Second Wind Urghhh, I'm so hungry, Ludo. We’ve got no money,
no food. What should we do? [Ludo says rob a bank] We can’t make an asset flip game, Ludes; we're better than that. [Ludo said rob a billionaire] You’re right; we do need the money. Desperate times call for desperate measures;
we have to become the enemy to survive. Okay, Okay, I'll help you make
one, but we have to be
fast and do the least amount of work possible, alright? Oh god, here we
go. Welcome to Design Delve. So, before we dive into the filth rumble pits,
what is an asset flip? An asset flip is any game where the majority of its models, sounds, or
even its entire systems have been bought from a marketplace. Now, this isn’t inherently a
bad thing. Creating games requires a wealth of experience in many different fields: art,
sound, programming, level design, writing, and all of these things need to come together to
form a cohesive experience. It's understandable It's completely understandable that
one person or a small team might not have the skills necessary to do all of this themselves. Assets stores exist to supplement this lack
of skill and provide jobs for freelance artists. There are positives here, but the negatives
begin where the assets flipped start to outweigh the original content. This is how games start to
look, feel and sound the exact same. of a severe lack of experience in the field or
a need to get a game out quickly to make money This can be done because of a severe
lack of experience in one field or a need to get the game out quickly to make money fast. And in our case, we don't have three
years to handcraft a thoughtful experience, so time to squirt something out as fast as we can
to make at least £1.50 so we can share ourselves a draw. So, to have the greatest chance of success while
flipping, we need to pick a genre that people will So, to have the greatest chance of
success while flipping, we need to pick a genre that people will
religiously buy regardless of quality. So let's just combine the three worst offenders. So survival, zombie, shooter. Perfect. The next choice is going to
be, what engine are we going to use? [Ludo said whatever engine we please] Unreal Engine 5. That's a good choice, yeah. It's got a really good marketplace to
kick flip off of, and UE5 will take care of most of the heavy lifting for us by default. Okay, so shall we get a quick grey-boxed
environment going so we can prototype some mechanics? Oh, you've already found a
bunch of environments on a marketplace? Um, oh, actually, there's a lot
of really good environments here, Ludes. We could spend a little
bit of money and get this one. It's pretty good. It's got loads of- Oh,
you found another one for free. Okay, let's load it up and take a look. So this is an Asset Pack, Ludes. It gives us a bunch of models all textured
and ready to go for us to build our own environment. I've never used an asset
pack before, but I'm a level designer, so it shouldn't take
me too long to get this done. It came with this default example level, so you can just take a
look at that, get some inspiration. [Ludo would rather have scritches]
Just use the example level. Ludo, come on, that's low. Okay, I'm not happy about
it, but we are on a time limit. All right, what next? The character, the mechanics. Zombies. You want to start with zombies straight away? Jesus. [zombie noises] Okay, all right. I found a bunch of zombie models. Surprisingly, there's a lot of them, so which one do you want to use? Specifically, the Nazi zombie. Classic. Okay, let's just get it in engine. Ooh, I think we might
have run into a problem, Lutz. This might be a weird hurdle to jump. I got some experience with animating, but I'm a level and sound designer. It's going to take me a long time. Wait, what's this then? Mixamo. They've got models and
animations all ready to go for free? Jesus. Okay, well then let's just
get some generic zombie animations for idle walking, attack and death, and just animation blend between them. I'm going to need to set up montages eventually, but this will do for now. Because we've got bigger problems, Ludo. This isn't a game. You can't play it. We need to get a character set up. Let me do it. Luckily, UE5 comes with
default first and third person characters, so that's basically ready to go. We just need to go on
Mixamo and find a suitable model. Hmm. Maybe this one, it looks like it might fit in the post-apocalyptic
world we're trying to create. This... Mr. Clean, explain yourself. God, you're cute. Okay, whatever. Let's find a bunch of
animations and get this bold beauty in engine. Yeah, let's make sure he can walk, run, vaulting? Nah, we don't need that. All right, character implementation completed. Wait, why does he look so shiny? Just add rain noise. Genius. No rain effect, just the sound. Okay. So you can walk around and avoid zombies, but we need more than this, Ludo. Shall we add some mechanics or something? You want me to add a dog? That's not a mechanic, Ludo. I'm not adding a dog before we add mechanics. That's just dumb. Ah, fuck. Right. Okay, there's a dog now. Are you happy? I'm adding some gameplay. You cannot stop me. Let's just do weapons. Luckily, a lot of asset flips want guns. Who'd have thought? So we have a wealth of options to choose from. They come with everything we need. The 3D models, textures, and animations. They're super simple to get them in, but because these assets
weren't made to fit together, our character and
weapon animations don't line up, and there's no sound effects. This looks and sounds like hot garbage. Ludo, you know how important sound is to me. Please, just let me make
some weapon sound effects quickly. Oh, you've found a sound pack for that as well. Okay, let's try it out... This is a fucking mess. We've got to go through and fix all of this. First of all, the environment's too dark. Add a torch. Add it where? On their hand. Okay, I see. I guess this kind of helps, but that's just
illuminated the rest of the problems. Did you realize that this
asset pack was set in South America? That's the Brazilian flag. Wait, you want me to replace it with this? Is this because you want
people to know you made this? Ludo, I don't think you want that. There are still so many issues. The doors don't work. You can't walk up the stairs. You can't vault. You can't hip-fire. You can't even look up. How have we overlooked the Z-axis? What? Ship it? Ludo, have you been
taking producer pills or something? Why is that zombie doinga thriller dance? Okay, I'm done. I'm done. This game doesn't even have a goal. What is the aim of this game? Just don't die. Ludo, you can't die. There is no fail state. Okay, let's at least add a death state. Add a fail state. Just get this in, and then we'll have a gameplay loop. See? There we go. I'm dead. Done. What do you mean we're done? This is a mess. Fixing all of this is
gonna take a bunch of time and money that we just don't have right now. I suck. I'm not a pro asset flipper, Ludo. I make all of my level
and sound designs from scratch in a completely different engine. And whatever I can't
handle, like animations or art, I work with a team of wonderful game designers who can do those things. It's a collaborative experience. Big shout out to the bog team, by the way. We cobbled this together in a few hours. It's a Frankenstein's monster stitched together with pieces of other people's garbage that's not designed to work together. Of course it's gonna suck. And this sort of
situation happens a lot with asset flip projects. Developers getting over the
heads with promises on Kickstarter, pressure from producers and publishers, facilitating the need to use marketplaces. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Flipping and reusing
assets happens all of the time in your favorite games, I guarantee you. But at what point does it become a problem? When a project is 90% flipped assets with barely any
original content, missing features and riddled with bugs and
it still took them three years to cobble it together, what was the focus on? Where was that time spent? Because it wasn't on the player experience. [barking] Marketing? Yeah, I think you're right, Ludo. If we put all of our energy
into fixing up this game visually, and film it from the right
angles and clean it up where we can, we could make a convincing trailer. We might even be able to
trick Nvidia into promoting it. Alright, next episode,
we'll dive into how simple it is to take a garbage game like
this and advertise it convincingly. But before I go do that, what do you think? At what point does asset flipping
move from being a skill supplement to a scam? Let me know down below because
I would love to discuss this with you. Alright, I'm gonna go clean up this mess, but consider checking out our Patreon so me and Ludo don't have to do
anything like this in the future ever again. Alright, say goodbye, Ludo. Okay, see you later guys. Support Design Delve at
PATREON.COM/SECONDWINDGROUP THIS VIDEO WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY Closed Captions by @willcblogs
