Asset Manager - Feedback Request

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

I’ve started the initial work on an online asset manager, but before I go any further, I would like to get some feedback from the community to see if this is worthwhile.

Why use an external asset manager?

  • Small app download size may increase installs
  • Only load the assets the user needs for their specific device (no need to create 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x images and include them with your game, bloating its size)
  • Load assets as needed (level by level) or all at once.
  • Change assets on the fly (no need for an entire new app release for seasonal graphics & music; you could also change “sponsored by” images)
  • Not just images, but also music and sound effects, which could get automatically converted from .wav to .ogg if appropriate.
  • Developers could control whether they want the 4x size to be the upper limit, or whether 2x would suffice, as a default for all images, or on an image-by-image basis.
  • Your game’s visual style is important, “Loading…” interstitials are fully customizable
  • Easy to implement code for Corona SDK developers
  • Cost effective asset hosting on a CDN

Couldn’t someone do this themselves?

  • They’d still have to host the assets somewhere and pay for bandwidth
  • They wouldn’t get bug fixes to the library
  • They wouldn’t get support if something goes wrong
  • They would have to build an entire backend system if they want to support the versioning, to allow files to be updatable on-the-fly
  • If they can do all that, they probably already did, and that’s fine. This is for people like me who would rather just pay a service to take care of this, so I can focus on the game.

So my questions to the community:

  1. Is there anything like this already? (Coronium Cloud seems different than what I’m suggesting.)
     
  2. Would you pay for a service like this, and how much would it be worth to you?
     
  3. Would you be afraid to trust an external service in case it’s down?
     
  4. Would you feel more comfortable if you were able to easily export your project’s assets as a zip file, with their folder structure intact, so you can just drop it in your project at any time?
     
  5. Would you feel more comfortable if there was an export option just for a specific size, like all the 1x images so you could include those in your project as a fallback in case the server can’t be reached?

I value your feedback and opinions. This would be targeting Corona SDK developers exclusively for awhile.  If the majority of the community goes, “Nah, not interested” or “I wouldn’t pay for it” or “I would never trust it” or “There’s already another company doing this exactly,” then I know not to spend any more time on it.

Thanks, 
Dave

#2

Personally the usefulness of this would vary be project, depending on the final bundle size.  One thing I would definitely be interested in is using this to be able to change graphics on the fly, while at the same time shipping the app with all the required assets needed.  That way users aren’t forced to download all the assets on first install, but only those assets have been updated server-side.  

As far as price, I would only pay for this if it was a one-time cost and I could use it on my own server.  I would not at all be interested in paying for a monthly hosted option.  I think now with Parse getting shut down most developers are worried of trusting anyone as a backend.  

#3

I agree it’s tough to rely on external services sometimes. They might go down, whereas your own server will stay up as long as you want it to.  

Unfortunately, I think it would be too costly and time consuming (for me anyway) to develop this and still be able to sell it at an upfront price that would be attractive to app developers, many of whom have little to no money already.

So maybe it’s a good idea, but not a good business idea. That happens to me a lot. :wink:

Dave

#4

Personally the usefulness of this would vary be project, depending on the final bundle size.  One thing I would definitely be interested in is using this to be able to change graphics on the fly, while at the same time shipping the app with all the required assets needed.  That way users aren’t forced to download all the assets on first install, but only those assets have been updated server-side.  

As far as price, I would only pay for this if it was a one-time cost and I could use it on my own server.  I would not at all be interested in paying for a monthly hosted option.  I think now with Parse getting shut down most developers are worried of trusting anyone as a backend.  

#5

I agree it’s tough to rely on external services sometimes. They might go down, whereas your own server will stay up as long as you want it to.  

Unfortunately, I think it would be too costly and time consuming (for me anyway) to develop this and still be able to sell it at an upfront price that would be attractive to app developers, many of whom have little to no money already.

So maybe it’s a good idea, but not a good business idea. That happens to me a lot. :wink:

Dave