Would you buy one of these assets?

I'm currently developing some assets to hopefully sell.

the first one is an Aerodynamics and Hydrodynamics system I made for my game Project Build. It can take any mesh, and just by putting a script and adjusting some values give you very realistic Aerodynamics and Hydrodynamics on said mesh, Its also very fast able to handle thousands of polygons. There is no baking, so you can use it on procedural meshes and even have the mesh change while playing!

Another one I'm working on is a smooth Voxel Terrain, Now there are plenty of existing assets, but I find they are all pretty much the same, and lack some important features a voxel world needs, such as Fluid and Floating voxels falling. Other then that it would be fairly normal, Biomes, Textures, Trees and Objects, Node-based world generation and so on.

And one other one I have made once before but may remake into an asset, is a 1:1 scale Voxel Planet (Which you can find here). So think Astroneer with a real planet size with textures maybe even fluid, I did do this before though it was not multi threaded and could be improved quite drastically, but I already have the concept done and know how to pull it off.

Would you buy one of these assets? If so how much would you consider to be a fair price?
And if you wouldn't buy any of these what is your dream asset you want?

 

No, I wouldn't.

Reasons (programmer's perspective):
"Aerodynamics/Hydrodynamics" --> I'd need to know what you're using under the hood and what specifically does your solution cover. Simply put I'd expect a horrible performance and inability to use a lot of planes, plus I'd expect it to be unable highly detailed model. You said THOUSANDS of polygons. A modern model could have hundreds of thousands. And there may be a lot of those models. So I'll need to preprocess the models. I'd also need to check if this is not something like grid of raycast approximation. There may be a hidden requirement like mesh topology being watertight.

"Voxel Terrain" --> Given that you talk about fluids, I'd expect either poor performance or lack of realism. For example, let's say I dump enough water into scene to displace an oil tanker. What's going to happen? Either we'll have minecraft water, or it will crash. Floating voxels? What if I dump a continent sized chunk? Or a mountain sized? I'd expect it to hang or crash.
The talk about Biomes, Nodes, Textures and Trees indicates that you have VERY specific workflow in mind, and it might not necessarily be compatible with what I needed or wanted.

"Voxel Planet" --> Absolutely not. Because of the video. When you zoom out there' s a horrific slowdown, then there's visible seam on terrain, amount of detail is low and I see lod chunk switching with naked eye. Additionally, it is likely that you're using sparse compression, meaning if the user starts realliy digging the memory use will shoot up until computer can no longer handle it. Another problem is that planets are round, and voxels usually are cubic grids, meaning at some point the grid will not be aligned with ground properly, which is what I saw (many times) in space engineers. Additionally, unity is single precision engine, and a voxel planet requires double precision arithmetics. This smells like a lot of trouble.

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No offense intended.

Basically, I know that those are not simple problems, and that many existing solutions had issues. You (seem to) claim to have superior tech to them, and that brings doubts/skepticism.

If I were evaluating for a possible purchase, I would need to see demo, and behind the scene configuration. So it doesn't only look cool, but also reliable and easy to use.

In case of terrain, I'd be skeptical, because it woudl be highly likely that your solution would end up forcing its own node abstraction onto me . Along with world generation and stuff. It would also mean that another game with the same solution could end up with similar landscape. There are also alternatives.

In case of planet, I'd be extremely skeptical, due to engine using single precision, and due to lack of convincing demo. Planet explorers have this technology. They wasted years on it, and in the end it ended up being barely used in their followup title. That's a warning flag.

In case of aero/hydro dynamics, I'd need a demo to see what you're actually selling.I.e. whether it is simple lift/wind resistance model or something more. Adjust some values - how many values? Very fast -- how fast? Those kinds of things.

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If you just want to tinker, though, sure, go ahead. Those are fun projects for tinkering.
For commercial focus, compare to existing solutions on the store (gaia should be still popular) and see what your solution would offer compared to competitors, and evaluate your target audience.

Have fun.

 

If I was evaluating these in studio I would say no, because all of these have existing solutions that have had years of work put in and cost very little, and I doubt yours will be superior tech wise.

From the video you have shown, your code and/or design is wildly inefficient and will take a long time to match performance of competitor solutions let alone feature parity and usability.

Basically, I dont see the benefit in buying yours over just writing my own. What you have looks exactly like what would happen if I sat down and developed any of these solutions for a small amount of time without a full team and/or funding.

Not trying to burst your bubble but all the info you provided is vague, I would even say hand-wavey, and the video you have shown would make most people run for the hills. You said "I already have the concept done" for the planet one. Showing a badly designed voxel engine does not mean you have the concept. Taking this from what it is to performant AND usable is going to take a long time, and a "concept" would already have that proven instead of saying "I have done this so I could probably do that too".

I think its cool your making these but I would focus on making them a portfolio piece rather than a commerical offering, unless your willing to put a few more years work into these (which from what you have said and what we have seen, is exactly the time needed for you to get these up to scratch on your own).

 

If you are selling on the store you either got to appeal to noobs who know almost nothing and are looking for an easy solution that does everything for them magically, or it has to be the leading solution in a niche that nobody else can do better.

 

The Aerodynamics has no requirements and isn't just ray casting, While i say Thousands it could possibly handle hundreds of of thousands on a single model as well, It runs calculations on each Triangle calculating Surface area and velocity so on and applying forces as close to realistic as i could achieve. In my game Project Build i'm able to handle Thousands of polygons with no noticeable frame loss, Usually though you want to use a Secondary model that's lower quality, The script comes with a built in option to Simplify the model upon loading, though there are model requirements for that and may produce weird results so its better to provide it with a manually mane simplified model. In Project Build there is no pre-made meshes, I needed a solution that had 0 pre-calculated data. While it is very customization, its not designed to like go in and customize how each triangle reacts, Don't get me wrong you CAN do that but that means creating separate models for the different pieces, and you can child objects to a parent and have each child apply difference forces. Though in most cases it does not need that, as it seems to handle everything pretty well with default values and setup. Can handle a propeller going at whatever speed you desire, the biggest limitation though is a Rigid body is required to calculate information.

The fluid has two versions in the voxel terrain, 3d and 2d, 3d Being accurate fluids able to simulate flooding a cave and such, but its also entirely on the gpu, While 2d is your usual height map based water that takes the Lowest point in a chunk and uses that. For ocean scale stuff it handles it perfectly and surprisingly looks pretty damn good even with flood caves and stuff, only times its noticeably fake is when there are multiple layers. Both systems maintain a smooth 90fps on my machine. Regarding biomes and node editors, its all extensions on top of a Voxel Framework. One thing i dislike about all existing systems, is they are not just a framework but trying to do an entire portion of the game. Which in a lot of cases doesn't work to well, so my system CAN handle terrain and has that built in as well as procedural generation, its easily removed by simply deleting the scripts, to get a bare bones voxel system.

As i explained that video is old, is running single threaded with no pooling it could be quite drastically improved.
The grid is indeed an issue though i have yet to see any problems with it yet. Seams and Lod have also been drastically improved since last showing that video, also added Textures, Biomes, Trees, and much more, ill be making a new video sometime soon hopefully. Precision actually has not been a problem at all yet surprisingly, I did expect there to be many more issues, but with just Floating origin and being mildly careful with coding i seem to have managed to avoid it pretty well! I'm sure some stuff will pop up soon though cant magically avoid it forever. BUT its more aimed around the style of Astroneer, so much MUCH smaller then 1:1 scale planets, that video was more of a Stress test to see how far it could go. At a more reasonable size there are absolutely no problems, No seams are visible, no performance issues and especially no floating precision issues.

The Video is mostly a heavy stress test of the planet, its not specifically designed for 1:1 Scale planets, but it was also made in roughly 3 days.. So yea its pretty damn rough haha, Its been a while since then its a lot more powerful and more performant now, Its already a complete solution i am using in one of my projects!
All of these would sell for probably Under $50 USD.

Frankly, Especially the Voxel stuff, thats mostly what I'm appealing to. Unity has a lot of Artists and Non-Programmers using it, Things like a Voxel Planet similiar to Astroneer can achieve some very nice visual results with little to no programming.



Something i failed to get across in my initial post, I'm not 100% sure i want to sells these, "Hopefully" was the wrong word to choose. For now they are mostly just ideas on things i already have tested and work that i could sell. And wanted to get opinions on if its something people would buy.

 

Short version... and few pointers:

Statement like this:

Means that "right now it isn't improved".

This actually doesn't tell me anything.
"No noticeable frame loss" is dubious, as I'd need milliseconds spent per model.

What I'd want to know:
1. Milliseconds per model.
2. What actually is being modeled. I.e. whether you're just calculating lift, or you have turbulence, air streams, went as far as to model sonic booms, thermal ocntribution to wing and anything else
3. Whether if using your framework it is possible to spin a propeller and it would generate lift. Kerbal and Simple Planes do that.

Basically, Arcade Level, Flight Sim level, Windturbine simulator level or anything else.

The problem is we aren't seeing any of that.

If you're asking whether the people are going to buy anything you need a better presentation, samples, numbers, and so on and so on. Basically it has to be either finished or it has to look promising. Right now you're asking to use imagination, and meanwhile the video doesn't demonstrate features you speak of. I can imagine many things, but that does not mean those things exist.

You need to produce more demos. And better demos. And include numbers, details and so on.

 

If your certain of your products, best thing to do is post some gifs or videos of it doing the interesting stuff. If what you claim it does now is true, that will be immediatly visible in the gifs and as such people will be likely to be more interested.

Right now it all sounds like conjecture backed up by a single very old underperformant video based demo. If you have done more work and they have come along way, you need to open with proof of that.

We are all very capable of imagining things , but that doesnt make them true. Generally for something to be sellable within a 12+ month timeframe from now, I would expect you to have some solid demos available already that you could quickly record to show off the features. Ill be honest, if you have made the demos come as far as you claim, I am a bit confused as to why you would even post the old terrible performance video over something newer?

So if you have the demos, record them and post back! If it is generally worth something, that will be obvious. If its not, that will be obvious too.

 

If you have a project you tinkered with and you're unsure what you want to do with it, you could go about it commercial way or noble programmer way.

Commercial way means you turn it into product, create demos, write documentation, put it onto asset stores, and deal with the customers. Someone will buy it, that's for sure, but you'll want to ensure they like what they bought. You have to be serious about it. The thing is, all of this is pain to deal with and is not necessarily fun.

So an alternative is to "set it free". Dump it onto github under permissive license (BSD, MIT, ZLib), maybe someone will take over it. Obviously you gain nothing from it, but people might be grateful if you do that.

If you do nothing with the project, it will just sit on your HDD and eventually it will be lost one way or another.

Right now you're evaluating commercial way, and for that you need to provide better demos. I only saw the old video, and have not seen any other features you speak of in action. If you're planning to sell, you need to demonstrate the product, that it works, works well, and that it is cool.

 

Sorry didnt realize it got so long.

Thats what i mean, non of them are even close to being done and quite a lot more improvements need to be done.
The closest one is the Aerodynamics/Hydrodynamics script.

Regarding Exact performance i havent properly checked it.
Lift, Wind, Drag and Turbulence, Spinning a propeller is the main goal of the system, it can generate life, and automatically handle differant angle on the propeller.

While i try my best regarding the simulation im no Fluid Expert, So in regards to realism i would say its more around an Arcade style, and with how im calculating it if i attempted to make it produce realistic results performance would drop to unplayable levels, Its far from perfect but for sandbox building games specifically its really good, since its a REALLY easy way to implement semi-realistic aerodynamics on a dynamically changing 3d model! I have had people ask using it regarding simulating falling leaves and other such particles, which is also totally possible.

Regarding more Demos/Examples i have many more already in the works.
Im just asking if anyone would be interested in assets LIKE these, as i likely wont sell specifically these versions since ill be using them in my projects.
Im just trying to sort out what sorta assets i could bring to the table of actual value
.

 

Another reason i haven't showed many demos yet is I'm not sure i want to sell them, and i also have no intentions of doing so any time soon.

Just askin for opinions on if you would buy Complete versions of these ideas.

 

It is a shame no one really builds assets for existing assets (although it does happen a bit for the networking Mirror asset) problem with building everything completely from scratch often just means its going to take a while to get something that is going to be good (and upto the same performance/features of competing assets or at a lower price) and having the tooling/features desired...

Seeing as your stuff is mostly voxels.... I use VoxelPlay, does it do everything I want.. nope. Also have Ultimate Terrains.. same story, does it match upto the hybrid terrain engine used by 7dtd ie with cubed/custom 3d object voxels for buildings structural integrity support for blocks so collapsing works on a blocks material type and buildings and terrain in the far distance is rendered like heightmap terrain so a really far distance is covered. Again no... I'll buy addons for existing assets as its the best way of getting features added. I waste to much time just trying to get all these assets just working together adding addition custom stuff, without spending even more time on one asset trying to get more features into it.

And most assets on the store never bother with offering any basic networking support/examples.. though I blame Unity for screwing up there own networking so F***ing bad that there is no half a dozen networking frameworks to get lost in.

Still it's why I always come back to why doesn't Unity just add x feature, and then at least the community can build around it and for it...yknow for when what Unity build is actually good.

Anyway I can say one thing about all the voxel assets on the store, they all have absolute rubbish/non-existent tooling ... I don't know if that is a niche you want though

 

I have posted some free stuff on Github before, rough stuff, there is a complete 2d mmorpg engine but that's about it, And i may very well upload other stuff like these someday. Going free is not far from the realm of what i may do, but as of right now i am looking for ways to earn some money, making assets is something im considering, the assets i mentioned would be FAR FAR away, which is why i also asked for what people would want to see.

Thats a very good point, A good Asset take years to develop yet single features can take days-weeks to develop.
I also own Voxel Play and messed around with it a bit, but ended up leaving it due to it being a *Complete* solution, im actually looking for JUST the VOXEL solution not everything else.
I dont yet own Ultimate Terrains but i have used it in the past, its a very good voxel solution!

Is there anything in particular you would wanna see in Voxelplay or some other asset?

 

If you just want to know if people would buy these, as in a perfect world if they are perfectly made and marketed, then yes. They have potential as long as made correctly and marketed correctly for your target audience (which to make money should be the non professional or hobbyist community which also tend to be the user base that buys the most assets)

 

If they're not even close to being done, they can't be sold.

Why not start a WIP thread? Post periodic demos and keep people interested. You'll get more feedback and grow potential userbase.
https://forum.unity.com/forums/works-in-progress.34/

I tend not to buy things, and in order to make me pay for something, that something has to be perfectly done so I can be sure it will cause me no issues in the future. Or it has to be related to some contract work I'm doing.
To buy it by myself, I'd need to be sure that this is far beyond something I can code quickly by myself.

I.e. polished project with a LOT of time invested into it. Unpolished technology "with potential" is something I wouldn't buy, because unpolished means it likely has fatal bugs in it.

 

Thats why I'm not currently selling them nor advertising them as such.

It would be to early in development to post demos now. Though i may do so later on if i decide to sell them.

 

It is called WIP because it isn't finished.

Also, you give impression of changing your statements.
First you mention that the stuff you have and didn't show is vastly superior to what was in the video.

And then you say that it isn't close to being finished and it is too early to post demos.

Those statements contradict each other.

If you have textures, biomes and trees, ocean scale water and GPU non-ocean water that runs at 90 fps, then you have stuff to show in a WIP thread.

 

You ask about "selling" idea. But you want feedback on viability of the potential product, even it is at early state.
Sure you got one demo. But you focusing on two first products, without providing any showcase.
This is exactly good time, to post vid, gifs, screenshots to get early feedback, rather being speculative.
Then you would be able figure out, if is viable and worth to work on any of these.

If you want to be competitive in this area, you would need to go DOTS route.

 

Yea i have Stuff to show, which is why i AM new making videos and such which i already mentioned. But Downloadable Demo's are still to far off.

 

You don't need to make any downloadable demos though. Just videos and gifs and stuff like that would do.

 

Thought I might as well update this.

All three of these are now turning into assets well two, the Voxel Planet has been merged with the Voxel Engine
Some pretty major changes to both since I originally posted this. The Voxel Engine is Fully GPU and Burst compiled, and it's hella fast, its also called VoxelTown: https://forum.unity.com/threads/voxeltown-fast-universal-voxel-engine.1366860/
And the Aerodynamics asset is called AeroFlow and will get its own thread soon.
Also a Discord for both

This thread turned into a big misunderstanding haha, I wasn't planning on selling them then, not even close, was just asking if there was anything who would be possibly interested.
Also wasn't developing these to be assets, was making them for my own game and just thought some people might like them.

 

Not planning to sell huh?
So why you made so much effort, with docs, website, discord, etc., now necroing two years old thread on general, just to sell promote?

There is showcase thread for assets, if you really need to.
Also you missing mentioning and showcasing anything regarding performance.

 

Looking forward to that one!

 

Didn't think about the Necro, Not really a forum Guy also didn't intend to Promote was just looking over old posts and saw this one, thought I'd update it which I guess was the wrong decision :\, and yeah when I originally made this I hadn't planned to sell, I made them for my own game. Now years later I have come to the conclusion I will never finish said game. So may as well sell the stuff I made for it. Back when I made this post I was considering the possibility to sell, not that I was going to at the time.
And if I'm gonna sell them now may as well do it properly with documentation and all.

Also don't need a showcase thread I'm already in the queue for releasing VoxelTown and Aeroflow will also be in said queue shortly.

Oh and as for Performance, More will come, I'm working on Videos and Tutorials which will contain that sorta stuff, as well as a trailer that will showcase overall performance of both VoxelTown and another one for AeroFlow.

 

You didn't plan to sell but you titled the thread "would you buy one of these assets?"

 

Well yeah, I wanted to know if people would potentially buy these so that I can decide if it's worth the effort to sell them.

The original intention of this thread was to ask whether anyone would be interested in purchasing these hypothetical assets if they were finished and worked well as described.