First thing you see on the Unity website is this big image of the new Asset Store.
Click on it and you get to a page talking about how great it is. It even gives you the percentages you get for selling stuff. Cool.
My question then was how do I get to this Asset Store. Is it a part of the website? A separate software that comes with Unity? The info is nowhere to be found. I know it is new in Unity 3.1 so I download and install it.
I imagined, since it is such a big thing, that it would be easy to find. Nope. I then thought maybe it was a separate software inside Unity folder. Nope. Where the hell is it? Go to the forum and find other people asking the same question. Then I finally find it hidden in the Window menu, as item number 9! Wow.
Why don´t you guys put this info in the Asset Store page on your website? Or make a popup with this info as you launch Unity 3.1 after installation? I figure a lot of people will simply miss it the way it is.
By the way congratulations on the Asset Store and Unity 3.1. Great stuff. Just please make it less of a treasure hunt!
It might be a good idea though to make it browsable via the web, like the iTunes store. When I’m surfing the web is when I’m in daydreaming mode. Being able to window shop the Asset Store as part of my normal nonworkflow could inspire something, and lead to sales. And for non-users, showing what’s on offer would help promote Unity.
Good point. One of the strengths of Unity is the depth and breadth of stuff available. Why not let potential users see what it has to offer before downloading?
I completely agree with this thread. I have heard of the asset store but I could not find it. I accidentally found the asset store yesterday, and its great. I think their should be a button at the top of the windows labeled asset store.
To be fair, there should not, that way it will get in the face and feel like they’re trying to force me to buy it.
Right now it’s in a menu and it’s all cool.
Same here i find it a disappointment to be honest, at first i thought it was not yet released until i asked on the forum here as people were talking about it. Secondly it gives no information about the payment methods or any FAQ etc. It is a good ideas but this would have been much better as a new website rather than built into the app, or they should just make a new website for it also.
I think it’s a right move to have the Asset Store integrated into Unity for 2 reasons:
This is something for developers, not for consumers (therefore different than the AppStore). It should be where the developer could make the best use out of it (inside Unity), because you will need these assets probably during the development of your project.
Unity is available for free. Therefore, if you want to view the Asset Store, you’ll download Unity and become part of the big family, thus increasing the total number of users and the community.
For the time being, I totally agree with Unity’s idea of having the Asset Store available only through Unity. However it’s true that they should state this in its description within the website, to help users find out where it is.
Lemme guess, did you try opening the asset store while the boot camp project was open in the editor? I just filed a bug report yesterday, it seems that the larger your project, the longer it takes for the asset store window to open. When I had the boot camp project open in the editor it took over 2 minutes for the asset store window to finally open. And that’s under Windows 7 on a fairly fast machine with 4 GB of RAM. I imagine it could take longer or even crash a lower spec’d machine.
If JDonavan is getting the same as me, Unity crashes the instant the option is selected from the menu, and the Bug Report dialogue box appears. Size of project does not matter, I can create a new empty project and it still does it. Happens on both my iMac and MacBook.
Well, all gripes aside I really wish Unity would stock up their assets store. They’ve had the same assets in it now for almost a month.
I know there are tons of models, script,s and the like that the community is waiting to submit and to sell. So lets hope that the Unity Asset store can stock its shelves a.s.a.p.
I guess thats what they are doing, being flooded and now going through the stuff.
Also for anything thats not $0 (and potentially even there) its a lot of legalese involved.
Frankly, I don´t think the Unity teams was prepared for the amount of work generated by the Asset Store. I have submitted stuff a week ago and still no answer. Not even an automatic email response.
My guess is there are loads of people submitting assets but they don´t have the time or structure to handle it.
I´m sure they will sort that out soon though, because the idea is very good.
In fact…Vectrosity and Stitchscape are up!? Or is it somehow just on my end? I wasn’t expecting that yet. (I can see one potential issue I didn’t think of before…we’re going to need other sorting options when viewing categories, such as by date, or else people are going to be calling their stuff “AAAAAA Awesome Unity Utility” in order to be at the top of the list…)
OK, not just me, there’s some other stuff appearing now too. Something else I didn’t really consider before…I’m a little unclear as to the difference between “scripting packages” and “extensions”.
scripting packages seem to be single functinality / package of single functionalities, while extensions are full featured “frameworks” basically, something that extends the featureset unity by covering a missing field.
that the head target controller for example is no extension is intuitively understandable.
there naturally will likely always be border cases where the decision won’t be as easy.
optimally the two things wouldn’t be split and instead seperated through tags but thats just my 2c