Scene Diff — documentation

Everything needed to install the tool, run a comparison, and understand what the results mean. Scene Diff never writes to your project, so there is no destructive step anywhere in this document.

Requirements

• Unity 2022.3 LTS or newer, including Unity 6.
• Force Text asset serialization — Project Settings → Editor → Asset Serialization.
• Editor-only. Nothing in the package is compiled into a player build.

Installation

1. Import the package from the Unity Asset Store through the Package Manager.
2. Everything installs under the Punchdev folder in your project.
3. Open the window from the Unity menu bar.

Comparing two assets

1. Open the Scene Diff window.
2. Assign the two assets you want to compare — the earlier version as the left side, the later version as the right.
3. Run the comparison. Results appear grouped by GameObject.

Reading the results

Results are a hierarchy, not a list of lines. Each entry is an object, and under it the components and properties that differ.

• Added — the object or component exists only on the right side.
• Removed — it exists only on the left side.
• Modified — the same object, identified by fileID and GUID, with at least one differing property.
• Moved — the same object under a different parent or at a different sibling index.

Objects are paired by identity before comparison, so renaming an object reports as a change to its name, not as one object disappearing and another appearing.

Troubleshooting

Everything reports as changed

Almost always serialization: the two files were written by different Unity versions and one has been migrated to a newer serialized layout. Migration-only differences are collapsed automatically, but if an asset has genuinely been rewritten field by field, open and re-save both sides in the same Editor version before comparing.

An asset will not load

Check that the project uses Force Text serialization and that the file is not stored in a binary or mixed mode. Assets committed before the setting was changed stay binary until they are re-saved.

Results look right but the Editor disagrees about a name

Unity forces the name of a prefab's root object to match the asset filename, whatever the serialized value says. This applies to roots only — child names come from the file. See Every prefab variant is born with 11 overrides.

Support

support@voxcub.com. Include your Unity version, the tool version and, if you can, the two assets or a minimal reproduction.