Unity Assets

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Pegepinden
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Unity Assets

Unread post by Pegepinden » 01 Mar 2014, 19:02

With so many people using Unity now a day, i will start this thread for discussion of
Unity Assets. The thread can then be used to help people find the right assets for their production.

I will start with a few assets we use for Gunjitsu.

Daikon Forge GUI Library: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/10438

We switched to DF GUI from NGUI. Beats NGUI hands down, easier to work with and lots of strong features.
No reason for a long discussion, check out the reviews and his webpage.

Loom - Multi Threading Framework: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/7285

Great multi-threading framework for Unity, makes life easier. Time saver.

Ludosity's Steamworks Wrapper: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/2211

A simple C# wrapper for Steamworks integration, nothing more nothing less.

At the moment we are reviewing Particle Playground which seems to be an awesome asset for working with particle systems.
I also used a lot of other Assets in other projects, so will post my thought on them later.
I code stuff, it is true!

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Code
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Re: Unity Assets

Unread post by Code » 04 Mar 2014, 12:48

How much has performance increased in your projects by using Loom?
Spiludvikling og undervisning i Unity3D
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Danmarksmesterskabet i spiludvikling.
http://www.dmspil.dk

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Pegepinden
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Re: Unity Assets

Unread post by Pegepinden » 04 Mar 2014, 15:06

I do not have any numbers really.
We did not have performance issues before as such, so it was not bought to fix sudden performance issues, but being able to add more "niceness" into the game as we go.

Also remember that multi-threading in Unity is still a bit limited as you cannot alter "unity objects" outside of the main thread.
For example are we multi-threading all calculations for our voxel chunks, like mesh optimization, but we still need to change the actual meshes in the main thread.
I code stuff, it is true!

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vonknut
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Re: Unity Assets

Unread post by vonknut » 04 Mar 2014, 23:46

Humor a non-programmer - how do you use loom to improve performance?
-is it like a framework inside unity, that you create your script to "fit together with", to do its thing?
Hans von Knut Skovfoged - Creative Dir.
PortaPlay - Interactive Entertainment and Learning

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Pegepinden
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Re: Unity Assets

Unread post by Pegepinden » 05 Mar 2014, 00:26

I guess you know the idea behind multi-threading and how it can improve performance?

Loom is just a framework which makes it easier to work with threading in Unity as a coder.
Let me give an example of how we use it.

In Gunjitsu we have a lot of methods used to change our voxel world meshes in different manners. These methods calls a lot of other methods, some calculates math formulas others is used to actually change the meshes.

So lets say i have a method that calculates an explosion in my world and here after changes the voxel world mesh. I cannot thread the mesh changes as they can only run in Unity's main thread.
So i would have to create a thread for my explosion calculations. When it finishes its calculations i have to call some callback method to tell it that it is done calculating. Then i need to call my method to change the mesh. Coding wise it is a mess and unclear. And this is a really simple example.

I can do it smarter with Loom which gives me cleaner and more clear code, and most importantly it saves time.

This is all the code we have for threading a case like the one above.

Loom.StartSingleThread(() =>
{
List<Vector3> points = VoxelMath.Bruteforce(midArray, radius);
Loom.DispatchToMainThread(() => ModifyVoxelSphere(points, newType, radius, buffer, middle));
});
I code stuff, it is true!

Jan Borg
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Re: Unity Assets

Unread post by Jan Borg » 06 Mar 2014, 22:48

I warm heartedly recommend GoKit : https://github.com/prime31/GoKit
An open source tweening engine, that will make it easy for you to juice up the visuals of your game, for example some animated menus.

2D Toolkit is also cool if you make 2d games. Even after Unity included better 2d support recently, it is still a huge time saver, for example it is much better than Unity at generating smart sprite sheet atlases. You can throw in big and small and non-trimmed sprites into the same sprite sheet without problems. And loads more, like sprite animations, sliced sprites, etc.
http://2dtoolkit.com/

Playmaker should be awesomesauce, so I bought it, but never used it :S . But it was discounted! :)
It's become a nice little habit for me to check https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/ to see if something cool is on the daily sale, so I recommend that too

danielb
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Re: Unity Assets

Unread post by danielb » 19 Sep 2014, 14:10

Hi Pegepinden

My name's Daniel and I work for Unity as a copywriter. As luck would have it I live just next to ITU. As we're looking to do a blog post about a student who uses the Asset Store, I was wondering whether you'd be able and willing to set aside an hour next week to chat with me so we could feature some of the stuff I can see you've been involved with.

Anyways... if it's of interest, you can contact me at danielb at unity3d.com

I hope to hear from you!

:-)

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Pegepinden
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Re: Unity Assets

Unread post by Pegepinden » 19 Sep 2014, 15:13

Hey Daniel.

Check your mail :)
I code stuff, it is true!

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