CROSS PLATFORM ASSET MANAGEMENT

[frozen osprey]

Hi everyone!
I am working on a cross platform game and we are looking on ways to make high quality graphic for PC and optimized on mobile, but for that we need different assets / settings on each platform. So the question is, what is the best way to manage this?

the way I thought as solution is: create an empty prefab that carries both assets: for mobile and pc. then later create a script to turn on the one I need, so in case im running on mobile, it turns off the pc version inside the prefab.

I appreciate any experience on it, thank you.

[ember geode]

No better to find a way to have completely separate prefabs (with a common core) so in your mobile build you don't include the super hd things for PC. Size matters loads on mobile

I think addressables would work for this, but somehow you have to decide what bundle you want

[broken lion]

on a local manner you can set per platform overrides for assets and each stores the compression/resolution settings on each platform

if you're working with 3D models I suggest going with low poly and use normal maps that you can control on a per platform basis

as Roycon said, addressables work, and so do asset bundles, but you'll have to build the bundle for each platform

both asset bundles and addressables support cloud delivery which greatly reduces your original install size (beneficial for mobile platforms)

[high peak]

Use the built-in Level of Detail system.

In the Quality settings window, you can configure LOD settings that affect all GameObjects in your Project... Maximum LOD Level: Exclude meshes above a specified LOD level from your build.

So then you can cap your mobile builds to lower fidelity than PC. And it should be useful for in-game Quality settings too.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LevelOfDetail.html

I think the reason you'd go for addressables instead is to support different max LOD on different devices with the same build (so old iPhones don't download massive meshes but new ones do and it's the same Appstore app).

[stuck cedar]

When it comes to true crossplatform management, one way to do it is to keep your main git branch on the most high-end quality, and have a set of branches for other more restricted platform where all the main changes are always resolved in a "keep mine" strategy.

You dev on that main branch, pull on the platform branches and merge conflicts by keeping the local changes always.

(you can automatize that)

It's maybe slightly advanced in term of Unity architecture, you can't do that if your project is a mess.