Unity Editor Crash on Build Asset Bundle

[foggy vessel]

Sorry for the non subnautica related modding question, but it's tangentially related so maybe someone can help!

I've ran into an issue while trying to mod Plasma sandbox. There's no resources for learning how to mod Plasma, so I'm using whatever I can find.
Luckily, this Nautilus tutorial about using asset bundles seems to be just what I need for what i want to do.
https://subnauticamodding.github.io/Nautilus/guides/assetbundles.html?tabs=vs%2CnoNautilus

I've decompiled Plasma using Asset Ripper, and have cleared the unity project of any compiler errors. But now, my editor crashes when trying to build asset bundles as instructed here.

From googling, my best guess is it is related to this unity editor bug https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/crash-when-building-assetbundles
the bug is supposedly fixed by upgrading unity to 2023.2.0a5

So my question is, would upgrading the project from 2022 (which plasma uses) to 2023 allow me to build asset bundles that are still even usable by Plasma?

[frail wagon]

hey, i remember you from the bepinex discord. you'd be better off asking in #💻┃mod-making¹ (or #💻┃mod-making²). this support forum is for end users needing help getting mods installed correctly, and not that many modders monitor these forum posts 🙂

but to answer your question, afaik assetbundles tend not to be backwards compatible. you usually want to use a unity editor version as close to the one used by the game as possible, because assetbundles tend to be incompatible across different unity versions. though, i'm not super experienced with that - i've only ever made assetbundles with the same version of unity as the game, and my knowledge on assetbundle compatibility is second-hand, and just what i remember from googling around sometime.

i imagine the vast majority of subnautica modders will mostly only be familiar with using Unity 2019 since that's what we use for subnautica. feel free to ask in #💻┃mod-making¹ channels anyway though, as some might know better, and also i would advise asking in the bepinex discord and being patient if you haven't already. but also, i mean, as with many things in modding, mostly we find these things out by trial and error. so... try it and see? make a back up of the project first. But the chances are it might not work. like, from what i've read, there is some level of compatibility across different versions, but it's not guaranteed, there's no real documentation on which versions are compatible with which, and the best results will generally always be on the same version. so if you're having trouble using the same version... you may have to just use trial and error with other versions and see where you get.

[foggy vessel]

oh woops! haha yeah wrong channel entirely.
thanks for your help!
Luckily it seems the unity editor bug that was preventing me from building Asset Bundles was patched in the same major and minor version (Plasma using 2022.3.0, issue fixed in 2022.3.48)
so i have hope that it'll work! I'll be able to try it out this evening.

[frail wagon]

nice, hope it works out for you 🤞