Dream Bit Bundles

So you are in need for a solid framework to help you build your games from the ground up and want to focus on the actual game not on all kind of auxiliary systems. You are definitely eager to have some fancy progress bars load your dream game on people's devices. Or you have heard of Unity Asset Bundles and realized their potential for reducing your built game size and for deploying new or updated content to your players. Chances are you find the default asset bundling process cumbersome or hit a wall trying to actually use in-game the assets you have just packed into bundles. What about uploading your bundles to a far away server so that your players can retrieve them, from all over the world? If you face at least one of those challenges, have no fear: Dream Bit Bundles is here to ease and solve most (if not All!) of your needs regarding: asset bundling, in-game patching, bundled asset instancing, quick prototyping support, content deployment workflow, multiplatform build automation and so much more. You can use it as a starting point to build almost every game type you can come up with. Oh, and it's completely modular: using a Plugins based system you can easily extend the core functionality with any new modules your game may need. And don't even get me started on the cool level configuration method it comes with.

Forum | Video Tutorials and Demos

Before Starting – Third Party Libraries

► Dream Bit Bundles relies heavily on the use of asynchronous code. Before anything, you have to download and add to your project the Async Await Support free library.
► The Space Shooter assets used for the demonstrative level are part of an older package which was published (now deprecated) under the ”Unity Technologies” Asset Store account.

Additional Libraries Required By Some Features – Not Included

► The use of "Delta Encoding" patching feature requires obtaining the Octodiff library which is licensed under Apache 2.0. It is not included in the package and must be obtained separately. Instructions are provided in the QuickStartGuide.pdf.
► The use of "Google Cloud Storage Handler" feature for uploading bundles requires obtaining the "google-cloud-dotnet" SDK which is licensed under Apache 2.0. It is not included in the package and must be obtained separately. Instructions are provided in the QuickStartGuide.pdf.

Please make sure you understand your potential obligations arising from the inclusion of these libraries in your final product, as stated by their respective licenses! See Third-Party Notices.txt file included in the package for details!

Highlights

● A comprehensive set of editor tools which help you build and deploy bundled content and a set of runtime APIs that act as a bridge between your game specific logic and its assets. Save yourself thousands of hours of work and focus on what is really important: your actual game mechanics!

● A custom designed and built solution using mostly “pure C#” code and .NET calls, for maximum flexibility and customizability. Apart from a few low level Unity API calls (to build bundles, load content, draw custom inspectors) DBB does NOT rely on systems such as the “Unity Addressable Asset System”.

● Don't take my words for granted, see for yourself! The included demonstrative mini-game is a good place to see in action and test all core features! Or you can inspire from it to help you get started rapidly in creating your own DBB based games.

● Easy to use workflow for building Asset Bundles. Just drop your game assets into some dedicated project folders and press a button to start packing them into bundles. DBB will generate one asset bundle for each folder marked for bundling and the C# code needed to easily access their content.

● Not one, but three different methods of marking project folders for asset bundling: build bundles from folders which have a custom, configurable name; build bundles from a list of hand picked folders; build a bundle from an individual folder using a contextual menu button.

● NO MORE loading assets from bundles by using ugly hard coded strings which are a nightmare to keep track and debug! Use instead automatically generated static C# class members, one corresponding to each and every asset added to bundles.

● Selective asset bundling (Asset Bundle Variants). Using this mechanism you can separate bundled content so that your bundles built for mobile platforms contain lower quality versions for the same assets than those destined for more powerful platforms.

● What you see in the Editor is what you get in the stand-alone game! The Editor also loads data from the bundles it has prepared for standalone builds.

● Minimum coding required to interact with DBB runtime APIs. A few singletons, some static members here and there are all what is needed!

● Content Build and Deployment support for major Desktop and Mobile platforms.

● Silky smooth, non-freezing operations, as it uses asynchronous code for time and resource intensive tasks. Your game or UI will not become unresponsive when loading bundled data, downloading new content etc.

● Delta Encoding (Binary Difference) patch mechanism. Greatly reduce the size of shipped patches and save precious network traffic for your players by deploying updates in the form of smaller delta files (binary difference between an older bundle and a newer version of it).

● Build and upload bundles, build stand-alone game executable, for one or multiple target platforms in a single session, by leveraging the automation capabilities included!

● Memory caching system for loaded assets and bundles, with sliding time expiration policy and application memory consumption monitoring.

● Object pooling system for improved performance when working with frequently instantiated assets such as weapon projectiles, enemies swarms etc.

● Protect your players devices from receiving hacked or corrupted asset bundles by using a Public-Private key based Digital Signature mechanism. Or you can opt for a simpler but less secure SHA integrity checksum validation.

● An experimental binary patching system which allows your games to self-patch their executable code without the need of an external, standalone patching program (feature supported only on platforms capable of Just in Time compilation).

● FTP, HTTP file server and Google Cloud Storage integration, for asset bundles storage. If those do not suit your needs you can easily add your own custom file server integration.

● Lots of user friendly Editor tools and custom inspectors for: asset bundles content visualizing, rebuilding individual bundles, building the game executable, server upload, batch operations and much more. You can even customize the color themes of the DBB UI or create setting presets.

● Powerful levels configuration system: no more multiple scenes required in your game, ONE is all you need in your whole project. Just bundle some assets, create a level configuration prefab, use the assets picker tool to select assets (from those bundled) to load in that level and you are mostly done. And while your are still there, you can assign custom splash screens and progress bars for each level configuration you create. The system will load and unload all your configured levels in its own, unique, scene. Or if this approach doesn't suit your needs, you can add your entire scenes in asset bundles and DBB will load them just as easily!

● Modular and easily extensible core mechanism. Create your own custom logic (localization, achievements, networking etc.) and follow a few simple steps to have it integrated into DBB. Once integrated, DBB will take care of your module to be bundled, deployed, patched etc.

● BONUS: A fully functional module for UI and texts localization.

● In-game information and confirmation modal dialogues.

● A comprehensive manual and quick start guide, covering all important functionalities, inspectors and settings. And with lots of illustrations too!

● FULL, clean, formatted and documented source code included.

Platforms Tested And Working

✓ Unity Editor – Windows, MacOS

✓ Windows Standalone Build

✓ Linux Standalone Build

✓ MacOS Standalone Build

✓ Android Build

✓ iOS Build

Platforms Tested And Not Working

Χ WebGL Build

Platforms Not Tested

? All the rest.