Thread by @LotteMakesStuff

So Unity 2020.1 release today! lets dig though it and poke around at the new features together huh?

One real big (and relatively invisible) change is Asset Import Pipeline v2 is now stable and the default! if you've not switched to it yet, I SUPER recommend it - it allows for hella fast switching between target platforms. being able to switch almost instantly is a gamechanger!

In the Project Setting -> Editor window you can totally customize how unity numbers duplicated objects, which is neat

Loads of inspector properties have real good targeted copy/paste support now - you can copy whole properties and paste them to other objects! this is REAL NICE - you used to be able to copy a entire component- this is a good evolution of that

bonus shoutouts to Paste As Child in the hierarchy view too! getting that right can be fiddly sometimes heh

This is an absolutely wild change - Unity now defaults to compiling all C# in editor in Release mode for better performance. you can switch to debug mode at any time by either attaching a debugger or clicking the lil bug icon in the tray at the bottom right

its pretty quick to switch between modes, just a recompile.. be interesting to see how it effects my larger projects going forward

next to it the tray you can see the new background task manager - WHICH IS WILD! im sure to be writing some tweet tutorials on that at some point soon

Focused Inspector is going to be MASSIVE. simple put, right click on any game object in the inspector or hierarchy and select the 'properties' option, and up pops its own stand alone floating/dockable inspector window!

I CANT BEGIN TO TELL YOU HOW MANY TIMES IVE WANTED TO COMPARE TWO GAME OBJECTS WITH EACH OTHER AND RESORTED TO TAKING SCREENSHOTS OF THEIR INSPECTORS!! lifechanging <3

You can do this now?!? Unity's Serialization fully supports generic types now! I think this was one of the last big missing serialization features along with the [SerializeReference] attribute we got recently to support serializing polymorphic data THIS RULES

I think this is a super cool change if you use the job system at all, you can enable flow events in the profiler! this draws arrows showing how execution flows between jobs - really makes it a lot more clear what actually is going on between dependencies

Also in profiler land, you can now run it in a stand alone application outside of the editor! I guess this means you can collect much more accurate profiling data from the editor itself- as well as run it on its own screen and use windows snap an all that~

Theres big changes to how packages are handled - preview packages and package dependencies are hidden by default, you only see end user and verified stuff. If you wanna see them, you have to opt in

Its a lot more proactive in general with making sure you know if you have preview packages in your project, and that they aren't stable yet! theres more info on the general package manager cleanup here blogs.unity3d.com/2020/06/24/pac…

Oh, also package manager now has a lil icon ^-^

If you do a lot of mobile work be sure to check out the new device simulator package - it helps customize the game view to look and act more like your target devices
docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.u…

Heres an experimental feature - Sprite Atlas v2. I think the main neat thing here (appart from cache server support) is that I now handling lazy/background importing? that should help make big 2D projects more snappy in editor.
docs.unity3d.com/2020.1/Documen…

there currently is one big breaking change- you cant add a folder directly to the asset like you could in sprite atlas v1. Thats a suuuper useful feature so hopefully it comes back as the feature matures out of experimental?

this bug fix to Application.ForceCrash sounds interesting... was it like... crashing the game wrongly? xD

Scripting: Undocumented MonoBehaviour.Main method is no longer automatically called by Unity. (1146863) - WOAH?!? imagine hitting that bug - would have been hell to figure out. its fixed in 2020.1 xD

Scripting: Added GameObject.GetComponentInParent method overload that works with inactive Components.

I can guarantee this is going to make someone's day better (this does seem to show up in docs for older versions too?)

OMFGG!!! WE CAN FORCE NEWLY CREATED OBJECTS IN EDITOR TO BE AT 0,0,0 I LOVE THIS 99% OF THE TIME

ooooooh you can multiselect in the console now - works as youd expect, ctrl+click to pick individual logs, shif+click to select a span, and ctrl+a to select all. you can then copy errors to your hearts content and paste into bug tickets/slack channels :P

the cleanup of its toolbar buttons is welcome too - I tend to have a pretty narrow one and its annoying when the toggle buttons on the right of the bar fall off

"Editor: In the Scene view Camera settings window, it is now possible to copy/paste the Camera placement, and use entries in the Widget menu." HECK HECK HECK HECK

"Editor: One-time use windows like color picker, object selector, and gradient editor now always open next to the mouse position." ehh that sounds boring but lets test it *5 seconds later* OH NO HOW DID I LIVE WITHOUT THIS! IT OPENS RIGHT ON THE CURSOR

this is a pretty nice change - not that ive ever notice F to Frame fail much

Okay - thats it for now I think... its 11pm and ive not made dinner so im off to do that! o7 lotte signing off

UPDATE: The scene camera position copys as plain text, so you can totally paste into a slack chat or bug ticket with co-workers to share a ingame position how neat is that! just copy the text and paste right back in~