Mastering the Exit: A Guide to Leaving Play Mode in Unity

As a game developer, entering and exiting Unity‘s magical play mode is a fundamental part of your workflow. With a click of a button, you can transport yourself from editing Scene objects in the Editor to playing around inside a fully-functioning game prototype.

But what happens when you‘re ready to close the curtain on play mode and return back to reality? Let‘s analyze the ins and outs of this context switch to help perfect your play/edit cycle.

The Two Worlds of Unity

Unity‘s core Editor is an incredibly powerful creative tool for building 2D and 3D games. You can drag-and-drop objects, paint terrain landscapes, and tweak parameters through user-friendly Inspector windows.

However, games really come alive when played. Unity allows you to seamlessly transition to a play mode view of your current Scene. Suddenly static objects spring into motion, scripts execute game logic, particles fly across the screen. It‘s magic!

But these two worlds – edit mode and play mode – remain firmly separated in Unity‘s architecture. Changes made to your Scene during playback are isolated from the editable Scene assets. And critical engine processes like script compilation only happen when transitioning between modes.

So while play mode grants exciting real-time access to your game, Unity prevents changes from accumulating until you‘re ready. Let‘s now see how to move your project back and forth between these modes.

The Doorways Between Worlds

Unity provides a few doorways for entering and exiting play mode:

Play Button

The most straightforward entry can be found at the top-center of your Editor window – the triangular play button. Clicking it once when in edit mode will launch play mode. And clicking it again while playing will exit back to edit mode.

Keyboard Shortcut

An alternative access point is the trusty Ctrl+P (or Cmd+P on Mac) shortcut. This hotkey essentially triggers the same transition as clicking the play button, while keeping your fingers on the keyboard.

Menu Options

For those who prefer manual navigation, there‘s also File > Enter Play Mode and File > Exit Play Mode in the top menu.

So whether you like buttons, keyboards, or menus, Unity has you covered with direct portals linking edit and play mode.

Handling the Transition

Beyond just starting and stopping playback, quite a lot happens under the hood when crossing between modes:

Recompilation

If any code was changed while in play mode, all scripts are recompiled to catch those changes. Unity does this asynchronously, allowing you to continue working while this completes in the background. Small projects can recompile in under a second, while large projects with thousands of scripts may take minutes.

Lost Changes

Any alterations made directly to Scene objects during play mode are not applied when exiting. This includes changes to position, rotation and scale of GameObjects. Make sure to re-configure objects after returning to edit mode.

Reset State

The current state of your game resets when exiting play mode. This means scores, health, object destruction and other runtime changes are cleared out. Think of each play session as a clean slate.

Saved Changes

While play mode changes don‘t automatically save, changes to Project assets like scripts, prefabs, textures, etc get retained. Note you need to manually save changes to Scene files.

Advanced Control

Developers can exert more control over entering and exiting play mode through preferences and scripting:

Play Mode Options

Window > General > Play Mode contains options controlling player settings, graphics APIs, script changes and more. Tweak behavior here.

Custom Scripts

It‘s possible to inject your own scripts to perform operations when entering or exiting. For example, you could save state on exit and restore on enter.

This does increase complexity, but also opens possibilities like retaining play mode tweaks.

Best Practices

With great power comes great responsibility. Here are some best practices all developers should follow for play mode:

• Save Early, Save Often – Changes will be lost if unsaved when exiting, so get into a habit of frequent saves.
• Test in Release – Make sure to regularly test Using the built player to catch variant issues.
• Watch Compilation Times – Monitor increases to script compilation time as projects grow in complexity over time.
• Exit Cleanly – Avoid force quits which can leave systems in an incomplete state.

The Final Curtain Call

While entering play mode marks the exciting opening night premiere of your game, exiting this isolated environment correctly is critical as well. Following these tips on saving changes, managing state, and optimizing compilation times will help perfect your development cycle.

Take a well-deserved bow at the end of each play session, then seamlessly switch back to build mode to carry on crafting your masterpiece! The show must go on.