What's the most cost-effective way to automate builds for multiple platforms using an asset pipeline tool?

The most cost-effective approach is usually:

1. Use one build machine with a command-line asset pipeline

   • Run your asset pipeline tool headless from the CLI.
   • Script it to build each target platform in sequence.
   • This avoids paying for multiple always-on build agents.

2. Cache aggressively

   • Cache imported assets, intermediate artifacts, and dependencies.
   • Only rebuild changed assets or changed platform variants.
   • This often saves more money than adding hardware.

3. Use a single source of truth for configs

   • Keep per-platform settings in config files, not in manual steps.
   • Generate builds from the same pipeline definition to reduce errors and rework.

4. Trigger builds only when needed

   • Use CI/CD hooks to run builds on:
     • source changes
     • asset changes
     • release tags
   • Avoid constant polling or scheduled full rebuilds unless necessary.

5. Parallelize only where it’s worth it

   • If one machine can build platforms fast enough, keep it serial.
   • If builds are slow, use a small pool of cheap ephemeral runners rather than dedicated long-lived machines.

6. Store outputs in artifact storage

   • Upload built packages to cloud/object storage.
   • This keeps the build machine lean and lets you reuse artifacts for testing and release.

In practice

The cheapest reliable setup is often:

• one CI job
• one build container or VM
• scripted CLI builds for each platform
• incremental caching
• artifact upload

If you want, I can also suggest a concrete low-cost setup for a specific asset pipeline tool like Unity Addressables, Unreal, Godot, or a custom pipeline.