Switch back to old Unity version?

[TechSY730]

Given how many performance issues are still lingering in the new Unity3D version (that somehow are not reproducible on any of your (the devs' machines)), are you guys planning on rolling back to the older Unity version? Or do you have a few more "tricks" you are going to try first?

As much as I would hate losing my Linux native support, I would be willing to give that up to solve some moderately widespread norable to major performance regressions that are losing you respect, faith, and trust from a notable segment of your customer base. (EDIT: Last sentence overstated? Probably. But for those that are hitting these issues, and it apparently isn't a small number, it's a pretty painful step back from the last version...)

[keith.lamothe]

Honestly yea I wish we could switch back, but the game's already been sold with linux support so that isn't really an option.

But I think there are some more tricks to try.

[Draco18s]

Also pretty sure it's almost impossible downgrade a project to an older version of Unity.

[TechSY730]

Just curious. What Unity version are you on now? Also, have you already filed a bug report with Unity about this? If so, is there a link to it?

[TheVampire100]

If you use Steam however you can use the old unityversion with the Beta tab.
Just go to settings, Betas and select "oldunityengine".
I don't know however how this affects savegames.

[x4000]

4.3.1f, I think it is.  We have not filed a bug report, although we spoke to them about the issue a couple of years ago and they could not duplicate it.  Since then we've not had any issues with our other titles; we originally did with one of them, I think Valley 2.  But Bionic Dues and TLF have always been on this version of unity from day 1.

Going back to an older version of unity definitely isn't on the table, and isn't something I'd want to entertain, anyway.  That winds up just trapping us forever in a place where we can't get future fixes or whatever, and possibly can't get support for future platforms.

There are some things that we can try with the rendering pipeline that we have not yet, and there is a general upgrade to the rendering pipeline that we need to do before too long, anyway.   One way or another we'll get it solved, it's mainly more of a pain than it is anything else -- for you as well as us, if you're among the affected.  Thanks for your patience!

[x4000]

Update: 8.005 official update out to hotfix a performance issue that has been plaguing some players since the unity engine upgrade.  It was actually affecting everyone, but it was only really that noticeable on some machines.

[Kahuna]

I still have backups of some of the old AI War versions. Some early/mid 7.xyz.  I think I have a version 5.xyz too.

But still I'm playing the newest version although the gsme turns into a slide show every time I'm attacked by a CPA with 10k ships but I can deal with it.

[MarioFanaticXV]

Is this the reason I'm constantly having to exit and reload AI War? Because I'm constantly having it to where sprites will just disappear as time goes on- mind you, they're loading initially, but eventually they just... Go away.

And if I get in a large battle, I can't see much of what's going on... I have a wave of 20k ships coming at me, and I just gave up at that point- the game slowed to a crawl at 16k and I couldn't even see what was going on for most of the battle, and I'm well above the recommended system requirements right now.

[x4000]

If you have a save that can duplicate that, that would be helpful.  Thanks!

[Draco18s]

Update: 8.005 official update out to hotfix a performance issue that has been plaguing some players since the unity engine upgrade.  It was actually affecting everyone, but it was only really that noticeable on some machines.

Just out of curiosity, what was the change (code-wise)?

[Hearteater]

He mentioned elsewhere they were using FixedUpdate and now are instead using their own code to handle frame rate limiting.

[MarioFanaticXV]

This is my most recent one... You may have to fast forward a bit, but I got 20k ships incoming shortly thereafter. When  saw that, I just went ahead and closed out- I knew there was no way that I was going to be able to fight that many without the game crashing on me- it had major glitches when I was fighting the 16k wave, and the graphics... I had thought I took a screenshot, but I guess things were going so slow that Steam didn't manage to catch it. Should have just stuck with the old reliable Prt Scrn button I guess.

Mind you, some of this was before the new update, but this most recent save was after, and I've continued to have these problems.

EDIT: Also, here's my system specs:

Operating System
   MS Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP3
CPU
   AMD Phenom II X4 940   58 °C
   Deneb 45nm Technology
RAM
   4.0GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 401MHz (5-5-5-18)
Motherboard
   ASUSTeK Computer INC. M2N-MX SE Plus (AM2)
Graphics
   2752 @ 1920x1080
   NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
Hard Drives
   488GB Seagate ST3500418AS (SATA)   33 °C
Optical Drives
   ATAPI DVD A  DH24AAS
   Generic DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device
Audio
   Philips SAA713X, Hybrid Capture Device


At first I actually thought that it might be because I need to upgrade my RAM, but then I read that it was designed for 32-bit systems anyways, and thus wouldn't use anymore than my current RAM anyways.

[x4000]

Update: 8.006 official update out to hotfix a performance issue that was still affecting some folks.  This returns the rendering pipeline to a state that we are more directly sorting for performance purposes rather than letting the unity engine asynchronously try to handle it on its own.  It seems to help, given the volume of stuff that gets drawn in this game.

[x4000]

Update: 8.005 official update out to hotfix a performance issue that has been plaguing some players since the unity engine upgrade.  It was actually affecting everyone, but it was only really that noticeable on some machines.

Just out of curiosity, what was the change (code-wise)?

He mentioned elsewhere they were using FixedUpdate and now are instead using their own code to handle frame rate limiting.

Yep, pretty much.  Although it turns out that I was actually wrong and we were already not using FixedUpdate.  But we were still using unity's timings in kind of a halfway way.  So it was something that there was just a mess of outdated code that had to be stripped and redone.  The short of it is that previously it could run into problems where it was trying to time its frames one way but instead actually messing up the timings if the Update intervals were too long.  Basically a clash of multiple timing systems, given that this game has gone through four general engines now, sheesh.

This is my most recent one... You may have to fast forward a bit, but I got 20k ships incoming shortly thereafter. When  saw that, I just went ahead and closed out- I knew there was no way that I was going to be able to fight that many without the game crashing on me- it had major glitches when I was fighting the 16k wave, and the graphics... I had thought I took a screenshot, but I guess things were going so slow that Steam didn't manage to catch it. Should have just stuck with the old reliable Prt Scrn button I guess.

Mind you, some of this was before the new update, but this most recent save was after, and I've continued to have these problems.

EDIT: Also, here's my system specs:

Operating System
   MS Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP3
CPU
   AMD Phenom II X4 940   58 °C
   Deneb 45nm Technology
RAM
   4.0GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 401MHz (5-5-5-18)
Motherboard
   ASUSTeK Computer INC. M2N-MX SE Plus (AM2)
Graphics
   2752 @ 1920x1080
   NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
Hard Drives
   488GB Seagate ST3500418AS (SATA)   33 °C
Optical Drives
   ATAPI DVD A  DH24AAS
   Generic DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device
Audio
   Philips SAA713X, Hybrid Capture Device


At first I actually thought that it might be because I need to upgrade my RAM, but then I read that it was designed for 32-bit systems anyways, and thus wouldn't use anymore than my current RAM anyways.

Thank you very much!  I will use that for some benchmarking of my own.  After the 8.006 update (which is out now), I'd be very interested to hear what your experiences are.