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Non-pro asset bundle creation aka mod bundles

Discussion in 'Wish List' started by Damocles, Mar 23, 2013.

  1. Damocles

    Damocles

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2012
    Posts:
    46
    I think one of Unity's biggest weaknesses is the unnecessary difficulty in creating mod support for Unity games. To which end, I had an idea:

    Non-pro version "mod" asset bundle creation.

    There are two issues here:

    1) Unity sales.
    Unity would not want to give non-pro people asset control on this level, which is a simple workaround - limit the asset loading to Pro versions. Problem solved. In addition, these special mod bundles would be limited to certain types of asset, to reduce security risks. Mostly content such as images, meshes, audio. There would be no support for scenes or compiled scripts (it would be up to the game devs to add scripting support).

    2) Naming/asset collisions.
    When loading in unknown assets made by any number of people, there's a risk of naming and ID collisions. To this end I propose a new method:

    WWW.loadModBundle(string name, bool overwriteOriginalContent)

    this would load a custom mod bundle, and handle collisions based on the bool param:

    If false, the colliding assets in the mod bundle are ignored and not available.
    if true, the colliding assets in the bundle replace original assets.

    Combine this with a new Editor method in UnityBasic: createModAssetBundle(...) and you create a powerful and flexible modding system. Game devs can create scripts for use in Unity Basic that will handle mod asset bundle creation, so their modders can focus on content creation.

    I think a system like this would make it easier for modders to use Unity Basic to create mods for Unity games that want to support them. Mods are a huge sales incentive these days, and it would help the Unity community to make mod-enabled game creation easier.

    Also, it would serve as a great way to get new people interested in the power of Unity, thus increasing Unity's potential future revenue. A lot of companies ignore piracy of their high-end content creation software because they know people will learn it, then if they become developers in the future, they will influence buying decisions of companies. If modders are learning Unity in the same way they learn 3DSMmax and Photoshop, then Unity will gain mindshare and marketshare.