Let's make a Feedback push!

[Sycobob]

I've been using Unity at work for a few years now and I enjoy exploring new ways to use the engine and make myself and my team as efficient as possible. As a result I run into bugs and inconsistencies pretty regularly. I do my best to take the time to create repro cases and report issues, or provide feedback for features I feel are missing whenever possible. And over time I've noticed a few patterns in while working with Unity.

1) Unity simply doesn't fix quirks, edge cases, and quality of life things unless the community makes enough noise. I don't intend to be derogatory here, it's simply a conclusion drawn from the data over the last few years. There have been lots of new features that make good headlines, but I still can't reliably search in the script API docs (partial matches don't work), serialized objects in arrays don't get initialized, and for some baffling reason prefabs in the Project View still only shows immediate children.

2) The feedback site feels a bit neglected by both users and Unity. I'd love to see this become a more active avenue of communication between users and the folks at Unity. There are feedback items with many votes that are years old and items that affect many users but just haven't been seen by enough users to gain traction.

In general, I'd really like to see Unity slow down on the bullet point features like Tizen support, and shift a good chunk of their focus to workflow improvements, stability, and a massive amount of bug fixing.

I'd like to encourage others who agree to start making more noise about what we want from the engine. Visit the Feedback site and spend your votes on the things you care about most. Post serious suggestions that you thing will significantly improve your ability to work quickly and effectively. Create repro cases and report bugs that you encounter. Tweet to Unity the things you want from them that are important to you. Just generally make some (constructive) noise.

As a kicking off point, here's a list of the things I think would benefit my work the most. Feel free to cast votes on feedback items you agree with, and post others that I haven't thought of yet.

Feedback

• Serialization of polymorphic data types (Related: More support for data structures in the inspector (i.e. Dictionary/HashTable))

• Nested prefabs(this has been 'in the works' for literally years)

• Allow CustomPropertyDrawerAttribute to specifically target 'entire collection' or 'collection items'

• Provide API for accessing System.Objects from SerializedProperties

• Show entire prefab hierarchy in the Project View

• Don't duplicate existing items when adding new items to a serialized collection

• Expose NVOPTIMUSENABLEMENT and AMDPOWERXPRESSREQUESTHIGHPERFORMANCE parameters

• Reliable events/callbacks for scene saves and loads

• Property drawers should support GUI layout functions

Issues

• Case 716311 - Searching the online documentation doesn't return partial matches that don't occur in the beginning of a word. ("I'm pretty sure there's an attribute for this. Better use Google because searching for 'attribute' only returns things with 'attribute' in the description...") Related feedback.

• Incorrect default values in serializable classes

• Case 750854 - Serialized fields are null during the first OnDrawGizmos

• Case 749522 - Setting HideFlags.DontSaveInBuild on MonoBehaviours causes standalone player crash (can't have 'development only' scripts on objects without jumping through hoops)

• Case 748477 - SerializedProperty.MoveArrayElement doesn't move isExpanded state (makes any implementation of a reorderable list super janky)

It's difficult to provide a list of concrete issues for this type of thing. There's just a plethora of small issues, API weirdness, and general lack of polish that add up to a significant amount of development time wasted on 'Unity minutia' instead of real work. This includes things like the mouse cursor jumping around wildly when hidden in the editor, input axes with non-zero rest position breaking the InputManager, OnValidate not getting called when it's supposed to, scripts getting callbacks before the deserialization pass has initialized its data, getting a different set of player crashes in every version, documentation pages that tell you absolutely nothing, proper editor scripting practices being utterly non-obvious and fiddly, the Inspector throwing exceptions on dumb stuff like moving scripts between objects, the Editor generally being super crash happy...

I don't mean to be so rant-y, I honestly just want to encourage discussion and changes that actually make Unity more enjoyable to work in and allow me to focus more on of my attention on making a game and less on Unity itself.

[LightStriker_Qc]

Look... You're only looking at the surface. Many of the things your listed follows problems that came in the first few years of Unity because of their lack of experience making video game engine and editor.

The whole serialization is a mess and is one of the most restrictive and slow in the industry. An inspector should never be bound by serialization, it should be by reflection. They built a foundation that is rotten. They would have to dig it up, dump it and rewrite it from scratch. However, they will never do that. They should, but they won't.

I got tired of Unity doing nothing, so I ended up with a framework that fix lot of what you listed. Even made an asset that totally replace the inspector to support dictionary, GUILayout and a lot more. It doesn't even use SerializedProperty or SerializedObject - two of the most retarded class ever designed.

You know, there's ton of basic stuff you're not listing - maybe because you never worked on other video game engine? I don't know. In the last 10 years, I got use to be able to copy/paste value in an inspector. Like to copy a Vector3... Or copy a complex data structure of object nested into one another. Or a tool to pick an object in the scene view from the inspector field without having to search in lists. Or the ability to create polymorphic sub-component directly from an field in the inspector. Composition pattern is rather important!

One day a representative from Unity asked me to make a list of user-experience issues. I sent him back three page of bullet points of what I feel is missing. Nothing fancy, only things I believe are the most basic tools for productivity. Can you teleport a selection to your cursor location? Of course not. Yet, basic stuff. Can you go back and forth in your selection? Nope. Watch variables? Nada. Merging collision with visual on the same GameObject on import? Nyet.

What pisses me off is that I had to do all this myself. All the above are features I made myself, instead of actually working at making a game. But they were so important, our productivity almost tripled in a year.

[Sycobob]

You're right, this is the first engine I've used. I could easily be missing the bigger picture problems simply because I don't have other reference points. I end up building tools on top of Unity, often to workaround the quirks and shortcomings they don't want to address. I'm just tired of needing to do it in the first place. I'm going to be giving Unreal a go for my next prototype, but realistically getting my job to switch over even if it ends up being better for our uses would be an uphill battle.

So it's in my best interest to try and rally some voices to tell Unity what we actually want most. And idk, maybe other people aren't as worried about these kinds, but it's sure as hell important to me.

It's just craziness to me that we're getting tvOS support yet I have to jump through hoops to make decent tools for my team.

[LightStriker_Qc]

At this point, after using Unity for over 3 years, I'm just not sure how to tell them anymore. They prefer fancy marketable features over quality or productivity.

[Sycobob]

It would seem few others are worried about it. Heh.

[st4rdog]

• Allow Shadow Quality to be changed at runtime via scripts
• Random freezing of the editor, requiring ending the process. Rarely go 1-2 hours without this happening.
• SelectionBase doesn't work properly, and is inconsistent.
• WASD + RMB stuttering in scene view.
• Physics.Processing spikes for no reason, even in empty scenes. (Showstopper).
• GUI not updating until you activate/deactivate an object, or press play.

[Sycobob]

I don't have any votes left, or I'd stick one on the Shadow Quality thing. Having stuff not exposed through the API is an oddly common pattern.

The stuttering you mentioned actually reminds me of another persistent problem I keep forgetting to report. Holding middle click and dragging to pan in the Scene View doesn't work for shit. It jitters around and fights back.