Is it considered a bad thing if an asset store package size is big?

I'm developing a package for asset store. It's a big deal and took me 3 years to complete. The problem is its size is reaching 5GB and still growing due to numerous quality assets involved. A lot of models with 2K PBR textures are included.

Is it a good or bad thing? Do developers embrace the high resolution solution or the size would be a downer for most people?

 

ATM the asset store has a restriction of 4GB.

https://unity3d.com/asset-store/sell-assets/submission-guidelines
"Due to technical restraints, submissions over 4GB will be rejected."

it used to be much much smaller. (500 MB)


Either way, as a consumer, and someone whom frequently buys assets, if the assets are worth the price then the download size usually doesn't really mean anything, unless the textures are too Small.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Break the asset into adds on

Have a slim core, then sells teh quality assets as addon, but use them in the core promo with the mention not included and have link to them.

 

Equating resolution to quality, and the size itself, are potentially red flags. The normal first approach for amateurs is to equate quality to resolution and create assets that are just not usable in a real game. So given the number of amateur authors on the asset store, amateur is going to be my assumption until proven otherwise.

I would have a free asset or several that included samples that represented the quality of the overall package. That's almost necessary really I think. There is just too high of a risk otherwise on a large expensive asset package.

 

Download size doesn't bother anyone. I would be concerned with potential performance issues. There is a limit to how many GB you can throw at the graphics card. I'm not an artist, I don't know that limit. But it is there.

 

Unlike some of the others, I have a concern about download size. My internet service is slow, with little potential to upgrade due to my location. A four or five gigabyte package means I have to leave the computer on overnight and hope it all gets downloaded.

Doing that once is fine, but the Unity Asset Store has this really annoying problem that you have to download the entire package again if you want to update it. Some of the asset developers update very frequently.

There are also users who have monthly internet usage caps to worry about.

 

This. It's compounded further by the fact that the asset store never seems to behave itself. Some days it will download at the full rated speed of my connection while other days it might not even hit one-tenth of its bandwidth. Add in that it can just stop at any moment and I've learned to avoid any large downloads for the asset store as much as possible.

 

Raw size is always huge, it's vastly cheaper in the build.

 

I like higher resolution source textures, because you can always make them smaller if that's what the game needs.

But if you have a lot of objects ... it's probably best to break the package up into two logical parts that can have value to developers independently.

 

You still hirez SOURCE to adapt the asset without fuss. It does not equal quality but it's basically a QOL feature.

 

Currently the biggest size I had downloaded before is 2GB+ which is the Book of the Dead.
5GB size of Unity package, that is epic. But I would still download if worth it.

 

I have an asset where the author tried to make it super efficient, with texture atlases and all. I would rather the textures be left single so that I can do the atlas or texture array as I see fit.

A consequence of the asset textures being only in atlased format is that some of the textures with writing on them, like speed limit signs, are blurred out and unusable. Also, half of the textures are ones I won't be using, but there they are on the only texture I have available to use. Ugh.

So what I look for are reasonably high quality textures that I can reduce or combine myself for performance. I can't take a low res or heavily atlased texture that someone else has made and fix it for my own purposes, and buying things like that has been a waste of time and money.

 

I look for good quality PBR textures, also too many materials are not a good sign if the asset is just a prop.

 

If the assets are really good, and are what I'm looking for. And are nice
and usable, then I don't mind if it has a large file size.

My main problem would be, my hard drive storage space.

 

It's not necessarily good, but it isn't the end of the world either. If your Asset package is too big for submission, just consider breaking it up into multiple Asset packages. Nothing wrong with that. Also, the end user always has the option of deleting any resources that they don't want or use in their game after they've downloaded your Asset Package. They usually aren't required to hang onto all of the assets in the package, and can selectively remove any that aren't being used.

 

Very good point.

It seems the most logical way to solve the problem.

Developers can set texture's Max Size to solve that.

That's a legitimate concern. Thanks for bringing it up.

The reason the size went so high is that it is not even an asset package. It is composed of two sophisticated engines solving two important aspects of game development. Because the engines are in one place it can save a lot of headaches. The assets are there to make them complete and allow the developer to use the engines with ease and have lots of possibilities out of the box.

That's a fine answer. Thanks.