Issue #156 - Upcoming Features

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Learn about what Unity is focusing on now and in the future. Plus a ton of deals, tutorials and posts to help you now. Enjoy!

Games Focus: What’s next - This post is the first in a new blog series we’re launching to share what Unity is doing for all game developers – now, next year, and in the future.
Unity

Design Patterns Library - A comprehensive design patterns library implemented in C#, which covers various design patterns from the most commonly used ones to the lesser-known ones. Get familiar with and learn design patterns through moderately realistic examples.
nemanjarogic

Procedural Wording in Unity - In this article I am going to cover how to create a procedural system in Unity that creates unique text content at runtime.
playable.design

Clarifying API usage requirements via improved messaging - The conditions that an API can or should be called are sometimes unclear. Not having this information readily available often leads to writing code with unintended side effects
Unity

Tutorial: Using AI to Create Seamless Tilable Textures - Here's a short guide on setting up tileable textures shared by Daniel Beauchamp.
80.lv

Gentle introduction to shaders and custom materials in Unity - When it comes to games development, Unity stands out in many ways by providing a wide range of tools that support the process. Apart from programming, projects usually involve a team of artists who prepare artwork assets for the game. One of the more complex issues to encounter is to programmatically achieve believable graphics at runtime in response to some dynamic data. However, this cannot be accomplished with static textures and models with pre-recorded animations alone. In this article we’re going to look into shaders, materials and how to prepare mini programs enhancing the visual appeal of games.
pavcreations.com

Rendering my balls in a fragment shader - Since we were using an OpenGL fragment shader to convert the squares into circles, I thought about writing a fragment shader to render fully 3D looking billiard balls.
getlazarus.org

My take on shaders: Stencil shader (Antichamber effect) - I hope you have heard of the game “Antichamber” at some point in your life. It’s a game that has one purpose: to mess with your mind. And it does so successfully. Probably one of the most famous mind-twisting effects of the game is the one with the cubes that have sides that are seemingly transparent and you can see a different object from each side of the cube. [Here are some more stencil buffer uses]
halisavakis.com

Perlin Derivatives - Derivatives of Interpolation - Find derivatives for linear, bilinear, and trilinear interpolation. Calculate derivatives for value and Perlin noise. This is the third tutorial in a series about pseudorandom surfaces. In it we will calculate derivatives of value and Perlin noise.
catlikecoding.com

How I learned to love testing game code - Most videogames don't have much in the way of testing. The only big-budget one I know of that has publicly put a large effort into it is Sea of Thieves. My favorite open-source game, Mindustry, does have some but they're not super prevalent either. Why is this? Is testing just less useful in games? Well, kind of. [More links in the Hacker News thread]
chadnauseam.com

Try the new UI Toolkit sample – now available on the Asset Store - In Unity 2021 LTS, UI Toolkit offers a collection of features, resources, and tools to help you build and debug adaptive runtime UIs on a wide range of game applications and Editor extensions. Its intuitive workflow enables Unity creators in different roles – artists, programmers, and designers alike – to get started with UI development as quickly as possible.
Unity

Anti-Bullet-Points - I end up teaching one simple pitching trick often enough in consultancies that I'd thought I'd write about it: to ask yourself "would anyone ever claim the opposite"?
ltpf.ramiismail.com

How to create a community for your game using Reddit - Who am I? I'm Ayen and I made r/idioticthegame that has 600ish memebers. While the game isn't popular. I have a few tips on how to make a community and grow it. [Also of interest, How To Email (Small) Youtubers]
old.reddit.com

Unity 2022.2.0 Beta 8 - Unity versions 2022.2.0 Beta 8 and 2023.1.0a10 have been released.
Unity

Videos

Unity IS FOR GAMES! (Upcoming Features) - Lets look at the new Unity Blog post about showcasing the upcoming, future updates to the Unity Engine. Specifically about Games and the keeping strong transparency about what features will be coming and what you can expect. We'll go through the blog post today and I'll give you all the best details.
SpeedTutor

Why The Hell Are There So Many Fishing Minigames? - No matter which genre of game you play, no matter which era of the medium is your favorite, one thing is inescapable - inevitable, and that is... fishing minigames. From RPGs to Rogelikes to MMOs, fishing minigames are in just about everything, and as much as we enjoy them, no-one really seems to know... why?
Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Blender Geometry Nodes in Unity Engine | BEngine - Today we are going to take a look at BEngine for Unity, this amazing tool is aiming to bring procedural open source tools to unity, it will allow you to bring the power of Blender Geometry Nodes to the game engine.
InspirationTuts

Stand Back Up! How to Reverse Ragdoll Physics (Unity Tutorial) - In this Unity tutorial we're going to to look at how we can reverse ragdoll physics, and have the character stand back up again.
Ketra Games

Building the World of 'The Ascent' - In this GDC 2022 session, Neon Giant’s Tor Frick goes into detail on how the team approached and solved the challenges along the way, not only in 3D content creation and level building, but also stylistically.
GDC

Using DLLs inside Unity project - Here is a short tutorial on how to create an custom DLL and import it to your Unity Project. This tutorial is based on the "Advanced Project Setup in Unity" by Infallible Code.
Wawethewaras

Assets

The Complete Unity/Unreal Engine Online Course - Want to create a game using Unity or Unreal Engine? Looking to level up your skills for a career in development? Get a complete education with this online course bundle from Mammoth Interactive! Through instructional videos and hands-on projects, you’ll explore a range of essential topics, from programming in C++ and C# to understanding machine learning for procedural generation and AI. Equip yourself with what you need to succeed as a game dev, and have fun in the process—all while supporting Covenant House!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Synty Studios Publisher Sale - Synty Studios is a dedicated asset publisher that makes incredible, stylized art packs for game developers. Their low-poly packages are fun, easy-to-use, and with over 70 art packs, covering themes like City, Fantasy, Sci-fi, and more, they are great for beginners to start prototyping. Customers can get up to 50% off select stylized art packs! Additionally, Synty is offering two packs as Flash Deals at 70% off, POLYGON Construction - Low Poly 3D Art and POLYGON Sci-Fi Space - Low Poly 3D Art. The Flash Deals will be available at 50% off when they sell out.
Unity Affiliate

International Day of the Programmer Free Giveaway - GET 4 EBOOKS WORTH CA$283.55 (Free for the next 6 days). Includes: "Creating Games with Unity, Substance Painter, & Maya: Models, Textures, Animation, & Code", "Game Audio with FMOD and Unity", "2D Game Development with Unity", and "Punk Playthings: Provocations for 21st Century Game Makers".
fanatical.com

Dash Animation System - Dash Animation System for Unity is a system that was designed to make animation editing more approachable and user friendly. It offers solution to commonly encountered problems like visual editing and prototyping of programmatic animations called tweens. Combining tween and statically authored timeline animations. Sequencing, altering and retargeting of statically authored animations and much more.
pshtif Open Source

VisualizeMotionTrajectories.cs - Motion Trajectories in Unity 3D. [Also read the tweet]
hybridherbst Open Source

Procedural Toolkit 0.2.4-preview - Procedural Toolkit is a procedural generation library for the Unity game engine.
Syomus Open Source

Level Up And Learn Programming Games Bundle - Explore the FUN-damentals of coding and computing. Challenge your brain and have a blast learning with these acclaimed logic and puzzle games exploring the key concepts of programming, AI, and machine learning! Build a neural network to communicate with cats in while True: learn(). Automate office workers and create a living CPU in the award-winning Human Resource Machine and its acclaimed follow-up 7 Billion Humans. Build a feline Learning Factory on Mars, become a hacker in EXAPUNKS, and learn something new in process—all while supporting Carbonfund!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

SphereDissolve - Customizable procedural spherical dissolve shader for Unity3D, for all your customizable procedural spherical dissolve needs!
AdultLink Open Source

True Clouds/Fog (Mobile & PC) - FREE - This is the most efficient solution for rendering volumetric clouds, fog or mist that is availible on the Asset Store. Optimised for mobiles. Insanely fast on PC.
marserMD Affiliate

Real-Time Volumetric Clouds - A Unity demo of real-time volumetric clouds using a variety of methods as described in other scholarly material.
adrianpolimeni Open Source

NativeStringCollections - The toolset to parse generic text files using C# JobSystem and Burst on Unity.
kawai125 Open Source

BurstCollections - Burst friendly (special) native collections for Unity
andywiecko Open Source

Unity-Serialized Dictionary - Serialize Dictionary and see them visually in inspector.
Prastiwar Open Source

Unity Octree - Simple octree Unity implementation. Allows for simple and fast octree generation and collision testing.
wmcnamara Open Source

unimgpicker - Image picker for Unity iOS/Android.
thedoritos Open Source

Pinchable ScrollRect for Unity - Pinchable ScrollRect allows users to zoom in and out on the ScrollRect with both touches pinching input or mouse scroll input.
LokoSoloGames Open Source

MRTK-Keyboard - This is a standalone version of the NonNative Keyboard from the MRTK project.
Ayfel Open Source

Readme - Readme component for Unity, attachable to any GameObject to document what you can't in a script or the file system.
TinyPHX Open Source

Tranzmit - Unity 3D Event system that uses the new Experimental Unity GraphView .
code-blep Open Source

Unity Action Sender - A type-safe replacement to SendMessage.
favoyang Open Source

Danmokou - Danmokou is a danmaku (bullet hell) engine built in C# for Unity.
Bagoum Open Source

Link & Sync - A FREE Unity plugin for importing and exporting assets and easily synchronizing changes when they occur.
KybernetikGames Open Source

NetworkAudioSync - Keep your audio in sync across clients in your multiplayer Unity game!
LambdaTheDev Open Source

Easy Time Slicing - EasyTimeSlicing makes it easy to slice heavy tasks into consequent game frames to execute and helps to keep the game running smoothly and avoid janks or spikes.
aillieo Open Source

SpriteDicing - Sprite Dicing is an extension for Unity game engine allowing to split a set of sprite textures into dices, discard identical ones, bake unique dices into atlas textures and then seamlessly reconstruct the original sprites at runtime.
Elringus Open Source

Debug-Chan - Automated Logger and Interactive Console for Unity 3D
active-logic Open Source

VidStreamComp - A self-contained package for controlling video streaming in Unity.
gpvigano Open Source

Unity Tools Bundle - Last week for the 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. 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), and a 10% Off Coupon for the Unity Asset Store
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Unity Art Bundle - Characters, environments, music, SFX, and artists’ tools galore Bring your game to life with this bundle of incredible art assets & artists’ tools—specifically curated for Unity creators! Featuring characters, environmental elements, SFX, music, animations, and prefabs, this library of thousands of assets and creative utilities will help you realize game worlds for a wide range of genres. Included: Quibli: Anime Shaders and Tools MSRP: $60, POLYGON Dungeons - Low Poly 3D Art by Synty MSRP: $79.99, Total Music Collection MSRP: $135, Monsters Ultimate Pack 02 Cute Series MSRP: $159.90, Ultimate Sound FX Bundle MSRP: $19.99, Meadow Environment - Dynamic Nature MSRP: $50, Boing Kit: Dynamic Bouncy Bones, Grass, and More MSRP: $60, Toon Fantasy Nature MSRP: $48, ProPixelizer MSRP: $25, Forest animals MSRP: $200, Party Monster Rumble PBR MSRP: $25, Eternal Temple MSRP: $45, Quirky Series - Animals Mega Pack Vol.1 MSRP: $89, Quirky Series - Animals Mega Pack Vol.2 MSRP: $89, Underwater FX MSRP: $25, Monster Sounds Pack MSRP: $19.99, Character Creator 2D MSRP: $30, Magica Cloth MSRP: $25, Footsteps Sound Pack MSRP: $19.99, Basic Motions MSRP: $18, BIRDS PACK MSRP: $54.99, Little Dragons: Tiger MSRP: $39.99, Pixelate MSRP: $20, Map Graph MSRP: $49.99, RPG VFX Bundle MSRP: $48, Brute Force - Snow & Ice Shader MSRP: $19.99, Seamless Texture Generator MSRP: $5.99, and a 10% Off Coupon for the Unity Asset Store
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

Kredolis - The fall of Atlantis has left a small island unsunken and a mysterious institute has taken hold. You have shipwrecked and found yourself lost between esoteric and mystical puzzles. Find your way home or enter the sunken lighthouse into the depths of Atlantis.
Planned Release Date: 27 September

[You can wishlist it on Steam, and follow them on Twitter]
Pharos Interactive

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