Preface: None of these asset creators are funding this, and I get nothing for sharing these outside the joy of spreading some of my favorite assets.
In this post, I wanted to cover some of my favorite assets that I’ve been using recently. There are a ton of posts on the best free assets out there. I've noticed though that people tend to shy away from recommending some of the better paid assets, so I wanted to go over the premium ones that I constantly find myself recommending to other developers.
While this is not a complete list of every asset I'd give 5 stars to, it is the list of ones I've found myself recommending more than a few times in the last month. All the things on this list are assets I've purchased myself and I lead all my friends to buy as well.
I've also been taking feedback on other readers recommendations and was pleased to see some overlap with my recommendations. If you have your own recommendations for assets you couldn't work without, please let me know!
UI: TextMeshPro
Update: TextMeshPro is FREE now and will eventually be integrated into the engine (that's how good it is)
If you’re doing any UI work at all in your game, TextMeshPro is something you should be using. When I first saw the videos and pictures, I was pretty skeptical.
But I gave it a try and was blown away. Within 5 minutes, I’d turned my crappy looking UI into something professional looking just by adjusting a few sliders.
Previously, I’d have to jump into Photoshop, write out some text, add some effects, import it, and see how it worked out. Now I just use the TextMeshPro component instead of the Text component and I’m done.
In addition to making the text just look great, it also supports in-line icons,bolding, italics, color codes, and more. My description can’t do it justice, so definitely jump over to the videos and look for yourself.
Again, if you’re using text in your game, get this one.
Cartoon Environments: BitGem Dungeon
If you’ve tried some of my demos, you’ll see that I use this one quite a bit. I really like the way this one looks and how well it performs. It was easy to get over the required 90fps for a VR game and runs great on mobile too. If you need a dungeon (and some amazing characters to go along with it), I definitely recommend the BitGem ones.
Guns & Weapons: Weapon Pack
This pack is amazing. It’s advertised as a weapons pack, but once you open it up, you have the start of a full on FPS. The demo scene lets you run around and shoot things, swap weapons, kill stuff, etc. It has the sounds, particles, and animations to really tie everything together. This is my new go-to weapon pack. While the price is near the highest for the asset store, I think it’s still an amazing deal given the crazy amount of really high quality work you get.
Just to reiterate why I think this pack is so great, here’s a list of the stuff it includes!
- Over 20 weapons
- Fire & Reload Animations
- Bullet models (for some of them, but I reused across them all)
- Impact particles (bullet holes)
- Muzzle flashes
- Fire & Reload sound effects
- A fully playable demo implementation
- A flame thrower!
Particles: CartoonFX – Easy Editor
If you’ve ever needed to scale a particle effect, you probably know how tedious it can be. With the CartoonFX Easy Editor, it’s ultra simple. Pick a new scale, click a button, and it’s done. It covers the scale of all the children (including scale over time).
Even if you don’t want the particles, get one of these packs just for the editor and the time it will save you. Even if you don’t want, like or need cool cartoony particle effects… get one of these packs just for the editor. It’s a huge time saver and something I recommend using.