Cross platform asset bundles

Are there any plans to support "cross platform" asset bundles ? i mean, a single package that would be compatible across all (or: multiple) different platforms ?

Consider this use case:

Consider the case of modifying a single Vector3 value in the inspector, which requires us to rebuild the entire asset bundle.

We support 3 different platforms so this means switching to the target platform and rebuilding the bundle per platform, which is a very long process.

It could be great to build it once and use it on multiple platforms.

 

Awesome. i didn't know its available on github

we are actually using it (running a local copy on every developer's machine), but i've seen it fails to resolve assets in many cases, and in other cases it's just super slow, even with the cache server active..

 

why is that ?

 

it's not the one bundled with unity?

 

Do you know if the latest Cache Server is not integrate with Unity 2018.3?

 

Here's a tip for switching platforms instantaneously:

Keep separate Library folders for each platform. When you want to open the project in a certain platform, just rename it's library folder to Library and rename the existing library folder to Library [platform-name]. Please see screenshot for sample.

To let you know, it is relatively easy to automate this process making it all happen with just 1 button click. You could even set this up on a different machine so that it doesn't interfere with your work.

 

I am currently researching possibilities for modding with Unity. The main obstacle I see at the moment is, that Assets are always platform dependent. Therefore a Mod made for Windows would not work on Linux or Mobile. This is made even more complicated, as we aim to support the Nintendo Switch. We could provide users with build scripts to automatically create asset bundles for several platforms, but the Unity SDK for the Switch is not publicly available. So we effectively would not be able to support modding for the switch.
Any ideas? Is there maybe a way to provide at least basic assets like sound files, models and textures in a platform-agnostic way?

 

Sound and texture should be fine by loading from your own server at runtime using UnityWebRequestTexture and UnityWebRequestMultiMedia.

fbx runtime import

Why would you need Unity SDK for that?

 

We don't want to create our complete own asset handling system, but instead use Addressables and AssetBundles. Those can only be built from the Unity Editor, if I am not mistaken, and are platform dependent. Which means, that you have to have access to the Platform Support for the target platform, if you want to build AssetBundles for it, correct?

 

yep, correct

 

I haven't tested it myself, but since the Switch GPU supports DXT textures it should be able to load a bundle built for Windows, in theory, as long as that bundle doesn't contain any shaders.

At any case, full self-service user mods is uncommon on consoles, due to the tighter restrictions. For example, in Warframe the devs select the best user made skins and make them available on consoles by hand.

In all consoles there are also limitations to downloading and storing arbitrary files, you would need to talk to them to obtain approval to use additional storage space for things other than save data.

 

Interesting. We already had the idea to showcase mods we like on our website, so this would be indeed an option for the Switch. Thanks for the hint with the limited storage, I will look into this.