Game developers struggle with asset creation

“A character starts as a paragraph. Then that paragraph becomes a quest, dialogue, a location, a character model, animations and code. Before long, one idea exists in half a dozen places. Then you change the character. Which version of the story is still correct? Does the dialogue reflect the change? Did you implement the new rule, or only discuss it? Where did you write down why you made that decision? That's the problem behind PlayWeld. I'm PlayWeld's creator, and I'm building a”

“i am thinking about making game assets. i have 0 experience. how do i start? what do i look out for? how can i tell which game assets will recieve the most attention? i need the 101 on this, i appreciate all the help. submitted by /u/Acceptable_Image9107 [link] [comments]”

“Hey everyone! I'm pretty new to game development and currently working on a 2D zombie adventure game using Godot 4. I've been creating most of my assets using AI, and instead of using a TileMap, I've been using background images because it seemed like an easier way to get started. The problem is that the game doesn't feel right visually. The player, zombies, and environment look like separate things rather than parts of the same world. Even the player movement feels a bit off com”

“I bought some modular assets and it was a pain to make level. Now I just learned about ProBuilder and my mind is blowned by how better it is to build levels! Where are to good places to find textures? Is there a trick to make them look consistent? (ex: maybe I need to make sure they have the same width/height). I'm looking for a Portal\Stanley Parable type of look. submitted by /u/the_lotus819 [link] [comments]”

“Hey there, I'm a solo dev making voxel games for over 10 years now. So far I was never able to really use the fact that the assets are made from voxels. With the recent developement of AI I was finally able to make a shader that builds everything voxel by voxel without me having to split anything and it is really performant. It also works on destroying buildings. Voxels break out of them and stay on the ground until you repair it. I think this adds a lot to the game. What do you think? https”

“I know - debugging? And domain reload - unity is already solving this problem in 6.7 But still, I tried making game, which left me with cheap game along with 6 months spent. So I was thinking which thing frustrated me most, so to solve it. Other may be have felt same, because indie game game development is not just programming. It needs to manages many things at once. And when one tiny thing drags, our more aspiring ideas slips out from brain. So what do think in your game dev journey, which wer”

“Hi everyone, As indie/solo developers, we always balance time, money, and overall scope. On one hand, there are amazing free resources like Kenney, Poly Haven, or Freesound that can get a prototype off the ground without spending a dime. On the other hand, high-quality paid packs or custom hires can save hundreds of hours of design work. I'm curious about how you approach this in your own projects: Do you actively buy assets (3D models, UI, SFX, animations, scripts)? What’s your threshold/ru”

“I'm a solo dev and I’ve been working on a mobile game called "Starlit Stage" for a while now (almost a year) and I finally finished all of the main character busts! I drew everything in CSP (Clip Studio Paint). I attached some visuals if you're interested in looking at my bits of process. Basically just lineart -> base colors -> shading, though it still took me a while. I have 15 characters in the game, and 14 of them required me to do a full body bust cause I hate myself”

“Hello! I'm at a point in my game development where I'm really happy with the core gameplay and gameplay loop. It's kind of like a bullet hell game and Vampire Survivors, but you cast the abilities yourself. So far, I've been using placeholder assets that I pixelated myself in just a few minutes. They're all static, with no animations or particle effects. I've also been using some free assets from the Unity Asset Store as placeholders. The problem I'm struggling with n”

“Developers who purchase assets on marketplaces, tell us what you find most lacking when searching for assets for your games. submitted by /u/feigy_lipe01 [link] [comments]”

“Is there anyone shipping their game using free assets? Or where you are begain? I am a programmer and doesn't have design or art background. It's really hard for me to build the asset for game. I have tried once to use placeholder assets, but when I try to change to actual assets, it feel like I do a lot of things twice. submitted by /u/Zealousideal-Fix-527 [link] [comments]”

“So I have a project for warhammer that I need a 3D artist for. I posted in the warhammer and a gaming sub relevant to the project, just asking if anyone knew how to retrieve the files from said game and knew how to turn them into STL files. Within about a minute my DM's were flooded with 100s of people saying they are 3D artists. It turns out most were definitely AI bots and I'm still unsure about the 3 I didn't immediately delete. How do I tell if something is legit? I can't 3D”

“It’s my first full game. I am not an artist. I have a design target in my mind but I’m totally fine with just having it look decent and consistent. I have no idea even where to begin. Which sites for asset packs are best? Itch.io? submitted by /u/eastyboy1 [link] [comments]”

“One thing we’ve wanted to improve for a while is how alive the shop and its characters feel. Until now, a lot of the NPCs have been fairly static outside of their core interactions. We’ve started working on more character animations to change that small movements, reactions, and behaviors that should make the shop feel much more natural while playing. It’s still a work in progress, but even these early additions are already making a pretty noticeable difference. Here’s a small look at what we’re”

“Greetings, I have recently started using Ren'Py to create my own visual novel. While the programing and story writing isn't that hard for I have ran into a wall known as "not knowing how to make backgrounds and sprites". So I want to know what apps/programs or website I can use to create my own sprites and bgs. I should probaly mention that I am not all that great at drawing and that I don't have digital drawing equipment. I have my computer, the I/O devices linked to it an”

submitted by /u/brickylab [link] [comments]

“Im trying to make a simple card game as an hobby. Maybe i can publish it one day. Im a cs student and i am able to handle the coding part but i just dont know how to handle the graphic part. im using temporary assets from free sources. Im not much of a painter. Any suggestions? submitted by /u/Zealousideal-Two8306 [link] [comments]”

“I’ve been working on the character customization for our game, and this is roughly how it looks right now. I originally went with a baby as the main character because I thought the contrast was funny you’re basically this tiny little dude running around, changing outfits and somehow trying to act like a boss. But the more I work on it, the more I wonder if the baby theme might be a little too specific. People can be weirdly sensitive about baby characters in games, especially depending on the hu”

“So, I've been making my game for about two years now and a significant portion of time and cost is the modeling and texturing. I have been hiring some 3D artists to help reduce the time, but that becomes extremely costly. I'm not extremely skilled at modeling myself, so things that might take an artist a couple hours might take me days to do, which feels like a horrible use of my time. The environment and props are still fairly far from complete, and it's become a bit demotivating. I”

“Currently, the art team provides all textures/sprites as SVGs to the designers so they can resize them in Figma. They're then converted to PNGs and resized to the proper resolution to be imported into Unity. The issue the design team has with using raster images is that the source material is way harder to just resize than vectors, and since the scale of objects in Unity is linked to the size of the sprite, it makes keeping a consistent size difficult especially if the sizes are subject to c”

“I might have phrased it wrong but whatevs. Currently i have a normal tablet i use for drawing but ive been planning on making a game for a while and im not sure if i can use that tablet to draw or animate for it and properly import the files... Should i get one? submitted by /u/Heyomi-chan [link] [comments]”

“I’m looking to speed up the process of adding and manipulating prefabs into my game scene. Are there any specific tools or add ons you use that speed up the process? submitted by /u/DANCEWITHDUCKS [link] [comments]”

Hi there, I've made a prototype for a game (see first screenshot attached). It's a zombie survival RTS. Current in game view It's currently just using placeholders for the roads, cars, houses…

“Hi so this is a question to game developers that don't make their own assets but instead download them off Itch, Sketchfab, etc. I see a lot of people using specifically PS1 style assets and rarely any "realistic" ones when developing horror games, is there a reason for this, do people enjoy the style more? Cause I know that the common argument for using these type of assets by developers that make them themselves is time-efficiency which I totally understand and agree with. The re”

“I am exploring a Mac character creator for indie games. The idea is to start with a consistent stylized cast, change faces, proportions and outfits without modelling each person from scratch, then export a rigged GLB for the game. The attached 40-second walkthrough is a visual concept, not a working 3D generator. The characters are AI-generated 2D concept renders. The sliders and walk pose are illustrative, and the export button does not create a file yet. I made the mock to test the workflow be”

“I have learned that I suck at blender and making models outside of simple shapes. But I know that comes with time and practice. It’s just surprising how much time it takes to make a model and put it into the game to make a level. It has slowed down my process so much and generally, level design and asset implementation is just a pain in the butt. Does anyone else have this same struggle? If not, what usually slows you down the most? submitted by /u/DANCEWITHDUCKS [link] [commen”

“This... I see many people developing games as a hobby with many 3d assets and I doubt they made it or bought it. I wonder if there are good websites for it submitted by /u/21920alphabet [link] [comments]”

“Lately I’ve been seeing more developers talk about moving from Unity to Godot. I’ve mostly been making assets for Unity, and Unity is still my main focus, but I feel like I should start updating more of my assets for Godot too. The thing is, Godot’s official Asset Library seems to be mostly free assets. I’ve seen some paid Godot assets on itch.io, but I’m not sure where Godot developers usually look for them. Where do you normally buy paid assets for Godot? Is itch.io the main place, or are ther”

“What is your opinion (as a developer or a gamer) on a game developer using textures, images, pixel art, etc. in their game that were created by manipulating stock photos? (I am primarily referring to cases where they don't just put the exact original image into the game as is, but where some form of work was done to modify the image beforehand.) View Poll submitted by /u/TheExplanationFE [link] [comments]”

“I’ve been making an RPG as a hobby lately, and I’m curious—how do you all manage to balance beauty with a sense of gloom? Up until now, I’ve only ever made ridiculously carefree games, so this is a first for me! The setting is the American Old West, and I’m envisioning a story that leans more towards fantasy fiction. There probably won’t be a happy ending, either. Right now, I’m surrounded by so much inspiration that I feel like I’m losing my sense of self :> Also, I’m using a translation too”

“Hello, I wanted to share the evolution of my first character. On the left: The Anomaly At first, I wanted to create characters using several simple shapes. That gave birth to the monstrosity you see on the left. Spheres in a blocky world made no sense at all. I tried voxelizing them, then I attempted to use capsules instead of cubes for the larger parts. It was slightly better, but overall it remained a disaster. (In a burst of madness, I tried to add a crest to the helmet using the scatter from”

“I'm making my first full game as a solo gamedev, but I've always been a programmer guy. Art is something I can't do at all, so I've been struggling to find the right style for my game. Now I've found Paragon, if you don't know it's a discontinued Epic game that released all of their assets, and I feel it would honestly be a good fit and in a sense make my life a lot easier. I know some successful games exist that take advantage of it, however if I decide I want to mak”

“We’ve just finished designing a character for our visual novel ! We’d love to hear what you think which hairstyle do you like the most ? Ignore the clothing Feel free to pick multiple options! ✨ Thanks everyone for the feedback! Alaskanshrimp made a great point, I should have provided more context about the character. This is a psychological horror visual novel about a girl named Nissa who finds herself trapped in a constantly shifting mansion born of her own trauma. Her only companion is Kay, a”

“As a new dev which is figuring out what is going on, I made a commission request on reddit for some 2d monster sprite animations. My honest expectation is that maybe 4-5 people will react. Instead I was bombarded with 50+ requests, so I tried to talk with as many people as possible to get to understand the opportunities better. One of the "people" there talked exactly about the keywords I aimed for, as if their vision is an exact fit of what I wish for. Eventually I decided to move on”

“Hey guys, I posted screenshots of the first game im making here about a month ago and lots of people told me that it looked cheap. Now ive worked ALOT on the assets, especially i put way more thought into choice of colors now. Do you guys still think it loooks cheap or bad? or do you think the quality is good enough for an indigame now? it is so hard for me to judge by myself. At the end ill add some pictures of how it looked a month ago for comparism. I hope to get some usefull feedback again,”

Hullo, I was wondering where everyone gets their 2D assests for their games. Specifically for characters like the player or npcs. Do you make the assests yourself, commission an artist, or buy…

“I recently brought on an artist to help revamp the UI for my indie strategy game. As a side quest, he took a pass at our grid tile asset (something I originally made almost 4 years ago). Sometimes you get so used to looking at your own placeholder/old art that you stop seeing how much room there is to improve it. The difference from such a relatively small change is kind of crazy. Originally we made them super thin with more transparency, but then that did not show in certain mountain (brown) re”

“I'm wondering when you last hired an artist and what made you choose them over your other options. What is one thing you saw on their site, in their bio, their process, or somewhere else that convinced you to hire them and that they could help you? submitted by /u/MenogCreative [link] [comments]”

“For keeping characters consistent,I have made my RPG a project. That project has several canon files attached to it, like character dynamics. Character dynamics practically dictates how the NPCs in my main group should act, react, talk and so on. It also works as their memory, which means they can still remember stuff that happened earlier in the RPG. I've also worked out a kind of save system, if I tell chatgpt "make a new save" it automatically abbreviates what happened in this c”

“I don't know if I'm the only one, but have you all noticed your art & development skills improving over time? I recently went back and played a build of my game from a year ago and I was kind of surprised to see how much I had improved over lots of basic things from the UI to effects to the art style. It inspired me to post this post which is basically one of the many ways I'm improving. Not sure if you all feel the same, as indie dev/solo dev really feels like I'm just barel”

“So, I wanted to make a game that I had in mind since my childhood. I’m a software engineer so I’m fine with coding, but I’ve never had skills or talent with anything related to graphics. I tried doing 3d models for units with Astra or Fable (not local but 3d is hard 🫣), but even frontiers are not there yet. So, I decided to make a better workflow with 3d gen model generating a model for me from concept art and then only doing polish with LLM agent. I tried Pixal3d and Hunyan so far and they are”

“Ive been ideating what I think will be a great game for a long while now, but its ideas do require me to reach out to people for liscensed music. Do any of yall know how this works for artists? Like If i reach out and they let me have their music in the game, can I just take however long I want in development without liscencing issues? And do I make the part of the game with the music and then send it to them first? If they decline do I just scrap that then? TLDR: How should I approach reaching”

“I'm currently making my first game, and the art is hand drawn. Going in, I didn't realize how time-consuming drawing everything by hand would be, and I just learned about asset packs. Something feels off about using that, but I can't put my finger on it. I'm a musician, and it feels like the game dev equivalent of using a midi chord pack, which I've always found lazy and uninspired. What is the general consensus on using something like an asset pack to save time? Also, I want”

“Hi I'm new here. I was a product designer and Im trying to build a small game with AI lately. with the progress, generating stuff is getting way faster, but keeping track of everything gets messy really quickly. it's totally diff from my previous design exp. One character can already have refs, PSDs, Blender files, GLBs, textures, animations, audio, UI, videos… all over the place. How do you keep track of: what’s actually the latest/current version source files vs exports where an asset”

“I'm currently working on a game but I've run into a pretty big problem: I'm absolutely terrible at 3D modeling and don't really know how to create my own 3D assets. I could obviously use free asset packs, but then I run into another problem. It's hard to find assets that match exactly what I have in mind, and mixing assets from different packs can easily make the game look inconsistent. So if you were a solo developer who was bad at 3D art but still wanted to make a”

Hi r/IndieDev ! I am working on a first-person fantasy project that requires animations for things like melee, spellcasting, interactions, etc., but I am finding it difficult to locate good resources on…

“I tried metahuman it was decent but it has its limits and I am currently trialing Character Creator 5 doubt i'll stay with it and I dunno if my method to allow me to use it forever will even work. I heard its actually dogshit too. So next will be makehuman idk how well it'll be tho. Anyone have any ideas? submitted by /u/MeasurementWhole7764 [link] [comments]”

“I just want to know what the best free way to draw game assets would be, and what channels to avoid? which youtubers stand out? submitted by /u/Any-Landscape434 [link] [comments]”

“I'm curious about how Unity devs approach this in general — any kind of system (inventory, dialogue, character controller, enemy behaviors, etc.). - Do you buy systems to save time, or do you prefer full control over your own code? - If you buy, what makes you trust an asset enough to integrate it into your project? - If you code everything yourself, is it about learning, control, or something else? Asking because I'm trying to understand the market before building something — and I'”

“I spent 7 months making a modular asset pack for unreal with the concept of it being based on Egypt in a scifi world(on fab). I posted on reddit and got some real great feedback and realized I'm going to have to go back and change a lot. My main question fellow devs is, do you guys feel as if my concept is too niche ? Or should I press on and see what happens? submitted by /u/rodeobrito [link] [comments]”

“I'm building an idle mining game for mobile and in the ui I'm using captain portraits and hired an artist to build some of the designs. Due to some personal reasons I had to reduce my budget for the art, so the 3d designer will finish just a couple 3D models instead of all of them. I'm thinking of buying synty model package and replace the few captains with those models until I get my budget back to commission new artwork. Since this is an idle mining game, the 3d characters are not”

“I highly recommend learning Blender. you can reuse the assets or models you’ve created over and over again without worrying that their appearance changes every time, It just takes time to learn it. For me personally, it took about 1–2 years to learn what I needed to know. It took a long time because I didn’t have much time after working all day. So if you have a lot of free time, you’ll definitely make rapid progress. As a starting point, I recommend that you choose an animation style first, so”

“Wierd question but. My game isn't done. It's a point and click game, and we haven't started on art yet. It's just place holders everywhere. So obviously I can't show character or level design art because they're not ready, and I don't want to show the the mechanics because I'm waiting for the gameplay reveal trailer/the time according to the marketing plan. We came up with a campagne for the game's marketing, but now we want to establish our name out there. We”

“Hi everyone. My friend and I decided to enter a game competition and make our own computer game. She’s writing the code and the story, and I’m drawing all of it. We have one month to do everything, so right now we’re at that wonderful stage of development where we want to do everything at once and somehow not miss the deadline. And the competition is actually a really great opportunity to get our work out there and make a name for ourselves, so we really can’t mess this up. We’re already in it,”

“I was thinking about a game that everyone plays and I remember some people was asking for different cosmetics, I thinking to myself how long does it take to make a new skin or upgrade a previous one, like sound design, VFX, SFX, character movements, etc. Does it take long or it just depends on how detailed it is. submitted by /u/Available-Radio-8595 [link] [comments]”

“What's the best way to find someone to make textures for a 2D game without AI? I'm reusing the same texture since weeks and I really need new textures and UI. submitted by /u/th0ny_1 [link] [comments]”

“I’m a programmer who can do basic pixel art and basic 3D models, but if I ever try to model a humanoid or animal/monster I always get stuck and abandon the project. I usually search or buy models and try to rig them if a rig is missing, but that is a tiring manual process. I’m thinking about a tool to help me generate character models and maybe any animals and monsters with torso, head and limbs. Instead of bouncing ideas with AI and waste liters of water I’m gonna waste a bit less and ask the c”

“I’m currently a solo dev and my skills lean heavily toward design and development. I’m getting to a point with my game where I need to start producing more of the art assets and I’m realizing how much slower I am at that versus the rest of it because it’s new and I’m learning I could see it being really valuable to partner with an artist and make the game with them. I don’t have any experience here though I’m hoping to hear some success stories from the rest of you or some horror stories I shoul”

“Hey everyone, looking for some honest advice from fellow devs. I was laid off from my programming job a few months ago and decided to go all in on making my own game. Since I have zero budget, I used AI as temporary placeholder art just to get a working demo together. My plan was to use this demo to pitch to publishers and use their funding to hire a real artist to replace every single asset. Even though I am transparent about the placeholders, but every post gets people angry about the AI, even”