Top Down Engine Is... Very Very Good

[@gamefromscratch]

EDIT - Dec 12/2022 -- This bundle is back on encore! Tool Bundle - www.humblebundle.com/software/holiday-encore-unity-tools-software?partner=gamefromscratch Art Bundle- www.humblebundle.com/software/holiday-encore-unity-art-software?partner=gamefromscratch Top Down Engine on Unity Asset Store: assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/systems/topdown-engine-89636?aid=1011l4rAy GFS Coverage of both bundles: gamefromscratch.com/unity-art-humble-bundle/ gamefromscratch.com/unity-tools-humble-bundle/ The above links contain a code that enables you to direct a portion of your earnings to support GFS (and thanks so very much if you do!)

[@kpr2]

Picked up both the Art & Tools bundles recently & am really looking forward to using the Topdown Engine on a project I've had in mind for ages now. Thanks so much for the quick overview!

[@ephemeraldgames]

I personally love this and corgi engine, use one or the other as the basis for every project basically. They have a learning curve, obviously, and require some tinkering to get things working correctly, but they are incredibly useful frameworks for structuring your game logic. The "Feedback Engine" is super easy to use and makes juicing up a game extremely simple. I've never come across a compelling reason to take an approach different from his - your art and logic should be separate, there's no reason your movement code should know anything about attacking, etc.. I found in Corgi Engine it very easy to make a game with movement and in particular a jump that actually feels good and responsive (unlike, say, all his demo projects, which iirc universally control like shit) , and similarly getting stuff working in top down to feel good is easy. They do take work to adapt and customize if you want to do more unique things, of course. You want to make your own game, you have to do the work. Honestly I think the best way to look at them is as a much more in depth tutorial about how to make a game than the popular stuff on youtube that don't know basic coding principles. I have no connection to him, and would LOVE to be shown why it's "bad actually" or that his approach is the wrong one, always happy to learn and grow. I really do think the learning curve ends up a little steeper than it needs to be and think there could be better tutorials for sure, but comments about them being "impossible to customize" or "not modular" are just completely false, please don't let that scare you away. I ultimately don't care if people pass on this because they see some negative comments, but I am really glad to have both this and Corgi engine in my arsenal and highly recommend them, and think anyone motivated to learn how to make use of them will be happy too.

[@Myspacemeta]

00:45 The asset isn't nearly as laggy as this video makes it out to be. he's either using a limited machine, or possible having issues because of recording at the same time. Mine ran flawless with the tests I did. It's odd he doesn't mention anything about it

[@averageunitydev7089]

I think it's just his selected fps for recording in obs or whatever software he uses. It's a bit irritating as it reflects poorly on the asset even though its optimization is great.

[@occularmalice]

It's a nice kit. I've started a few games made with it. It's extensible and pretty flexible. As with any system there are limitations and some of the features are overly complex, but for the most part it's a solid buy. HIghly recommended.

[@TheJungaBoon]

What recording software do you use? The gameplay recording seems choppy. Maybe you can try out OBS? Always had really good performant results with it

[@luistorres6850]

I'm really interested in the CGC Kit from the bundle, are you thinking of reviewing it?

[@EnterpriseKnight]

I literally bought this last minute. I couldn't let it pass.

[@chonkusdonkus]

Why does that 2D demo run at 5 FPS???

[@Ares9323]

Because it's topdown, not optimized for FPS 🤣

[@jacktaylorviewing]

Cinematic

[@litjellyfish]

@@Ares9323 I love you!!!

[@sataStrike]

Mine ran very smooth. Not sure why his is so choppy

[@chonkusdonkus]

@@sataStrike last few videos of his showing off engine updates have been with really poor performance. it's not really helping the engine, when it's the first exposure to it many people have.

[@masterneme]

Are this kind of "frameworks" in demand? Because I was thinking about making a kit with different types of top-down games for the Defold Engine, which I think is pretty awesome. I did in fact start doing some experiments but I stopped to learn JavaScript and Node but if I see interest I will invest time into that. What do you think? Does a free and open top-down toolkit for Defold Engine have a place in this world?

[@MeatCatCheesyBlaster]

no idea what defold engine is but this is the top selling asset on unity store

[@timjenkinson26]

Great idea do it

[@heckensteiner4713]

Just got this on the Humble Bundle last week! Super excited to try it out.

[@ChrisLeeW00]

This has been worked on a lot these past years, I first got this when there was only a small amount of examples. Lots of bug improvements too!

[@disobedientdolphin]

Actually I can't share your exitement for this asset. It's neat, yes, but in reality you want to create your own stuff. And if you want to expand the example scenarios you also have to understand code that isn't written by you and understand all the gears in the project. I think this actually makes more work to use than it saves you tbh.

[@l_regression284]

The code it’s written pretty well and uses standards programming patterns. If u know how to code properly it can be a very good point of start.

[@ideletemyelf1585]

IMO - "Feel" is More Mountains greatest asset on the Unity Store.. It's used for adding "juice" to any game and I use it in almost every project I work on. It's very easy to use and is just so awesome. Highly, highly recommended.

[@Tatulak]

My exp with corgi, another product from the same developer, is that if you want to do anything a little different from what the engine provide, it is hell. For corgi, jumps at slopes, even being a basic thing, were not working properly and took ages for the developers to fix (The engine sells the corner cases are all done, but they are not). The game samples always look amazing, but the code is a pain to customize. Cool product, if you want to great something based on the samples Maybe topdown engine is a different thing, tho Also, "this game is not online, you would need to do yourself", this code is not ideal at all for this case.

[@altongames1787]

That's not exactly how it works smart stuff

[@PopCar]

This is why I'm really weary about using "all in one engine" style assets. Sure, they make development really easy to people who don't wanna reinvent the wheel and implement these things themselves, but to me it just means writing my own code around this will be a nightmare. I'd rather make my own top down engine, then I'd at least know how everything works and where I should add my code to make something happen.

[@Tatulak]

​@@PopCar I usually use those "templates"/"Engines" as a place to check how the developer did solve that task or the problems that he faced and the I code my own solution (with nicer layer of separation between logic, visuals... usual all data driven)

[@Speykious]

... Is it just the recording or that first game is really laggy??

[@reversamente]

this is the best bundle i've ever seen

[@BadBanana]

I've already got this from the bundle but yet to dive in. Glad you've done a review cos I'll watch this first Mike. Cheers

[@diadetediotedio6918]

Why are the assets in bundle changing over time?

[@kevintanudjaja7597]

0:55 why this asset so lag?

[@julianarnold7992]

Would you recommend this as a best practices example in Unity?

[@GameDevNerd]

No, I wouldn't take anything on the asset store as being a guide to doing things right lol. Most of that stuff is made by people who don't really know what they're doing and have no C# background other than Unity tutorial videos and MonoBehaviour scripts. Hideous spaghetti code is a common theme on the asset store. There's only a couple of assets I will even let near my real projects, and I own quite a few. Most of them I just used just as an example to see how a certain Unity feature, idea or technique worked, and then I quickly move on and write my own version of it because the code and structure of the example is generally quite awful. These little game templates are fun to play with and see how a simple game can be put together but don't spend too much time mucking around with them or start thinking that they're examples for how games _should_ be written.

[@PixelPressChannel]

@@GameDevNerd I can assure you that this engine is SUPER well coded, documented, and actually made by a guy who works in the game industry. I agree most of it is terrible, but that is not the case, and that is why it is pretty pricey.

[@GameDevNerd]

@@PixelPressChannelyou may be right, I've never examined it. The day I made that comment I was particularly annoyed with the asset store (we kept having to remove/purge assets at work because they were generating lots of garbage and conflicting with things) and I was perhaps being too negative and making too broad of statements. So I apologize if I am wrong about this one in particular.

[@sapientunderground]

"Very easy to add in characters" Yeah, if they're a box. The useful test for assets like this would be to take some misc figure from an outside source (Mixamo, Synty, whatever), and show how to get them up and running, and then add a custom weapon for them to use. That's going to be far more reflective of what people will want to do with the asset, and far more indicative of just how "easy" it is to use. For some assets, that's a 5 minute tutorial video and 2 minutes of wizards and then everything pretty much just works. For others...you're almost certainly going to give up as the time taken stretches on and on. Everything looks shiny when you show off the examples made by the creator, but the asset videos already do that. For a video like this to have any value, you need to show some reality.

[@dukemagus]

You're probably doing things wrong. I modeled an humanoid character, loaded some mixamo animations and imported it in unity using Mecanim to allow it to use any humanoid animation using a similar setup. And the engine has a bunch of animations embed and a couple animation controllers with every value and transition in the graph ready to use and tweak.

[@sapientunderground]

@@dukemagus I think you replied to the wrong message, since what you're saying appears to have nothing to do with my comment.

[@leanasf821]

Good project name, I like that

[@MarcV_IndieGameDev]

Fullscreen editor = awesome!

[@kylo1275]

Hope they extend art bundle too just like tools hehe

[@rogueforger1439]

Thx for making this video! I'm so happy and grateful that I'll actually be able to understand the content I paid for. :D

[@Shadowthevampire]

Can u use it too make farming games?

[@FarazKhanDev]

I dont think so.. none of the demos show any similarity with using the engine as a farming game.. The Farming engine on the asset store will be more suitable for that

[@gkkaafirookie888]

Honestly you can make anything out of this, It depends on your skill level and time you can out in. I made a third person prototype and it worked well, and I can totally see one make a farming game

[@wils-caru]

please make a video about their "feel engine"

[@7kGreen]

Hi, Gamefromscratch! The Photonians started multiplayer games jam. And, most importantly, they give a trial on Quantum (deterministic rollback multiplayer engine) for the duration of the jam!

[@seefoodxxv]

Everything from More Mountains is very very good :)

[@jimkincaidz]

Love this product

[@theplaymakerno1]

I recommend creating your own frame-work from scratch. This engine is extremely difficult to use and customize.

[@thusky4399]

(2D)Personal experience with the asset was ok. I had lots of help from the discord and the dev until both stopped (which makes sense, you gotta learn by yourself), I was just a bit bummed I couldn't make my Secret of Mana 2(SNES) clone with it (which seems pretty straight forward looking at top down engine templates). For all intents and purposes I saw this asset being able to replicate an "Enter the Gungeon" type of game more easily than some retro SNES game, RIP. I also let a 4 stars review (out of 5 mind you) and the dev was pretty unhappy about it saying that he would have appreciated the extra star (didn't feel natural in the way he asked about it), that did turn me off from ever buying an asset from this developer again, I don't really like forced ratings. If you want to work (2D) with the features in place and don't aim to customize a lot of things except the art in some aspects (you can't go purely retro sprite based for the 2D templates without customizing the code), then go for it. Cheers!

[@maxbedlam3920]

Could you go a bit more into detail on why you weren't able to make what you wanted? Better yet, would one be able to do it if he knew how to code and extend upon the asset? Developers complaining or asking for a better rating always turns me off, except maybe when the review is unreasonable. I expected better from this dev. Would it take a lot of coding to be able to make "retro sprite based" games, or more of a minor changes here and there?

[@thusky4399]

​@@maxbedlam3920 I gave myself one month to prototype something with the asset and a maximum of 2-3 hours per day to learn the ropes, I had 1 year of C# programming and 2 years of unity dev behind me (with courses from Udemy, mainly). I wasn't able to finish because I reached my own deadline and couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to have/adapt the directional movement/feel Secret Of Mana 2 had with Top Down Engine, I don't say it can't be done, but I struggled as a beginner/almost intermediate for sure. I would say my biggest hurdle was linking the documentation to my goals, learning/reading/adapting took most of my time and I spent very little time implementing, which in turn removed the main appeal for such an asset, I think. That applies specifically to me, I'm a pixel artist/low poly artist to begin with, I'm not a programmer. I had much better results with assets such as Adventure Creator or UFPS, since these tools provide setup wizards (that give more room to art driven people) and you can just link up your assets and append your code much easier. That would be my comparaison. I don't think I'm in the same category as most people using this asset however, otherwise it wouldn't have such a high rating. Most people seem to find a way to adapt everything they need. I just struggle when it comes to code design/implementation! Hope that helped!

[@maxbedlam3920]

@@thusky4399 It did, thank you for the reply. I still haven't started with, but I am interested in game dev and Unity seems like the best choice for me. Haven't dabbled with it yet, but I did buy some Unity bundles on HB, preparing myself. Something like TopDown Engine seemed like a great way to make games quicker and easier while still learning something since you get access to code and can see how everything is done. But from what I've read so far, this developer has a specific way of doing things that some people just don't like both in terms of how this asset is supposed to be used and in the way he codes. Then again some people praise his coding. At this point I'm not sure would it be better to use something like this or just buy some courses on Udemy and learn how to make stuff myself. Guess the only way to figure things out would be to actually dabble and see how it goes though.

[@thusky4399]

@@maxbedlam3920 A lot of courses on Udemy are quite accessible and as you follow along you figure a lot of things out! I'd advise "Complete C# Unity Game Developer 3D" Both Ben and Rick (teachers/designers of the course) also test your knowledge every step of the way, much like a skill check to make sure you understood the lesson which is quite useful. All in all it's up to you, you will learn by making either way, the only way it would "stick" however is to keep practicing, since I'm mostly just working on art assets for the past few years I forgot most of what I learnt to be fair!

[@DerpyNinjaFrog]

6:23

[@JasonEllingsworth]

I got this in the humble bundle, so I don't consider it a big loss, but I found this to be very hard to understand what to do with it to use as a base to make my own project. I have created a finished product with Playmaker, and thought this would be perfect as a template for my 2nd project. The demos are great, but without a person making detailed videos about starting a new project with this, who(no offense) speaks proper english, then it seems too hard for a rookie to work with. Since this is certainly only going to be useful to someone who is new to game development, then the product is useless. Anyone with a year or two of development experience under their belt, is going to see this as more of a hurdle than a time saver since they will just build exactly what they need from the start themselves. If you are going to build a product for dummies, it needs to be built so a dummy can use it.

[@HE360]

So, we could make a new Metal Gear type of game with thism

[@BadBanana]

Easily yes. You'll need some assets to use for your gfx but it's gonna be very easy to remake metal gear

[@easygamemaker]

I'm the creator of EasyGameMaker. Would like if you could publish a video about my game engine in your channel also. Thanks.

[@christeralmond1081]

It looks laggy, which is unacceptable for 2d game engine. Although it could be just problems with recording and video.

[@gamefromscratch]

Yeah doesn't feel laggy on my end, so might be a side effect of video capture.

[@ephemeraldgames]

Definitely not laggy in practice

[@erichance8222]

Dev seems like a talented guy but the difficulty in starting new projs with these puzzle pieces (and his lack of interest in compatibility with any of Unity's visual scripting systems) back in 2019 are what caused me to leave the Unity ecosystem. Looking back I'm thankful I did... FWIW I'm a Houdini/Maya user with scripting experience so I don't give up easily, just sayin...

[@borgproto9238]

Are you using unreal engine now?

[@nick15684]

Nah, I'll just stick with Godot. Godot has an *actual* 2D engine separate from its 3D engine and overall just a better workflow for 2D. This isn't an engine and calling it that is very misleading. It's a framework, nothing more. Calling it an "engine" makes it sound like a standalone integrated development environment for creating video games. It's not though, it piggybacks off of Unity, where the actual work is done.

[@rogueforger1439]

Do you have any advice with getting started in Godot?

[@umapessoa6051]

The only thing thats not good about it is its developer. Me along with lot of other people were almost sued for using it. Wouldn't recommend to anyone just because of that.

[@Drastonar]

Explain this story better...

[@gamefromscratch]

Wait, what, huh? This is certainly not something I have heard.

[@simple11q]

Do you mind elaborating on this? wtf

[@MarcV_IndieGameDev]

I'm interested in the details! I'm on their side, if you were selling the entire package as your own on another platform. I'm on your side, if you released a game (on steam etc) and they wanted the share of the profits. Though, really need more details :D

[@KristopherStoltz]

The heck? That should be well known bro.

[@Cerbyo]

sounds horrible

[@BadBanana]

🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂 I'm sorry I'm sorry but inside of our Mike we're gonna create a 3d object had me in tears mate hahahahhahahahahhaha