Should a beginner game developer use the asset store?

Hi guys,

This is my first post on the forums so I hope my question is in the right category. I have spent the past year one and off teaching myself C# for developing games and have decided to FINALLY start a project (pretty common story here I am sure). A big selling point for Unity is the asset store, which as I have heard can really speed up projects so you aren’t recreating the wheel.

As a beginner, I would like to know if I should be using assets or trying to create my own? I have seen a couple of threads or articles discussing the ‘Must-Have Assets for Beginners’, and thought that if started using these I would lose a lot of fundamental knowledge and experience that comes with creating your own stuff.

What do you guys think? I would love to hear opinions from both other beginners and advanced users

 

It depends.

In general, if there's a need that the asset store fits very well and it's something you don't want to bother with, then sure, get it from the asset store.

But to know what kind of needs you have, you should start making something. So personally, I'd suggest against buying stuff from the asset store before you've started making something.

 

I pretty much agree with @AcidArrow. I don't believe there are any "must-have" assets, with the exception of Script Inspector 3, without which you can't edit your code within Unity. That's definitely a must-have for me. But it's an editor asset; it basically fixes a shortcoming in Unity, and it's not code you would ever need to look at or need to know how to do yourself. So you're not losing anything by getting it (except a lot of frustration, and all that free time you used to have while waiting for MonoDevelop or Visual Studio to launch).

But as for stuff you actually use in your game... well, if you find art assets that inspire you (and if you poke around a bit, I bet you will), I say get 'em! You don't need them — you can make a perfectly fun game out of cubes and spheres, or crude programmer art — but such assets are fun and may keep you motivated while you struggle through the initial learning phase.

 

Just you. You are little peculiar in this preference.

Ultimately this. What is the goal you are trying to accomplish? If you just want a playable game, going straight to the asset store is sensible. If you want to learn to program, grabbing art from the store is sensible. If you want to learn to do it all on your own, stay away from the store.

 

It's definitely less expensive than investing in a solid state drive... it just won't cover as many use cases as one.

We're rapidly reaching the point where my recommended assets that you can't live without are no longer necessary. We now have an official shader editor (Shader Graph), we now have more advanced level design tools (ProBuilder and related), etc.

Currently we don't have an official visual scripting solution, we're currently relying on a very clunky input system and a very clunky terrain system. You may find assets for these would be very helpful but I'd at least wait until you've had the chance to try out the official ways of handling these before making a decision.

 

Okay. My advice would be, to learn to create/model simple object assets.
Boxes, crates, barrels and cartoony humans+creatures.

And later on, if you want, you could buy/use, some of the complex 3d models
on the asset store. Eg. semi-realistic humans, giant spaceships etc.

Also note, there is no shame, in buying or using pre-made game assets.
They do come in handy, once in a while.

But yeah. The big drawback of starting off, using/buying pre-made game stuff
is that you will sort of miss out, on the fun and creativity, of creating your own
cool stuff. Especially when it comes, to 3d creations etc.

In my case, I took my time and learned to model, everything I need.
However, giant dragons and monsters, are like the toughest ones for me
to model and create. Lol.
But just recently, I figured out a few ways, to semi-easily create them.

 

I am a beginner, and in my limited experience, assets are "purpose items", so weapons for enemies and common things that are not that important because your not going to focus on them are probably fine to download from the asset store, turbo-squid royalty free, or similar etc. But the items you download, you will have to "build learn" anyway. As you may want animation on weapons that don't have any, or vehichle etc, so will have to edit them in blender or similar etc/maya. to improve them for your function. If it's allowed etc... But main items such as player weapons, characters, vehicles and also animations in some cases, should be original as they look like a copy if everyone is using them.

Same with artwork (pictures/photos etc). Though just using .obj files downloaded free and adding colors/normal maps to lots of items helps make them original.

Currently I did not want to think of building an MKXL style combat game but am having hundreds of characters pop in my head, so i'm printing t-pose skeletons on double sided A4 to draw my own characters, then I may use these to practice blender etc...Possibly. Not sure what I'll do with them though. But I will have to research each character too.

It's all a trade off. Originality gives a new exciting feel to a game, but lots of things are the same in every game, especially combat games ... It depends on what you want to get at the end...Your choice, and workload.
I just have a big problem of not knowing much of anything, except how to improve things/games inthought not action... etc (poor coding/poor blender skills he, typical)...

 

Hey team, thanks for the responses I genuinely appreciate all your feedback. I will take the advice to have a crack at everything myself first before I dabble in the store - at least until I stop making practice games and try something real! I may look into some utility assets but for now will sit tight.

It seems like a very responsive and helpful community here so looking forward to helping others when I have some experience. Cheers.

 

Hi just out of curiosity why is using visual studio a problem? I noticed you can leave it open and alter scripts and save it and unity has no problem re running it... Just curious

 

I use Visual studio.. as I'm sure many people do. It's great - no problem(s). Don't worry.. he just really likes that asset, is all.

 

Visual Studio has been known to have performance problems for some people even with a high performance system. Add to that the fact that @JoeStrout is on macOS and can't run it to begin with and you can understand his choice of editor.

 

How did you know he was on a mac...?

 

I have a 2ghz laptop and visual runs ok, ish. A bit slow, but then so is unity. Visual has a lot more systems/functions/support etc that's inbuilt so it runs slower, but is potentially more helpful???

I would use mono-develop for the documentation shortcut, but I don't know which parts/version etc, to stop, to allow mono-develop to work & not auto-sync to visual. Visual is microsoft so I don't know the rules of usage/royalty free code creation or attribution required etc, but it installs/un-installs very easy.

Visual also syncs with Unreal also. It is also a well supported learning software. Though i'm only using a book .

 

Visual Studio runs great on Mac, btw.
(Source: I use it on my mac every day)

 

He's mentioned it from time to time.

You're not using the real Visual Studio. You're using a rebranded Xamarin Studio (which is a rebranded Mono Develop).

https://adtmag.com/articles/2017/05/10/vs-for-mac.aspx

You can find information in the above link as well as a statement from Microsoft about their intentions regarding Visual Studio for Mac. Until they bring more features to the IDE though it's simply nowhere near the same level of functionality.

For the purposes of Unity development though it's good enough.

 

Well, you're probably thinking of the Windows version of Visual Studio, which doesn't run on the Mac. On the Mac, your choices are MonoDevelop (which sucks) or "Visual Studio" which is really just Microsoft's rebranding of MonoDevelop, as @Ryiah said (and so, most likely, still sucks, though I confess I haven't tried it). Or of course you can just use a text editor like BBEdit, which at least has a proper Mac UI and is blazingly fast, but doesn't give you any help with the actual coding (intellisense etc.).

But sure, MonoDevelop is usable — I got by with it for years before Si3 came out. I just got by so much better since then. It's blazingly fast, provides even more help than VS/MonoDevelop (it understands all of Unity's magic methods for example, direct links to Unity's docs, etc.), and somehow manages to feel amazingly Mac-like when the prefs are set that way (and, I'm told, still feel Windows-like to Windows users).

So yeah... I like that asset.

 

Is it suitable for a beginner? Would it be bad for learning unity if it "helps" so much with auto-typing etc & more? Just wondering...

 

It is absolutely suitable for a beginner. The aid the code editor gives you only helps avoid typos, or occasionally trigger your memory about what the parameters of a particular function are. You still need to understand what those functions are and what they do. And that will often mean going to the reference — which a good code editor makes very quick and easy (right-click and pick "Unity Reference" or "MSDN Reference" from the menu), but without it, you'd do the same thing via your favorite search engine.

These comments apply to any good code editor, of course.

 

Thanks for opening my eyes! I think...

 

I was wondering about the Asset Store Assets...If I download an asset, are they recieving my details like an app in the "APP-STORE", or are my details still private etc? I wouldn't want to be connecting to the Si3 web document option if i'm giving data or web-browser info etc like most other sites etc...?

 

It depends on who you mean by "they." Unity certainly has records of what you've bought or downloaded, so that it can provide such a list in your Asset Store tab, notify you of updates, etc. But the actual asset authors don't receive any information at all — if they have more than one asset, Unity doesn't even tell them how much of each one has been sold!

I have no idea what this means.

 

My point was the connection through the internet for documentation shortcuts to unity docs from Si3 etc. Using web browser etc.