Just want to create my first game in Unity, needed some advice...

Hello, according to the topic - yes, it's time.
I've tried to create 2D and 3D projects just to learn enough to create my very first mobile game in Unity.
Previously I had some experience in game development for PC, Xbox, and iOS.
So, let's skip all these unnecessary words, the question is about the graphic assets.
I can write the code etc... but i can't draw, just can't. I've tried but failed. So i'm planning to buy some from the assets store. It means "potentially" that there will be a couple of games using the same assets?
It is ok for the game market? Need some advice.

Thanks in advance.

 

Yes.

There's a term "asset flip". When people only buy marketplace assets quickly throw them together and call it a game. Or when they resell free tutorials as games.

You don't want your game to be that.

Additionally, if you can program, you can definitely learn to draw/model, to an extent, although this will take time.

 

Even when buying assets from the store, you need to have basics skills to modify them for your needs. And adjust for your own design / project vision. Depending on the game (3D/2D) - modelling, or basic image editing knowledge is a must.

At that point, assets actually aren't added as is. So chances people recognize them will decrease over time.
Then there's kitbashing approach, where multiple different assets are mixed and matched together. Reducing chances even further.

In the end, everybody reuse assets one way or another. Even big AAA studios.
Users don't care unless you've pretty much stripped an entire project from the asset store and published it under your own name.


TL;DR: Its fine, as long as it fits for your design.

 

If you're just trying to create your first game, why are you concerned about the games market?

 

Any time you buy or aquire an asset, you need to make that asset "your own", by changing textures, materials, etc., to "fit" your game/vision/workflow. It wont look like others if you change/modify it to your needs... Understand?

 

One of the best things you can do if you want to be a jack of all trades in game dev is to focus your time and effort into skills that enable you to do enough to modify things that already exist so that they belong in your game and to your vision, as well as filling in the blanks for things that aren't provided at all.

Most of the time, what makes art look like it either belongs or doesn't is the texturing. If you are lucky, some smart artists provide layered .psd files for models that enable you to modify all sorts of things about the texture very easily. When you have this, you can go and grab textures from GameTextures or Substance Source or whatever and insert them in to get a very good result. Otherwise it's a bit hard to make it all look consistent, which is the major issue people have with asset flips, they look like someone has gone and got random stuff from the shelf and thrown them all in together, with the style and quality varying all over the place. Some photoshop editing skills and possibly model baking skills will come in handy here.

Another useful thing is learning how to modify sound effects, for example some sounds you find might be very tinny and others very bassy, and if you have some basic knowledge of things like low pass filters, reverb and bass/treble adjustment you can go a long way toward making all the sounds fit into the same type of soundscape.

Another thing I do is use Substance Designer's procedural nodes to create all kinds of visual effect sprites, like muzzle flashes, engine glows, planet and asteroid textures, star fields, nebulas, explosions, dust clouds, exhaust trails, many different UI elements, and all sorts of other things. For me, it's probably the most useful software I've ever found in game development, besides the engine.

In the end, the most important thing is to make a fun, in-depth and well-polished game that people enjoy playing, most of the time an asset flip is something that smells bad from multiple angles, like having certain features missing or extremely poorly implemented (because it wasn't part of the asset for whatever reason), very little content or random content, lots of bugs, glitches and places where the game's guts just fall out for no apparent reason. It's really the lack of care or attention to detail that makes people feel ripped off, most of the time anyways.