6 MUST USE Packages for Unity3D

The most important unity3d packages every developer should know about and use.

[onatkorucu]

1:32 TextMeshPro
2:20 Cinemachine
3:49 ProBuilder
5:28 Visual Scripting (old name was "Bolt")
7:12 URP & HDRP
8:27 Unity Collaborator

[djh]

For 2D developers, the tilemap and tilemap extras packages are an absolute must. The Scriptable Tile is such a time saver

[JamesMakesGamesYT]

Great video Jason! I'd definitely recommend the Input System package too. It improved my development workflow, especially with mapping out controls and integrating them with game state changes.

[RobLang]

This is a great list, completely agree. Another package I love is the Profile Analyser. Using the profiler to help fix FPS problems is cool but with the profile analyser, you can compare two separate session. For example, you want to refactor something slow, save a profile before and after and the use the analyser to compare to see if you really got savings.

[fc]

Watching this video after spending time manually changing the color of my text every second makes me appreciate this channel

[UnburntStudios]

I’d say it’s a challenge, but definitely worth getting to understand the New Input System!
Especially when it comes to really easy implementation of keyboard & many types of controller support, and local multiplayer systems, it’ll make your life easier and your code cleaner & compartmentalised

[josemarcano]

I love visual scripting! I am completely adopting it into my game design methodology. Would love to see some content from you on this topic. <3

[MatthewChowns]

I like the idea of visual scripting for organizing a project from a high level. Certain concepts, (such as state machines) are easier to work with, understand, and debug if you can literally see it working.

I'd love to see videos about using visual scripting to handle project architecture in a way that still lets programmers implement the fine details in code

[CRUMVIII]

I already use 3 of those 6, but didn't know how useful the other 3 were. Thanks for the info.

[justinwhite]

Visual scripting sidestep the limitation that you can't put scripts in asset bundles or addressables. Visual scripts are basically just scriptable objects that hook into your compiled code. Super a handy if you have a lot of dynamic content.

[mohammadsami]

Hey! That was pretty helpful! Thanks!!
I just subscribed. Looking forward to know more about rendering pipelines

[wendten]

It's quite trolling to have that eye sight test thing in the background blurred out.. E, Γ, P, T, O, Z, L? .. like, who even own such a thing?

[Bloodthirst]

i like how the pads in the back react to the mic volume

[millthor]

Thanks for the video, I will try these!
Something I still struggle with is when Unity updates and a 2 year old tutorial doesn’t work anymore. That’s the demotivating part of working on Unity.
I had this with the ARkit pack and for lots of code. For a beginner, it’s really demotivating!

[blackcitadelstudios]

Currently using these packages in my project. Really helpful. ☺️

[jeannettemaldonado]

Just broke my arm patting myself on the back😆 glad to see I'm heading in the right direction as a noob

[angeldiaz]

thank you for the information, this packages are definitely great!

[anommymousse]

For the main stuff my current little 2d project uses from the package manager, cinemachine, textmesh pro, and URP. One thing to note about URP - the 2d shadows are beta which means you probably don't want to rely on them for a while. (No need for probuilder or UDRP for my current 2d project, but probuilder is great).



Additional 2d things I'm using is the 2d tilemap and 2d tilemap editor, 2d PSD importer and 2d animation and finally a non-2d thing addressables.



I'm also using the new input system as well, it's quite nice, though some packages assume you are using the old one, works for me on PC at least on both keyboard and xbox controller.


Collaborate - I dislike collaborate, I didn't at first, I thought it was pretty neat, my problem struck when adding in more art and sound effects, collaborate decided for some reason to ignore my settings for the directory and include the files anyway pushing me over the 1GB limit, making it useless as I can't check it in, I decided to make a fresh new colloborate thinking it won't ignore it this time, it did. So I now just use Git. My advice is avoid collaborate or find out how to only put in exactly what you want before hand as configuration directory instructions are probably not gonna work.


Visual scripting.
For me visual scripting has it's place, I've testbedded entire large 3d generated levels using Blueprint and houdini for UE4 that generated and placed stuff at runtime, I've also written decent-frontend stuff for UE4 too with hardly any code required, I like c# so for Unity I tend to code first. Playmaker is popular and bolt/now inbuilt visual scripting is going to be useful to at the least prototype stuff.

For me it's only useful as limited team size, I personally don't see anything wrong with menu systems done in visual scripting. When it gets to main game though, I think the visual scripting should be kept an eye on and profiled to see if it needs optimized, also scripting should not become annoying and get in the way. There's nothing wrong for example of calling a function in c#/c++ from a visual script for something you think is getting annoying to link-up. I don't think AI is best done in visual scripting as that tends to be a big hog of cycles but that would depend on the game and enemy count, but there's nothing stopping you from making something that tweaks those values using visual scripting then output and process using c#/c++ code. But if you are an Artist playmaker/visual scripting could be the difference between finishing or looking at c#/c++ and giving up.

TLDR version : If it gets too complex, probably should write code, if it runs too slow write code. But the mantra of "Make it work, make it good, make it fast, IN THAT ORDER" always holds true.
And when you are trying to make something faster, make sure it needs it, always approach speed side on via a nice profiler :)

[Tofos]

I'm really looking forward to the videos about visual scripting. I can actually program, but it still looks very interesting for me

[tarriochu]

Im a software engineer currently studying a game design program in which the unity classes are done with visual scripting, I absolutely love it. Makes it super amateur friendly for my classmates to code without having to know a programing language before hand. Its easy to explain logic with it as it is very graphic and displays the values of stuff while running. I absolutely love that I can simply just say to them "sooo, this is never true, and It will never reach that node you see?" without them having to read the code over and over again to understand what the f im talking about.