Should I even bother to upgrade from 4.6 to 5.2?
So I have two projects that were developed in 4.6, both of which were 85%-90% complete. I upgraded to Unity 5, and all subsequent versions, and neither game works correctly anymore. I've been spending weeks trying to get them back up to the level they were before. My issues primarily break down to being:
Apparently there was an axis change, since my race game, based upon the car tutorial, now flips all over the place instead of rolling along the track.
Shaders are not acting correctly for me, and a lot of my scene renders as either pink or black. I've gone though and tried to "Fix Now" any materials that weren't right, and changed shaders where I could.
RTP doesn't work the way it's supposed to. New terrains and projects do, but terrains already made are just not working. Tried reimporting it, but it's still not right.
So, my question is, do I really need to upgrade my projects to 5.2? Sure I'll develop new projects in there, but these two that begun life as Unity 4 projects are almost done, and don't take advantage of any of the bells and whistles of Unity 5. Is there any compelling reason to continue the uphill struggle of trying to convert them?
Tangentially: Can you have both Unity 4.6 and Unity 5.2 installed on the same system without issues?
Agreed. But I'm torn by the fact that 4.6 is no longer supported, getting answers to questions will be harder, and assets won't be released for it. But on the other hand, it's almost done, so I shouldn't need anything else, and I can code what I do need. Plus, a lot of assets haven't been updated yet. Lastly, I think I'd lose more time repairing and debugging it, with no guarantee that all my assets will work.
No doubt new projects will start with 5.x, but I think I'll stick to 4.6 for this one. Still don't know if I have to uninstall 5 to reinstall 4, or if both can sit on the same PC. One way to find out....
You can have both version installed. If you are on $$anonymous$$ac, you need to rename the already installed one or the new one will overwrite. On Windows, you do the same or rename the new one.
What you cannot do is have one project to be run on both versions. you would have to have a version for 4 and a copy for 5 and any modification would have to be manually copied. You could have a version system ignoring the project files but you would still get issues with new and deprecated methods.
Answer by fafase · Oct 24, 2015 at 08:15 PM
If you do not plan on maintaining those projects then I would stick with old version. Next project then start it from newer version.
We moved to Unity5.2 because we are constantly updating our app. Sticking with old versions would mean not taking advantage of new features.
What I would recommend, do not jump on the latest version as soon as it is out. Wait for a few patches and then go there. New releases (5.1, 5.2 and coming 5.3) always come with a bunch of issues. Probably the rush of releasing for marketing reasons. Unity 5.2 was containing a lot of bugs, probably the promise of the release track due date. Unity 5.3 is due early December but I would not touch it until February.
Converted to answer as it supplies the OP with sufficient data about the question. @Tanoshimi2000 if you want to discuss further about the differences and impact of upgrading to Unity 5 you are welcome at the Forum.
Answer by Statement · Oct 24, 2015 at 10:07 PM
do I really need to upgrade my projects to 5.2?
Is there any fix, feature or improvement in Unity 5.2 you need?
Then yes. Otherwise no.
4.6 will stop getting patches by the end of this year.
If you later find that there is a roadblock, perhaps at the 99th % of your game, well, bite the bullet then and upgrade, work around the issue or drop the feature that is causing problems. Likewise if you later get bug reports from users and it's due to 4.6 issues, be prepared to do a full upgrade. The longer the upgrade takes, the worse rep you'll get from your customers.
If you need help upgrading the project, consider hiring a consultant to help you if you can't get around fixing the issue or see what support Unity offer (make sure to contact them to set your expectations right before you buy a plan).
Answer by Monkiman300 · Oct 24, 2015 at 11:10 PM
I've been working (simply) with Unity 4.x for awhile now, and the move to 5.x was an extremely painful one. For me, and my understanding of the physics engine, the transition from 4 to 5 broke nearly everything in my games. I wasn't doing anything complicated, but moving platforms became a pain with Unity 5, as well as the subtle code changes in C#.
I and several peers have been running into issues with our entire projects being deleted entirely off our respective PC's (backups and all) which never happened to any of us working in Unity 4.x. My advice, stick to Unity 4 until 5 gets a little more stable and the kinks are worked out.
our entire projects being deleted entirely
(backups and all)
Just want to advise you to use some kind of SC$$anonymous$$. Personally I use Git but it's not the best for large files. It feels nice to have the project backed up both locally and remotely. Never had issues with Unity destroying the project (and how would it find your backups?) but computers do crash from time to time.