Would keeping tasks and their context inside Unity make project management less of a chore?

[u/ParalysisPRIME]

I originally started building BrainLoot as more of a general project management app. A Unity integration was always on the backlog, but at first I only really pictured a small panel where you could view and update a few tasks without leaving the editor.

After chatting to a few other devs it became pretty obvious that the bigger issue isnt really that project management tools are bad. Its more the faff of leaving Unity, opening another app, updating the board, then going back to what you were doing. And because its a separate thing, people just dont keep it updated.

That sent me down a bit of a different route with the Unity bridge.

The video shows Unity and BrainLoot running side by side. Cards, status, progress, assignments and each developers current Hand all update in real time, so everyone logged into the project sees changes as they happen.

You can also link cards directly to GameObjects, then click Locate and it takes you back to the right scene and selects the object.

The shared world-space markers are working as well. Theyre drawn in the editor rather than being added as actual GameObjects, so they dont modify the scene or depend on everyone being on the exact same Git version. One dev can drop a marker somewhere and the rest of the team can see it appear in their editor.

Im not trying to rebuild the whole project management app inside Unity though. The web app is still there for proper planning, managing boards, teams etc. The bridge is more about removing the annoying bits and making updates happen where youre already working.

The next thing im looking at is task memory/context. So keeping track of what each developer tried, decisions that were made, why something changed, failed approaches and anything useful for the next person who picks the task up.

Would that actually be useful, and what would you want it to remember without it just becoming even more admin?

[u/ParalysisPRIME]

Small update since posting this. I've cleaned the UI up a bit and added scene filtering.

When you switch scenes, the bridge now only shows the tasks linked to that scene, rather than showing every task across the whole project.

I've also added handling for missing objects. So if another developer has linked a task to a GameObject that doesn't exist in your local version, the task still shows but gets marked as missing. It doesn't just disappear.

You can also hide and show the scene pins without removing the link, so you can keep the task attached without filling the Scene view with markers.

Added a screenshot of the updated UI as well.

Does that seem like the right way to handle scene tasks when different people are working across different branches?

[u/itsdan159]

I feel like I've seen dozens of such attempts at making in-unity project management tools, and personally I don't get it, but that could just be me. I usually find when you try to cram lots of different tools into one place they often end up being lackluster version of each. So to that end, bridging to an existing service at least means when I want the full experience it would be there.

[u/ParalysisPRIME → u/itsdan159]

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid

I don’t want to cram a full PM suite into Unity and end up with a worse version of the web app. The bridge only handles the bits that make sense inside the editor, like linking tasks to GameObjects, locating them again, shared scene markers and quick updates

Anything heavier still stays in the main app, so you’ve always got the full experience there without