How I created my Unity asset Blocks Builder System
I have a son who is a big fan of Minecraft and I don’t blame him. Minecraft gives the player a very big amount of freedom in building and destroying anything he wants using blocks. So I said to myself “why not try to create a simple Unity asset that also gives the player the freedom to build almost anything using simple blocks and then destroy them!”.
So I created the Blocks Builder System asset for Unity and I published it for the Unity assets store.
Of course I did not mean to create a Minecraft similar system. There is no way to compare. There is no open world and (at least for now) it’s not a multiplayer asset. Instead, I created an asset that allow the player (a kid for example) to use his imagination to build any kind of constructions in the same way he plays with LEGO toys on a table.
When I uploaded the asset to the Unity asset store it was rejected many times for many reasons. This is some of them:
- The images I uploaded were only screenshots of the Unity editor;
- Some prefabs positions and rotations were not set to 0;
- Some gameObjects had missing scripts (for this, it was not my fault, I used ProBuilder to create the blocks and Unity automatic validation system did not import it before testing my asset, so I converted all the ProBuilder meshes to regular meshes);
So I fixed all the issues, resubmitted the asset and it was finally accepted (it took almost a month!).
The Blocks Builder System asset includes many blocks prefabs, but the game developer can easily customize the existing blocks or add new blocks. He can also use his own UI. And after construction, there is destruction. The user can destroy his building by enabling gravity (physics) without losing the original building. The limit is only the user imagination.
Other features :
- You can add light, fire and animated blocks (only rotation for now);
- You can control the size of the block;
- Runtime scene zoom, orbit and pan;
- Day and night Modes;
- Save and open files of the created runtime scenes;
- Auto save the current scene;
- A runtime example is included;
What can you use it for?
If you are a game developer, you can use the Blocks Builder System asset to create a LEGO like game and you are not only constrained to cubes. You can use any shape: Cylinders, spheres, prisms, … . The asset already contains a full featured demo scene that you can use as a starting point.
Finally, the game could be build for many platforms like Windows, Android and iOS.
That’s all for now. Thank you!.
