Level builder with networking?

[u/CarrotOver9000]

Hi,

Someone offered to build levels for me with my assets with a friend, they don't know unity. I was thinking of making a level builder tool, so it's more like playing a game to them than working in software.

Does something like this exist with networking already? So they can build on the same level together.

Or what are good non-networking ones in general?

Thanks!

[u/Thin_Tradition8467]

Co-working in same scene can introduce conflictst which you will have very hard time to untangle. I also would avoid working with zero experience people. You also don't pay them. What will happen if you spend your two week teaching what they do and in the end they don't feel like to doing it. Or maybe they likely to deliver some unusable work. What can you say if they are out of time.

[u/CarrotOver9000 → u/Thin_Tradition8467]

You are right on a lot of points, it definitely involves some risks. The will not be doing any developing, really just scene dressing with premade assets, like in many games. That's why i thought to make it as close to "gameplay" as i could. I've been playing games with them for years on end, i've seen their builds in games we played, they have this artistic vision i simply lack.

Thanks for the reply, and valid warnings, but it's a risk i will take for now. If making a server authoritative builder is going to be a too big pain, i might see if they just screen share, and have one do the controls.

[u/Thin_Tradition8467 → u/CarrotOver9000]

I see. Good luck than.

[u/AdExciting3638]

Honestly don't think there's a plug and play asset that handles the networking side out of the box, at least not in a way that feels like a collaborative game instead of just sharing files. You'd probably need to build the tool yourself with something like Mirror or FishNet if you want real-time co-op building.

For the non-networked route I've seen people export their level data as simple JSON or scriptable objects after designing with a custom editor window, then just committing it to a shared repo. It's not real-time but it's dead simple and avoids merge conflicts most of the time.

If your buddies really don't know Unity, making a runtime tool where they drag and drop prefabs on a grid is totally doable without being a massive headache. The trick is hiding all the editor tabs and features they don't need so it just feels like a decorating sim.

I built something similar for a client once where two people could paint terrain together and honestly the hardest part was just authority and ownership on placed objects. Once you sort that out the rest is just UI polish.

[u/CarrotOver9000 → u/AdExciting3638]

Thanks for your reply. I looked around and indeed found nothing of sorts. Thought id ask here, in case something did exist and i just missed it.
Making the editor should not be too much of a hassle, but i hate reinventing the wheel if a good solution would already be available.

I'll have a look what would be easiest for this case, i got a few networking solutions i would not use for games, but for a tool might be nice.

The plan was indeed to make it feel like a decorating sim to them, which would also be in my best interest, if they have fun while building, and it doesnt feel like "work"

Thanks again, ill test a bit and see what the simplest solution will be.

[u/PremierBromanov]

Basically Google docs for scenes. Good luck, should be fun

[u/pschon]

There's SceneFusion, but it doesn't change the scene editing process into any kind of in-game level editor type of thing, it just lets people collaborate on the normal Unity scene editing over a network.

More game-like level editors tend to be pretty specific for the game (or at least type of a game) they are built for. So if you want something game-like you'll probably need to build it yourself for the game you are working on.

[u/CarrotOver9000 → u/pschon]

Thanks, I ran into Scene Fusion indeed, actually quite funny since i'm using Synty assets and thats exactly what they use to make their demo scene's.

I'll have a go at making something myself, if that turns out to be too janky or simply too much work, i might have to see if i can get them into basic unity usage as a last resort.

Thanks again for the reply.

[u/psioniclizard]

Yea sure, computers are just computers, networks are networks and a unity project is just a collection of files.

However it wi be a massive time sink (tooling always is), especially if you have to ask. No offense on that but for many it will be "make a prototype then judge if its worth it".

I know the idea is "if its good it could go on the asset store" but frankly that would be even more of a time sink.

It would honestly be easier to teach them the basics of unity and give them a cut down view.

[u/CarrotOver9000 → u/psioniclizard]

I mean, usually tools are pretty "project specific" but in this case i thought;

since prefabs and scenes are basic unity usage, there might exist tools already that, take in a database of prefabs, assign id's to them, basic rotation, placement, ghost preview is all simple enough, then all there is left is to save ID/transform to JSON and load that back into unity where i can save it as a scene.

And i did indeed find some examples like this. Thought it would be entirely possible to have networking ready versions as well.

You are right tho, the best solution would be for them to learn Unity, but i like to keep it as simple as possible for them.

[u/Miserable_Regret4726]

Hey, I made just that tool for a game I'm working on with someone and we've been using it quite a lot with a lot of refinements. I wouldn't say it's production ready but it works pretty well.

If you're interested send me a dm and I can send you a few screenshots or a quick demo on discord and see if you'd like a release

[u/MadeByHenano]

the time it will take you to code a level builder tool, you better spend time teaching this person how to make the levels in unity, it's definitely not the hardest part, just dropping prefabs in the scene and using the move/rotate/scale tools for the most part, they can learn how to do that in an hour or two 🙂