[DAO:cd271ca] SDK7 Unity Editor Toolkit

Thank you! My main concern is the price tag. I know you guys do good work, but it seems like a lot.

thanks for the clarification, these interactions i think is the most attractive things for creators. If the visual graph is too hard, then maybe putting it into the next stage.

This tool seems to cater to a very niche audience within the community, seasoned Unity developers. Most DCL builders may not be familiar with using Unity or be looking to learn a new software at this time.

The current builder tools (existing and in development) are designed to be more user-friendly for a broader audience. I think those tools are more relevant to our current user base. As Unknower mentioned, there’s the legacy builder, the new builder, DCL-Edit, DCL-Connect, VLM, the In-World Builder and the AI SDK7 builder.

As the community continues to grow and we see more unity developers face the challenges outlined in this proposal, it could be a good idea to integrate this tool with the AI builder.

Given the size of the target user base and the existence of similar and more user-friendly tools, I don’t think the cost is justified or a good expenditure of DAO funds.

While it’s clearly an excellent tool and the proposal has vision, it may not be what the majority of the community needs at this time.

I hear your point Kat, there are many other tools that allows you to build on Decentraland, yet all of those force you to become familiar with DCL development from scratch, making the learning curve quite slow for newcomers. Or they allow you build very limited experiences in DCL.

None of those tools allow you to manage, iterate and update efficiently when developing larger complex scenes.

Unity is the one of the most used game engines in the world and a large range of metaverse platforms already have Unity tools to develop scenes.
This tool will help to onboard already existing metaverse creators to transfer their know how without having to invest a huge a amount of time into learning a whole new development environment as they might be already familiar with Unity.

I believe this based on our own experience, this tool has definitely helped new artist and developers in our studio to become familiar with DCL way faster.

It is indeed a professional tool for people looking to do more complex things and an alternative to all the user-friendly tools. DCL has been around for over 3 years now and there is already a good base of seasoned creators who might need something more.

I think my feedback has been misinterpreted to some degree. My comment was that there aren’t many seasoned Unity developers in Decentraland, as most builders rely on other tools.

Unity is a widely used game engine, but it has just a high a learning curve as the tools you are trying to improve. So I can see the benefit for it, but it currently applies to a very small number of people. If the goal is to make building in DCL easier for existing metaverse creators, as you mention, then an AI tool such as the one already being developed would likely be more efficient for everyone.

There are already enacted grants with improved SDK editor functionality such as “DCL-Edit V3- A No Code Editor for the Decentraland SDK 7”

I’m not too sure if we need another one at this point.

How does yours differ enough to be valuable to DCL?

I think this is an important project. If Decentraland wants to attract the best talent from the world of game development then professionals need to be able to use their preferred tool set. It is a risk for a seasoned Unity developer to jump out of the world in which they have based their career to work with a fringe set of tools that are less powerful.

Whereas if they do not need to change their tool chain then Decentraland poses less of a risk to their own career development and as a result working in Decentraland can be an attractive chapter in any game development career.

One of the biggest talents I think the Decentraland community has ever seen left this eco system because he wanted to work entirely with Unity as his career choice.

Unity is an incredibly important source for high quality scene development, having a good SDK7 library for Unity is a must. On top of this, our entire metaverse runs on .gltf extensions and is a roadblock to development for every single Unity developer if it is not supported natively.

While I have not seen or used Polygonal Minds sdk6 version, I do have faith based on the quality of the projects they create both inside and outside of DCL that these tools would eliminate this stepping stone to create fully extended model solutions.

Voting yes.

P.s. it would be really cool if the system also supported OMI standards for a potential future vehicle/seating implementation:

  1. Will the tool be free for anyone to use?
  2. How will the Unity community be informed, so that we realize the benefit of many seasoned Unity develpers becoming involved in DCL building?

RIP unity …

My understanding is that it is only those needing to distribute a Unity Runtime will have to pay a fee. So what is proposed in this post could still be utilised without any charge by those running the free/personal versions of Unity.

Would be good to have @kourtin comment on this and in relation to point 1. of @CarlFravel’s questions.

Ok . Let’s see. The game dev community is in uproar atm.

Hello, @Billyteacoin , @james , @SugarClub , @Morph , @CarlFravel ! Thank you for taking the time to visit and share your thoughts. I’d like to address each of your concerns individually:

  • @Billyteacoin : DCL-Edit v3 and the toolkit we’re proposing serve different purposes. DCL-Edit focuses on Decentraland-specific development after it’s already started and introduces a new editor standard. Our toolkit, on the other hand, emphasizes scene layout, aligning more closely with the familiar Unity workflow. In essence, our tool facilitates Unity-based creation that can later be adapted for Decentraland. DCL-Edit, in contrast, is confined to the Decentraland ecosystem, making cross-compatibility with other Metaverse platforms challenging.
  • @james : Thank you for recognizing the value of our toolkit in helping experienced developers transition into Decentraland’s development framework. It indeed provides a fast pipeline for exporting content to Decentraland while ensuring that your work remains compatible with established development practices.
  • @Morph : Absolutely! Our toolkit includes a GLTF export pipeline, allowing you to choose between packaged GLB+textures or GLTF+.bin+Textures file models. Integration updates for OMI standards (or any additional components) are in the works to convert Unity instructions into SDK7 elements seamlessly.
  • @CarlFravel : Great questions!
    1. Yes, this tool will be freely available, open for contributions, and developed transparently on GitHub as part of our grants initiative. We’re also exploring the possibility of distributing it through the Unity Asset Store to increase its visibility.
    2. Our marketing budget will be allocated to create tutorials, documentation, and social media posts to highlight the simplicity, accessibility, and scalability of building for Decentraland via Unity.
  • In response to @SugarClub 's concerns about recent changes in the Unity Engine’s business model, I’d like to clarify that these changes do not impact SDKs, tools, or any editor functionality, as @james has pointed out. Our toolkit remains unaffected by these changes. However, it’s worth noting that dcl-edit may face challenges if these changes are implemented, given its reliance on Unity runtime.

I hope this clarifies the key points for each of you. If you have any further questions or need additional information, please feel free to ask.

kourtin

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Voting no, but only because I think that the Mobile Godot Client proposal should get priority for this quarters budget. Would be awesome to have DCL fully functional on mobile asap!

I would support this proposal for next quarters budget.

(I still think platform category should have a way bigger budget so when two good platform proposals like this happen, they can both be funded right away. Reduce all other categories, and increase the platform budget. These are the types of grants that will prepare DCL for mainstream users and make it easier for us developers to create better content also. Funding the platform category at this stage of DCL is the most important one for the long term success of this space.)

This proposal is a huge win for bringing external talent to building inside DCL, one of the major kickbacks i’ve experienced trying to bring devs in is having to learn a unique toolkit/adapt to the dev environment. The amount of Unity devs far outnumber the current SDK7 builder pool so it would be great to bring them in. I see this is a far greater benefit for onboarding content creators and expanding the pond to an ocean. No point being a big fish in a small pond etc… More creators, more content, more experiences, more marketing, more users.

I’m not sure if I missed it in the proposal though but alongside the development process will you be ensuring to keep the tools up to date with potential updates to SDK7 that won’t be an automatic parse to your toolkit?

Cheers!

What about the new pay per install rule?

Let me point you to this blogpost - https://garry.net/posts/unity-can-get-fucked

What I personally think?

  • I’m more aligned with Garry, instead of the self-proclaimed experts on this forum :wink:

Don’t know whos Garry Newman?

  • Google is your best friend :slight_smile:

Hi all,

I’ve switched to abstain as this and the Godot client are directly in competition for the remaining funds from this quarter - I do believe that the Godot client is a must, and we cannot afford to lag development there, so I have moved this vote.

This does not reflect on this proposal nor the team, but is simply a logistical decision that must be made based on our platform grant limits - please ensure this gets re-requested as the new quarter limits open and I will happily vote yes immediately for the same reasons above.

It is a shame that the platform grants are more limited versus some of the larger community building grants being given out - it seems clear that while both these platform grants are requesting large amounts - it is definitively worthy of our funds to contribute to the actual development environment for creators.

SDK7 Unity Editor Toolkit

This proposal is now in status: PASSED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 53% 7,736,798 VP (103 votes)
  • No 12% 1,931,444 VP (22 votes)
  • Abstain 35% 5,426,024 VP (19 votes)

There was a lot of last minute vote changes happening on this one. Initially thought the proposal was not controversial given early results but now i understand it was controversial given competing budget with the Godot proposal.

Is that a normal-frequent dynamic? Some kind of time-based vote lock would be good to avoid bad dynamics like this.

Also agree with @Morph that it’s a shame that we need to pick one over the other in this specific case. We do need both development efforts and while the treasury isn’t unlimited - now is a perfect time to invest in building platforms/toolkits/clients etc.

SDK7 Unity Editor Toolkit

This proposal has been ENACTED by a DAO Committee Member (0x88013d7ed946dd8292268a6ff69165a97a89a639)

Vesting Contract Addresses: 0xe426b284b61f6bacee5efe355f186625045142ee