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I feel sorry for the guy who made the 2D Toolkit [0]. It's a very solid asset, but with a new built-in official competitor I think it might die, or at least slo

I feel sorry for the guy who made the 2D Toolkit [0]. It's a very solid asset, but with a new built-in official competitor I think it might die, or at least slow down over time. Would it be too cynical to think that this is part of the point of the asset store? To let independent devs run thousands of experiments at their own expense, let them all run, give them their 70%, then just reproduce and integrate the very best of these assets with the next version of Unity? I suppose from the Unity team perspective, it looks like they can't do anything right: don't add enough features and people will complain about over-reliance on the Asset Store - but add too many features and Asset Store publishers complain. There's probably one of those 'yeah well, sounds obvious' lessons in here: don't make your product overly dependent on somebody else's platform. Easy to say that, of course. [0]: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/908 https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/908

aras_p 13y ago
FWIW, all the "2D extensions" asset store publishers have known about Unity's upcoming 2D features for a while (have been part of the alpha testing etc.). Yes, their toolkit sales will probably drop, but that's what you get when targeting a missing feature of a product - sooner or later the product will add that feature. They are smart folks so I'm quite sure they will find something else to do though; or will build even fancier extensions on top of base functionality. "I suppose from the Unity team perspective, it looks like they can't do anything right" - I don't think we have this problem. If there's a big missing gap in features, we will close it sooner or later. Yes this might upset some asset store publishers, but that's how things are. On the other hand, many of them will have had several years of really, really good sales of their packages. (I work at Unity. YMMV etc.)
- hdivider 13y ago
  Yeah, you're probably right - they knew the risks going in, and it's not like they haven't benefited from the Asset Store. Ultimately I'm willing to bet that improving the core product will mean there'll be more opportunities for asset store publishers, not less.
- FrojoS 13y ago
  So, obviously you are right and this is an issue with any platform. But I do wonder if there was a better way. Couldn't you in many cases offer these people a job at the company? I mean, I guess Unity is hiring a lot anyway.
  - aras_p 13y ago
    Well, if you look at it... RageSpline guy (Juha Kiili) is working at Unity (on the same 2D stuff for 4.3), and NGUI folks (Michael Lyashenko & Philip Cosgrave) are working at Unity on the upcoming GUI system. That said, some people do not want work for any company; they just want to be "independent". And that's ok.
hatu 13y ago
I think 2D toolkit is a great asset too, hopefully they got something out of this and will keep on doing good work. But I think what most people are missing is that the real game changing 2D news is the new 2D physics engine (box2d). Doing sprites has been a tiny hassle compared to using the 3D optimized physics engine we had before to do accurate 2D stuff.

aras_p 13y ago

FWIW, all the "2D extensions" asset store publishers have known about Unity's upcoming 2D features for a while (have been part of the alpha testing etc.). Yes, their toolkit sales will probably drop, but that's what you get when targeting a missing feature of a product - sooner or later the product will add that feature. They are smart folks so I'm quite sure they will find something else to do though; or will build even fancier extensions on top of base functionality. "I suppose from the Unity team perspective, it looks like they can't do anything right" - I don't think we have this problem. If there's a big missing gap in features, we will close it sooner or later. Yes this might upset some asset store publishers, but that's how things are. On the other hand, many of them will have had several years of really, really good sales of their packages. (I work at Unity. YMMV etc.)

hdivider 13y ago
Yeah, you're probably right - they knew the risks going in, and it's not like they haven't benefited from the Asset Store. Ultimately I'm willing to bet that improving the core product will mean there'll be more opportunities for asset store publishers, not less.
FrojoS 13y ago
So, obviously you are right and this is an issue with any platform. But I do wonder if there was a better way. Couldn't you in many cases offer these people a job at the company? I mean, I guess Unity is hiring a lot anyway.
- aras_p 13y ago
  Well, if you look at it... RageSpline guy (Juha Kiili) is working at Unity (on the same 2D stuff for 4.3), and NGUI folks (Michael Lyashenko & Philip Cosgrave) are working at Unity on the upcoming GUI system. That said, some people do not want work for any company; they just want to be "independent". And that's ok.

hatu 13y ago

I think 2D toolkit is a great asset too, hopefully they got something out of this and will keep on doing good work. But I think what most people are missing is that the real game changing 2D news is the new 2D physics engine (box2d). Doing sprites has been a tiny hassle compared to using the 3D optimized physics engine we had before to do accurate 2D stuff.