Assets [Released] Cascade - Rivers, Lakes, Waterfall and more ..

4 tiles . 12KmX12Km . river is 20Km ... Cascade has pushed up water surface quality in Unity . .. beware of imitations ...

 

looks realy nice. Could you add the TerraPainter on it, maybe also with some streets from SENTIERI?
Waiting for the asset is not nice.

 

On 16th of February 2018 Cascade went live on the Unity Asset Store.
Cascade earned an excellent reputation and the sales were going really well. It was second in terrain category and present on the home page of the Unity Asset store.
In the night of the 21st of February, I received messages from the buyers saying that asset was not anymore available for download.

On 22nd of February at 00.47 am CET time, I received the below communication from the Unity Asset Store Team.
"Hi EarthShaping,
Thanks very much for your submission to the Asset Store.
'Cascade - Rivers, Lakes, Waterfalls and more ..' has been disabled.
It has been brought to our attention that this package contains content
that you do not own the rights to redistribute. As this is a violation of
our User Agreement, we will be removing this project from the Asset Store.
Kind regards,
The Asset Store Team"

I Immediately requested for details and ran an audit on the content provided by third party as I was really surprised.

It was only after a wait of a week, on the 1st March 2018, did the Unity Asset Store Team answer back.

"Hi Antonio,
It was brought to our attention that you are redistributing skyboxes
that were obtained from a site that does not allow commercial use of their products.
We would advise you audit every piece of your project and make sure all products you did not directly create yourself are available for redistribution.
Kind Regards,
The Asset Store Team"

As soon as I received the above messages, I replied to clarify that Cascade has ONLY ONE SKYBOX and I request that it be enabled again on the asset store.

Skybox used in demo scene if from the collection NoEmotionHDRs by Peter Sanitra
“It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://noemotionhdrs.net.
http://noemotionhdrs.net/hdrevening.html (08-08_Sunset_C)
License allows commercial use of the skybox just giving credit to the author. I also would add that the skybox is it also included in the package by UNITY TECHNOLOGIES in the BLACKSMITH ENVIRIMENT with same license included in CASCADE
and in other assets present on the asset store with same license
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/39948

I even highlighted that the change log that we publish on the website has the asset on it with relevant credit and includes all those details.

It is really difficult not think anymore that something strange is going on, as it is evident that there is no correspondence between the messages received by Asset Store team and the reality.

It's not “play a game” anymore on this issue, as we have invested huge number of hours in development, had a long beta test with 15 selected Unity users from the unity community.

Unity Asset store Team is making copyright claims reported by someone regarding information that has nothing to do with Cascade and I don’t see evidence that someone has checked if it is correct or wrong or the very least get in touch with me in a reasonable time window to clarify or sort this out.

I don’t want to blame someone, but I would ask you to support the restore of Cascade and help to prevent these situations from happening to another publisher.

If publishers who are coming into unity, especially ones bringing in years of expertise and are capable of making assets that make life easier for developers, are alienated, it doesn't reflect well on what unity stands for which is democratizing development.

***************************************************************************************************

Only skybox present in Cascade is the same present in The Black Smith Enviroment. We report the details in change log.



Change log pushished and updated
http://www.earthshaping.com/cascade-change-log/ at the bottom all license info

And that is from author website ..



and cc 4 license ..

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

 

Wow that sounds messed up on the asset store team's part.

Personally I feel like they did not respect both the publisher and the buyer here, considering that I didn't receive any sort of notification indicating the asset has been taken down. I bought the asset and the next day when I wanted to use it, poof, gone. Only option I had was to request for a refund which I did to which they responded after five days.

Judging by what @antoripa shared now it seems like they didn't alert him to the situation (auto-generated email at least), seeing as he found out about this from the users.

I wonder if they will take down the Blacksmith package too.

In either case, I am sorry this happened to Cascade and I hope the asset store team comes to a reasonable conclusion on the matter.

Cascade is an absolutely amazing tool from what I saw in the beta and I've never seen the techniques you used or the ideas on any other unity asset on the store.

 

I've passively followed the progress during beta and submission and now am really bummed to see this hit by a made-up copyright claim - be it by accident or out of purpose by competitors.
I understand that the AS Team has alot to do, but taking so long to sort this out in such a critical phase after release is unacceptable. I could imagine that the priority of this claim was low because he is a first-time publisher, although I really hope not so.

Oh, and a final note if this WAS a claim by a competitor for the sole reason to harm Cascade:
Shame on you. Sure, this is done all the time in all industries, but it's that false craftmanship that poisons our community - which is not new, unfortunately.

Best regards and have a nice day,
Seneral

 

Who brought this to their attention?

 

Oh man . just back home after a nice vacation . and I got to know that ...I was following the thread and planning to buy the asset.. . it looks amazing and much more better than the other river tool released few montha ago. I hope that action did not start from that guy; I assume that if Cascade was second in the category .. the other got a lower rank for that ..just thinking louding ..

And I agree with your message . it is not anymore your asset but Unity mission and view...

You can read in the company profile :"More than an engine, Unity helps you achieve ongoing success. It offers everything you need to develop quality content, boost your productivity, and connect with your audience"

I hope that this story, if i would say that is minor if we compare to the overall company activity. will pop to a kind of senior board member to help to understand how how employees support the company mission-. But please don't give up , issues can always happen and those are good when company understand the action to put in place to prevent the same fault.

 

Hate to see the community torn up by this. One of the reasons we switched to Unity was the asset store and even more so, the community.

Honestly, I am friends with so many of the developers. I now find I have to be careful what I say. I feel like I have to lie about what assets I am using(not always true but is how I feel). I have to even not post screenshots with certain assets because someone might think I like those assets better than theirs. I do not..I love the assets I own and I admire the work the developers did, all of them. If I did not like their work, I would tell them so. I own many terrain creators, many water assets, many of everything. I love having choices.

When someone makes me feel it is okay to be honest about the assets I use, I feel this great sigh of relief.

Using Unity is not as much fun when you have to feel like you are walking on eggshells.

It really makes me sad. After Unite last fall, I came home full of hope and joy and eager to use Unity. Now, I have this feeling in my gut that maybe Unity is not that shining beacon in the indie game development world anymore. Competition is great, but when it makes you afraid to show off your screenshots because people will think you are taking sides, then something huge is wrong.

Hope that all this gets fixed. I hope that Unity communicates better with the developers, lets them know exactly what is wrong. And please, get rid of anonymous reports. Geesh, isn't Unity a big company? Why would they take something down based on an anonymous report?

And why did that person not use their name?

 

yes . that make sense .. maybe the community manager @Buhlaine could help

 

I consider myself a small child in th Unity world,becuase I started programming with Unity in October 2016. But an old guy in IT world who worked for the biggest IT company in the world for long time ( for last years with the 3rd one in the world until I started my sabbatical and unity development ) ; and in my 25-year career I learned two points that drive all professional activites :
1) Compete with someone else means make better innovating
2) Every day our work has to be driven by company values and ask ourself : what I am going to do today to help company mission.

 

Honestly, I am not sure this is about competition. Not sure what, but it seems that people who are counting on assets to bring in money would not want to get a bad name.

I think this is about something else. Maybe it is that old fanbois thing that has happened before. Or maybe it is someone who feels they were wronged...we know a person like that exists from the beta. Or maybe Unity is hiring people with not enough training.

We really do not know. I would like to believe this..with all my heart.

 

Well this is a sad tune of events for UAS and the community. I like many other small devs rely on the asset eco system to create games well beyond what we could do alone.

If this is a malicious act I hope the person responsible is named and shamed. They should have to suffer the effects on their reputation as this must be affecting Cascade negatively.

I will support this asset when it is reinstated or when you sell it on another platform.

 

Remove the damn skybox... it’s always a bad idea to make that kind of thing public and play the card of users pressure. It’s not pro.

After try to make them understand that it’s a mistake from your point of view, in an update.

 

Unity makes it easier for me and seen many experienced long term developers leave Unity due to poor support, nonsense we see from the Asset store all the time and much more, not surprised by this behavior.. I have seen other assets inside of Unity ones, like such, and they aren't taken down, if the Author allows it and gives credit as told per the Author license and other assets are allowed, I'm confused here... So does Unity NOT want new Unity asset developers??? Good you made up my mind, to sell my stuff else where.. if this is the case.. Nice Job Unity..

 

Yep. Name and shame the culprit. There's beginning to be too many feuds of asset devs and it's getting out of hand. You all know who you are, downvoting each other's assets and telling tales. Bloody pathetic children.

 

And there has been a lot of collateral damage. For a while, it seemed every day someone was receiving a nasty message from other person telling them they were not loyal or whatever. That hurts. And it is very unprofessional and childish.

But...I have said this before, but glad others are finally condemning it as well. Wish Unity would wake up.

 

I would . but please note the one from Blacksmith Enviroments .. is the only one that we have included and licese reported in the change log .. and in the update I pushed "before" UAS had time to write 10 words email with their result of investigation, I also enclosed detailed license file ..... So at this time,, I don't know if there are other skyboxes ( as in UAS team message the writer talk about skyboxes and use were as verb .. no typo ) that we cannot see . kinda magic asset ..

 

I think your asset would sell without the skybox. Most of us won't use it anyway and the default skybox is not horrible.

 

I'm so sorry to read what happened. Are you planning to stay on Asset Store regardless? I'm asking if it would be a good idea to ask for a refund and buy the asset from you guys directly if you're planning such a thing.

 

Yes, we will stay on asset store. Never had a doubt on that.

Intention of the post was just to share what is going on for 10 days
I had been handling daily questions and requests from customers and users with an extra effort.
It was not possibile anymore not share what was the issue .. a fake issue created by someone who reported to the UAS team a false accusation of copyright infringement for the skybox used in one demo scene. I cannot think a different intention by distrupt Cascade reputation.

Other assets are in our pipeline with unique and innovative features that will support a better workflow and better quality for procedural landscape creation including complex road network, cities, villages and an entire large terrains.

i think that what reported and what commented by community , it is a right indicator that unity asset store team should take in account to close asap this weird incident enabling Cascade on the asset store

 

But I am a dreamer, and one of my favorite dream is democracy ..
Unity's motto is to "democratise game development". .
So now I am just wondering how they can do without any accountability.

 

So . time to continue asset development ....
Feedback from users is important .. so i have implemented one of first suggestion to improve the UI Experience ..
i created colored header for the section

 

Great! Please also add an option to auto-expand all, that'd be great instead of having to open selectively, especially for beginners if you'd like to toy around

 

Hi @antoripa,

I've seen that you commented in the thread when GO Map had a similar issue. My situation was a bit different and I haven't had to change much because the code was already completely different from the other one.
It was probably just a misunderstanding of the asset store team, and I have to say, they were very supportive and reactive about fixing that situation.

From what I've seen in this thread you have just an issue with a skybox.
Even if you think it's unfair I suggest to remove it from your asset and maybe replace with a skybox of your own design or with some unity defaults. =)

Bye
Alan

 

done New build will be ready for download to already customer for end of day

 

Hello.
despite the skybox included it is in line with asset store policies, I have removed the skybox from Cascade.

I don't want create any missunderstanding as I am not here to fight non sense battles but only to give my humble contribute to the community creating asset with unique and better features that what market offer.
Thank you for all your support. Much appreciated

 

So . Group menu now will not autcolapse and section header are colored

My artistic skill is really bad . .so not sure if colors are good

 

I like it.

 

yup, with Unity, not worth the hassle.... and just going to lose ground with any sales from the store, they will drag it for ever. So better off, hope they get it back on the store for you. best of luck .

 

remember with colors, color blindness, never use Yellow. hehe. Use Color, symbols. etc. I can tell its yellow, as I'm color blind to it. Many men are color blind, keep this in mind with stuff like this. UX/UI, as game devs to many indies, don't know better or non artist .

 

yeah . nice to know . thanks man

 

a nice feature:
Erosion for the river. That means: Maybe you can change the age of the river, so a older river gets deaper into the ground, then a "new" one. Maybe with some noise to show harder and softer rock, so that it looks like your canyon (when it is a realy old river).

 

Yes . that will come ..I don't have already an ETA but it's planned.
I will share more information in the next few weeks and even first screenshots

 

Problem is that older rivers do not always get deeper. Some get wider. Some change course, some simply dry up, depending on what is going on upstream.

And deeper rivers are often not the result of age, but of other factors. The Grand Canyon formed through a variety of processes, uplift of the mountains, floods, ice, etc.

You might consider using something like Timeline if you want to show geological process. Biggest problem is it takes millions of years. A human life span would not see many changes...even elves would see very little.

 

Forgot to add, look at many games with puzzles etc, many use colors, with Symbols for that reason Cheers. Don't use bright colors, or very hard to see colors text etc. .

 

The idea was only to make it look more natural, not to make a super realistic nature simulator.

 

Your comment I quoted below led me to believe you wanted to show the river age, therefore, simulate aging of a stream. But I realize now that you only meant that you wanted to show older rivers vs. younger rivers. Problem is that a deep river can be a young river. Older rivers fill with sediment so may not be as deep. So really, what you want it to be able to make different types of rivers, not necessarily older vs younger rivers. I will save the rest of this for my thread instead of posting it here.

 

Your blog's a very good read, thanks for that resource I see a lot of potential in simulations aiding with the correct placement of, let's say geological structures...

 

Thanks, Seneral! You made my day!

 

I am quite colorblind, but the point of it was really to differentiate which thing was the actual heading for a new section with a quick glance. As long as yellow is not right next to a green, or a brown next to a red, it is fine with me, if it were to go green red yellow blue, etc, it would be fine.

 

Here is my map:

It would be really nice to use all the nice assets from antoripa to fill this map with textures, rivers and lakes, streets and villages.
I know that this map is HUGE.
I can't make the terrains smaller then that or my RAM is full (already have a maximum of 64GB ^^). Unity uses with this 25,4GB RAM. OK maybe the problem could also be the graphic card. I tried 8km x 8km terrains and my PC lags realy much, but no problems with 16 x 16.

 

that is a nice use case. Need couple of days and after I will send you a pm

 

I been a game , Web , UX.UI developer for over twenty years, so I GAVE my experience and input. Which is what every game and software person should be making sure of in games and software. so I'm more than aware of what he was showing, was asking artist and others there opinion.. /cheers

 

Not sure if this will help, but I posted the following:

https://www.facebook.com/ZacharyLayne/posts/10156221152249700

 

If I'm correct and this is Japan, why not use real world data?
But for real, I assume you use some streaming solution? Would also imagine some custom solution for work in the editor might be suitable, must be horrid to work with lol... Poor UnityTerrain really is not suitable for such an application...
What's even more intersting, what is the resolution per tile?

 

First I created the map with Real World Terrain (a great asset for real world terrains), then I splited the terrains with the nice script by Dvornik, some erosion here and then to get the smoothness away and don't have a flat ocean and I had the map. Even when it took me ~2 months to get this one. Had many trials and errors. My ocean is only ~90m deep. Would be nice if there were free ocean heightmap data, but who cares. ^^ When everything is done somewhere in the future, I will use World Streamer to get around the floating-point error.
That is my progress since early december. I also tried procedural texturing, but it is not accurate enough. I have heights from 0m (ocean) to 3480m (Fuji, even when he is 400m higher ^^) and creating a beach only on the first 90m is not easy.

Edit: here the resolution per tile:

Width: 16000
Length:16000
Height: 29569
Heightmap Resolution: 1025
Detail Resolution: 0 at the moment
Detail Resolution Per Patch: 8 at the moment (even when I don't know the difference between these two)
Control Texture Resolution: 2048 (can't get it higher )
Base Texture Resolution: 512

 

I was also just GIVING my honest feedback based on what I was looking at.

 

Very interesting indeed! Never seen anyone push the limits that much so far Just one thing, probably desired, but why is the terrain height so high? Nearly 30000 is alot for only 3500 actually used... Might reduce vertical precision.
Also, as for texturing, why not texture procedurally based on a color map?

 

I would guess flight sim.

 

16km, by 16km, isn't huge . and you shouldn't be running into Ram issues, 64 is more than Enough... Unity now sucks making larger maps and has slow downs, over 10km by 10km alot of the time. Great seeing others posting data on large maps, anyways, i make a ton of them . Thanks for more data.