Optional Downloadable HD Assets

Unity Engine
,
1

We want to give tablet users the option of downloading HD assets, as well as optional SD and HD content. I have been reviewing Scripted Importers but can’t see a solution so far. Wondering if somebody can help me out.

How do we create an HD asset and tell unity to use the HD version instead of the SD version included in the app bundle?

More specifically, how can one replace an existing asset with an HD asset downloaded at runtime?

For example, in order to replace the main menu background, the source asset would be:

  • SourceAssets/bundles/main_menu/hd/bg.png
    The output of the asset pipeline would be:
  • Assets/Resources/bundles/sd/main_menu/bg.png
  • Uploads/bundles/main_menu/hd/bg.png

If the user opts in to HD assets then the main menu prefab shows

  • /downloads/bundles/hd/main_menu/bg.png
    otherwise they see
  • Assets/Resources/bundles/sd/main_menu/bg.png

This is an artificial example, but most of the assets are Image and Sprite for UI, characters, levels etc.

We prefer to do this with a custom asset pipeline. We can’t use addressables or unity asset bundles due to the nature of our config pipeline and workflow.

2

How do we give the user the option of using higher resolution assets from an optional download?

This is assuming that the user has already downloaded the files. We just need to swap in the hi res assets.

We have already dealt with the layouts - we just want to swap in the high-res textures.