Tasharen Entertainment Forum

Support => NGUI 3 Support => Topic started by: kruncher on January 15, 2014, 12:03:54 AM

Title: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 15, 2014, 12:03:54 AM
Hey guys

I am using GIT for my project and have configured it as follows:

- Using "Visible Meta Files"
- "Force Text"
- .gitignore excludes the "Library" folder.

The Problem:

When pulling repo from remote onto another computer, any references to dynamic fonts in prefabs are lost.

Workaround:

1. Pull from remote (into fresh folder).
2. Verify GIT shows no working changes.
3. Open Unity.
4. Wait for assets to import.
5. Notice that some of the affected prefabs show up in GIT as modified where font guid references have been erased. Not all affected prefabs are listed.
6. Reset these changes.
7. Those which were listed are now temporarily fixed.
8. For other affected prefabs:
... a) Select prefab.
... b) Temporarily change value of a field.
... c) Select "File | Save Project".
... d) Restore value of field.
... e) Select "File | Save Project".
9. Reset any working changes in GIT.
10. Fixed... until next time

This feels like a bug in Unity... but is there anything I am doing wrong?
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: ArenMook on January 15, 2014, 10:08:19 PM
Are you sure you checked in all the "meta" files? Simply showing meta files is not enough. You need to commit them and push them alongside the actual files.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 16, 2014, 11:58:52 AM
Meta files are committed to the git repository so that the 'Library' folder can be rebuilt. I have narrowed this down to a bug with either Unity or the scroll bar class and have submitted a bug report to Unity (Case 585890).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2GBJ4IV7bs

Please let me know if you would like me to send you the repro project directly. Though I guess that you should be able to access the case details directly.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: ArenMook on January 16, 2014, 10:36:18 PM
I don't work at Unity anymore, I left at the end of November to pursue my own interests. But it does sound like some bug in Unity, so it's a good thing you submitted a bug report. I'd recommend doing a repro case without NGUI in it though. When Unity guys see "NGUI", or some other plugin, they just usually blame the plugin.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 16, 2014, 11:10:16 PM
Quote
I don't work at Unity anymore, I left at the end of November to pursue my own interests.
I really wish you all the best with this!
Quote
I'd recommend doing a repro case without NGUI in it though. When Unity guys see "NGUI", or some other plugin, they just usually blame the plugin.
I can't reproduce this without NGUI present... I have spent a considerable amount of time trying. When the scroll bar is present it breaks, when its not, it works fine...
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: ArenMook on January 16, 2014, 11:21:46 PM
What does having or not having a scroll bar have to do with dynamic fonts? o_O
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 16, 2014, 11:23:15 PM
On the repro project, delete the scroll bar and it magically just works...
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 16, 2014, 11:23:56 PM
If you PM me your email, I will send it to you directly if you want. I feel that this is a Unity bug somehow triggered by the state of the scroll bar...
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: ArenMook on January 16, 2014, 11:31:30 PM
It's support at tasharen.com, but I doubt I can do much here. Sounds strange to say the least.

I'd prefer a dropbox link btw (but also sent via private email).
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 17, 2014, 12:12:26 AM
I don't have a DropBox account at the moment, so I have sent the file to you using WeTransfer which avoids cluttering your inbox with attachments. I hope that this is okay for you...
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: ArenMook on January 17, 2014, 12:24:27 AM
Yup, thanks.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: BurningToad on January 17, 2014, 10:26:31 AM
Just thought that I would chime in and say that we have seen a similar issue pop up.  We use perforce for source control, and check in all the meta files.  On a new machine (getting all the code from depot and importing and such for the first time) we have seen the dynamic font references disappear from prefabs as well.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: gekido on January 18, 2014, 03:57:31 PM
are the fonts installed on all machines?  that's one of the biggest issues with the dynamic fonts, the exact version of the font must be installed on all machines - so if you have pc / mac dev's (for example), I could see font references being lost for example...
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 19, 2014, 03:43:57 PM
Quote
are the fonts installed on all machines?
In my case the fonts do happen to be installed.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: ArenMook on January 20, 2014, 12:27:17 AM
"Installed"? The TrueType font should be a part of your project.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 20, 2014, 04:52:53 AM
Quote from: ArenMook on January 20, 2014, 12:27:17 AM
"Installed"? The TrueType font should be a part of your project.
Just in case that question was directed at me:

I only have the font installed for work in Photoshop. I would expect the Unity asset importer pipeline to deal with the font. Unity only breaks the font reference the first time it updates its asset database from a GIT repository.

Added: I am going to spend some time today trying to figure out why the scroll bar class is causing this problem by stripping it back.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 20, 2014, 06:18:53 AM
Okay, I have traced this problem to its root with a lot of trial-and-error. The problem is caused within one of the parent classes of `UIScrollBar` which is the `UIProgressBar` script.

The following is the bare minimal representation of the script which causes this issue to occur. I didn't bother inlining `ForceUpdate` since I figured that retaining the structure would help you to see where it came from. This is the bare bones implementation of the `UIProgressBar` class which leads to the problem occurring:

  1. using UnityEngine;
  2.  
  3. public class UIProgressBar : MonoBehaviour
  4. {
  5.        
  6.         [HideInInspector][SerializeField] protected UIWidget mFG;
  7.        
  8.         protected void OnValidate ()
  9.         {
  10.                 ForceUpdate();
  11.         }
  12.        
  13.         public virtual void ForceUpdate ()
  14.         {
  15.                 if (mFG != null)
  16.                 {
  17.                         mFG.drawRegion = new Vector4(0f, 0f, 1f, 0);
  18.                 }
  19.         }
  20.        
  21. }
  22.  

I have spent some time minimizing the number of scripts in the NGUI assets folder. My GIT commits (made whilst minimizing the repro project) might be useful for you. I will send you the updated GIT project in a moment.

I hope that this helps to reduce the problem further for you :)
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: ArenMook on January 20, 2014, 07:25:53 AM
Quote
I only have the font installed for work in Photoshop. I would expect the Unity asset importer pipeline to deal with the font.
The font must be in your Assets folder. That's the only way it's ever going to work. If it's not there, then there isn't going to be any .meta file alongside it. No meta file means it won't be stored in the repository. Not being stored in the repository means no references to keep.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 20, 2014, 08:01:45 AM
Quote from: ArenMook on January 20, 2014, 07:25:53 AM
The font must be in your Assets folder. That's the only way it's ever going to work. If it's not there, then there isn't going to be any .meta file alongside it. No meta file means it won't be stored in the repository. Not being stored in the repository means no references to keep.
As you will see in the video and the demonstration projects which I have sent you, the font assets are in the project folder. I also have them installed into the Fonts folder on Windows and Mac for use in Photoshop :)

Clarification on former wording: I only installed the fonts into the OS's so that I could use them in Photoshop. Unity naturally requires the font as an asset in the project.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 20, 2014, 08:06:59 AM
If "mFG.drawRegion = new Vector4(0f, 0f, 1f, 0);" is removed from the minimal version, the issue does not occur. So it seems to be related to this...

The problem seems to be caused by ExecuteInEditMode in the other NGUI scripts. I have removed that attribute from the bare-bones repro case of `UIProgressBar` (as you can see above).

For the purposes of testing I have:
1. Removed all references of "ExecuteInEditMode" from the NGUI scripts.
2. Naturally this does not preview in edit-mode anymore.
3. Problem no longer occurs when testing using play-mode. The former problem occurs in edit-mode and play-mode since Unity damages the asset.

So it looks like ExecuteInEditMode is causing an issue when Unity is regenerating its asset database. I haven't used this attribute in my own asset and do not really understand its quirks. Hopefully this will help.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 20, 2014, 08:27:30 AM
Okay, I have found the troublesome lines of code in NGUI source:

UIWidget.cs : MarkAsChanged
Occurrences of:
  1. UnityEditor.EditorUtility.SetDirty

Removing these fixes the problem.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: ArenMook on January 21, 2014, 03:54:14 AM
SetDirty should be there. I'm not sure if it was you I emailed back or not, but the root of the issue seems to be the fact that Unity executes OnValidate function in scripts on prefabs, even if prefabs are not instantiated, or selected. 3.0.9 f3 should have this resolved by exiting out of OnValidates early if the game object is disabled.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 21, 2014, 07:52:54 AM
Quote from: ArenMook on January 21, 2014, 03:54:14 AM
SetDirty should be there. I'm not sure if it was you I emailed back or not, but the root of the issue seems to be the fact that Unity executes OnValidate function in scripts on prefabs, even if prefabs are not instantiated, or selected. 3.0.9 f3 should have this resolved by exiting out of OnValidates early if the game object is disabled.
Yes, it was me you e-mailed!

It seems that usage of SetDirty within the context of OnValidate is the cause of the problem when importing the project for the first time. The early-exit strategy seems to work perfectly in my trials today. It hasn't failed once.

Thanks for the fix! My client will be so happy now that they don't have to perform odd fixes each time they pull from the repo :)
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: kruncher on January 23, 2014, 06:00:19 PM
The previous fix has been working great! I haven't updated to the latest version of NGUI yet, but adding those early-outs has made the GIT workflow a breeze :)
Title: uGUI vs NGUI
Post by: col000r on January 29, 2014, 07:21:47 AM
Hm. Not working at Unity anymore? So what should we all do now? I was under the impression that uGUI would more or less naturally replace NGUI down the line and that you had some kind of deal worked out with them for that. (This was based on no evidence whatsoever, just plain guessing on my part...)

So the new uGUI is just another new GUI-System to compete in the market then it seems. Should I give the new uGUI a try or stick to NGUI? Will you continue to develop NGUI?
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: ArenMook on January 29, 2014, 09:12:31 AM
Well, brief history... uGUI started as NGUI. That is, I took NGUI in its entirety and branched off from it to create uGUI. There was no deal or compensation, I just felt that Unity deserved a solid foundation to start with. That was around April last year. From that point up until mid-June I was on it mostly by myself and had full control of what was being changed.

Eventually other people jumped onto the project and things started getting pulled in other directions. Rendering/batching pipeline, complete inspector re-design, scene view handling, text system, anchoring system... Some changes I liked, others -- not so much. In the end I felt like I was also pulled in different directions. On one hand I wanted to finish uGUI, but on the other hand I felt that I had less and less control over the overall polish, and I found it frustrating.

I also wanted to do game dev because I passionately believe that in order to make great tools, the people making them have to use them as others use them. Unreal has Gears of War. CryEngine has Crysis. idTech had Doom and RAGE. Even Unigine had Oil Rush. Unity... has nothing. And it shows as a bunch of half-finished systems that devs have to work-around.

Cloth crashes Unity if included in prefabs, doesn't respect rigidbody interpolation and can't be disabled without breaking. WindZone not being available to scripting at all. ParticleSystem not having most of its properties exposed to scripting... Those are just the ones I encountered in the past week alone.

I hate hacks. I hate them with a passion. Seeing things come apart as others started changing them, and become visibly worse with the excuse of "oh, I'm just going to get it working for now, make it pretty later" wore at my resolve. I believe that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing properly, and from the start. Because let's face it, most of the time there will never be a "later". Once a feature is in, devs will move on to the next thing. Polishing, and more importantly -- using those features is never a priority.

In the end, I realized that I was spending a lot of time idling, and very little time actually doing something. My "mojo" was gone, and I wasn't going to stick around for the paycheck. And so I left.

Curiously enough, my mojo returned within a week. I was back at it doing dev work, and the week after my last week at Unity was the most productive NGUI-dev week I've had to date, with me adding many of the features people were asking about.

Now it's a new year, and I am focusing more and more on game dev, which is what inspires me in the first place.
Title: Re: Problem with dynamic fonts and source control
Post by: ArenMook on January 31, 2014, 02:11:01 PM
Since some people started linking this post and interpreting it as "ArenMook hates Unity!", I feel the need to clarify some obvious points.

One dev parting ways from a 300+ person company does not make or break anything.

uGUI started as NGUI with the simple goal of "take something that works, and make it better". That much has been communicated on many occasions, and I talked about it at Unite. After months of development it became a quite different system. Even by Unite 2013 it was very different. Now -- much more so. If by the time it gets released you won't recognize any similarities anymore, I won't be surprised.

As everyone knows, people rarely leave for just "one reason", and that was also true in my case. There were some creative differences, certainly -- but show me a project that doesn't? I'm a perfectionist, and me getting irritated over lack of immediate polish is nothing new. I wasn't keen on some changes, but it doesn't mean that I think the changes were wrong. It just means that they were simply not what I am used to or what I personally deemed as a priority. Note the emphasis. I didn't drive the GUI development. I contributed to it, and my priorities are different than most people's. That too is nothing new.

The most important fact you have to remember is that I've been doing NGUI since 2011, and GUI systems since long before that, and I was simply put -- burned out from doing the same thing. Add to that the fact that I was overworked with a full time job and still had to support NGUI, and all that time I wanted to do game dev instead. Two full time jobs left no time for that, and something had to go. I don't have the luxury of "quitting" NGUI, but I was able to part ways with the other job. Fortunately by the time I lost my mojo the system was in a solid enough state and there were quite a few capable developers doing great things that continue to improve it daily. I have full faith that it will be a solid system when they deem it ready.

I'm sure all of us will use it, myself included.

And for the record, Unity Tech is the single best company I've ever worked at. Great variety of extremely smart people, unrivalled freedom and openness with execs make it second to none.