This is an opinion I have held for a while, and it has been made more urgent by the recent security announcement and patch.
The Asset Store is effective as a web page, and web pages are effectively handled by existing browsers. Why is there a web browser in my game editor environment? Isn’t that a whole new can of worms and potential security issues?
Evidently, yes.
Ultimately, buying something from the Asset Store results in a .unitypackage download. I can do that in Firefox, Chrome, or what have you. Let the Unity Editor deal with unpacking the file I’ve gotten through normal means. The in-editor browser is a messy beast, extra bloat, an annoyance when opened inadvertently, and an obvious and now confirmed security risk.
Your opinion is shared by many. I think that the list of assets we’ve bought should be available via a separate API which the editor caches instead, and an alternative download for each package like you suggested. The slow as molasses way of browsing now is unbearable. I dread updating my assets because I have to put up with that crap.
I write server code, so I may be biased against bingly-bing frontends for n00bs
Or we could discuss the real issue at hand. Why is the dark skin not used for the background of the asset store in the editor?
On a more serious note, I completely agree with OP. I just think that a big chunk of their market are people who have never developed a game before and they need to make it as easy as possible for them to fill in the gaps with the asset store.
That is a good point, AntoineDesbiens. The argument about noobs needing it to be easy is the likely the crux of the thing. That is understandable, and Unity has always had user-friendlieness at its forefront.
But I don’t think there is anything particularly unfriendly or difficult to understand about opening the Asset Store in the system’s web browser, when the user clicks the tool. In fact, any noob is more familiar with how to browse and download on the web. And anyway, the .unitypackage file will open in the Editor when double clicked. So I really hope this isn’t considered a justification for keeping it.
The decision for asset store in editor is purely a financial one, I think that’s pretty obvious. It has absolutely zero to do with “noobs”.
Simply better business to bring the shop to the customers, so to speak. I don’t personally mind it nor care. I guess it would be a bonus to have a handy link to open the local files so you can delete older assets or manage them.
I’m not zealously against or in favor of the in-editor store, but having the option to store assets on an archive drive instead of strictly on the boot drive should be a standard option.
O Unity … hear my plea!
PS - Also, having the ability to switch to a local mode where I can immediately browse through my downloaded assets instead of waiting on the store interface … that would be great.
The store interface is absolute garbage in the Unity editor. I have to wait up to 10 seconds for the list to even populate, and that’s with it’s default #packages nonsense that I do not want. I can’t even interrupt it.
So yeah, it could be better. Maybe they should try it on normal internet connections around the world (I have an extremely fast connection btw) with lots of assets in the account. It’s not very good
Wait a second. Does not allowed to access mean I can’t browse through with my browser to find what I want then click the download link which opens the page in the unity editor? The only time I ever use the store in editor is when downloading and importing. All of my browsing, searching and such are done in a regular web browser.
It’s not that I don’t like a built in way to access the asset store in unity editor…
It’s just crap and slow… no opening multiple asset pages into seperate tabs, constantly having to go back and forth instead just closing tabs for assets I was taking a look at. Can’t copy an asset stores url into or out of the editor…I basically just look at the asset store in my web browser… where the convenience of browser it is… still got to go back to unity to download it… really just outdated and I imagine if they update it will only get worse and more dumbed down. Basically having to use a broken and crippled html rendering engine to use the unity asset store in editor blows bit like using Steam own built in ouddated chromium crap browser.
The Unity offline documentation files are web pages… yet those don’t get a built in help tab to load up in.
Lucky you! It takes more than that here, probably close to a minute at times, and there’s not a hint of caching. If I close the store tab in the editor it of course forgets everything because the editor design is retarded.
When they say “technical reason” they mean “nobody wants to write a new webpage”. They already have a system in place to show content we need a login for, so I don’t see why it should be so hard to add a direct download section. Or making categories of owned assets their own pages to speed up browsing, for that matter.
I thought that when the store was first created it was actually an editor only thing, and the web interface only came later on?
In any case, they could “bring the shop to the customers” at least as effectively by having the “Asset Store” button open a link in your default browser and then give it window focus.
And, financially, it’s got better but there’s a huge number of occasions where the poorly implemented in-Editor interface for the store just outright made my experience worse. For instance, the combination of only showing a single page, along with issues with the back button either not working or skipping pages, made it incredibly difficult to effectively search for relevant assets for ages.
It honestly strikes me as something they did the easy way to start with, which is fine, but then those early decisions haven’t been revisited since. Just because they were easy back then doesn’t mean they’re the best way moving forward now.
