Am I the only one who is annoyed at the IDE compatibility for UnityScript? It’s totally half-assed in MonoDevelop – the IDE doesn’t even do auto-completion for private variables. This totally messes up your code as MonoDevelop will complete your variables with built in variables/classes, when, in fact, you are trying to type in your private variable, rendering the IDE useless for UnityScript.
Am I mistaken when I say that one of Unity’s big changes in 3.0 was allegedly better MonoDevelop support for UnityScript? Well, it’s still not useable – unless you have all public variables, which is considered bad coding practice. I’ve filed about two or three bug reports on MonoDevelop’s problems with UnityScript, yet nothing has changed. I was really hoping 3.1 would address these issues.
Unitron, on the other hand, is way too minimal – it’s essentially a basic text editor with basic syntax coloring for UnityScript. It doesn’t show you any autocompletion, project views, etc.
It’s simply annoying that I pay a few grand for a program and the most basic element (writing your code) still seems primitive. For example, I can go and download NetBeans for free, which is an awesome IDE and works as one would expect. Of course NetBeans isn’t a 3D engine, but nevertheless, if NetBeans can release their IDE for free, why can’t Unity, which charges anywhere from $400 - $1500 per license, at least provide its users with a fully functional programming environment?
Any suggestions on what IDE to use for UnityScript? (I’m using a Mac, FYI.)
C# seems to have great support in IDEs, but one of Unity’s selling points is UnityScript – a damn easy to use scripting language. If there are no good IDEs that fully work for UnityScript, I guess I’ll just have to switch over to C#, which is a bit of a pain (IMO).
i was looking for the same issues… on OSX Javascript MonoDevelop seems useless
we would just need an autocompletion dictionary for Netbeans (which we use for PHP development and is really great!)
thinking about switching to C# if it really rocks with MonoDevelop
No you’re not alone. Hard to believe that a product this mature still doesn’t have a decent script editing tool built in. I’ve since switched to a PC and am using Notepad++. To get it to work properly with Unity will require some work on your part, but it’s by far the best editor available for Javascript under Windows IMO. If you decide that it works well for you, then add your vote(s) here: http://feedback.unity3d.com/forums/15792-unity/suggestions/1117073-editor-replace-uniscite-with-notepad-?ref=title
No wait that’s not a solution. While I use notepad++ and pspad a lot too, if we switch to any IDE other than monoDevelop we lose the debugging feature. Now I admit the uniscript support for monodevelop is bad, but the solution to that isn’t to get them to switch to notepad++, but to fix uniscript support in monoDevelop.
Still using UniSciTE its the best in my opinion. 
I’m really surprised the unity devs still don’t have a link to this program stickied somewhere, or in the feature pages or something.
http://technology.blurst.com/unitydevelop-javascript-editor/
Supports autocomplete for both built-in classes and for classes you make. Sadly it doesn’t support opening from unity (so you can’t double click on an error to get it to pop open to that line)
Good one cerebrate, I had forgotten about Unity Develop. I’ll give it a try. FYI Notepad++ suffers from the same lack of not being able to double click an error message, so it’s not a perfect solution either.
I’m glad I’m not the only one a bit ticked off at this. This is a serious problem and needs to be fixed.
I’ll take a look at Unity Develop this weekend when I have more time. Thanks for the suggestion – I hope it works good enough until Unity does what it’s supposed to.
just my two cents… I love the feel of Unitron/Smultron, but it’s lack of line compression of functions and proper syntax highlighting is starting to grate me as I head past 500 lines.
You’d think, at the very least, someone at Unity could take the effort to flesh out Unitron to make it a little more complete of a product for their product.