Back in 2009 we (at that time “we”) at Unity packed some of the reusable building blocks and released something called Standard Assets. Really this was just a zip file with a bunch of shaders, some pre-setup game objects, blob lights, cameras, etc. Later on we added a locomotion system, skybox, characters and other less basic stuff. And this is how most Unity-authored demos look recognisable up to these days. That Standard Assets pack was imported by default into a new Unity project, I bet this did help Unity to emerge as a prototyping tool.
Now the reason I am writing this here, is that King teams who use Defold claim, that they can prototype faster with Defold than with Unity. Despite all drag-n-drops and assets in their store.
This statement is quite new to me, as the common “industry” statement used to be “ah we just throw in everything to the scene, draft some ugly code to Update and can assemble a quick proto in days”.
So I wonder, what is the experience of people in this forum? What tool is the fastest for you, if the goal is to quickly test a game idea?
And if you do prototype faster with Defold, what are the first assets/libraries you add immediately?
In the meantime, I’ll try to assemble some of the commonly used pieces of functionality (like characters from the War Battles demo, A* by @JCash, probably a camera and alike) into a fast ptototyping kit or Defold quick start kit. I’ll keep you posted at the old thread: Set of assets, libraries and plugins for quick starts