This is a question for Asset Store customers… I’m a 3D artist, and I’m looking into selling 3D models on the Asset Store. My question to customers is this: What are you looking for? Do you have any requests? How can I help YOU, and are there any specifics that you’re looking for? Any particulars when it comes to format, textures, shaders, polycount, etc.? Are you looking for single items? Themed packs? High quality? Mobile quality? Whatever you could wish for, please leave a comment. I’m sure your comments will not only help me, but other content creators searching this forum.
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Spaceships! Most of us are indies so high-res isn’t our game, but high-quality is super important. Something that looks professional which means that it has consistent art (i.e. a realistic spaceship with a toony turret don’t go well together) and definitely no blurry textures.
I think a lot of us also want a larger art pack, or many works from the same person under the same theme. I.e. if you make spaceships, make a universal spaceship package that can pretty much power the game. Another tactic is selling every spaceship as its own package but only do this if you focus on spaceships. Digging out spaceships from a vendor who also sells fantasy, UI, 2D, etc. is really annoying.
The hardest things for an art asset flipper is consistency. The Asset Store is a great place but it takes a keen eye to spot assets that will work together to produce an immersive world. You can make it easy for them by tailoring assets to do just that.
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All right Benny! 
Spaceships are doable. Are you looking for assets for a top-down space-shooter type of game like Raiden or Galaga? Or more of a 3d-style game like Starfox or Eve Online?
Almost. The spaceships I especially have in mind are big and bulky (think Battlecruiser in Starcraft 2). Also, in 3D but definitely for top-down.
So, more like gunships than starfighters? That could be more interesting… it seems starfighters are a dime a dozen in the asset store. I assume you’re looking for something armed with turrets, missile bays, energy shielding and other forms of heavy weaponry? Perhaps something with a modular design so a player can swap out weaponry?
Any idea what sort of polygon budget you’re looking for? If you’re looking for multiple ships, do you want them all to belong to the same faction? Multiple factions? Varying races with distinct ship designs? The more info you can give me on what you want, the more I can tailor the models to suit your needs.
Hell yeah. A spaceship that’s highly moddable, with ports for attachable turrets. I’ve been using this for prototyping but ideally there would be more ports and a flatter roof of the ship (to accommodate more ports). Also, a port model xD. I’m guaranteed to buy anything like such and to help spread the word because of the help it is to me.
i have looked for something pretty complex modular spaceship with interiors, currently nothing like that on asset store, not sure how that would be handled?
Interiors are usually created separately from exteriors. You could have a camera pan around and show the fancy spaceship exterior and then design an interior that you can walk through with a sci-fi level pack.
Example of what I’d like: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4144134/Omega%20Fleet%20BattleShip%20Set/Omega_Fleet_V_web.html. This, except wider (something whose collision shape can be approximated with a circle). Also, less details on the bottom of the ship because my game is top-down. For poly-count, anywhere between 1K-2K is fine but 3K is pushing performance a bit. High-quality and resolution textures are important since they can be scaled down.
Ok, so we’re looking for a highly detailed roof, and I think the word we’re looking for is ‘socket’ rather than ‘port’. We would need a universal design for a socket that would be recognizable across all ships so as not to confuse the player. In fact, the socket design could possibly be added to existing models like the ones in your prototype. Then you would just need add-on turrets and weaponry that match the design of the ship. On average, about how many sockets would you like to see on a ship?
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On the first example ship, there would be 3 “large” sockets (the standard 1x1x1 socket except with larger scale and accommodates larger buildings) lining the middle section. The side would be lined with standard 1x1x1 sockets like a pirate ship is with cannons, in regards to frequency.
Sockets are circular and full of gears. Turrets and other buildings’ll be packaged in something like this so the socket should accept those pods like a hand in a glove. The details for that aren’t important since the package will bloom out and cover any transitions needed to attach the building to the socket.
Circular/square-shaped designs are doable. Would you want them to look more like space stations or orbital weapons platforms in that case? For textures, are you looking to stick to 1024x1024, or 2048x2048? Any particular needs for shaders? Do you want them to follow a particular color scheme, or possibly have multiple color schemes so that you can introduce them as separate factions?
How many different sizes of sockets would you like to see? Just ‘large’ and ‘regular’, or did you want to go further than that?
A spaceship interior might be a fun environment pack to work on. If you wanted to make it modular, the modeler would have to standardize hatch openings and other connectors and such to make that work correctly. Figuring out some sort of system of mount points that rooms could be snapped to would also be helpful. I’ll keep that one in mind.
1024x1024 textures are perfect. For shaders, U5.0’s Standard shader will work best since they’re very customizable - or for previous versions of Unity, bumped diffuse or diffuse as needed. For ships, neutral color would be the best… something that can be changed to red or blue during runtime, depending on the ship’s faction.
Perfect! Preferably, ‘large’ sockets have greater detail with a few extra “claws” or “gears” to show that they’re not just the ‘regular’ socket scaled up.
I’m caught between Portal’s energy ball catcher with claws and a spaceship escape hatch for the design of the socket. I think the claws is the better choice but it’d need open/close animations to hit the asset store, preferably with the legacy Animation because of its simple nature. Either one would work well for me. *Actually, I think the hatch is better. Simpler and clutters up the roof less.
So basically, keep it grayscale so you can tint the shaders? Sure, that works.
I’m going to second the hatch style. It makes more sense since personnel or drones might have to man the turrets. Claws on the sides might make sense to lock the weapon in place. I’m able to do animations if necessary, but let’s worry more about the design first.
While we’re at it, what kind of modular weaponry are you looking for? I assume from the 2 sizes of sockets, that some will be more epic in nature than others. Taking general sci-fi cliches into account, I assume you’ll want things like a laser cannon, a shield generator, missile bays, perhaps a grapnel or tractor beam? If you don’t have a list already, I’ve got a few other ideas that I can throw at you, but I assume your weapon list will depend a lot on the play style of your game (in other words, a sensor array or cloaking device might not make as much sense in an action shooter as it would in a turn-based strategy sim).
List of things currently needed:
- Spaceship
- Regular and Large sockets
- Heavy rifle turret (like a sawed-off tank gun)
- Plasma turret
- Production or radar control building
- 3 types of drones… comparable to creeps in dota
- Starbase
I’d like to pump out a vertical slice by January and see if I can get any support from my school for funding and playtesting.
I haven’t planned the long term yet, since it’s still far away, but what you’re suggesting should be in there. The game is a slower-paced MOBA with a focus on strategy elements (i.e. resource control) so cloaking and intel gathering will be a big deal.
Oh ok, that sounds interesting. So, if resource gathering is an important element, would one of your drone types be a miner? Or are the drones intended solely for battle/creeps? In any case, I didn’t get far on socket designs last night (I was more tired than I expected), so I’ll probably work on that a bit later today.
For the vertical slice, I’m only showing the most exciting stuff. Players build spaceships with unlimited resources then fight it out until one faction’s base is destroyed. For now, the drones are only for combat. I think in the future, certain drones can harvest resources or maybe it can work like control points with automatically built harvester buildings. The game focuses on combat more than traditional RTS games, so I think control point resources is the better way to go.
*Oh yeah, forgot to mention the star base. The star base/nexus/station is a circular structure like the station in Ender’s Game except flatter (to allow for building sockets). For now, all it does is take damage and end the game if it gets destroyed. Added it to the list.
*Also, for the drones, I think the best would be to have under 1000 poly count, maybe around 600. This would work well because they’re much smaller than ships so less detail will be seen and it would allow for more of them to be used.
Hey man, meant to be on here earlier, but some family stuff got in the way. Sorry about that. Anyhow, I put together a few designs for sockets, but I’m noticing right away that we’re going to have to be careful to limit the amount of sockets if we want to meet your polygon budget, as they take up a fair amount of polygons just by themselves. Anyhow, let me know what you think of the suggested designs so far, and what direction you’d like to take them. I’ll start working on designs for ships in the meantime. Probably won’t be on until late tomorrow, as I’ve got plans for the day.
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