Asset Store marketing

So I recently released my first asset to the store: CityScaper

It'd be amazing to use the asset store to get a small income going for the next few months while I finish production of my game. Especially since I'm posting tools that I'm making for the game...

There have been a number of threads out there on this already, and I've read through all of them, but I'm curious if anyone has found any tips and tricks recently, if things have changed in the asset store over the last year or so, offering more tools to advertise with, if there is any advert programs I can subscribe or pay into to advertise my app, also what kind of demand you think this tool might pull, etc. Any information, advice or feedback on the asset you can give me is appreciated.

 

I've added to my 'interests' list because it has potential but the layout of the buildings is non-typical. There is no street grid. No sidewalks that I can tell.

Look at views of skylines of Manhattan, Montreal, Chicago, Hong Kong, and other big cities in your design and adjust the probability that a random style of skyscraper is placed goes up the closer it gets to the location designed 'downtown' (for places like Montreal, NYC, Chicago, Hong Kong, ...) or goes down the closer you get to downtown (London, Paris, Zurich, Munich, ...)

Now some big cities do have skyscrapers dispersed in distant locations from one another but the is typical of extremely old cities that want to preserve the look of their city yet modernize too. Examples are London, Paris, Zurich, Munich, and so on.

As texturing is the hard part for me I'm inclined to wait to see if you add nice textures later and you need a more diverse set of skyscrapers while the smaller building can be somewhat less diverse (think of Manhattan's Brownstones for example).

 

The buildings supplied with it are really only meant to display the script at work. The hope for the asset is that artists can make models for buildings and typical things you'd otherwise find in a lot along a street, so as an artist using this script, you'd be able to create any range of skyline shapes you'd like. It's funny you mention skylines, because its original use was to make skylines in the background of my sidescrolling game. Now it can add colliders, can be scaled and be placed as well.

So I suppose, knowing that it's intended for people who have modeling and texturing experience, but not the time or experience to assemble buildings dynamically with coding - is there a way I can expand it in your eyes to make more accessible to people without texturing or modeling, aside from the ultimate goal of generating buildings procedurally and generating textures dynamically (Building BuildR Procedural Generator on the Asset Store does this actually)?

As far as generating skylines like Manhattan, Montreal, Chicago and Hong Kong, I think you actually could accomplish this relatively easily using CityScaper and a few buildings modeled after buildings that actually exist in those cities. You can add as many buildings as you want, so with enough models, you won't notice the reiterated ones, if they're even present.

I do have Bob Ahrens, my talented 3D artist, working on a fresh set of example meshes to help demonstrate the possibilities.

Edit: Also, if there was any confusion on how the asset works, please let me know if there's a way I can better explain the tool in the support thread.

 

So I think I understand your reply better, essentially what you're describing is the noise generated districts I have in the planned features. The programming concept behind it is to use the same noise algorithm and assign each street loop or city "block" a "density" value, which then randomizes a block type you've created, such as the typical "Commercial", "Industrial", "Residential." This way blocks you enter with higher densities come out only in the center of formations.

I was working on the procedural terrain generation, but I'll get to work on the district system instead.

Here's that asset I was talking about, it's also substance compatible, would be a great tool to use in tandem with CityScaper:
Building BuildR Procedural Generator

 

Oh, in that case it's much less interesting as it seems to be the famous maze generation algorithm with a random variable generated to select from a store of building models. I have a script on my HD that does that already that I made 2 years ago.

Let me rephrase that; it is interesting and useful, I've done it myself already as I said but for $45 I'd expect a lot of improvements. If you are using that maze generation algorithm I'm afraid you are limited by those algorithms for how you streets ultimately get laid out.

Far more interesting would be if given a terrain your algorithm laid out a plausible city street grid and choose from an array of enums to place various buildings, traffic control devices, and so on...and it's need to do it quickly at runtime as it's easy enough to use MegaShapes or Easy Roads Pro to do layout streets depending on the 'look' and game scenario you're after.

If you're going to be limited by the famous maze algorithm then I would ask your artist to generate 'curved' corners to the city streets and the further to make sure and cluster tall building together so that making an outline of the skyline of the path you are following behaves like a sine or cosine wave. This is an artistic criticism of the layout your script is generating.

You artist can also make dirt paths though the woods and other places or one that resembles the 'Yellow Brink Road' from the Wizard of Oz.

I was going to charge $5 - $20 probably $5 if I had pursued by scripts further to do something similar to what you've done. I know there are several dungeon generators that all ultimately use the same public domain source. One I know costs $10 and others more. I haven't seen them all so I couldn't tell you if they already do what I've done and what you seem to be doing. The one I did see that cost $10 does not have choosing randomly from a pool of enums to create unique levels. The dungeon generators that cost more I can only suppose they have more and better models creating their dungeons.

 

It's not actually the maze algorithm, similar, but it's based off of the smooth voxel engine system, using a 5 point concatenation. At the moment it is limited to a random grid output for development simplicity, but I have left a lot of opportunity open to create a large number of shapes and directions for the streets. After fleshing out the current planned features list, including a district distribution system similar to what you originally described, I'd like to expand the street types, allowing for diagonal directions, curves, highways, and more, paralleling some of the complex shapes exhibited by introversion's famed city generation algorithm.

However, the aim of the project is to allow the user/artist control over the models randomized into the scene, and I've released to start troubleshooting problems that might occur for artists.

I appreciate the feedback on the layout and price. I released this asset on the path to releasing my own game project, so I'm still learning what's out there. I had found DunGen listed at a higher price, and figured this for a smaller version that would eventually overshadow it with expansions, and priced accordingly. I hope to bring the value of this asset to surpass its listed price, if it does not meet it already.

 

Sounds good, but remember before politicians started using road building a means to route tax dollars to their and cronies bank accounts; political and business leadership planned city streets and traffic control much more rigidly than now. If you look around you can find information on Washington, DC planning as well as most towns in the Old and New Worlds when the planning was done before the 20th century.

So using random isn't going to create a good city but if you create a set of templates maps based on your research that can layout the roads and the bridges on a prepared Unity terrain and then let the artist place the building models that would be nice. You might be able to export streets only as vectors from a place like OpenStreets.org.

As traffic signs and signals are rather standardized with only several variations maybe you can include good models of those, starting with US, EU, China, India, Japan and other high population centers first.

 

I think, theoretically, it's only a hop, skip and a jump away from being able to do that already, since it's based on a concatenated value system, I'd just have to put high points from a terrain into one of my points arrays. The randomness of the buildings will ultimately be very well controlled by the player, that should be a lot more evident after the district system is done. You've given me a lot of suggestions and ideas, thank you very much goat!

 

Sounds good. I have it 'favorite' for when you get closer.

 

Hey Goat,

Just wanted you to know that I've integrated a system for assigning density values to your buildings, it's not uploaded yet, but please take a look and let me know what you think so far.

 

Sorry I don't subscribe to threads but I remembered it as something useful from earlier.

Now you starting to get a more realistic looking city layout. You just need to vary the types of large skyscraper buildings (they rarely come in twos). For the residential buildings you don't needed to worry about variance as much.

 

I'll probably put some work into the example models after I finish uploading this and the terrain generation as well, but the program really is intended for artists to create cities with little to no scripting knowledge, and for coders to instance it for load times to help make worlds on the fly. I think I may actually be done with the terrain generation tonight, and be able to upload 1.0.3 with both additions included.

You can think of each building shown here as an archetype however. Create as many building models as you'd like to fit within those types of odds and placements, and they will be randomized to prevent repetition.

 

I know maybe you can create residential and business government variances and height variances but it looks like that's already mostly taken care of you just need enough models to make your cities look natural.