Noob Game Dev: Part 2
Something that I generally avoid doing if possible is buying game assets.
Reason 1: My budget doesn't allow me to do that all the time
Reason 2: I'm cheap
Reason 3: I think I can do it myself
So, in light of that, I had decided to go through during the end of the year sales going on at the Unity Asset Store and buy myself some assets that I knew I wanted to get. Not only that, I actually just click on a lot of random assets in the store just to see what they all were.
I was mostly looking for tools that I could reuse over and over again, were at a reasonable price for me to handle, and would overall just help me speed up my game design.
I also had certain aspects in mind when what type of assets I wanted and what I wanted to accomplish. I looked for optimization, flexibility, time saving, and reusability. I wanted to make sure what I was buying would save me time building games, no matter what kind of game I was making.
The worst part about trying to do that was narrowing it down to what I needed to what I wanted. I had to focus on the games I had in hand and what I needed out of the assets in order for me to finish those games.
My normal workday, I work in programs within the AEC Industry. I am used to seeing and using parametric features, automation workflows and cloud synchronization. Luckily, I was able to find tools within the Unity Asset Store that catered to my mindset. I am used to spending most of my days in 1 or 2 programs with very little need to open up an others.
Being able to find tools that allow me to spend more time within the game engine creating and customizing my games I knew would make a big impact in my design process. I enjoy using programs like Blender and Substance Painter making interesting assets that I can use, but when making games, I don't want to spend all of my time in them.
2 tools that I have downloaded and been experimenting with to speed up my game design and I feel like I am most excited to use is the Dungeon Architect and Archimatix Pro. These each allow me to create some interesting environments and does so in the way I like to design.
If you are someone who doesn't have deep pockets to buy every game asset you can image, then I would certainly encourage you to just go through the asset stores of your preferred Game Engine and see what you can find not only on sale, but also something that you can use over and over again. If an asset looks really cool but it doesn't function the way you do, don't worry, the odds of finding one that does is most likely out there, you just have to look around.
The ones I mentioned above I never even thought about honestly. I was just scrolling through the store while there was a sale and just started randomly clicking on things. Before I knew it I was seeing things that got my brain spinning! Being able to pair multiple powerful tools to create a workflow that I knew would work for me was something that I really needed. I grabbed a couple other assets off of the store that are geared towards my workflow methods, but not everyone thinks the same. Maybe the ones I listed just aren't for you or what you want to make. Maybe there is a different combination of tools that you find that would work better?