Feb
5
2013

First impressions using UnityVS

An article by mgear

Been using UnityVS some days now (only for simple scripting), heres few notes about it. *adding more notes later.
(you can get a free trial version from here)

UnityVS+VisualStudio2010+Unity4

Good Stuff:
– Real autocomplete! (for unityscript also!)
– AutoComplete.
– Autocompl… yes, it saves a lot of time when you dont have to check every command from the unity documentation (which usually doesnt help much anyway..)
– When saving a script in VisualStudio, it instantly starts compiling in Unity (instead of the usual Alt-Tab jumping around and waiting for the compilation to start..)
– You can use VisualStudio macros, snippets etc.
– Object browser (see image #2), view all the commands/functions available!
– Best for C# (with unityscript theres still some annoyances)
– ..more later

Needs fixing:
– Sometimes scripts wont open, no matter how many times you double click them
– Cannot have Webplayer as current build platform
– Documentation bit lacking (for example, not much info what to do when things dont work..)
– Sometimes autocomplete is too “aggressive”, especially in unityscript (you try to type: “private var mapsize:int”, the int gets autocompleted with “InteractiveCloth”)
– Random hangs when quitting unity
– By default Visual studio doesnt have the common useful shortcuts, like: ctrl+d (duplicate line), F1 for scripting documentation, etc. Have to build your own macros.

—

Image#2: Object browser

Tags: autocomplete, c#, review, unityscript, unityvs, visual studio

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9 Comments + Add Comment

Mladen Mihajlovic 08/02/2013 at 13:59

Here’s something: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2279000/visual-studio-short-cut-key-duplicate-line

Reply
- mgear 12/02/2013 at 22:47
  
  Thanks!
  
  Founded something similar also,
  still need to make/edit the macro where can select part of the line, and duplicate that in the same line..
  
  Reply
Tam 20/02/2013 at 14:41

Thanks for sharing that.
What about debugging functionnalities ? Did you tried it ? That’s what I was mainly interested in

Reply
- mgear 28/02/2013 at 23:26
  
  Havent tried it yet..
  
  Note:
  There was update available to unityVS and it seems to fix most of those random hangs & script not opening problems.
  
  Reply
elecman 04/03/2013 at 08:09

The random hangs when quitting unity have been fixed in a beta version. Ask them to receive the new beta and give it a try.

Some grammar: I see you sometimes say “founded”. That is wrong. It should be “found”.

Reply
- mgear 04/03/2013 at 08:50
  
  Thanks, i’ll do that 🙂 my english is bit broken ><
  
  Reply
mgear 13/05/2013 at 16:48

Useful plugin for visual studio:
Displays indent guides in Visual Studio text editor windows
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/e792686d-542b-474a-8c55-630980e72c30

Reply
mgear 02/07/2014 at 22:59

“Microsoft acquires SyntaxTree, creator of UnityVS plugin for Visual Studio”
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2014/06/30/microsoft-acquires-syntaxtree-creator-of-unityvs-plugin-for-visual-studio.aspx

“we will make UnityVS itself free for download on the VS Professional and higher SKUs”
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2014/06/30/microsoft-acquires-syntaxtree-creator-of-unityvs-plugin-for-visual-studio.aspx#10539089

Reply
mgear 29/07/2014 at 22:18

released:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2014/07/29/visual-studio-tools-for-unity-1-9.aspx

Reply