Asset Inventory Management System using Asset Bundles

25 August 2023 - 3 mins read time
Tags: Unity Game Development C#

Asset Bundles

Imagine you have a big box of colorful building blocks, like Legos. Each block is a different shape and color, and they can be used to build all sorts of cool things like houses, cars, and animals.

Now, think of an asset bundle as a special bag that you put some of your building blocks into. You can choose which blocks to put in the bag, and you can even have multiple bags with different blocks in each.

The cool thing about these bags (asset bundles) is that you can give them to your friends, and they can use the blocks inside to build their own creations. So, you can share your building blocks with others without giving away your entire box of Legos.

In the world of computers and games, asset bundles are like these special bags that hold things like pictures, sounds, and 3D models. Game developers use them to organize and share these things with others when they make video games. It’s a way to make things more organized and easier to share with friends.

Asset bundles are a crucial concept in game development, offering various benefits and use cases:

• Efficient Resource Management: Asset bundles help manage game resources like textures, 3D models, sounds, and levels more efficiently. Game developers can package and load only the assets needed for specific parts of a game, reducing memory usage and load times.
• Mod Support: Asset bundles facilitate modding communities by allowing modders to create and share their own custom assets. Players can install these mods as asset bundles to enhance or modify their gaming experiences.
• A/B Testing: Asset bundles can be used for A/B testing in game development. Developers can create multiple asset bundles with different gameplay features or visual elements to test which ones players prefer.

In summary, asset bundles in game development offer flexibility, optimization, and the ability to deliver content efficiently, making them a valuable tool for creating and maintaining games in a dynamic and ever-evolving industry.

Asset Inventory

Creating an asset inventory system in Unity involves managing and tracking game assets, such as items, weapons, or resources, within your game. This system can be essential for managing player inventories, item pickups, and more.

1. Define Your Assets
2. Create an Inventory System
3. Data Structures: Define data structures to represent your inventory. You can use arrays, lists, or dictionaries, depending on your requirements. For example, you might have an Item class to store information about each asset, including name, description, icon, etc.
4. Inventory Management Functions
5. UI Integration
6. Interactions: Implement interactions between your game world and the inventory system. For instance, when a player wants to add other assets, calls the functions such as RemoveItem/AddItem function to remove/add it to their inventory.
7. Inventory Persistence: If your game needs to save and load the inventory between game sessions, implement a save/load system.

Sprite Icon Generator

UI Elements

Raycasting

Putting it all together

Few bits and parts for reference during the development of this asset inventory system is taken from Solo Game Dev - Unity Inventory System - Easy Tutorial (2022).

Features:

• Allows user to choose any asset bundle to be added as a part of the asset inventory system.
• Allows user to manually choose the spawn point of the selected object.
• Allows user to save the locations and orientations of the spawned assets.
• Creates the sprites/asset overview/asset preview within the asset inventory system to let users view how the asset looks before spawning.
• Allows loading and unloading of any asset bundle.
• Load multiple asset bundles.