So… I have been working on this game for a while. Naturally, during that time updates have come out for Unity. And almost every time I downloaded the latest version as soon as I could and updated my project. With one glaring exception. I am still using the 2020 build of Unity.

That build is still getting updates, and I install those whenever I can. But there is now (what appears to be) a fairly stable 2021 version and even a 2022 version available for download. So why wouldn’t I use the latest and greatest version of the engine? For a few reasons as it turns out.

Firstly, when you are in the middle of development you don’t change up the version of a program you are using without a very good reason. Updating always has risks. Perhaps that system you are relying on got tweaked just enough to break one of you mechanics. Or maybe a feature you relied on got changed out for a new one that works differently. Learning these new systems and idiosyncrasies takes time and can bog down a project to the point of an all out stop.

This is not to say you never update a program to a new version. Sometimes those changes that can bog you down? They might be exactly what you need to make something work or speed up production. Or perhaps your target platform changed somehow and the new version can handle that change better. As such, one shouldn’t  dismiss newer versions out of hand. But only done after long consideration.

With all that said, even if the newer version had something that would benefit design work game, I wouldn’t update at this point. The reason is quite simple: I am too close to the end. It makes no sense to refamiliarize myself with the new placement, layout, and controls of the various Unity systems at this point in development. Updates to the current version? Certainly, in fact I downloaded one as I wrote this. But, frankly, rather than speeding up development, at this point the time taken learning new systems could as much as double time I need to finish this project.

So the newer versions of Unity will simply have to wait for my next game.