Brain dump: In Unity, should I buy an asset or make it myself?
1 min readJun 13, 2020
I follow these rules:
- If it’s a core competency, make it yourself.
- If it’s obvious to the players, make it yourself.
- Your brain takes priority over these rules.
For example, let’s say I’m making an FPS game with portals. How much should I buy and how much should I make?
- Character movement is unique to each game and is essential for your FPS game to feel just right. So I consider it a core competency. I make it.
- Sticking the character to the ground is really more of a basic engine feature; more of a better CharacterController than anything. So I buy it (Character Movement Fundamentals).
- The FPS system in general. If we can buy movement assets then what’s stopping us from just using UFPS? Well, it’s an FPS game and so it’s a core competency, so I make it.
- The portal system? There are many assets on the store that does this already. But no, this is a core part of my game and what makes it unique. Plus, making it myself allows me to add functionality and make it FPS-ready more easily. So I make it.
- Markers on enemies? Aside from them not really working through portals, this isn’t really a super important core part of the game. If the portals weren’t a problem here I would buy it.
- Finally, for graphical and sound assets, it really just depends on how much players will notice that it’s bought. Maybe I can modify them too.