[Solution] Convert serialized prefabs and scenes from 5.5 to previous unity versions

Hey everyone,

While getting ready for AS submission I noticed all prefabs and scenes serialized in 5.5 (my development version) were completely broken in my minimum target version, 5.1.5.
While the automatic conversion of Unity from 5.5 to 5.3+ yielded working results, all object names were gone - porting to < 5.3 even resulted in completely broken prefabs and scenes
Of course I'm aware Unity had no intention to make this work in the first place but I'm sure many people would appreciate backwards compability

So I wrote a little script that works on the text-serialized versions and 'converts' them to work in previous unity versions based on some basic text processing - it is really surprising how these simple modifications do wonders
It can be found on Github Gist along with my other small projects.

To convert serialized files (prefabs, scenes, ...) to versions <5.5 or <5.3:
1. Get my script from Github Gist
2. Enable force text serialization in ProjectSettings/Editor
3. Right click on the asset in the version it was serialized in and select the target version
4. Move the created file with the _Converted suffix into the target project

It is currently pretty simple and rough as I was in a hurry, if there's interest I can add batch processing and other improvements
Seneral

 

Thanks for the script, unfortunately it didn't work for a asset we bought from the store (submitted using Unity 5.5.0). I set serialization to force text and deleted the library folder, temp folder, .meta files, .sln/proj files and disabled Cache server but Unity 5.3.7f1 always crashes upon opening the converted scene file.

You should also sell your script on the asset store I think.

Btw if you want to assure backwards compatibility we used to develop a project in the lower Unity version (4.6 in our case) and pull the changes into a branch which was upgraded to a higher version (5.3 in our case). Upward conversion should always work. We only had to worry about plugins and their Unity compatibility.

 

Hey,
I won't sell such a small little script, I think such utilities should stay free. Don't know, just feels inapropriate Also I created it for my needs without a guarantee it is working in every case.

Yes I now do develop in my target version but when I started I did not consider this. Usually, you should have backup incase you're upgrading your project to a newer version or similar but, there should atleast be the possibility to downgrade.

If you're allowed, can you PM me the scene file? I just filtered the differences between the scene files but there are probably edge cases where things are differently - especially in scene files.
Also, you should just be able to right click/Reimport with force text serialization on and then open the file in a text editor and see text - correct? Just to make sure it's really serialized as text.

Seneral

 

Well, I was more thinking about visibility and update management and stuff like that. I sent you the file.