Should Unity add a My Assets Library feature to the Asset Store

To clarify this would allow users to put assets/prefabs/code they commonly use into a separate asset store folder or library and reuse them privately between projects.

Ideally it would also allow people to share assets within a community and maybe integrate with cloud services (e.g. dropbox, icloud etc.) to allow more flexible sharing of assets between projects.

Is it a good idea?

 

I already replied to same questions you before in another thread and most of this is already possible and does not take much effort. Non curated easy click community sharing is dangerous because that could easily lead in to people sharing asset content they should not share, either on purpose or mistake.

 

But if it was a local folder that accepted prefabs and appeared via the asset store or just within Unity as your Library. Then it would be up to the developer to link the folder to a cloud service and optionally share the content with friends or colleagues.

But if it was 'part of' the asset store sub-system they could upload the assets to the asset store as free or paid assets and import update their own assets between projects.

 

Have you tried the exiting things? There is already 2 folders where you can place shared packages and quickly use them in Unity.

I don't think UT want any more stuff to mess asset store since the accept times have become longer and more poor or non unique is getting rejected. Some easy system to spam content would just make work for them since it needs to be reviewed.

 

Great but I just think it could be made much easier to use, that's why I'm raising the idea of an asset 'Library' a simple context or metaphor but more integrated and easier to find and use.

That is my point, we could argue about details all day long but the idea is to make Unity a better and easier to use game development tool.

 

Well there is always stuff that could be improved and making them easier to use but we are talking about game development tool here and not Microsoft Office or some non tech office workers app. For example setting up the folders and sync takes less than 5-10 minutes. Asset store also has stuff for favorites and other stuff.

It's better that UT uses the resources to implement features that we can't do easily or at all instead of them trying to hold our hand and make trivial things more easy.

 

So you don't believe in the UX/UI theory of Don't Make Me Think or the KISS principle which for game engine developers should be MISS - "Make It Simple Silly" principle.

It's just I thought Unity were in the job of democratising game development, surely they should make it as easy as possible. If they don't someone else will.

 

I don't believe in em when it comes to professional development tools. I don't want UT to waste too much time on care bear features and make the app like click and play tool if it requires valuable time from coding team especially if the wanted features are already possible and trivial to setup. When Unity 5 is out and the features majority need then maybe its time to do such things unless there is already a team working on collaboration features/cloud.

I'm not sure why are you so tackled on this specific feature (mentioned it in 2-3 different threads). I'm sure as you want it so much you have already made an entry about it in the feedback site and asked people to vote?

 

If you are using Visual Studio you should be able to use a Nuget local repository to do this. A Nuget package can contain arbitrary content that is added to your project. Though I haven't tried it.

If you aren't in Visual Studio, Nuget has a command line tool, but the Visual Studio way of doing things in this case is about a billion times easier.