful outside of Unity without having to take the time to learn the fairly substantial differences.
Perhaps…but having been around a long time I see that when the shift to C# and probably bringing in engineers with only that as their language the quality of Unity has gone downhill. C#-ers are super anal about their MSE code paradigms which just do not fit the engine paradigm to a T. I will bet this has crept into the engine bit by bit.
US… I was able to be up and running complex sims the night I downloaded Unity thanks to US and my long experience with ECMA type languages…And US is very much like OS X new coding language Swift. C#…I get stupid errors that happen to be 90 lines before the actual error. I have to jump triple twisting somersaults to do stuff I can do in one line in US. like yield WaitForSeconds()…which requires a bunch of BS in C#.
You know it’s interesting how few people are defending UnityScript. Most flame wars involving OSes, languages, APIs, etc have fairly active sides. UnityScript only has two professionals. That should give you an idea of popularity.
