Issue #154 - Storytelling

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Lessons on storytelling, some tools to help you improve, and lots more. Enjoy!

3 lessons in storytelling from Inscryption - Inscryption launched in 2021 to critical acclaim, winning top prizes at the Independent Games Festival and Games Developers Choice Awards, among others.
Unity

The Video Game Storytelling Summit - Upgrade Your Video Game Storytelling In a few days, four of the most published game writers to date will get together to chat about storytelling, game narrative, character narrative, gameplay, and more at the Video Game Storytelling Summit.
This is a one-day free online event, and it's open to the first 200 people that sign up.
[Sept 8, starting at 1pm EST]
Classpert.com

How the "magic" of Immortality was informed, but not defined, by film technique - Sam Barlow, the writer and director of this interactive mystery, title discusses "creating the Dark Souls of watching a bunch of movies."
Joel Couture

Game AI Pro - Welcome! It's all free! All book chapters are free to download. Enjoy!
gameaipro.com

We gathered data about ~54000 games in Steam and combined it in one spreadsheet. Feel free to use it whatever you like! - In our document you can find various open data for ~54,000 games on the platform, approximate popularity and revenue data for various tags. [Direct link to sheet]
reddit.com

Simplex Derivatives - Analytical Normals and Tangents. This is the second tutorial in a series about pseudorandom surfaces. In it we will calculate derivatives of simplex noise and use them to generate normal and tangent vectors.
catlikecoding.com

Avoid Prefab Hell with ScriptableObject Services in Unity - n this article, I'll cover using ScriptableObjects to create "service" assets, which will provide reusable game logic alongside settings that reduce dependence on the prefab workflow and introduce several other benefits.
Steve Mcilwain

Pick up these helpful tips on advanced profiling - In June, we hosted a webinar featuring experts from Arm, the Unity Accelerate Solutions team, and SYBO Games, the creator of Subway Surfers.
Unity

Accessing IBufferElementData elements in a job struct - I highly recommend using job structs instead of the magical Entities.ForEach for some reasons. However, I think I haven’t shown how to access IBufferElementData elements in a job struct like IJobEntityBatch, yet. I’ll show you how in this short post.
COFFEE BRAIN GAMES

A CFO’s Guide to Building a Financially Sustainable Studio - For any game studio to go the distance, it needs a robust financial strategy.
lootlocker.com

Unity 2022.2.0 Beta 7 - Unity 2022.2.0 Beta 7 has been released.
unity3d.com

Videos

Risk and Reward - In the Game Essence category, I'll explore the thinking behind "game essence" and how it impacts the push and pull at the heart of games.
Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games

Talking with Unity CEO John Riccitiello - GameDev, Unity, and the Future of Gaming - Talking with Unity CEO John Riccitiello about Unity3D, the merger with ironsource, the weta acquisition, rendering pipelines, dots, netcode & multiplayer, and the future of Unity & gamedev.
Jason Weimann

How I Fixed the Ocean in My Pirate Game - Pirates spend a lot of time on the ocean, so the ocean better look good! It's time to give my pirate game's water an overhaul and make it look much better.
Tom Weiland

The Burden of Proof: Narrative Deduction Mechanics for Detective Games - In this GDC 2022 session, inkle’s Jon Ingold outlines how Overboard!'s deduction system works, and show how it tackles the problem of proving specific feedback without removing the need for player creativity, and he'll demonstrate how the approach could be applied to more right-way-up detective stories.
GDC

How to procedurally place Items and Enemies in Unity 2D - In this tutorial series you will learn about how to procedurally place Items and Enemies on a 2D Dungeon map.
Sunny Valley Studio

Volumetric fog post processing effect | Unity shader stream - Twitch stream recording from August 22nd 2022, working on porting a volumetric fog solution to PPv2 in Unity3D.
Harry Alisavakis

Why I use Wave Function Collapse to create levels for my game - this was so much work i'm about to (wave function) collapse
.
jdh

Assets

Unity Tools Bundle - The ultimate Unity game creator’s kit.
Build the game you’re envisioning with this massive bundle of versatile tools for Unity, the world’s leading platform for real-time content creation! Featuring more than two dozen utilities, systems, and other assets built with game creators in mind, this bundle will help you:

• Design levels faster and build 2D and 3D worlds more efficiently
• Manage animation and motion more easily
• Create effects ranging from lighting to weather-filled skies
• Add systems for dialogue, destruction, and more And many more… Whether you’re dreaming of building a role-playing game, top-down shooter, or sci-fi mech sim, this bundle will help you turn your vision into a reality—all while supporting Gameheads! Assets included:
• Top Down Engine ($60 Value)
• Magic Light Probes ($40 Value)
• Prefab World Builder ($59.99 Value)
• UniStorm - Volumetric Clouds, Sky, Modular Weather, and Cloud Shadows ($59.99 Value)
• Smart Lighting 2D ($29 Value)
• Storyteller ($100 Value)
• DestroyIt - Destruction System ($75 Value)
• Fullscreen Editor ($20 Value)
• Better UI ($64 Value)
• Fluxy - 2.5D fluid simulator ($47 Value)
• Endless Book ($25 Value)
• Script Inspector 3 ($39 Value)
• Dialogue System For Unity ($85 Value)
• CCG Kit ($199 Value)
• Very Animation ($46 Value)
• Mech Combat Kit ($50 Value)
• Blocks Engine 2 ($35 Value)
• Train Controller (Railroad System) Ultimate Collection ($90 Value)
• Broccoli Tree Creator ($42 Value)
• Performance Tools ($59.95 Value)
• True Shadow - UI Soft Shadow and Glow
• Archimatix Pro ($90 Value)
• RPG Cameras And Controllers ($40 Value)
• Modular Motion ($49.99 Value)
• Bones Stimulator ($11.99 Value)
• 10% Off Coupon for the Unity Asset Store Humble Bundle Affiliate

Unity RTS Selection - Unity RTS-style unit selection.
lexonegit Open Source

Unity Behavior Tree Visualizer (Beta) - A tool built in Unity that draws a graph representation of behavior trees running in the scene.
Yecats Open Source

BakeShader - Unity editor tool for baking shaders to textures. Blit2D, Blit3D, or MeshRenderer (uses model UV). Adds options to Material & MeshRenderer context menus and Editor Window (under Window/Cyanilux/BakeShader).
Cyanilux Open Source

Unity-UIAnimeTool - A simple unity3d ui animation tool.
lisonghappy Open Source

UniDi - Dependency Injection for Unity.
UniDi Open Source

Unity MultiScattering Atmosphere - Atmospheric Scattering (With Multiple Scattering) for Unity
bearworks Open Source

VoxToVFX - VoxToVFX allows you to import a MagicaVoxel project into Unity using the new VFX Graph. No mesh is created, so the import process for huge world is very quick ! All voxels are particles rendered on the GPU.
Zarbuz Open Source

Lex - Lex is a high performance c # framework based on LeoEcsLite with a more user-friendly api.
SinyavtsevIlya Open Source

Unity PlayableGraph Monitor Tool - PlayableGraph monitor tool inspired by PlayableGraph Visualizer and implemented in UIElements.
SolarianZ Open Source

Free Blender material downloads since 2007 - Welcome to the Open Material Repository - a library of material files for Blender 3D provided under public domain. Since its inception, 164 creators have provided 664 materials in 20 categories to this database.
blender-materials.org

GMesh - GMesh enables creating reliable geometry editing tools. It is a graph-based Mesh data structure (kind of like a relational database) for geometry editing via Euler operators. It is built from the ground up to enable Unity Job System support.
sitterheim Open Source

UnityMainThreadDispatcher - A thread-safe way of dispatching IEnumerator functions to the main thread in unity. Useful for calling UI functions and other actions that Unity limits to the main thread from different threads. Initially written for Firebase Unity but now used across the board!
PimDeWitte Open Source

Upscayl - Free and Open Source AI Image Upscaler for Linux, MacOS and Windows built with Linux-First philosophy.
upscayl Open Source

Spotlight

Freeborn - Freeborn is a visual novel adventure about messy old friendships, curious combatants, and psychological chaos. Explore a semi-open world, build your deck, and make dialogue choices all on your quest to become a champion!
[You can wishlist it on Steam and follow them on Twitter]
Deckpoint Studio

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