This one mistake is killing my game

[@AIAdev]

A lot of people have assumed I’m not using version control. Of course I am! Before I make any changes, I print out screenshots of my existing scripts. There’s a huge binder on my desk that holds all of them. They’re all organized by file and date so they’re easy to find.

[@thethingofstuff]

5000IQ

[@jamesoliphant8178]

This is the best! You just made my day.

[@WeAreNoJokeGames]

LoL 🤣 this is awesome

[@kevincrinklaw7422]

It's better than the shit-show at my current employer. You get a pass!

[@IsaacPeek]

🤣

[@TSHolden]

Fun fact: the floating point error you experienced is the exact reason that there are elevators in Metroid Prime. The devs ran into a bunch of glitchy motion once the player got more than a few thousand meters from the point of origin, so the elevators were a clever way for them to be able to reset the 0,0,0 point without the player being aware of it.

[@supercrazy7188]

That’s really cool

[@scotmcpherson]

that's a trick used to change scenes. It's called the bend in the tunnel method.

[@onlysmiles4949]

It's also a problem the devs of Outer Wilds encountered

[@aladvs]

@@onlysmiles4949Outer Wilds devs solved this by making the player the origin, and the world moves around the player, rather than the player moving around the world.

[@des4929]

As someone who is playing through Metroid prime remastered (got it for Christmas) elevators are interesting from a game design perspective because they work well as very small breaks in the action and they also give anticipation of what might come after you exit the elevator

[@BlacksteelForge]

For the record: The industry standard is to pick an update version and work on the same version until the project is finished, even if new updates are released. You should only update if there are bugs that are fixed in later versions that you need dealt with, or in the rare case that there's a piece of functionality you really want in a later version.

[@wchorski]

If working on a team, I 100% agree. If it's a personal project I'd say it's a good idea to upgrade with intention. If you're still deep in development, those updates could help or add new features. If you're months away from release, then yes stay on that same version as you polish the finished product.

[@mattc9598]

Not the game dev industry, but I remember when speaking to a pro in the music industry, and we talked about the latest version of one of the industry standards for music and audio creation/design. The update was not free, so I asked him if he thought it was worth it, assuming he had upgarded since he was a pro. He told me that he was still on version 3, which was released when I was six years old. The current version? Version 13. 10 whole massive updates over 20 years, and he just didn't get them because "I am working just fine with what I have".

[@PHeMoX]

This is 100% bullshit though. The industry standard is to adapt whatever feature set is based on a future target system, aiming it to be the standard by the time the game releases. The industry standard is _not_ to use outdated systems.

[@PHeMoX]

@@mattc9598 Then he's definitely not a music industry pro, because that industry has skyrocketed in just the last two or so years ago in terms of DAWs and functionalities. Yes maybe he doesn't need access to all those modern plug-ins, but the reality is that some of the bread and butter features have been improved an insane amount. Maybe he only records indie bands that don't require the latest and greatest audio fidelity, but most recording studios don't have the luxury of sticking with 6 year old software. Heck, don't be surprised if there's zero technical support for software that old. On top of that, most software has transitioned to subscription fee models, meaning you will get the latest versions anyway.

[@mattc9598]

​@@PHeMoX and yet hollywood/record labels keep coming to him for audio work. Maybe he's updated since I spoke with him, but he definitely didn't need to keep updating in order to win any awards.​

[@iamapie13]

I'm studying Video game design in college, the one thing they say is you choose a build for your engine and you don't update it, you stick with it. incompatibilities between versions are mostly inevitable

[@StygianIkazuchi]

A good example of why would be Legendary Tales. It's a VR dungeon crawler that decided they wanted to move to UE5... and then realized after updating that a lot of their systems don't work anymore and had to downgrade again, SEVERELY slowing down development and causing many people unaware of the situation to assume the game had been abandoned.

[@TheGuyWithTheLemon]

agree with this, usually update not worth it

[@w花b]

​@@StygianIkazuchiI can't even imagine someone working in a game studios that has the worst boss they can't go against that is advocating for this kind of update...

[@slimyasparagus3573]

That sounds really cool! Is that a full four year degree? I already did my time in college, but learning game development sounds super interesting to me.

[@stevemyopinion423]

unles you still new into the game i mean a few mouths in and i could see updating it

[@FlatThumb]

Making games is really hard. Shout out to all the indie devs going through development hell!

[@greenheart5334]

I spent almost a year making game using libGDX. My thoughts are: Making game is not hard. Making Fun and Polished game is. LibGDX actually does some stuff better than Unity. Like... more freedom and stuff... And finally... Marketing is veery important. Failing at this one makes your game not exist.

[@Derek-mi4wy]

Shout out to all the haters who complain and say "all they had to do was make the game fun"

[@greenheart5334]

@damsen978 you are a bit incorrect. making good game is indeed hard task.

[@DorkestDemise]

help

[@iluk3606]

Thanks man, appreciate it a lot :)

[@digitalunity]

My guy, updating software for development is like loading a shotgun shell into a revolver. Stuff's gonna explode. Never update mid project, this ideology that you need the latest version is what's killing your game, not vis scripting

[@JasonWelch]

yeah.... vscode kept updating C# and .net versions which would end up breaking the unity integration, so I flat out disabled all automatic updates. Nothing more fun than spending 3 hours trying to figure out what the hell changed and fixing it with the 3 hours I of "free time" I had for dev time.

[@lithiliel9904]

And no version control.... Genius

[@Floky]

Petition to call the spell book companion: Scribbly! Looking forward to all your inspiring videos AIA! :D

[@AIAdev]

thanks floky ;)

[@handlebecauseihaveto]

Signed

[@sirdemilich]

Signed

[@sandydarkfall]

Signed! ♥

[@milkmilk1489]

we should be able to name it ourselves if its a pet

[@BanditDev]

I LOVE MANA VALLEY!

[@RedHeadphones]

how'd you comment 9 hours befoe the video was even released?

[@pixlydev]

@@RedHeadphones he is a memeber

[@hamzahgamedev]

As a solo dev myself who is working on an open world game, I can totally relate to these challenges. Once I was also using some weather Asset, updating which completely messed up my scene lighting buuutt your problem completely overshadowed mine 😅😅 All the best with Mana Valley, i am surely getting this on Day 1 ❤️

[@BobbeDev]

every time AIA mentions an old game I remember he's in his 80's

[@AIAdev]

I keep getting older faster than everyone else

[@MaxMakesGames]

Awesome progress. I feel like the cutscenes are gonna help for the story a lot !

[@lx2222x]

Your landscapes look better than every single game Gamefreak makes

[@TheShelfman]

We're backkkk I honestly thought of the first person view indoors as well as it kinda seems awkward now, having to look over your own shoulder to see where you should go. Nice progress AIA!

[@AIAdev]

if Yordi says it, it will be.

[@TheShelfman]

@@AIAdev Careful IAI

[@gamecreator]

Sorry for the breaking changes! 💔 We pinky promise we won’t make such drastic changes again. We’re incredibly glad the project goes on! Best of luck!

[@BanditDev]

Love the spell book idea as well as the minor details (shadows, sun rays, and particle effects when casting spells, etc.)! Keep it up we’re rooting for you.

[@puttiputt2461]

Really great work on the game and I love that you show some more of the struggles that are related to code architecture. Great video editing and voice-over too. Your devlogs are super entertaining. I wish you the best of luck with Mana Valley, you got this! 💙

[@DualWielded]

I'd honestly prefer the game turning first person in buildings, even if you manage to create the most advanced indoors-third-person-view system mankind has ever seen. There's just something weirdly cozy about playing in first person when indoors, and Mana Valley feels like a game that can benefit from embracing that coziness

[@parknich081]

Agreed

[@Greatcelestialkaligo]

Your a dev right? Your the good one for the 100 devs video right? Hope we can get those hand back to their former glory.

[@HammerHeadGameStudio]

@dualwielded @aiadev you guys should definitely collab. Two of my faves from the game dev challenges.

[@k0cc425]

As far as artistic color grading of shadows and highlights go - you could write a fairly simple shader that shades the darker/lighter parts of a texture map a different color - or even just use a LUT for which parts get which colour - then you have a bit more control over what's "shadow" and what's "highlight" - but in reality, in a game with this artstyle, it's probably going to be fine going the extra mile here!

[@GilbertGames]

It’s been so long since a good KZbin devlog has come out. Glad to see it 😍

[@Tobiky]

I respect the "killing my game" instead of "killing your game", cool vid

[@f11bot]

6:13 Here you could keep the color and use a shader that would only change the hue instead of multiplying the texture by color. Keeping the whole texture more lively since shadows and highlights vary in hue, this keeps the same dynamic of colors, hope this helps!!

[@penji58]

Awesome Progress, cant wait to play it

[@mayanwiner]

To me AIA is content creating game dev god. The fact that you keep working on the same game is beyond my understanding. I need to change project every few days or I would lose my mind.

[@Schmingus1]

Guys if you flip AIA's name upside down, turn it 360 degrees to the left, scale it up by 60%, flip upside down again, scale it down by 60%, flip it to the right twice and then try to read it, it will still after all that say AIA. Mindblowing stuff.

[@BushMan-js8jw]

Him: casually changes to fix a game by looking through the universe of code Me: *error*

[@AnthonyMaddenVRStudio]

I rather program manually than use visual scripting. Also you shouldn't update anything in unity mid development, unless you completely backup the project. Been a unity dev since Unity 2.5

[@AIAdev]

I’m with you

[@mattc9598]

I think that is part of the reason he said "i don't think anybody knows" about Unity visual scripting Unity encourages coding over visual scripting. The majority of people who actually want visual scripting over code are using Unreal. The ones using Unity never seem to need visual scripting, as they are doing their work via code

[@AnthonyMaddenVRStudio]

@@mattc9598 I can see that but I made another point besides hand coding. I stated backing up your project before any update. Unity also warns about this all the time. This is mostly due to things breaking bc of the updates.

[@mattc9598]

@@AnthonyMaddenVRStudio Yes, at the very least devs should save a copy of their project every single time they close the program.

[@PHeMoX]

@@mattc9598 "Unity encourages coding over visual scripting. The majority of people who actually want visual scripting over code are using Unreal. The ones using Unity never seem to need visual scripting, as they are doing their work via code" This is such nonsense. The majority of unity devs rely heavily on asset packs and coding done by others. Nothing about Unity encourages people to 'learn to code', which is why there is such a massive backlash about people wanting to switch engines after the whole Unity 'self-destruct' thing, but feeling they 'can't'... People also really seem to hate the concept of visual scripting, without understanding how it has become a legit way of creating games years ago. Yes, in my personal opinion it will never replace coding by hand, but that doesn't mean it's trash.

[@supernovero]

Just wanna say (and i know its been a few months now) I've been wanting to start game dev for a few years now! Even though it ended up costing some extra work and time, I'm happy and jealous that you're getting to put your ideas into reality! Castles in the sand and all that; I'm excited to play this when its ready, and I'll be taking some motivation to put my own work and ideas into reality too!!

[@spimortdev]

Awesome devlog, thanks for sharing your journey 🙂

[@KDSBestGameDev]

Usually a game project doesn't update anything. Only if you need the security patch or you have a bug and the patch fixes that bug otherwise you don't update. If you are early in the development cycle you can update, but an update results in testing everything from scratch again.

[@marscaleb]

As soon as you said you moved the starting point way far away I knew you were about to have problems with floating point values. I didn't expect the problems to look really cool; that surprised me.

[@GingerNingerish]

Babe, wake up the new Mana Valley devlog just dro.... Oh boy that's depressing haha. But great work getting everything back on track at least.

[@Vercidium]

Having the spell book open up when changing spells would be awesome

[@GingerRazz623]

I like the middle ground for hair between the way you had it and the way it is now. You can do a grey scale map to apply your colors to and then set up a primary color and a highlight color section that each have a color wheel and allow for more player customization to make it more artistically pop compared to a single color application. It also lets people do wild things like black hair with purple highlights or blonde hair with green highlights.

[@Ashbobah07]

NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER BACK DOWN!!! 💪🏻 Thank you for all the time spent on making MV controller friendly 😅

[@fudgemerchant]

Man this looks so dang good. I know I mentioned it before but it still gives me slight FLYFF vibes and it makes me happy to see that you're not letting that update ruin it for you! GONNA KEEP SUPPORTIN AS LONG AS YOU KEEP MAKIN IT BUDDY! This is why you're my favorite Mushroom Spaghetti Soup!

[@IspyrGameDev]

NIce devlog! Subbed! I started with the plugin in question (GC1) but switched to Playmaker and made quadruple the progress in my game, just a couple annoying bugs to squash and I can successfully release it. Can't believe how much came in the box with no game breaking updates :) That said Marti is an incredible guy and amazingly smart, and I will definitely go back to GC2 at some point.

[@PuppetDev]

Always backup your projects before upgrading, especially if you have a big scene and are using a ton of assets that do stuff under the hood for you! Hopefully there wasn't too much code that broke. But I'm sure you can recreate it much easier and faster than your first time.

[@NotBlazerMC]

Moral of the story: Don't use Visual Scripting.

[@NotBlazerMC]

Same @@edupe6185

[@Pixelith]

At 6:18 I sighed relief as I was panicking for you at all the materials for hair. I did the same thing before and quickly found out how opposite of fun this approach is.

[@Achivus]

1:35 your words GIVE ME POWER, I DON'T WANT TO BECOME A STATISTIC EITHER

[@ashisharky]

2:57 this is why we use subgraphs you can share between objects. Once you get a certain action loop finished you can copy paste that to other objects.

[@kierentm3858]

I think you don't neccesserily need to give up control on hair colour tinting, you can set up your material to take a few mask textures to use as a lerp which will get their own colour tint, lets you get closer to how things might have looked originally without all the extra materials, additionally you could use this to customise in even more interesting ways like changing roots, highlights etc seperately from the base tint.

[@Rhyspectable]

Fun idea: Make a weird purple realm with very dangerous monsters and beasts. But In this realm the books shakes like when it was glitching.

[@yol_n]

You shouldn't use the latest and greatest "just because". In this video, switching to the newer version forced you to change the visual scripts which was a net gain... *but* what if it was something solid (like actual scripts) that broke? This is why a ton of even AAA devs didn't switch to unreal 5, their enviroments weren't made with Luminen and Nanite in mind and the transition could also break stuff.

[@GopherDevMain]

For your hair highlight problem, couldn't you technically use another black and white texture for where the highlights are, and then multiplying that by some value to do hue adjustment? So the final color would be what you have right now with shifted hue where the highlights/shadows are? Not sure if it can be done with just material properties, but could definitely be done with a simple shader

[@sigilbaram]

Just hue shifting by a fixed amount from a color picker output might not have consistently pleasing results. Putting the hair color through a color map would be a similar idea, while allowing the output to be tweaked on a per color basis. Alternatively they could use the new dynamic hair color system internally while still having the available options for the player be presets. Each preset could then have associated shadow and highlight colors. That would bring back the artistic vision of the old system while keeping the streamlined dev pipeline.

[@mardelmarcano]

Im so glad i found your channel. Your passion and desire to make your game is contagious. I find it funny that i heard my name cus its Mardy. I was like huh? What did I do? It was Marti but it sounds similar. Look forward to your progress and hope to be able to ask questions to you in the future about game development.

[@GugureSux]

That floating book companion is straight out of Nier: Replicant. Grimoire Wise is such a delightful character.

[@SnowyLeopardFrom1997]

I feel your pain fam... Unity did me dirty as well recently I was writing a complex algorithm that had a low chance of success, and after 3 days of continuous debugging, I shut the software down, open it back up, and miraculously, it works without changing anything I ask around, and that's when I got introduced to lock states (you keep saving your file, but Unity low key didn't save it... So your code never ran through because of a buggy software) And don't get me started on the great system transition... I went from something that works to completely destroying my game, and I'm still trying to fix it for the better

[@byronmorley2907]

Your development method and approach hurts my soul, but your video was charming enough to keep me interested in your "Villian" arc and see if it pays off

[@bongfidence]

You’re a straight up genius bro, no matter what you decide to do with YOUR game I’ll always be loyal and can’t wait to buy it.

[@HyenaBlank]

With the hair thing, you could add like an additional detail layer in the shader itself to slow in a overlaying texture that gives you more control over the highlights

[@mikecicciari845]

the way my jaw dropped when the subscribe button did a little visual effect when you did your subscribe pitch.

[@AIAdev]

did it work :O

[@pkmnjourney]

Fun fact: the floating point error problem is one that plagues many open world space exploration games. One way they solve this is by not moving the player at all. They do this by keeping the player at (0,0,0) and moving the world around the player.

[@am_9944]

honestly im glad to hear you are not canceling i want ot try it out its been sitting in my wish list for a good while now... i hope it will come out soon at least a beta or something.

[@AkariEnderwolf]

seeing some of the customization I kinda hope that if you have a ponytail hairstyle, it doesn't disappear when wearing a hat, I have my hair in a ponytail all the time, and my hair doesn't just disappear when I put a hat on. It's a pet peeve I have with a lot of games with character customization where they just make ponytails disappear rather than having a hat version of the ponytail.

[@JonasMostert]

I hope you could fix it and are going on strong with the indie deving! I have great respect for you. One thing you should consider: When you start a serious endevour into making a game (or any software) stick with one LTS (Long Term Support) version of your tools throughout the whole process. Don't update unless absolutely necessary!

[@miata646]

My brother I understand your iphone analogy, but I regret to say that its never the case in the creative field. I myself make music on an outdated version of ableton but would never even humor the thought of updating because of the fact that my UI is customized to the point where my workflow is efficient and I know where everything I need is. Like others have said in the comments updating while actively working on a project is a death sentence in most cases. Im thankful you had the resilience to work through the update sabotaging you! So excited to see how Mana Valley turns out!❤

[@the-one-and-only-squeeze]

The book and the cat from earlier would both make for fun familiars - maybe the player can have one active familiar at a time, swapping between them for different passive buffs or combat styles? If that ends up working out, you'll definitely have to add a crow/raven as well

[@pietrobertipaglia7020]

1:59 that Nerd hitted so hard anyway u gained a new sub today, also i think that u are realy crazy to still use unity after what happened

[@MysticArchmage]

Only 1 min into the video but.. 1) Version control and 2)Daily backups. This should be common knowledge at this point.

[@mentalwig420]

I actually laughed out loud when you said, "Oh, you're not here to help?"

[@theophile4043]

The Hair colors solution is pretty cool, thank you

[@RafaMartinelli]

Congrats for not giving up!

[@PDR_Dini]

For the textures, you can split the rgba channels into base color, highlights, shadows and detail, than you make the collor pallets and asign each color to each channel, it's actually quite simple to implement

[@InfinityBladeRecollection]

Awesome devlog! One of the most entertaining and easy to understand dev logs I’ve seen! Subbed 👍

[@Fairlii]

This game is gonna be epic❤

[@mr.tweaty]

I can't begin to comprehend how people do anything complex with these funky blocks...

[@immitatedone1511]

Looks great. Hope one day I will be able to do something similar. Right now I am working on my first game and I am really happy with the progress.... but still a million miles away from something like this. Gj for solo dev.

[@celesteartley905]

First things first, you can't just throw Jet Force Gemni out as a game you played as a kid and I don't have to comment. Secondly, yes... levling the book and having a companion is always a fun mechanic to have in games, DO IT YOU WONT!

[@zeedon]

I think having the book toggle-able could be good. You can have it follow you if you want, and put it away if it’s bothering you. Maybe even with an active or passive effect when it’s out.

[@Manavine]

you know, at 2:00, I was expecting you saying you ended up in the hospital from overwork considering you mentioned soaring through the skies while rude buster was blaring.

[@lets_dev]

Amazing video, keep up the progress!

[@theyolkstar3575]

Yay another aia video :D. Glad I got to see it before my deployment :)

[@AIAdev]

Be safe buddy

[@Skeffles]

These look like really solid changes, and I hope it makes the game better for you to develop.

[@AIAdev]

thanks Skeffles. It certainly has. I feel like I'm fighting with things much less now. The advantage of going back and redoing things is also experience

[@robkiller205]

Generally studios avoid updating the engine to avoid issues like this. You only update if you know there's something in it that you'll use, not just because it's the latest and greatest; so I think the iPhone metaphor is inappropriate. That aside, the game is looking good and I'm glad you're learning a lot through making it.

[@ADevAura]

Fine Works! also if you don't know, cinemachine has collision detection and smooth camera switch itself!

[@AIAdev]

The 3rd person had collision detection but not the orbit camera 🥲

[@ADevAura]

oh.. I don't know about orbit camera but I was talking about 11:51, transitioning(I didn't have it's name in mind so i said camera switch lol)! I'm pretty sure you can do it with State-Driven Camera in cinemachine! (in case you don't know). @@AIAdev

[@junj1023]

AIA Say that you remember AIA Dancing in september AIA Never was a cloudy dayyyy Sorry

[@Nufshi]

The progress is insane.. Damn bruh your really hyping me up for the release..

[@OtherE0021]

Your channel is inspirational to me! Your videos feel so professional, keep it up!

[@NihongoWakannai]

When indoors for a tight area, it might make sense to just have the camera stick to a static position in that room and then just look at the player. At least for non-combat situations. Helps it feel less claustrophobic

[@illegalcoding]

The song at 0:36 is "Some Assembly Required" from the Portal 2 soundtrack for anyone wondering

[@dj_cam]

First time, working on something myself and your overview is insightful thanks so much!

[@RodneySanders]

There is an asset on the Unity store that can help with your World's origin issue. It actually moves the origin with or... or maybe it moves it ahead. I don't remember the details. But I remember it standing out from a Code Monkey game asset video.

[@slobbymonk]

New Mana Valley devlog!? I can't believe it's been almost 2 years 😯

[@AIAdev]

its crazy

[@OfficialGless]

I thought Christmas was in December?!? Looks like I got another present with this Mana Valley Vid! 😍😍😍

[@theshadowunity8260]

4:20 Well I am already subscribed so I'll just press the like button for the algorithm

[@rondale5475]

Just stumbled on your channel while trying to fall asleep and now I can't im hooked this only my 2nd vid in

[@rarebeeph1783]

6:16 you can still have hue shift on highlights and shadows if you map the black-white spectrum to a curve in color space, effectively just specifying a several-color palette instead of a single material color. now, i'm a math nerd and not a game dev, so i don't know how to do that or what the technique is called. but that sort of thing might be what you're looking for

[@shlazzz]

it's been a while, I forgot about it 😅 mans valley seems rlly fun tho, had it on my steam wishlist for a while now. hope it comes out soon!

[@Pontos420]

Good Job, please keep it up. Dont give up I want to play this game.

[@alexanderkartashov8776]

idk about other engines, but with Unreal it's a common thing to use Visual script for high level design and prototyping, but most important and heavy calculation stuff with classic code as it performs better.

[@TegridyMadeGames]

I had to replace ES3 because it would randomly not spawn an item in the players inventory that they should have...

[@rikushin5867]

1:50 so inspiring!!

[@StCost]

To fix floating error world I track when player goes 5km away from center - then every root object in scene is moved 5km opposite direction back to center, making player and camera in world center again Works smoothly, as long as you keep in mind how it will break your other systems. Makes stuff much more challenging. Yet for player it looks seamless Any rigidobody and camera should be max 10km from center. That would prevent game from physics or rendering bugs

[@edemaiscomtheovieira2718]

I really hope you can fix this problem because I think Mana Valley is gonna turn out great!

[@RedHeadphones]

how'd you know what the problem was if the video is 14 mins long, but its released only 3 mins ago xdd

[@edemaiscomtheovieira2718]

Because he said it at the start of the video

[@Maksim3l-the-storyteller]

If you wanted to, you can make multiple masks for the dark, light and medium tones and have the player shift only the middle one, and have the dark and light tones shift of of the middle tone to reflect coldness/ warmness of the environment? or just set it to shift an x amount so that for example if middle is orange, the dark one shifts a little towards red and darkens and the light one shifts a little towards yellow and lightens?

[@fatbrittalking5578]

hi AIA. first of all I really admire you for how much hard work you’re putting into your game and I know that game design is extremely difficult and hard work. Have you ever thought about adding a Minecraft narrator style ui reader in your game as a toggle-able option? This would make it easier for people who struggle to read certain fonts/font sizes to play the game. and also be fairly useful to new players. For example, they could toggle it on until they use to the control scheme and use it first and then toggle it off once they’re more familiar with it. I realise that this might be extremely difficult if not impossible, but I have dreamt of more games adopting this aspect to be more inclusive and you don’t know if you don’t ask. I realise they are several downsides to this as well though for example, having the text speech program stutter if someone changes options to quick as that happens a lot in Minecraft too.

[@RobLang]

How did I miss this one?! The float issue is going to nail me at some point, I need a reset to origin thing. Thanks for the tip - I'll add that into my backlog. Love your your videos AI, A.

[@bobross9370]

It's generally not common to update your engine every time a new version comes out, games generally stick to a specific version to prevent this kind of stuff, unless the game specifically needs engine changes for specific features, other than that you're just hurting yourself, your iPhone analogy is completely wrong. Of course it's probably better if you refactor your visual scripts into C# classes, but there is no need to update the engine at all. You'll either end up with depracated packages, or a bunch of depracated libraries and functions that need to be changed, it's not worth it at all.

[@littledreamergames]

If you don't mind the shader referencing two textures, the second texture can also be greyscale and added to the first. Basically image based lighting (IBL). Edit: or you could still just use one texture and store the base greyscale image in Red, and the IBL in Green. But if you want to choose between different highlights, keep it as a separate textures but set the texture type to single channel R.