SAM - The Streamable Assets Manager is primarily focused on three critical tasks.
1) The conversion of existing over-bloated scenes into bite sized streamable assets (which we call Streamable Asset Chunks).
2) Managing said Asset Chunks in a way that is user and editor friendly.
3) Streaming those assets dynamically in-game.
The first two tasks are primarily carried out using the World Designer Tool, while the third is achieved using a combination of useful Scriptable Assets and Components.
There are several core tenants that have guided how this product has been built, which should give you a basic understanding of our design philosophy. Do you care? Probably not . . . however, we think they're worth mentioning anyway!
1) Flexibility: This product, like its forbearer (The Terrain Slicing & Dynamic Loading Kit) is based on a system of flexibility, made possible via Unity's built in Component Based system. While there are a few core classes that contain a ton of code, we have strived to separate functionality out into individual components that can be interchanged in order to modify functionality.
2) Providing A Core Foundation: All components and Scriptable Assets have default implementations which should work across a variety of different project types. These core implementations are robust and should be all that 90% of users need, however we understand that there are many unique projects out there, and it's impossible to cover every use case. As such . . .
3) Extensibility: If one of the core component/assets doesn't do what you need it to do, extend the base component/asset yourself to create a custom implementation! This extensibility is made possible via the component based system, and for assets, the power of Scriptable Assets. Note, we will always strive to guide you in creating these custom components, however doing so will still require some basic (or in some cases advanced) knowledge of coding!
You will find information on creating custom components within the Chapter for the component type, under the name Custom X, where X is the name of the component type. For extensible Scriptable Assets, information can be found in the Custom X Sections (where X is the name of the Scriptable Asset) within the Scriptable Assets Chapter.