My top 5 Assets from the AssetStore!

If I had to name one reason why I love Unity, the first thing that'd come to my mind is the AssetStore.

Let's be honest with ourselves, none of us is perfect in everything. I mean, I'm a programmer, and a, well let's say not the worst, 2D-Designer. However there simply are things I'm not good enough to create myself. So, in order to still create good looking games, you need someone who can do this for you, and thanks to the AssetStore, that's pretty cheap nowadays. Also there are enough situations where you just go: I could work 50 hours creating this, or I'll just spend 20$ for pretty much exactly what I want. Well, what you gonna do?

Over the last Year I bought quite a number of Assets there, so here's my top 5! I'll focus on "programming" stuff, because these are things you need in most projects. I bought a lot of models too, but these where pretty "project specific".

#5: Pool, Target, Constrain Bundle

The targeter in this package works fast and efficient, I could not have done it better myself. And the pooling is great, no more lagging when instantiating objects!

#4 Mesh Baker 2

I used this extensively for Empires-Rising, and without it, the game wouldn't even run on high-end Desktop machines! Merging together different Meshes with different textures into one saves you alot of draw-calls, and this thing makes it so easy!

#3  KGFMapSystem (minimap)

The best minimap system I have found so far. Tons of settings, different designs, you name it! It also includes fog of war, but only for the map itself. However, with a little tweaking I made a quite decent World-Fow out of it. I'll post how you can do that yourself this weekend.

#2 NGUI: Next-Gen UI

Did I mention that I love Unity? Well I do! BUT, the integrated GUI System sucks! Tons of drawcalls, it's slow, no editor, so you have to code everything "blind". It's just sad, Unity deserves better. And thats what NGUI is for! WYSIWYG design in the editor, TONS of settings, fast and efficient, and dozens of precreated tweens. It's all there! The price is a bit high, but I got it when it was a 24 hour-sale for 40 bucks, and I'm sure it will be there soon again.

#1 Playmaker

If you know this thing, and haven't bought it, you are an idiot. Ok, that sounds a bit harsh, but it's the truth! It reduces the time I'm working on small things like "selectors" (i.e. selecting a unit or building), raycasts for different things and so on by HOURS! Also, you can combine it with NGUI, which makes these both tools even better.

Thats it! Thanks for reading!