What Unity experience is good to get additional tools from the asset store?

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1

Hi,

a little bit of background - I have been coding for >20 years (C++/MATLAB earlier and Python for the past 10 years) and am just starting with unity. I also have some experience with graphic design and computer graphics in general. So while some concepts of Unity are entirely new to me I have strong experience in some others. I have followed some courses and written a few small prototypes so far; I think while my solutions are not always great I was able to get what I was aiming for so it’s fine for now.

I would like to have small games or one slightly more complex game up and running in the next months and I’m wondering at which point I should get paid tools from the asset store. For example, most of my ideas are top-down so I have checked the TopDown engine which provides tons of functions. Other assets for level design, UI and inputs also look great. So I’m thinking at which point it’s most useful to get these. They are definitely worth the money as I would get great code which would take me weeks or even months to write myself, but at the same time I think I might miss something essential if I don’t try stuff by myself first so I learn a few important things and how to address some problems.

My current idea is that I write a basic but fully playable game with all the stuff I need (basic player control, weapons, SFX, enemy control and game/level selection UI and so on) within a few weeks where I only use built-in tools and just a few free models from the asset store to get an insight into how all relevant aspects work. Afterwards I can come back to the asset store and get some of the packages to help me achieve more complex goals. Is that a working approach or is it equally useful to get the assets right away or maybe wait even longer to get decent experience before moving on? Or are there some tools that you can/should get early on while others require more skills?

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You have the right approach. Don’t get those assets right away; especially big ones like a “TopDown engine” is going to be a huge ball of wax to learn, nearly as big as learning Unity itself. And if you mix multiple such overgrown assets, all with their own naming conventions and API standards, and probably redundant (and possibly even conflicting) demo scripts, etc., you’re really choosing the way of pain.

Especially since you’re already an experienced developer, I say just write it from scratch and only reach to the Asset Store for art/sound assets, or specific, well-focused code assets that solve just one problem in a contained way, rather than trying to be a “kit” or “engine” that takes over your project.

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