Given up!

[D_F]

I've spent over 2 weeks trying to get Gaia working for our project.

A world of  5x5 512 terrain tiles

I'm getting continuous errors and terrains not loading in builds.

I've given up! 

Well Gaia Pro 2021 was discounted, so I've only lost 155e, but will be moving on, I guess it works for some.

 

 

[Adam]

Hey there. Our support is here to help you.

Please share what is going in and we will see if we can sort it out. 

[Emursive Indie]

Alot of times it's a unity thing. Let Adam and the team try to help you as Gaia really is an amazing tool especially when paired with Gena

[Sorra the Orc]

Hang on... we can't blame Unity here. Gaia is a very complex and powerful tool and if it's not used as intended it can behave erratically. Just the other day, live on stream I had the following experience:

1) A crash caused me to lose the terrain (may or may not have been caused by Gaia). When returning to the scene I ran the Gaia Session Manager to recover the lost work. However, the Gaia Session Manager had stopped recording my actions after a specific point. I'm pretty sure I know what I did to cause this to happen and it was certainly an edge case. But it happened and was nothing to do with Unity.

2) Restarting my scene I got all the way into using Gena to place my POIs and they worked fairly well. But road pathfinding was frankly bonkers, I manually set my paths and it worked well. But then when trying to place some trees they just weren't working. It was getting late so I decided to just go ahead and spawn from Gaia. It stripped all my texturing from the terrain and left me with just sand, throwing an array exception. Again, nothing to do with Unity and in this case I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything unusual (unlike issue 1)

Gaia is an amazing tool. But lets not pretend it is a perfect tool and Unity is the villain. That doesn't help the PW team in the slightest who, genuinely, want to make it as close as possible to the perfect tool. I happened to be streaming so I have a video of everything I did. I've yet to share it with the PW team (want to find the key timestamps for them to help them make use of it).

There isn't another Unity tool out there that will give you a fraction of what Gaia does. That does mean it is worth persevering with and, critically, bringing problems to the PW team so they can a) provide the "correct" way to do it and b) protect against problems when a different path is taken. 

D_F trust me the PW team are very open to feedback. On a stream a couple of weeks ago I had the whole team watching me work with their new Synty Nature pack. Just a day later they released a patched version to stop users like you and me falling afoul because we were using a different workflow from the one intended. Don't give up... give constructive feedback. The team love it!

Edited December 26, 2021 by Sorra the Orc

[Adam]

As @Sorra the Orc says, Gaia is not perfect!

We do our best to provide quality software, but at same time, issues do slip through.

When we know about them, because people took the time to document what went wrong, then we can try and replicate to fix.

Sometimes the issue is ours, sometimes the issue is Unity, and sometimes it is self inflicted wounds through workflow that we did not anticipate.

That said, my initial experience of Unity 2021.2 has been abysmal to the point that I don't want to demo with it any more. It literally randomly starts throwing errors - and has to either be restarted - or in some cases, pressing play and coming back out of play mode fixes it.

I was surprised that they released it at all with the significant list of known issues it has. It has been their least stable release in some time imho.

What's new in Unity 2021.2.6 - Unity (unity3d.com)

[Sorra the Orc]

Well Unity 2021 is Technical Stream (aka Beta) so I'm perfectly OK with the fact there are known issues with it. That being said I find it far more reliable than 2020 (which consistently hangs for 5-10 minutes 2-3 times an hour for no apparent reason). That's why I'm still on 2019 for anything but experimental work. That presents a problem, with Gaia Pro only being 2020+

To your point, the instability of Unity 2020 is outside your control. I wouldn't hold 2021 instability against them though. If it is still unstable at LTS that is a different story. We are a quarter away from LTS.

 

[Adam]

We get judged by the experience people have and are generally the first to be blamed when things go wrong.

A lot of newcomers to Unity are not aware that you should only use the latest LTS, and instead rush to download the latest bright shiny Unity release.

I personally would love for Unity 2020.2 to be more stable, as I love the new sky system... but have found 2020.1 to be quite good, and 2020.2 to be quite bad.

When serialization, and undo are not working reliably, and there are a bunch of terrain issues, then the finger naturally turns to us, as our tools do a lot of heavy lifting.

[D_F]

I've attached the Unity Log. In Editor the game still runs with these errors, but the scene view becomes inactive (can't move the scene camera, click on anything etc), also in a build I get a black screen after the Unity Logo! I have tried completely removing Gaia, re-importing it and recreating the world, but eventually these errors return.

I'm using Unity 2020.3.17. Windows platform.

Edited December 26, 2021 by D_F

[D_F]

Log error in more detail.

Edited December 26, 2021 by D_F

[Sorra the Orc]

 

7 hours ago, D_F said:

Log error in more detail.

I've never seen anything like that with or without Gaia. My guess is the PW team might need a repro for that - though they always amaze me how many of these things they have seen before...

Edited December 27, 2021 by Sorra the Orc

[Vexstorm]

I also have never seen an issue with Gaia Pro, or really any asset that is produced by this team resulting in this error. As asked before me, what Unity Version are you running. Have you tried to create a simple test scene with Gaia Pro only and running the same test, to see if issue replicates?

Its truly frustrating when something doesn't work, I understand this better than some as I not only use Unity to develop Games, using much of procedural world assets in the process, but also develop software in Unity and have had what I would nicely call "challenges", and issues that seem to run afoul for absolutely no reason I could gather other then Unity just having a bad moment (perhaps cache file issues or other memory issues)

I would suggest the following checks done, and information provided:

Information -

1) What Unity Version are you using? Edited - your using Unity 2020.3.17. Windows platform. 

May I suggest backing your files up, and then upgrading to version 2020.3.24 LTS ?? Its the version I have been using with no issues to date

2) What rendering Pipeline?

3) Is this a test scene only with Gaia Pro or other assets included? If other assets involved, which ones?

4) What was the last thing that you did , that resulted in this change? What specifically triggered this error?

Things to look at and Try:

1) Check your build settings, and make sure you have added your current scene to it in the build settings as well as have deleted any "ghost" scenes that you don't want built (ghost scenes are scenes that you deleted but have not been fully removed from the build settings screen; They show as an empty space with a check box next to it in build settings screen). These can cause errors similar to what your describing, meaning unity did not clean up your deleted scene correctly.

2) Run an instance of Unity that you know works, that is clean and free of all other assets and run the same test with Gaia Pro and create a build from a simple terrain you create. Make it simple, add water, and what have you, spawn the biomes, and then add it to your build 

3) Do not give up. Game development, really any development is challenging and hard. Anything that is worth while is not meant to be easy otherwise, anyone would do it. This said, I personally do find procedural worlds assets speeding up my process, for what would have taken me many days, to a few hours. You got this. Additionally there is a community that is willing to help. I look forward to your response, and wish you the best

 

Chris

 

Edited December 27, 2021 by Vexstorm

[D_F]

Thanks for you reply.

1) What Unity Version are you using? 2020.3.17

2) What rendering Pipeline? Built in

3) Is this a test scene only with Gaia Pro or other assets included? If other assets involved, which ones? - I have tried with a new "test" project with just Gaia. Still the same issue.

4) What was the last thing that you did , that resulted in this change? What specifically triggered this error? - I have had this issue from day 1 of installing Gaia into the project., so can't recall a single thing other than importing the package -> creating a 10x10 512 terrain world -> spawning Alpine Meadow biomes..
 

Check your build settings - Yes, all terrain scenes are in the build settings that should be there, with no "deleted" scenes.
 

[Vexstorm]

51 minutes ago, D_F said:

 

1) What Unity Version are you using? 2020.3.17

- May I suggest backing your files up, and then upgrading to version 2020.3.24 LTS ?? Its the version I have been using with no issues to date

2) What rendering Pipeline? Built in

-  This rules out any potential issues with scriptable pipeline

3) Is this a test scene only with Gaia Pro or other assets included? If other assets involved, which ones? - I have tried with a new "test" project with just Gaia. Still the same issue.

-  I am glad to hear that you have tried with just simply Gaia Pro, and nothing else in test scene. Have you verified your using the latest version of Gaia Pro? What version of Gaia Pro are you using? Gaia Pro (original) is now at version 2.2.5 and Gaia Pro 2021 is at version 3.1.3

- Additional suggestion since your using windows, is to navigate to your Gaia Pro Folder by going to c:\Users\-yourprofilename-\AppData\Roaming\Unity\Asset Store-5x\Procedural Worlds\Editor Extensions Terrain\   you could then remove your asset for Gaia Pro there ( or Gaia Pro 2021) from there , and re download it, alternatively you should be able to also redownload the asset from the unity store, (assuming some how its erroring due to file corruption)

4) What was the last thing that you did , that resulted in this change? What specifically triggered this error? - I have had this issue from day 1 of installing Gaia into the project., so can't recall a single thing other than importing the package -> creating a 10x10 512 terrain world -> spawning Alpine Meadow biomes..

-  Have you tried other biomes, to narrow down the potential issue? Perhaps its just the one biome giving you the issue

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Additional Questions - 

1) You are testing and it fails with only one scene in the build settings, do you have a screen shot of what your build settings look like please? Perhaps its a specific setting or perhaps a specific build type that is missing a required file.

2) Please review the above responses I have provided. They may provide a potential solution you may not have thought of.

 

I look forward to your response and hope this helps.

 

- Chris

[Recon]

Hi, DF, game development is a complex thing, alot of things can go wrong, it can be Unity, it can be Gaia.  it happens.  

 

But, I help users every day with different assets, and different issues.   Your using an older Unity 2020 version.  Update to the newest 2020.3.24  

 

for example, I helped a few folks the other day and even myself, I was using 2020.3.21, I think it was, and I updated one version and it fixed it, I had an odd issue with Undo, in Gaia, no matter what I did, I could not fix it. The developers tried to help me what resolved it was an update, this was the same for others.

 

So, give Unity an update to the newest version of 2020.3.24. or 25.  let us know how it goes.

 

 

PS, Remember Unity does not make games, so alot of times we developers, you me and everyone are the testers, so things break, also PW made GAIA it is a complex things, things can break, but people use it every day, and yes its frustrating when everyone says it don't happen to me, but its happening to you and its broke, so alot of times its trial and error, take a step back, and come back to it.

There always is a fix.... I been a game developer a long time and bang my head on my desk alot of days, and sometimes things that I even made break for new reason in Unity after they worked for years.. so sometimes Unity adds something that breaks things.  Some times Gaia may have added an update they may have broke something. ( alot of times its Unity from my experience.)  I helped thousands of users with various assets, and my own client work for years, so take a breathe, and don't give up, this happens in game development.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Recon

[Peter]

@D_F I had a look at the error messages you sent, and I do know these errors from two other cases: The error originates from terrain loading, and basically there is a technical issue where this error is thrown when Gaia attempts to load a terrain while the unity editor is doing an assembly reload, which then can lead to a deadlock where the assembly reload is never finished because of the error, and Gaia keeps on attempting to load the terrain.

However:

• There should already be a mechanism in place that prevents this exact error from happening
• With the other cases this was something that would happen at some point during development, and could be fixed temporarily with a restart of the unity editor or unloading all terrains in the terrain loader manager
• This error should normally not occur during runtime / in a build, since there should be no assembly reloading happening there, also I would expect at least an empty scene to be rendered - it could be that there is an additional issue at play here.

Could you please download the attached file, rename the extension to .unitypackage, and install it in your project? This is a small patch where I try to catch the error before it happens so that the assembly reload can complete. This might fix the issue, but it is a bit difficult without being able to reproduce the issue.

Gaia-AssemblyReloadCatch.unitypackage

If the errors during build still persist, it would be great if you could try a development build, in the hopes you can see an error message in the development console. You can additionally check the Player Log of the build, sometimes the last log entry gives an indication what the issue might be.

[Vexstorm]

Love the support given here 🙂