Need assistance in upgrading to 2.x

[Abelius]

Hello Tony, long time no see.

You may vaguely remember that I tried to upgrade from 1.8.x to 2.x some months ago, and I ended up with garbled text in my Sequencer Shortcuts components...:



You indicated that I should change Asset Serialization to Force Text, as seen here:

https://www.pixelcrushers.com/dialogue_ ... dingFrom1x

...and try again.

The thing is, it seems I already did that the first time because it has happened the same thing to me now as well.

I'm running Unity 5.6.6f2 and quite a few plugins, including PlayMaker and Adventure Creator, so when I reached the step in which I needed to delete DS and import 2.1.0, I proceeded to import their integration plugins to clear out the dozens upon dozens of compiler errors.

However, I'm more worried about these errors I received when I changed Asset Serialization from Mixed to Force Text...:



I don't have the slightest idea of where those errors come from, but at that point, the shortcut components were still okay.

It was after running the Updater tool when they got garbled and I also received another error like the previous ones:



Nevertheless, all errors could be cleared up by pressing the correspondent button, so no critical things seem to remain.

However, the save system must not be running 100% well, because when I load a pre-DS2 saved game, I get this...:



There are quite a lot of those.

I don't expect perfection after a so important upgrade, so I saved a new game file at this point, and tried to load it, expecting not seeing any of those errors. However, some were shown:



So, summarizing...:

1.- I don't have a clue if those errors were generated by a Unity 4.x asset, because I have several plugins.

2.- If the only place where I get garbled text (to my knowledge) is the Sequencer Shortcuts components, I could easily migrate them to a script to avoid the issue.

3.- Those loading errors worry me to a higher degree, and I checked that the Bridge configuration is identical to the one I had before the upgrade.

Could you give me some suggestion as to how to proceed? I don't want to get locked in 1.8.x, because you mentioned old versions won't get new features and also better performance (?).

Of course, if you need more info, please tell me.

Thank you!

[Tony Li]

Hi!

You may vaguely remember that I tried to upgrade from 1.8.x to 2.x some months ago, and I ended up with garbled text in my Sequencer Shortcuts components...

I'm surprised that they would appear garbled after the updater. I would think that they would be garbled after changing Asset Serialization to Force Text.

If you still have the DS 1.x project, please try this:

1. Make a copy of the project.
2. Make sure the Sequencer Shortcuts' content looks correct.
3. Change Asset Serialization to Force Text.
4. Close the project and delete the Library folder.
5. Open the project and wait a long time for Unity to rebuild the Library folder.
6. Check your scenes and Sequencer Shortcuts.

If Sequencer Shortcuts are incorrect, then Unity has garbled it, and it just didn't show up until Unity refreshed the scene's cached data.

However, the save system must not be running 100% well, because when I load a pre-DS2 saved game, I get this...:

That "ERR #" message was inadvertently left from debugging. They only mean that the saved game does not contain SimStatus information for a conversation.

Version 2.1.1, which I'm trying to release by tomorrow, has significant performance improvements to the save system and also gets rid of that message. The save system performance improvements will also be in version 1.8.9, which will come out later in the week. But I do recommend upgrading to version 2.x if possible because it has other improvements, too.

[Abelius]

Thank you, I'll make sure of trying that asap and return to you.

About the slow performance I mentioned, I was referring to the Conversation Editor, actually.

But the scene is so big and it has so many FSMs at this point that I'm not even sure it is problem with DS. Anyway, yes, I'd like to move on to 2.x as soon as possible.

[Tony Li]

The conversation editor has major performance improvements, too.

[Abelius]

Okay, I've tested your procedure and I've got the same result (no garbled text before Updater tool).

I'll tell the story with screencaps...

Project backed up and started. Shortcuts are okay.


Serialization to 'Force Text'


Same errors as in other tries.


Shortcuts still good.


Exit saving.



Library folder deleted.



Project started again from Unity Hub. Reimports for 25-30 minutes.


I get welcomed with a lot of warning and one critical error (x56), which seemed related to the camera and/or Spine.


Also, the scene is not automatically opened.


When I open the main scene, the shortcuts are still readable.


So, I'm inclined to continue with my plan of consolidating all the shortcuts into a script (I was going to do that eventually, anyway), and retry the whole thing to see if, in the end, even after all those errors I still can get the game to work. The last time seemed to work, at least...

Of course, I'd want to have more reassurance, but considering how many plugins I have, it might not be realistic to put that weight on your shoulders.

Unless you have other suggestions up your sleeve, that is.

[Tony Li]

I'm at a loss. As far as you know, is Sequencer Shortcuts the only component with garbled content?

I could write a short exporter script that would save off your shortcuts so you could reimport them in 2.x. Are all of your Sequencer Shortcuts in one scene or on one prefab? That would make it easier.

[Abelius]

Yeah well, I didn't research too much into other components because the game as a whole seems to work. Moreover, I use PlayMaker and Adventure Creator and both of them are quite hysterical when it comes to errors or things they can't find anymore.

Yes, my sequencer registration script is in the scene, but don't worry. I'll consolidate all of them into that script, delete the components and see if I still get those thousands of errors. I suspect they come from other places, though.

Could you confirm if those "Binary to YAML conversion:<type> is unsupported" errors are related to the Unity 4.x binary assets issue you mention in your update notes?

[Tony Li]

Could you confirm if those "Binary to YAML conversion:<type> is unsupported" errors are related to the Unity 4.x binary assets issue you mention in your update notes?

Yes.

Unity 4.x is a 32-bit editor. Assets such as scenes that are saved in binary format in Unity 4.x are saved in 32-bit format.

If those binary assets are brought into Unity 5.x+, Unity can still read them. But when converting them from binary to text, or when using a scene that references some assets that were saved binary and some that were saved text, it chokes on 32-bit integers. When Unity 5.x came out, they had to prioritize what issues to fix. They chose not to fix this issue, instead recommending that devs set their 4.x projects to Force Text before upgrading to 5.x. For the most part this is a reasonable workaround. But there can be a problem with Asset Store assets that were created in 4.x. If they were saved in binary format and brought into 5.x, they carry this issue with them. Assets that were created in 5.x+ are fine in 5.x+ regardless of serialization mode (binary or text). As are 4.x assets that were saved with text serialization.

[Abelius]

I've finished migrating all the shortcuts to the script and tomorrow I'll try again to upgrade.

However, the times I've tried to upgrade I've received thousands of conversion errors, so I suspect the shortcuts are not the issue but other plugins' assets. That could be bad news for me because I don't have any idea of which plugins would be.

I guess I could try to pinpoint the culprit/s by uninstalling some of them and trying again until I don't get those errors. But for that to be useful, I'd need to revert serialization to 'Mixed' after I end upgrading DS.

Is that possible? Or that field is supposed to be 'Force Text' from now on, as long as DS is used?

[Tony Li]

It only needs to be Force Text while the updater script is running. You can switch back to mixed after the update process.

However, Force Text is the way Unity is headed because it prevents these kinds of garbled data issues in the first place. New Unity projects in 5.3+ (I think that's the version) always default to Force Text.