Challenge: How can I open and run the Unity project of the single-player ecosystem simulation game Ecosim that my team and I received from the client?
The Ecosim repository that my team and I received from the client was created with an old version of Unity (Unity 5) and contains a lot of errors so we started looking into how we can deal with that and run the project in order to start working on our first playable prototype of the wild boar management module.
Methodology
I opened the project with the version it was created on (Unity 5) but it didn’t load. That is why I tried opening it in a newer version of Unity (2019) and it worked but there were many errors so I started fixing them one by one. Whatever was deprecated or obsolate, I replaced it with its updated version and I commented out the things that didn’t work in order to at least see the project running. I managed to run the project but there were some runtime errors and my team and I didn’t really know what to do with it. After that we managed to open the project with Unity 5 but the same errors occured. In the end I summarised the errors I found which we then sent to the client with a request for support.
DOT framework methods used:
Resources
Ecosim repository
Products
Running the project after getting rid of (”fixing”) the errors
Discovered errors
Fixed:
Some methods were deprecated or obsolete so we replaced them with their updated version and it seems okay; e.g.:
AssetBundle.CreateFromMemory(byte[])' is obsolete: 'Method CreateFromMemory has been renamed to LoadFromMemoryAsync (UnityUpgradable) -> LoadFromMemoryAsync(*)'
'Component.renderer' is obsolete: 'Property renderer has been deprecated. Use GetComponent<Renderer>() instead. (UnityUpgradable)'
The references to the struct Coordinate required an import "using Ecosim;" which we added and it seems okay
Not fixed:
The file "InfluenceCoordinate" does not exist; we replaced all references to "InfluenceCoordinate" with "ValueCoordinate" temporarily in order to let the project introduce us to the next batch of errors
There are two "RenderFontToTexture" files (one in Scripts/Font and the other in Scripts/Render) which are almost the same but have some differences; we temporarily commented out one of them in order to let the project introduce us to the next batch of errors
The next batch of errors:
Next
Communicate with the client a possible resolution of the problem and in the meantime - explore other options for creating a first playable prototype of the wild boar management module.
