Platform Popularity and Industry Usage

Unity is one of the most widely used game engines in the video games industry. It is currently the most popular engine for games published on Steam [8]. Unity’s popularity ensures long-term support, frequent updates, and an extensive network of compatible tools and workflows.

Ease of Use

Unity offers an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it accessible to individuals new to game development. Its design tools and workflow are intuitive, reducing the learning curve. Additionally, Unity offers a comprehensive learning platform through Unity Learn [9], which provides step-by-step tutorials for a wide range of topics. Another key advantage is the Unity Asset Store, which includes a vast collection of both free and paid assets. These premade assets significantly reduce development time by providing ready-made models, animations, and scripts.

Community and Documentation

Unity boasts one of the largest and most active game development communities, offering extensive documentation, forums, tutorials, and third-party plugins. The active Unity community makes it easier to troubleshoot issues and find reusable solutions. This reduces development roadblocks and supports faster learning.

Scripting and Language Support

Unity uses C# as its primary scripting language, which is known for being easy to learn, especially when compared to more complex languages like C++. C# provides strong object-oriented programming (OOP) features, making it highly suitable for structuring game logic and managing in-game interactions. It also offers a good balance between performance and simplicity, making it a preferred choice for game developers.

Asset Style

To further ensure smooth performance, we chose to use low-poly 3D assets. Low-poly models use fewer vertices and faces, reducing the computational load on both the GPU and CPU. This results in:

• Faster rendering
• Quicker load times
• Smoother frame rates

These benefits are essential for our target hardware—low-end school laptops.

Additionally, low-poly assets typically have a smaller memory footprint, which helps:

• Reduce installation size
• Minimise RAM usage during gameplay

This makes the game more accessible and efficient, especially for devices with limited storage and memory capacity.

Render Pipeline

Choosing the right render pipeline is crucial, especially when developing games for low-end hardware. In Unity, a render pipeline refers to the series of processes and operations that the engine uses to render images to the screen. This includes lighting, shading, and post-processing effects [11].

Unity offers three main render pipelines [12]:

• Built-in Render Pipeline: The default pipeline, offering limited customisation.
• Universal Render Pipeline (URP): A scriptable pipeline designed for performance and flexibility. It supports scalable graphics across different platforms.
• High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP): Designed for high-end platforms to produce high-fidelity graphics.

We evaluated each pipeline based on the following criteria:

We ultimately chose the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) because it delivers excellent performance on low-end hardware, as proven in Superhero Sportsday, and provides better flexibility and long-term support than the Built-in pipeline.

HDRP is unnecessary for our game, as our goal is performance over realism. While the Built-in pipeline could have sufficed, URP offers superior control and optimisation.

Sloyd.ai a href="#ref13">[13]

Advantages: Free to use, extremely easy to use, and delivers fast results. It generates models from basic text prompts, making it beginner-friendly.

Disadvantages: Offers very limited control and only supports simple geometric shapes. It cannot generate characters or animals. Models generated had a realistic art style.

Conclusion: Sloyd.ai is suitable for quick prototyping and basic models, but lacks the flexibility for our game’s visual and gameplay needs.

Rodin AI [14]

Advantages: Offers advanced geometry editing and produces stylised model outputs. The interface is user-friendly.

Disadvantages: Requires highly specific prompts for good results. The free plan has limited export options, lacks rigging support, and only provides basic texture quality. Many key features are locked behind a paid subscription.

Conclusion: Rodin AI offers powerful geometry editing capabilities but is not ideal for animated or rigged assets. It also requires significant fine-tuning for consistent results, making it less efficient for rapid development.

Tripo AI [15]

Advantages: Offers auto-rigging and animation tools for humanoid characters, however it is a paid feature. Also supports negative prompting to improve fine-tuning, and offers a clean and intuitive interface.

Disadvantages: The free plan is highly limited, with restrictions on model complexity. Outputs often lack detail, and the rigged animations require significant post manual adjustments.

Conclusion: Tripo AI shows promise for character animation, but its restricted free tier and lack of refinement made it less suitable for our project.

Meshy AI [16]

Advantages: Supports text-to-3D generation, texture editing, and produces optimised geometry. Compared to other tools, Meshy’s outputs are more consistent with a low-poly aesthetic. It also allows for basic texture customisation within the platform.

Disadvantages: Occasional style inconsistencies and unpredictable prompt results.

Conclusion: Meshy AI offered the best balance between output quality, low-poly style compatibility, and ease of use.

Stable Diffusion [17]

We used Stable Diffusion, a powerful open-source text-to-image generative model, to create 2D assets, such as panels and buttons, and visual concepts for our game.

Advantages: Stable Diffusion offers precise control through text prompts, and supports popular extensions like ControlNet and Adetailer. Using prompts such as “Nintendo 64 art style”, “Wii Sports graphics” and “kid-friendly low-poly design”, we could tailor the output to our intended aesthetic. Its open-source nature and active community made it a flexible and accessible solution.

Disadvantages: Requires careful tuning to avoid overly realistic or inconsistent results.

Conclusion: Stable Diffusion was a valuable tool for generating 2D assets and concept art due to its cost-free access, wide support, and flexibility.

After evaluating several tools, we ultimately adopted a combination of Meshy AI and Stable Diffusion to assist with asset creation. Our choice was driven by performance needs, time constraints, budget limitations, and stylistic consistency.

Limitations of 3D AI Tools

• Rigging and animation were paywalled on all platforms.
• Generated characters and houses had geometry issues (e.g., broken chimneys, distorted faces).
• Visual style mismatch with our low-poly winter aesthetic.

Due to these issues, we relied on Unity Asset Store models for characters and larger structures.

Example Use Case: Kayak Customisation

To enhance player engagement and personalisation, we used Meshy AI to generate kayaks in multiple colours. This aligned with feedback from our industry partners, who wanted children to choose equipment they liked.

Challenges with Free Plans

• Tools like Meshy AI used a credit-based model.
• We often hit credit limits before generating all needed variations.
• Stable Diffusion required careful prompt tuning to avoid inappropriate outputs.

Conclusion

While generative AI could not replace traditional modelling for all assets, it significantly accelerated our workflow in key areas. These tools enhanced visual diversity, supported player personalisation, and allowed us to stay within the technical constraints of our low-end school laptop targets.