Is Smart Sprite at all available?

I've been making my game from tiles so far, and the more I work on it, the more frustrating it gets. Mostly since every single time a new possibility of tile combinations arises, I have to create a completely new tile, to fit in-between the two. I started with the basic 3x3 tileset, with a centre tile, and the outer ones. But now I have around 20, because there are so many places that require special tiles so that the levels don't look weird.

I feel like the Smart Sprite feature is going to solve all my problems in this case.

I know they discontinued it for now, and are currently working on improvements, and I'm very happy to wait for it. I was just wondering if there is at all a version where it is present, just so I can play around with it, and see how exactly it would work under different circumstances.

So, is it available in an alpha or beta version? Or did they take it away right after showcasing it, and before releasing another version?

 

I would also like to know about this.

 

All the preview and experimental features are announced and discussed here:
https://forum.unity3d.com/categories/betas-experimental-features.86/

I don't see it mentioned in the 2D section. I think the Unite roadmap talk said it wouldn't be in 5.6, it was further out.

 

Weird, it seemed to work pretty well when they demoed it, wonder what the issues were with it that made them delay it this much.

 

As I understand it was demoed in a controlled way with a very specific set of assets. From what I gather the tool had a host of problems when given a generic set assets to work with.

 

I'm curious as to how Smart Sprite would help you, OP. As far as I can remember it had nothing to do with tiles, but was rather a tool for creating Worms-like levels quickly.

And I'm sure that no matter what tool you find to help you with your problem you'll still have to create all the tiles yourself. No tool can create the tiles for you. Normally in a 2D tile based game you either have 16 unique tiles or 48 depending on whether or not you care about corners or not.

 

It seems you misunderstood my post. I'll quote some stuff from it, and explain what I meant.

Here I was saying that currently I am using tiles, but find them frustrating. And I went into giving an example of how it gets frustrating.

When I said

I meant it would make creating levels a low easier and more efficient, since instead of specific tiles, it just requires seamless sprites, and can be easily formed into any shape.

Although I understand the confusion, as I did not mention that I am not aiming strictly for making the game tile based. I simply chose to make it using tiles, since it is a pixel platformed, therefore tiles would make sense. However I am now planning on breaking away from the idea of tiles and pixel art, mainly because what made me choose to use the two, is my gaming nostalgia, rather than what I actually wanted to create. Therefore Smart Sprite would solve all my problems by requiring very few sprites, rather than say, 20 sprites.

 

Ahh, right. That makes more sense.

In that case I would advise you to embrace the possibilities that having 20 sprites give you over having just a few sprites. What you give up in speed and efficiency you can make up for in unique details and interesting level features.

 

Its currently 'on-hold' whilst other 2D Features (Tile Map, Atlas Asset, 9-Slice, Masking, etc) are being focused on for the Experimental Preview Builds and eventual release with main Unity.