I don't "Asset Flip"

Screenshot of Blender Made original Game Assets (By Snowconesolid)

     "Asset Flipping" is when pre-made or store bought game assets (typically art assets such as character models, game props, environmental props, etc) are used to quickly create and sell a video game.

The Unity game engine user base has a very bad rep of doing this (mostly indie Unity developers) and are the ones who are typically called out for doing "Asset Flips". These pre-made game assets are typically purchased from the Unity Asset Store or are the standard free default game assets provided with the engine itself. Other than the use of store bought art assets, another common form of asset flipping is when the developer purchases a template for a complete game project off the store and simply resells it as their own project either on Steam or other digital gaming store fronts in hopes of making a quick buck with little or no effort put in at all. 

Why? Cuz money baby!

These pre-made game templates have had a lot of work put into them by their original developers and their purpose is to serve as a starting point for the developer to build off of for their own original game projects, or as a learning tool for new and under experienced developers. However, as stated above, there has been many incidents where devs look for an opportunity to obtain an easy profit. 

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I believe the term "Asset Flip" originated (or at least became a popular term) from a well known game critic and YouTuber named Jim Sterling - who has even done an entire video about "Asset Flips" 

Somewhere in the video Jim states "using assets to form a basis for your work - not a bad thing, but stitching together nothing but pre-made objects without any rhyme or reason - it simply cannot be called game development can it?" He also talks about how buying a bunch of pre-made assets from different sources/developers and throwing them in your game ruins its art direction and just becomes a huge mess. "It's an artistic car crash" - Jim Sterling (same video linked above). 

Jim Sterling can be seen as a very harsh and over critical person when it comes to games. Especially indie games. I personally have experienced this first hand because one of my games, "Potato Thriller" was a victim of Jim's criticism and was featured on his "Best of Steam Greenlight Trailers" - a segment where Jim picks not the greatest looking greenlight submissions and gives feedback and criticism based off of the trailer, screenshots and description. In his video he called my submission "cringe", "terrible mic quality" (the mic was pretty bad, i'll admit) and trying to be "memes". After Jim's video went up a whole lot of his viewers poured onto my Steam Greenlight page, left nasty comments and down-voted the game to Steam hell. I'll be honest, looking back at the trailer I created at the time - it was terrible. I had no idea who Jim Sterling even was at the time and it wasn't until he covered my "Potato Thriller" game that I found out about him. I took all this in a really lighthearted manner and even subscribed to his YouTube channel on that day. I found it really funny and was even happy. Sure the game was getting an insane amount of downvotes and negative feedback, but it was getting feedback. It made me happy that my game was getting some kind of notice, even if it was infamy.

Sad Potato man...

Anyway, to get back on topic about "Asset Flips", despite all that has happened with my first Steam game, "Potato Thriller" - I actually agree with what Jim has to say in his video that covers "Asset Flipping". He makes a pretty good argument and very valid points.  

I personally have nothing against developers who do purchase assets to use in their games. I support this very much actually. I even created several of my own original asset packs and am selling them at extremely affordable prices on the Unity Asset Store in hopes to help other Unity developers with their projects (This ad has been brought to you by Snowconesolid Productions - buy my asset packs and you will become a successful indie game developer! ....and I really need a couple of dollars. please! I'm so poor!).

It is understandable if you are on a low budget, aren't a very good artist and need some props to use in your project, or if you are a small indie team and you are on a tight schedule to finish your project. But don't make your entire game based off of store bought assets. Don't buy an entire environment of a city, then buy a package of animated zombies character models and mash it together. Try to make your own unique character model, don't just purchase the typical standard "Army Guy" character model from the store and use that in your game as a main character. If you need to decorate your level with with some foliage and trees to add more to the atmosphere then buy a package of pre-made trees. But don't buy like 20 different asset packs each from a different developer/artist and mash it all together. It will be visible in your game and show that no effort or originality was put into the game you are developing. People could tell if you are using store bought asset packs. They would point out and say "hey I saw these same exact models in a completely different game developed by a completely different developer".  Aside from the art assets, purchasing an entire complete project and just reselling it as is without putting in any effort to make it your own original title is just a setup for failure in the indie game development community. Nobody will care about your Temple Run template you purchased then put out on the app store.... 

A prototype...

Anyway, that's not really the point of this article. I am not writing to tell people how they should develop their games or what to do. Not at all. I am simply giving advice and sharing my personal thoughts on the subject of "Asset Flipping". I understand that there are many game developers out there who would completely disagree with everything I said and that is completely fine. To each their own. If one development style works better for you then all the power to you.

 The main reason I bring any of this up is more of a personal preference for me as a developer and artist. Negative comments and harsh criticism over any of my games never bothered me one bit. I accept all forms of feedback with open arms and try to use that feedback to improve and better myself as a independent game developer. In fact, I even enjoy seeing negative feedback over my work to some degree. What gets me however, is when I am accused of being an "Asset Flipping" developer who buys pre-made assets and quickly throws something together for a quick dollar. That is the only thing that hits me right in my passionate game developing heart.  

Lana the Lemon, Potato Man and Hotdog Man.

I mean c'mon! where the hell will you find characters more original than this! ^^^ >:(

I do recall reading some comments on the "best of Steam Greenlight trailers" for my game "Potato Thriller" saying things such as "it's an Asset Flip", "Dev just bought everything from the Unity Asset store.", "I swear I have seen that weird Potato looking thing somewhere on the asset store before", etc. I know they might not be the best looking game assets, but they are definitely not store bought assets. 

Originality is something that is extremely important to me especially when it comes to visuals and art. My whole life, I have always had a great appreciation for art and always aimed to become a good artist myself. I have said this many times before throughout the years on the blog and other places, but I don't "Asset Flip". I never use anyone's art besides mine in my own projects and I don't like including anyone's artwork except my own in my projects. 

Screenshot of some Potato Thriller Art assets source files - The entire game, Potato Thriller is made up of pretty much everything you see in this image. 

Wireframe screenshot. All models made from scratch in Blender3d

Throughout all the years I have spent as an indie game developer I have always been very open about the development and work that goes into my projects here on the blog. I have always taken great pride in the fact that I created everything you see in game myself. I'm going to take a quick step back and admit one thing here. The only visuals in my game that I have not created myself and are store bought are particle fx (such as explosions, fire, rain, etc) and skyboxes (which most of the time I rarely even use a skybox in my games and often just use a generic color as the sky) that is it. But I created every other thing that you see in the game. Everything. Everything from the main character model to the tree that is just in the background and this is something that I am very proud of. I have spent years practicing and learning good 3d modeling, texturing, game asset creation, etc and I have greatly improved over the years since I first started and it shows in my work even.

Screenshot from one of my first 3d games ever from early 2012

Fast-forward a couple years. Screenshot from a newer project, late 2016

Screenshot of one of my first original character models. Early 2012

Screenshot of a much newer and modern character design. Late 2016

By this point, if you read this far into the post then I must sound like a really whiny egotistical hipster who just sits in a coffee shop all day trying to act like some successful artist. Looking back at what I wrote, it does sound like that actually... But I am not writing this article to brag about what a good artist I am. But instead to express how passionate I am when it comes to the artwork behind the games. I care very much about how my games look and the originality behind them. If anybody ever asks me "did you make all of this yourself", I could confidently say that  I did create everything in the game myself. It is all my own original art and design. (Okay, so yeah for bragging rights then..... Shut up! you brag about your accomplishments too!) :D

As I just said above, I care a whole lot about the artwork and I put in a lot of time and effort creating each art piece/3d model from scratch to be unique and original. In all honesty, I know that I don't create the greatest games and I don't make the nicest most visually appealing looking artwork. I might be terrible at game development, I might be a lousy artist, but one thing I am not nor will ever be is an "Asset Flipper". That is not my style...

Making of "PonyTail"

Here is a quick breakdown of how I created the Ponytail character that you see above.

First, I started out with a quick character concept sketch that I drew on paper. As you can see, the character I originally had in mind was more of this older cartoony vampire type character. The end results was a completely different character. 

I started off by poly modeling the entire character from a cube. Everything from the head to nose was poly modeled by hand. I did not do any dynamic sculpting (dynamic topology) or retopolgy at all for this character model. However, I did use sculpting tools such as the grab, smooth and inflate brushes to adjust the vertices I already had on this model. 

After modeling the main body, I then modeled the features that give the character a unique look. Small detail stuff like hairstyle and type of eyebrows, adjusting certain aspects like how wide is the character and so on. Originally, I tried to go for a bald top - crazy hair coming out of the sides hair style, very similar to my concept sketch. I did not like the way it looked. It was messy so I scrapped it. I then decided to just model a simple ponytail type hairstyle as you can see in the next two images. After giving him a ponytail hairstyle, I decided to just name the character "Ponytail"

The modeling was done at this point.

I laid down some simple base colors for the character. Not final color scheme. Just preparing early for texturing later on.

For the eyes, I was originally planning on just texture painting them onto the mesh. However, I later decided to actually model in the eyes and make it part of the mesh's geometry. This was a much better result. 

Next came the texturing process. I started marking seams on the model and unwrapping the parts. I then organized them on a 2048x2048 texture map.

Still on the texturing process. I baked out an AO map and a diffuse map and used those to create one texture map for the character model. I then hand painted extra details such as the eyes, added fabric detail to the clothing pieces, fixed the messy parts of the texture map (such as artifacts from the ao bake or seam lines that showed) and played around with the color schemes a bit. 

Next came the rigging which is actually a very quick and easy task to do if you are using Blender3d as your 3d modeling program. Using Blender's rigify add-on, I quickly rigged my humanoid character model. While the rigify add-on does save a lot of time on the rigging process, it is not perfect. So I had to go back, adjust some weight paints and clean up a little bit so that the mesh properly deforms and is animation ready. 

At this point the 3d creation and rigging side of things from Blender3d is complete. Finally I exported the model as a .fbx and the .png texture map to the Unity game engine. I created a small working prototype demo and set up a third person controller so that the character can actually move and be in action. 

And that is the whole character creation process for "Ponytail".  I would say this character model probably took around 4-5 hours to create from start to finish. There is still a lot more work to be done in the unity engine. This is just one of the many things that goes into game creation. It's a very time consuming process and takes a lot of patience and work. But it sure is a lot of fun and seeing the end results of your hard work is a great feeling. 

2015 gamedev plans. The Next generation of Snowconesolid Games

     Here I am again. I know I haven't been updating the blog as much as I said would. I have not been as active on the unity community forums either. But i'm still here. It's 2015 and "Snowconesolid Productions" is still around. I am still here. Still developing games. Still creating whatever I imagine. Sharing ideas, artwork and interactive experiences through my creations. Still a huge fan of Blender3d and the Unity game engine.

"Snowconesolid Productions" is definitely no triple-A game development studio. Non of my games so far have received millions of downloads/plays and I am sure that not a lot of people have even heard of  this development blog.

What is "Snowconesolid Productions" ? Snowconesolid Productions is a indie game studio run by a solo optimistic game developer who is passionate about creating not just games but experiences, artwork and memories. A indie developer who is not afraid of putting up his creations no matter what the feedback is. "Loved it", "hated it", "worst thing I ever played", etc. Comments/ critiques, etc. Any feedback is always welcome and accepted. A indie developer who loves to continue learning and improving his development and artwork skills.  I am Snowconesolid. This is what I love doing. This is my true passion.

I still find it hard to believe how fast time fly's by. I started learning game development and the other areas of the pipeline such as 3d modeling, animation, etc back in 2010. It's 2015 now and I have learned so much throughout these years. I have come so far in my indie development journey. Looking back at my first couple games and my first 3d models and comparing them to what I can do now really shows that I love learning and improving my skills. My dedication to creating. There is a huge difference in the quality I can deliver now in both game design and art compared to what I could do when  I first started.

For example, comparing two of my games:

"MoonLight Mountains : First Discovery" (A game I created and released in 2012. Something I made that was more experimental. A project I created when I was still learning game dev.)

with something like

"Hide-n-Seek Winter" (Created and released in 2014. One of my newer more polished games ever created.)

These two titles are night and day different from each other in every area. The game design, the gameplay mechanics, 3d models, animations, etc. There is a huge difference in quality that is clearly visible between the two games. And for both of these titles, I created everything from scratch on my own. Every art asset, all the logic behind the game and so on. If anyone compares the two they probably would not think the same developer created both of these.

That's what being a good developer is all about right? Learning from previous projects and experience, improving your skills, listening to what others have to say about your work, constantly training and improving your knowledge daily.

I love creating games. I love 3d modeling. I love animating, I love programming. I love creating storylines and characters,  I love being a indie developer.  It is 2015 and Snowconesolid productions is still going strong. My journey as a indie game developer will never cease as long as I can continue to create.

2015 Plans:

     Now that I have the long "New Year" blog intro out of the way I can share my plans and goals for this year.

New Games!
This year I just have so many new original ideas planned out. Currently I am actively developing my next game. Actually, I have been developing my newest game for about two weeks now. It is still very early in development. Down below I have some screenshots to share and more info about my next game.

Old Games brought back to life!
Yup!. So also, I plan on rebooting some of my older games. Revisiting some of my first original game releases and re-creating them from scratch. Taking my original ideas for those games I made when I was still a beginner game maker learning how to make games and using my current skill set I have today to re-create them to be how I originally wanted to make them in the first place. This is something I am really looking forward to. I have been wanting to re-visit some of my older games for a while now and see how I would approach them differently now because I am a completely different developer today compared to when I first created these games years ago. It will be a really interesting challenge for me that will really test my skills.

The new games?
While I look forward to re-visiting my older game projects and giving them a reboot... this is something I plan on doing later on. I am not focused on rebooting my older titles at the moment. When the time comes I will talk more about re-creating my older games later on. For now I rather focus on creating my new game ideas. I want to deliver new experiences. And as I mentioned above, I have been working on my next game already for a while. I rather create something new first and then consider rebooting older titles.

So anyway, here is little early preview of my next game project. (Screen Shots not final):

Early preview of "James" in Blender3D. My newest original character who will star in my next game:

In unity. Setup. Early testing, etc:

Early preview screen of what the final game will look something like. Rendered in Unity. Actual in-game screen shot:

Once again these are still early development screenshots from my new game and nothing is final yet. I am sure I will be changing a lot down the road as I continue to develop this game. Also if you follow me on twitter you may have seen me post these screenshots earlier.

Game Info?
At the moment I don't have very much to explain about the game because I am still planning it out myself (especially the storyline) as I work through it but here is a general description for it:

"Jelly Space" project (Working title) will be a 3D immersive third person stylized level based puzzle/survival/adventure game. The game storyline follows "James" (our main character) as he journeys through a surreal space world, trying to find his way back home after an unexpected accident.

Lost in space and low on fuel, players will be placed in Jame's boots and must overcome unusual obsticals and strange encounters as they try to survive this harsh journey back home.

Platforms:
This game will be both for pc and mobile platforms.
I plan on releasing this game for Windows, Mac and Android platforms.

This will be my first game release of 2015 and I am very excited to continue sharing progress on the project down the road. I will have more info later on in upcoming blog posts.

Who is working on this project?
As always, I am going to be 100% responsible for this game project. Just like all my other games up until now, I will be developing this solo. I will be responsible for creating all of the 3d models/ art assets, game design, mechanics, storyline, etc from scratch. Whenever I work on my own game projects I like to take full responsibility for them. I like being able to say "I created everything in this game on my own" no matter how it turns out. It is a really rewarding feeling and achievement and a personal development style for myself.

What happened to Jelly Stack?

You might remember that in my last blog post (the last blog post I made in 2014) I mentioned that I was working on a quick short one week project called "Jelly Stack". I even said I would have it finished and released before the end of the 2014 year. Unfortunately this never happened. Plans have changed and as I thought about it I realized this is not the kind of game I want to create. Stacking a pile of randomly falling jelly blobs seemed like a boring idea to me later on. It seemed like something that has been done too many times before. I don't want to create clones of games like this. I want to create new and original games with more meaning and storytelling. Anyway one thing lead to another and then I ended up creating this character:

Jelly Guy:

Then this character ended up leading me to start creating my current game project I was just talking about above ("Jelly Space"). So actually, my upcoming game is all branched off my original simple idea for "Jelly Stack". It's amazing how one thing usually leads to something completely different. Who knows what else will change down the road as I continue creating "Jelly Space"? We will see...

2015 Conclusion?
My main focus this year and with all my upcoming game projects is about quality. This is something I will really stress as I develop my newest games. I want to prove that I can produce high quality games on my own with all the skills I have gained throughout my  past experience. Lots of focus will be put into every area of the pipeline (great quality graphics, fun gameplay mechanics and so on)

2015 is going to be an awesome year. I have so many new games planned that I want to create this year. It might be a little soon to say this but I'm going to go ahead and say it anyway because of how confident I am.

Personally, I think that this year, 2015 will be my best year ever as a indie game developer. I strongly believe that I will create some of my best and most memorable game experiences ever this year and I am just so excited to get the ball rolling. This year will be my year to really prove and show just how far I have come in this indie game development journey of mine. Using all the knowledge and experience I gained throughout the years, 2015 will show the kind of quality games I can truly produce.

This is definitely an exciting time for me. For "Snowconesolid Productions". It will be my biggest year yet for sure and I plan on delivering top quality professionally polished game releases. I hope to create interactive experiences that everyone will enjoy playing. Experiences that will really be memorable.

Thanks for reading and once again I am extremely excited to start creating my newest game titles for the 2015 year. I am looking forward to sharing progress as I develop my new games here on the blog. So stay tuned for a lot more updates down the road!