Should I buy the world building mega bundle?

So I have bought the last 2 humble bundles which included Gaia, Aura 2, and Mtree. Other then Gaia I haven't even tried any of these assets out yet. I don't have much money to spare and consider $60 a pretty sizable investment.

I'm still pretty bad at programming or at least the designing modular systems part of it. I'm hoping to improve in the next 6 months though. Once I do I would like to make an open world rpg game at which time I will need to build a world. Ideally one with a large map or several large maps. Are these assets good for that? Which ones would you use? Would you recommend something outside this bundle instead or in addition? How easy are these to learn how to use?

I'm thinking at the very least CTS and vegetation studio should both be good assets to use with Gaia and the environment packs should have some good prefabs to use?

I hate to miss out if I'm going to need some of these assets in the future but hate to buy them if they aren't going to work for a large scene or will need to be replaced with something else.

 

My recommendation: You need models. For that Meadow Environment and Forest Environment are AAA assets and the best on the store. For huge terrains you should use Vegetation Studio Pro, not Vegetation Studio Standard. It's such a time saver to use the VS Pro Biomes, just e. g. drag a forest around and be done with it. And it's absolutely convenient to use. You can build your terrain with the new Unity Terrain Tools, they are free. I personally use World Creator 2 Pro Standalone for terrain, but it's a bit pricey, absolutely worth the money nontheless. Aura 2 is awesome, but on huge terrains I ended up not using it, because I can have a huge view distance with the performance gain of VS Pro and didn't want to limit the view with e. g. fog.

To sum it up: The NatureManufacture assets alone are worth it. Other than that, it really depends on what you intend to achieve.

 

For your own sake, drop the idea of open rpg. At least until you will gain decent programming skills. It wont be anytime soon. Neither 6, nor 12 months. Pick up something much smaller and easier for your first time game. Otherwise you will just waste your own money. Buying random assets here and there, leads you nowhere, without understanding technical challenges of making games.

After new year, you will find out you don't have much time, and you will barely touch any of assets. Not to mention about actually making something playable and fun, which should be your first priority.

People buy things in bulk, never touches for long time, then when want to try, they find out things dot work anymore, with new Unity version. Unity changes too much, to be playing shopping spree, just in case for future use.

Models and textures are at best investments can be made. At least these don't go outdated at any fashion, as other assets do. Weather you will ever need them, that other matter.

 

To clarify I'm not really planning on making any money on this first game. I'm just hoping to put something together which is playable and looks decent without spending too much money. I know doing an open world rpg alone like this will end up with an empty feeling world as I'm not going to have enough models and content to fill it. That's ok with me though. It's meant to be a prototype to prove I can do it more then a fully featured polished game.

I have already started working on it with primitive models to practice programming. I have inventory with ui and hotbar, skill, player and enemy health and damage, and movement systems and a partially implemented encrypted save and load game system using an asset from the store. I think all I'm missing is good enemy AI, dialogue, buy/sell, quest, currency, pause game, animation, and loot systems in terms of gameplay along with needing to use them to create content.

It's pretty bad code that will need to be refactored if I'm going to be able to reuse it easily in multiple projects or even continue to add much more to it in this project as its already hard to follow the logic. I think within 6 months I should be able to figure out how to use interfaces properly and design things modularly though.

I also have worked a little bit with umotion pro and made a few animations. I'm planning on just making it first person so I don't think I will need to spend too much time on animations considering there are some free ones on the store that I can use for human NPC's.

Any suggestions on what technical challenges I should be looking into? I really know very little about the modeling, art, graphics side of things. What are some of the biggest issues going to be once(if) I have the gameplay stuff figured out and working well? Is this going to be as much or more work then the gameplay coding?

Anyways it sounds like the models alone are worth it and I don't have many good environment models at the moment so I guess i'll go ahead and buy it and hopefully get some use out of the other assets too. I have built up a small collection of random models and textures by exporting royalty free stuff from epic on top of what's free on unity and what was included in the humble bundles so I should have enough to do something with it all. I can always scale down the world size if these assets aren't good for making a really big scene.