The World Designer Tool is an incredibly robust tool that reduces the normal pain that comes with working with a large quantity of individualized, segmented assets, which is par for the course with a streamable game design.
Not only does it allow you to easily make changes to existing streamable Asset Chunks, it allows you to generate new assets and destroy old ones (that are no longer needed) on the fly with very minimal effort.
In addition, through the use of customizable Asset Managers, you can easily add support for new asset types that Unity may add in the future, or custom Asset Types that are proprietary to your project.
To launch the World Designer Tool for the first time, navigate to your World and click on the World Designer tab. So long as you have at least one valid Zone Grouping on the World and a valid World Designer Data asset assigned (more info can be found in the dedicated World Designer Data Section within this Chapter), you should be able to use the Launch World Designer button.
Once you've launched the World Designer Tool once, you can dock it and start editing any World in the scene straight from the tool window, which is typically easier than launching it via the World inspector.
The World Designer Tool eliminates the standard workflow of dragging and dropping your assets into the scene in order to edit them. Instead, you can use a visual based approach to load and unload the assets as you need to iterate on them (using the L* and U* buttons).
Right clicking the L* button performs a special operation called Chained Loading. This loading operation not only loads the Asset Chunks from the current LOD Group Cells that you have selected, it also loads any Cells from Chained Groupings that overlap the selected Cells (assuming that Grouping has a matching LOD Group).
Chaining can be configured using the Chaining tab in the Operation Settings area of the Tool. Just enable the Groupings that you want to be chained together!
Similarily, you can perform Chained Unloading by right clicking the U.
Note that only the L and U buttons can perform Chained Loading/Unloading. Any other operations that load or unload cells will not utilize chaining.
While the tool offers the flexibility of loading and unloading specific cells, it also offers the convenience of loading or unloading entire regions of cells with a single button press. This is extremely useful as your World's become more complex, as it allows you to load cells from multiple Zones and Groupings with a single button press.
Rather than having to go through and save each scene or prefab Asset Chunk individually, the World Designer Tool helps streamline the saving process.
To manually save changes made to your content, simply select the Cells which have changes (marked by an asterisk on the Cell), and use the Save button.
The Tool can also be configured to automatically save dirty Cells when they are unloaded, or to display a prompt so you can choose whether they are saved or not.
Using the World Designer Tool to save Cells/Asset Chunks is always advised. Not only does it ensure all Asset Chunks associated with a Cell are saved, it ensures the Asset Chunks are in the correct format for loading at runtime.
--Special Note--
How Asset Chunks are saved is controlled by Asset Managers. You can support the saving of custom asset types or introduce alternative saving techniques by creating custom Asset Managers.
Sometimes you may have Asset Chunks that contain child objects (a forest chunk containing many trees, for instance), and you may wish to reposition those child objects within the scene. Or you may have game objects that you wish to remove completely, or new objects that you have added but not assigned to Streamable Cells. Under all these circumstances, game objects may need to be parented or un-parented from Cells' Root Asset Chunks.
While you can do this manually, the World Designer tool can handle moving, adding, and/or removing multiple child objects at once while keeping Asset Chunks well organized (e.g., ensuring that each Asset Chunk belonging to a Cell has a roughly equal number of child objects). It will also automatically handle the saving of any modified Asset Chunks, the enabling of new Cells that are needed, the disabling of Cells that no longer have objects, and the destruction of empty Asset Chunks.
--Special Note--
How Asset Chunks are deleted from the Project is controlled by Asset Managers. You can support the deleting of custom asset types or introduce alternative deletion techniques by creating custom Asset Managers.
While the World Designer Tool is not capable of automatically creating new Asset Chunks on its own, it can interface with Asset Creators in order to requests new Asset Chunks be created. This is a powerful feature without which the manipulation operations described above would not be possible.
A Default Asset Creator is included with the Streamable Assets Manager, however you also have the power to add custom ones that add support for custom asset types or simply change the way in which Asset Chunks are created. Asset Creators are assigned on a per LOD Zone Grouping basis, so every LOD of every Zone Grouping can make use of a unique one. Please take a look at the Asset Creators Section within this Chapter if you want more information!
Interested in the Default Asset Creator instead?
The World Designer Tool offers an alternative way to enable and disable Streamable Grid Cells, which is especially useful for larger Streamable Grids where enabling and disabling the Cells becomes cumbersome using the Streamable Grid inspector. Do note that enabling cells that don't have Asset Chunks associated with them will result in runtime errors, so if using this approach, it's recommended to load each newly loaded Cell using the L* button, for every LOD on the Zone Grouping. Assuming an Asset Creator is assigned to each LOD, this will trigger the Asset Creation dialog so that you can create the needed Asset Chunks.
The World Designer Tool also gives you the option of removing any Asset Chunks associated with a Cell you are about to disable from your project. It is recommended to always remove the Asset Chunks when prompted to ensure that asset chunks are not left behind in your project (though of course, you can always manually delete them as well).
--Pro Tip--
When Asset Chunks are removed via the World Designer Tool, they will still exists in your trash/recycling bin. Make sure to clear your trash/bin to free up valuable hard drive space!