From another thread, but I thought it deserved its own (updated) list.
9-4-17 - FORGE is now Free & Open Source. Reordered assets, Updated some for Unity 2017, formatting.
12-18-16 - Added “Rainbow Folders” & “Enhanced Console Pro” Assets.
1-4-16 = Added “Heavy Duty Inspector” & Explained/Updated Rating System
Here are all the assets I’ve purchased, and why:
(Pictures for Assets I positively endorse / use)
RATING SYSTEM -
0/5 = SCAM!
1/5 = Trash.
2/5 = Bad. Old, Out Dated, Flawed, Problematic, or Poorly Made
3/5 = Just Works. It works. However, that’s all it does is “Just works.” Nothing spectacular about this, and likely annoying/tedious work involved.
4/5 = Good. It doesn’t just work, but has some great features. However something major or many minor things could be improved.
5/5 = Great. It works, it has great features, and there isn’t much left wanting.
Pixel Perfect 5/5 (Great - “Must Have” for PixelArt)
I created entire threads to fix Unity’s rendering flaws. Eventually, I caved in after seeing this. For a petty $10, it fixes one of Unity’s biggest bugs (for my pixel art game). Sure, I probably could have eventually figured it out myself. But this was a one-click solution. Instantly fixes the issue. If ONLY I had found this earlier.
Rewired 5/5 (Great - “Must Have” for any Unity game)
- Update: “It Just Works!” Very easy to setup. Quick too. Simple, powerful, and even replacing my custom code was relatively easy. Plug in a controller & it detects it. Highly customizable & supports sooooo many controllers. A must-have in Unity.
- Old: I’ve been waiting to buy this until it went on sale. It just did. This sounds awesome. All this input / controller work done for me? Support for tons of controllers? Plug-n-Play? It does it all for me. Well, enough to basically allow me to add in all this extra controller supporter. Otherwise, I’d probably end up with limited controller support or none at all.
Rainbow Folders 7/Fun (Great)
This was a no-brainer for me. At only $5, I thought “Make it easier to navigate in the project tab while simultaneously beautifying the Editor? Ingenius!”
It does what it promises, and that is a very simple thing. Hard to go wrong with this.
1 second upon importing this asset, and it had already identified and colored & icon’d my important projects.
(ex. I use the “Prefab” icon/color for all the children folders, except for the folders that actually contain prefabs. Using this rainbow system, I always know “Red is the first child folder of the parent.”)
(ex2. I customized temporary folders with a large Delete X, indicating I need to eventually delete them.)
Console Enhanced Pro 5/5 (Great - “Must Have” for Unity)
This is actually pretty awesome. Although a bit expensive IMO for $20.
However, there is a Free Version which will suffice for the most part & is still better than the default console.
It is cleaner than the default console, outputs what Frame/Time logged, and let’s you open up your compiler (or multiple compilers) to the exact line you click. Pretty nifty & a lot better than Unity’s default console!
Much much easier to read.
Update: Console Enhanced Pro does what PanicButton fails to do: Stop lockups from live edits to scripts. It has an option to handle recompiling of scripts during Play Mode. I set it to turn off Play Mode & Compile, but you can also set it to not compile until YOU stop Play Mode. What an amazing asset.
Forge Networking 4/4 (Good, Free, & Open Source!)
4/3…then 3/3… now 4/3 (Good)
Why out of 3 rather than out of 5? Because no Networking package seems all that great. Ridiculous CCU costs, Closed Source, it’s all a pretty bad shitpile.
Forge breaks through as the only Networking Asset that is both Unity-Native & not a complete PoS. After Remastered is released, it may actually achieve a 5/3; setting the standard for what makes a good networking asset. We’ll have to see though. The Unity Community has had a very bad run with all networking assets.
This is a big deal.
I wasted 90+ hours on UNET when it was a broken PoS. I was so excited for UNET, but so incredibly disappointed & upset at its failure, its broken examples, and horrible documentation.
I really didn’t want to have to learn all there is about networking, so I was dependent on a multiplayer package (otherwise I’d just make a singleplayer game).
Forge Networking is the only networking asset that promises
- Full Source Code (after UNET failed me, knowing I could fix any issues later if I had to was a huge deal. I no longer have to be dependent on someone else. Trust is a big problem with Unity networking assets, so giving us control if it gets abandoned is a MUST, IMO.) To note, UNET does not give full source code. Users will claim this, but it’s only for the HLAPI. The source code you want is in the LLAPI, which is closed source.
- No greedy/shady monetization system. Pay once, and it’s yours for life. Self-host if you want.
- It actually works. All the reviews I read were glowing. The developers are very active.
Later on, the developers disappeared & everyone thought “Oh no. Not again…” They later reappeared, and are back to normal but were very quiet while they worked on their major transition. This really hurt their credibility, IMO. A lack of communication is always bad. Just be honest & transparent with your consumers. Many of us understand.
Update: I finished my upgrade to Forge Network Remastered, and I must say that it is quite a good improvement. It took me 16h to upgrade from FN original to FN Remastered. The developers are also very responsive now, just like they used to be.
Update: Still some bugs here in Remastered, but a lot fewer than Forge Classic. It’s been a year since, and release date is incoming probably at the end of this month (that’s my guess). It will either lose or gain a point at release… most likely gain.
Update 9-4-2017: Forge Remastered is now FREE and OPEN SOURCE. Get it while it’s hot!
GitHub - BeardedManStudios/ForgeNetworkingRemastered: See various forks, also please join the Forge Community fork of Forge Alloy! -> https://github.com/ForgeAlloyCommunity/ForgeAlloy
Heavy-Duty Inspector 3/5 (Just Works)
This is good, but IMO far from great. It has a lot you can customize, but the way you must customize it is not as user-friendly as you’d want. This may be a limitation of Unity & not the asset, but that is what it is.
My biggest complaint is that I got this to pretty-up my lists/arrays. It does that…partially. I can color some lines in the Inspector, but not all. I can add in names & organize it…partially. However I still am forced to see the ugliness & disorganization of “Element 0; Element 1; Element 2” rather than being able to name them, color them, and customize them as I would like it to look. Maybe I could do better with this asset, but why bother when it would take me as long / as difficult as simply doing it myself with my own editor code?
When I could customize the Editor to look the way I want it to, and this asset can’t? It loses 2 points. A lot to be improved. It helps, but only a little bit. The problem I had with visually organizing my data in the Editor is still prevalent.
No Longer Used by CarterG81 (Outdated Review)
Sprite Collider Generator 3/5 (Just Works)
I needed to generate 3D colliders from 2D sprites, and didn’t know even the first step to do this myself. This asset worked, but was far from perfect.
2D ColliderGen 5/5 (Great)
This was a risky purchase, as it could turn out like the above, but seemed to be a better version of the above. But something about it told me it was likely better than the above. After purchase, I was extremely happy with it. Way better than the above. I only used it for one very niche feature, even though it provides a lot of other features. (So arguably, the more features you add, even minor ones, the broader your net is to gain sales.)
This asset lets me press one button, and instantly generate a perfect collider. This improved my asset workflow SIGNIFICANTLY since every texture I import needs a custom collider.
Dialogue System for Unity 5/5 (Great)
This just looked awesome. In a few minutes, I could setup a dialogue system for Away Mission. Talk about time saving. For my current game, I can use it too because of a nifty extra minor feature. That minor feature of “Barks” is a major use now. I can see myself using this in EVERY project.
Visual Item Database 4/5 (Good)
After awhile in development I realized how important it is to not just store information, but to be able to read it quickly. I looked long & hard for how to handle my crafting recipes. I wish I had seen this earlier, before I made a custom way to handle my items. Nevertheless, I use this because it allows me to visually see the items that make up my Crafting Recipes. This makes reading my database very fast & easy on the eyes. Fun to see your images alongside a bunch of boring text/numbers.
The Unity Editor’s limitations prevent this from becoming an even more amazing asset… but not enough to lose any points.
However, the code behind the scenes seems to not be perfect. Removing a Type seems to really mess with this asset. Problems with enumerators most likely. Also updating databases is problematic. Have to subtract a point. Could definitely be improved by a revamp or better asset.
Behavior Designer 5/5 (Great)
This is an extremely well reviewed, highly praised asset, that provides a very complex &n specific thing: Behavior Tree AI. Nothing more needs to be said. It does everything right. Even its price of $75 feels like a steal compared to what it provides.
Easy GUI Skin - 5 Pack 5/5 (Great)
This looked awesome. Perfect GUI for Away Mission. And for only $5? Instant buy, even if just as a $5 placeholder.
Pro-D Total - Procedural Dungeon Generator Total 5/5 (Great)
I researched how to handle procedural generation for my survival game. With Away Mission, I made it all myself. But I was creating land/ocean maps, which was very different than what I knew how to do.
I read this article, and it was a difficult concept to understand. I tried to implement it myself for awhile, and had trouble. I knew I could eventually figure it out, but why bother? I hit up the Asset Store to save me this headache. Found this, and it handled all the complex math and underlying code for me! AWESOME! I use this not just to create my game world, but I was even able to use it to generate how grass patches look in the game. I edited the asset code myself to enhance it with more features. A great package because it let me skip “the hard part” / “the math part” and just get into the more customized aspect of world generation.
Puppet2D 4/5 (Good)
My survival game has this type of art style. I looked up all the tools: Spriter, Spline, and Puppet2D. It was an easy choice, even after much thought, because this is Native to Unity and Had more features than the competition. Deformable meshes was great. Native to Unity means a better workflow experience. No importing of anything. All done in-editor, even though Spriter/Spline are considered great tools. Documentation & tutorials kindof sucked, but Acceptable considering how few options there are for this.
See-Through System 5/5 (Great)
This was EXACTLY what I needed. I wanted something similar to the “Circle of Transparency” found in Ultima Online. That was a 2D isometric game that handled visibility very well. This was expensive IMO for some reason, but looking back I think it’s very fair considering. I think I almost didn’t purchase it because I didn’t NEED it right then & there. However, I’m very glad I did early on. Adds a lot to the game. Some features also give me possible ideas for unique ways of rendering things, which is fun to think about now that I own it.
Poly|Nav - 2D Pathfinding ?/? (TBD)
I needed something to handle 2D pathfinding. For my niche game, this seemed perfect. I also LOVE point & click adventure games, so that heavily influenced me to enjoy purchasing this asset (even if I never make a point & click game, it’s nice to know I could very easily with this asset.) However I didn’t get to use it as much as I’d have liked to review it confidently.
2DxFX: 2D Sprite FX ?/? (TBD)
Impulse buy while it was on Sale for a discount. Tons of visual effects, which I could easily see adding to my survival game. Will I ever use this? I don’t know. Didn’t want to pass on that amazing sale though. And it just looks so pretty 
Panic Button New 2/5 (Bad)
Old 3/5 (Not Bad)
I was tired of Unity locking up on me all the time, with no way out. I researched on google for a solution, and found this. For only $10? Wow, what a steal! This fixed one of the biggest problems with the Unity Editor: lockups. However, most of my Editor lockups are caused by script edits in Play mode, Unity, and multi-threaded assets like Forge = lockups that Panic Button does not help with. So I still get lockups & although this has saved me quite a bit in the past, it is no longer helping very much.
- New: With Unity 2017, I get all kinds of build errors & this asset just seemed to not work very well at all since Unity 5+.
No Longer Used by CarterG81 (Outdated Review)
Vectrosity 4/5 (Good)
Before Pixel perfect fixing my problem permanently, I saw this. I used it to create my own rendering method separate from Unity. I also saw use of this in some graphic effects in Away Mission. Pixel art laser beams and all that fun stuff. A big reason I bought it was because Eric is a huge part of the forums for so long. Highly reviewed assets, highly respected user in the community, and loads of promises of the best documentation possible in a world of shoddy documentation.
SpriteTile 2/5 (Bad)
Another one of Eric’s assets. It’s what I needed at the time. I don’t use it, and see much better tools now & so this is dead to me, but at the time, these other better assets weren’t around or were not visible to my eyes. Sometimes a good asset is just never seen by the people who want it, so they settle for assets they know about.
However by today’s standards, this pretty much sucks now IMO & in the opinion of a peer. It’s just not something you want to buy when there are much better options available.
I originally gave this a 1/5, but couldn’t deem it as a “Trash Asset” because it works. So +1 point for simply being out dated & not so pretty.
Universal Sound FX /
Impulsive buy? Just an amazing deal for the money. Endless sound effects for dirt cheap prices. Very hard to pass up. Maybe also during a sale? Extremely hard to say no, regardless if I use it or not.
Excavation Tool SFX (Dig/Mine/Chop/Farm) ?/? (TBD)
The exact sound effects I needed for my survival game. Competitive pricing & quality compared to going to a sound effects website. I haven’t tested them out yet though. I purchased these after spending a lot of time on professional sound websites trying to find good sound effects. (I didn’t succeed on those sites. Then I remembered to check the Asset Store & found this; satisfactory.)
