Big edit after feedback:
This is nothing more than a passing thought at the moment but it’s something I keep thinking about doing. I’ve made quite a few tools over the years, so I thought about putting them up on the asset store.
After feedback, this is what I have so far:
-Voxel based GI solution
-Terrain system?!?
-Physx extensions (potentially for animation)?
Keep suggestions coming.
There are already popular assets on the store for some of those points. I would concentrate on things that are not available in the store yet. Otherwise you’ll put a lot of effort in things where people are likely to pick a different solution anyway.
If you put stuff on the asset store, especially more complex systems, you’ll have to provide customer support a lot, unless you want to get bad reviews. Just look at some popular scripting assets to understand what kind of support you have to deal with.
[EDIT]
Unity development is moving rather fast in recent years. It can be quite a challenge to keep compatibility and support the newest release in a timely manner, especially if you provide a lot of different complex systems. Always supporting the latest version and having backwards compatibility seems to be a very important for many asset customers.
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If you want to reach many customers, $250 might be too expensive. I think it’s too much for many hobbyists at least, which I believe most asset store customers are. Companies on the other hand might come up with their own solutions anyway, rather than buying things off the asset store.
Here is what I would do as first steps…
Splitting it to several smaller packages allows to reduce the price and let customers pick what they really need. It feels not good to buy an all-in-one solution where you own half of the stuff as different assets already or is available for free.
You can’t do all of that and do it all well, not as well as the assets that specialize. No single person could. So what you are in reality proposing is a bundle of sub par stuff compared to the assets that specialize.
That could work in some cases but not this one, because you don’t have a focus. Like if you bundled a bunch of tools for making a specific type of game that inherently carries more value. But a bundle of rather random stuff for a discount, versus purchasing individual assets that specialize in one thing. Not really interesting or a great value considering the fact that it won’t be competitive with the specialized stuff. And that’s not a knock on you, it’s just literally there is no way a single person could do all of that well.
Performance is the primary concern, a lot of them I probably won’t get around to although anything to do with a shader would have to be done (again due to performance). I’ve had thoughts on how to approach it but not sure yet… Might require a new rendering solution…!
I’ve looked at a lot of asset store stuff and own quite a bit but I’ve had another look, some of the timline editor (cutscene) manager looks better than mine… The input manager is open source so that’s a maybe if and when I ever get to it.
UI system would be a port from another framework I have, not sure if I want to do it but I suggested it because it’s done already…
I need to get to the crux of general performance issues, see if there’s anything I can do about it.
I can’t really sell a lot of them seperatley, they just wouldn’t work right without each other.
Who says? You’re assuming I’m starting from scratch here, which on a lot of stuff I’ll be porting it from a framework I made a while back before Unity 5.X got released… When UE4 came out I dropped it, not to mention the ample amounts of resources already there to be used.
Also you’re assuming it will be a single person working on this.
The first to come would be terrain / GI and shaders… After that see what happens and I’m not denying it could take me a long time. Still, it gives me something to do…
If there’s no specific interest, I’m more than happy just to port it all into Godot… At least then I know there will be no restrictions and as GD3 has a lot of stuff I already need to get this working quicker, hey… It could be a better idea.
Well the strong implication was it was just you. If you have further specific information to the contrary then fine that changes things. But I don’t see you saying you have a team of people ready to jump on this.
In 20 years as a lead developer, you would be the first person I have seen to take on that much and do it all well, regardless of how long you have been working on it.
But what about your exosuit game? :-/
Cool story bro.!
It’s just a passing thought Martin, I’ve accumulated a lot of tools and stuff over the years and wondering if it’s worth getting back to roots in the more development side of things (maybe earning a little bit out of it?). It seems it’s what I’m best at…
I doubt I’d actually get through half of it, just start with porting over the terrain system / GI and shaders I have… In all fairness I need it for my game anyway.!
Well if you plan on working on such a huge bundle why not bundle it in your own engine with a base framework like Monogame and maybe have something like a patreon for funding. Seems like a better fit to me for this kind of project. So i vote for your second thought!
Edit: Something like Nez but for 3d
The framework I made is over 5 years old now (it’s not quite good enough to be called an engine), it’s outdated and majorly lacking compared to even one man engines like S2 HD… If I was going to implement it I’d be crazy not to pick up something open source like Godot.
There is nothing that causes more vitamin deficiencies than making a game engine…! Especially with engines like LY and UE in the loop now it’s physically impossible without a team of a hundred for it to be worth it.
I guess it’s a bit of a shame, wouldn’t of minded getting something out there for Unity… Although @Peter77 is probably right, even as a base package (Terrain, GI, Shaders) it’ll be too expensive and one’s with bigger teams who can or would pay for it would probably DIY anyway.
I’m sure I’ll find other ways to contribute.
I think Unity has the fastest pace of development than any engine out there now. It would be really hard for you to update your framework to Unity. In 2018 there will be new lightweight entity component system, C# job system, new custom compiler technology, visual material editor, visual scripting etc. If I were you I would at least wait a little bit to see what Unity is going to introduce in 2018 version.
Extremely valid points, again all of this is a passing thought… I’ve not a clue how much work it would be to integrate said creations in the first place, then to have to re-do the integration a few times over would be interesting / frustrating?
So another question, if there’s one thing on that list that would be most useful (general question to everyone here) what would it be?
@ : Don’t let the negativity put ya down man… Granted it may be quite a big project - I’ve found I’ve learnt the most knowledge I have from doing massive projects, whether it works out financially or not, the experience alone is worth the endeavor.
I say go for it, what do you loose even if it don’t work out? The time wouldn’t be wasted because you gained knowledge.
So you don’t loose anything, so go for it man.
I don’t start threads off with a personal anecdote, but I am loosing my skills at this point… I’ve spent the last couple of years tweaking vertex’s / sculpting / texturing etc. etc. and just generally faffing about. So when it comes to what I used to be alright at I don’t know my head from my behind.
So thanks, I agree… If nothing comes of it no biggie, y’know at least it gets my brain working for a bit and at this point that’s what I need.
I have no doubt that there’s plenty of framework stuff that could be made for Unity, but quite frankly I think that this would be a question of developing huge systems from scratch just to make a relatively small iteration. With a lot of the stuff you’ve listed, I think there are highly polished tools out there that do 90% of what you want. Even if you improved a little on them, at best you’d be entering a crowded and competitive market, and especially at the price point you’re describing it seems like it might be very hard to sell.
If I were you I would aim at the ‘next generation’ of tools - stuff that is either sorely lacking or hasn’t really been done yet. Things like
SVOGI (or whatever it is that lumberyard has);
A semi-procedural character creator (not sure if Unity is going to do something in this area).
A better cloth physics/creation framework;
Procedural anything - animation (I think the physics based animation is a good idea), sound generation, level generation, building generation, asteroid generation, planet generation etc etc
I guarantee this will get the wheels spinning, and I think not only would it be a lot of fun but it would do more for advancing game dev IMO than iterating on existing tools.
Finally I think Unity have found some coffee because lately everything is on the map, they are even jumping into making starter kits and stuff like that. So a lot of the core stuff that you’re talking about might be taken up in the next few years by them, making it even harder to compete. So I would try something more radical, the sort of thing that would be too difficult for Unity to be able to sell to their investors for at least half a decade.
I agree and would sum it up as “focus on something that has no use on mobile”, because that’s likely something you won’t see from UT and the Assetstore devs seem to avoid stuff like that as well. SEGI is open source now, if you’re interested in realtime GI you could get involved there.
Another approach worth thinking about imho is “what would be the thing you need most, to drastically cut down the time to make your next game?”.
Any idea when this terrain system is coming? That was the reason I was looking into it, but sure I agree… It’s going to take me a long time to do it anyway so there’s no point if they’re sorting most of it out in the next couple of years.
Funny you should mention SEGI, I’m currently looking into it as viable option… As said, not starting from scratch as I’d never get finished (ever)…
No idea, but if nested prefabs are on the way then anything is possible …
I’d just dump it all to github under permissive license.
The wondering about getting back to the roots reminds me a scifi story about the baker.
Basically, there was a young boy training to be a baker. He watched space ships (scifi, future) fly from nearby spaceports and wanted to become a ship captain… and one day a miracle happened - some visitor in their bakery offered him opportunity and he took it.
Years passed, the boy grew old and was working as a captain on a big passenger cruise ship. The dream came true, but he was mostly dealing with mundane bureacratic stuff all day through. So when he went to sleep he dreamt about baking bread…
We can’t compete with Unity regarding how things integrate into their tech. They can alter C++ core if that is the thing to make C# tick faster. I’m not sure we can make a very good terrain system without some rework of their C++ core…