Issue #190 - Shaders, UI, AI and more

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Check out this week's issue including shaders, UI tools, AI and pathfinding, and more. Enjoy!

Compute Shaders in Unity: Multiple Kernels, ComputeBuffers, CPU - GPU data flow - In this segment, we will delve into the potential of utilizing multiple kernels within a single shader. To provide a comprehensive understanding, we will review two examples that demonstrate the usage of multiple kernels. The first example involves performing per-pixel operations on a texture, while the second example showcases basic mathematical operations leveraging the capabilities of compute shaders. For the second example, we will explore a new entity - Compute Buffers.
Danil Goshko

How to make your own game engine (and why) - So you’re thinking about making your own game engine. Great! There’s lots of reasons to want to make one yourself instead of using a commercial one like Unity or Unreal. In this post I will go over why you might want to, what systems are needed in a game engine, and how you should approach development of it. I won’t be going into any deep technical details here, this is about why and how to develop a game engine, not a tutorial for how to write the code.
Tyler Glaiel

Unity runtime on Arm-based Windows devices - This blog will dive into what is required to build games for Windows on Arm, and offer a glimpse into the future of Unity Editor support for the platform.
Unity

Game ready: Building the ‘Ōhi’a lehua tree with SpeedTree, part 2 - Read (and watch) on to learn how to add the final touches to the tree, including shaping its trunk, controlling branch shapes, and adding wind effects. The last half of this tutorial will teach you a lot of new features for SpeedTree 9 that you may not have seen before.
Unity

Videos

How Unexplored 2 Generates Entire Fantasy Worlds from Scratch | Artifacts #1 - In the first episode of Artifacts, our new series on all things generative AI, we dive into Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy - a roguelike adventure that procedurally generates entire game worlds from scratch.
AI and Games

Exploring C# async/await support in Unity 2023.1 - Today's topic is C# async/await support in Unity. In recent versions of Unity, as part of modernizing the C# scripting environment, support for asynchronous processing, so-called "async/await" is being promoted.
Unity Japan

Unity Interfaces - Complete Guide (Plugins, Abstraction, Events, & More) #unity3d - Today we're diving into a key concept in game programming especially when we're talking about Unity development and that's interfaces. We're going to explore what they are why they exist and how you can use them in various scenarios for your games
Jason Weimann

How to use the Job System + Burst in Unity! - Unity Jobs System and Burst can deliver insane performance improvements. This guide will show you both the basics and some advanced ways you can use these great free tools to make your game run a lot more smoothly.
Dev Dunk

System Driven Level Design (My Biggest Mistake) - In this video I discuss System Driven Level Design, a valuable concept to help those looking to create games, specifically platformers, dungeon crawlers and level-map-centric games.
Lost Relic Games

How to Animate EVERYTHING with Absolute Shapes Keys - Breakdown and tutorial of how I animated Patrick and Aku on blender using only absolute shape keys and without using any rig.
Arsalan Has Naan

Being Successful with Open Source in Game Development - In this 2022 Open Source Game Development Summit session, Google Cloud’s Mark Mandel and April Kyle Nassi review the state of the wider open source ecosystem, and discuss commercial motivations at both a personal and company wide level as well as the costs that are associated. They also look at what makes a healthy open source project, both from a creator and contributor perspective.
GDC

Assets

Unity Hidden Gems Bundle - Tools & art treasures for Unity creators from the Unity Asset Store.

Bring your game to life—and make dev life a little easier—with this bundle of hidden-gem tools and art assets for Unity creators. Enhance your process with tools to enhance help draw, debug, create dialogue, make AI-generated maps, and much more. Get art assets & tools to build worlds with volumetric clouds, 3D lands filled with snow and ice, or fantasy realms with pixel-art monsters. Unleash your creativity, save time, and make the game you’ve been dreaming of—and help support Girls Make Games Scholarship Fund with your purchase.

This is an official bundle created by the Unity Asset Store, supporting the asset publishers featured.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Royalty Free Game Film And Content Music Mania Bundle - Supercharge your soundtrack Score your game, movie, or other creative project with this bundle of high-quality music! Featuring hundreds of tracks, loops, and more audio elements, this sonic library will help you craft a fitting soundtrack for your fantasy fantasy role-playing epic, arcade beat-em-up, cinematic action sequence, and much more. Plus, your purchase will help support Extra Life!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Blender Animation And Games Book Bundle - Learn to create 3D art with Blender Unleash the creative power of Blender, the free and open-source software tool for 3D artists, with this bundle of books from Packt. Explore the tools and techniques to make animation, 3D models, environments, and lots more, and level up the skills you need to make 3D games and other incredible content. Plus, your purchase helps support The Trevor Project.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Note Attribute - The NoteAttribute is a custom attribute used for creating Inspector notes in Unity, helpful in streamlining design processes.
ShadowIgnition Open Source

UnityTodo (Editor-Only) - Add, remove, and edit tasks in form of List/Item like Trello and other famous Task Management apps
somedeveloper00 Open Source

Layout Panel - Simple panel layout system, supporting drag and drop panel placement, panel folding and interactive resize
zambari

Green Mamba Stealth - An advanced stealth system for Unity that detects how well-lit a character is, allowing characters to hide in dynamic shadows.
DameonL Open Source

Unity 2D Context steering AI - How to setu up Context Sterring AI in Unity
SunnyValleyStudio Open Source

Pathfinding - Pathfinding - using Unity Navmesh, ECS and Burst.
This fork represents self-sufficient module that can be used with Unity Entities and NavMesh.
In order to add all necessary components to authoring object simply add PathfinderAuthoring component.
Specify agentID and minimal query distance and it's ready to be baked.
bustedbunny Open Source

EntitiesNavMeshBuilder - Runtime NavMesh dynamic building for Unity Entities.
bustedbunny Open Source

Unified Universal Blur - URP Blur effect for Unity - UI blur (translucent) effect for Unity URP.
lukakldiashvili Open Source

TextureMerge - this program is ideal if you want to pack individual grayscale textures in one image.
Fidifis Open Source

GpuTrail - ComputeShader implementation trails for Unity
fuqunaga Open Source

Unity - Display missing component type info - Serializes and renders warning missing component info in Unity
needle-tools Open Source

Gameframe.GUI - This is a library of GUI helpers for UGUI Includes a panel system that implements a navigation stack. Includes a scene transition system. Includes a SRP shader for blurring the background of UI panels.
coryleach Open Source

Create Script Dialog - An improved/expanded version of Unity's Create Script Dialog that supports namespaces.
RoyTheunissen Open Source

Unity Fantastic Fantasy Sale - Create Magicla Worlds. Save 50% on fantasy assets to build your next epic adventure.
Unity Affiliate

50% Off Dragonsan Studios - Publisher Sale - Get 50% off Dragonsan Studios assets – now until June 15. PLUS, Get Herbs - Icons for FREE with code DRAGONSAN at checkout.
Unity Affiliate

UnityUxmlGenerator - Generates "UxmlFactory" and "UxmlTraits" source code for a custom VisualElement
LibraStack Open Source

UniFlux - Flexible Event Driven and Flux for Unity - Typed Event Driven with Flux for Unity.
kingdox Open Source

Editor Screenshot - A unity editor script for taking screenshots in the editor. Mainly made this to take transparent screenshots for use with making VRChat thumbnails.
Open it by going up to Tools > Pumkin > Editor Screenshot
You can either install using VCC or by importing a unity package.
Go to my VCC Package Listing and click Add to VCC. For more info check the Readme link on the site or here.
rurre Open Source

SnowyOwl - Unity Large World & Toon Shading Solution.
SnowyLake Open Source

Baked Blender Pro Suite (Free Asset Library) - The Baked Blender Pro Suite (BBPS) is an asset library that contains 3D models, materials, geometry node setups, particle systems, and eventually much more. With the BBPS, we aim to equip and train the next generation of digital artists.
bakeduniverse.gumroad.com

The Complete Learn Coding Mega Bundle - Learn coding & AI by building real projects. Learn to code with the world’s most popular tools and languages! Build apps and AI with Python and ChatGPT, and discover visual coding with Scratch. Create games with Unity, Unreal, Godot, Roblox, and Phaser, build C++ apps, and make responsive websites. Learn mobile development with Java, Kotlin, and Swift, and build an AR experience—plus, you’ll support Lotus Outreach International with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Polygon Assets Bundle - Low-poly game development asset trove Looking for a little help to build your digital world? Get an instant library of flexible, lightweight, low-polygon assets, perfect for any game. Whether you’re trying to create a moody, atmospheric sci-fi adventure (Poly Style Mega Sci-Fi Sandbox) or a dangerous and dark survival horror adventure (Mega Survival Kit), there’s something here for every kind of game. Vehicles, city-scapes, fantasy villages, medieval camps—it’s all here waiting for your creativity. Plus, your purchase helps support Save the Children!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

Remnants of R'lyeh - Remnants of R'lyeh is a First Person Horror Survival game inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's Great Work. An ancient dark power is calling you and you need to find an exit... Face your greatest fear, fight, hide... you must escape before the underwater city rises...

[You can get the demo on Steam, follow them on Twitter]
Darktree Game Studio

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