Issue #194 - AI, Shaders, Multiplayer, and more

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

AI designs and assets, shader tutorials and a lot more. Enjoy!

How To Market A Multiplayer, The Battlebit Remastered Story - This is a story about how 3 developers managed to make a massively multiplayer online shooter that gained over 800,000 wishlists before launch resulting in over 87,323 simultaneous players. In the 2 weeks since they launched, they sold 1,800,000 UNITS.
howtomarketagame.com

Iridescent crystal with raymarching and signed distance fields - While the initial goal was a small file size, it also allows you to create some really cool effects and use boolean operations to create complex shapes. In this article, I’ll show you how to create an iridescent crystal using raymarching and SDFs.
varun.ca

Awesome Learn Gamedev - A Mega-List of Learning Resources for Game Creators
notpresident35

Dynamic patrol behaviour in stealth games with Markov chains - Hi, this post is about a game AI algorithm for stealth games.
leanrada.com

Grass System (BIRP & URP) - Here is finally the updated grass tool, that has the highly requested feature of spawning points on meshes and a bunch of other features.
Minions Art

Happy Harvest demo: See the latest 2D techniques - Happy Harvest, now available on the Unity Asset Store, shows developers how to harness the latest capabilities for creating 2D lights, shadows, and special effects with the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) in Unity 2022 LTS. It incorporates best practices any 2D creator can use, including not baking shadows into a sprite, keeping sprites flat, moving shadow and volume information to secondary textures, advanced Tilemap features, and much more.
Unity

Make a fully functional calculator in Unity not only for VR, Part I - The first part of the three-part tutorial of how to build a fully functional calculator prefab in Unity not only for VR games. In this part you will learn how to animate a button press using coroutines, how to work with Unity events, and utilize TextMesh Pro.
blog.gamedev.tv

Unity 2023.1 Tech Stream is now available - We’re excited to share that the 2023.1 Tech Stream is available for download. You’ll find improved features and render quality for both the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and Universal Render Pipeline (URP), along with platform graphic improvements, additional connectivity types for multiplayer solutions, and more.
Unity

Videos

Benefits of Missing Out: What 'Cyberpunk 2077' Taught Us About Non-Linear Level Design - In this 2023 Level Design Summit talk, gain an overview of the design intentions behind the levels in the game, and look at how these intentions did not always fully receive the anticipated reception by players. It will elaborate on what the team was able to learn from this and, finally, how these lessons were turned into principles and techniques that can be applied by level designers to make those branching paths feel more rewarding and special, while still keeping things production-friendly.
GDC

The Genius AI Behind The Sims - The Sims uses a super smart AI system to make virtual people who think, feel, and interact in a believable way. Here's how.
Game Maker's Toolkit

Aiming with Inverse Kinematics (IK) and Animation Rigging | Gun Series 12 | Unity Tutorial - In this tutorial, learn how you can always have your character perfectly aim at their target without needing a million animations! We'll review the PlayerIK first introduced in Part 1 of the series and update the aiming to properly aim at the crosshair!
LlamAcademy

A Guide to Finding Affordable and Quality Fonts. Best Websites for free Fonts - In this video, I'll get into where to find good and affordable fonts. I share my favorite websites for discovering high-quality fonts and we will have a look at the free and versatile ISL Open Font License (OFL), how it can benefit indie developers, and where to download free high quality fonts!
Christina Creates Games

Day/night cycles, 2.5D gameplay in Unity and Kickstarter | Venture to the Vile - Today's game is Venture to the Vile from Montreal indie studio Cut To Bits. This is a dynamic 2.5d metroidvania game with a unique Twist on how you traverse the environment
Unity

Building Roads Procedurally Using Unity's Spline Package - Roads are more common in videogames than you might think so in this episode we'll look at how we can use Unity's new spline package to build out a tool that procedurally creates a road mesh along a spline, and ALSO handles intersections at the same time. While we're at it, we might even decorate it to look pretty using URP Decals too!
Game Dev Guide

Interactive Wind Shader for your Foliage (Unity Tutorial) - In this Unity tutorial, We'll make a wind shader for all your foliage from scratch using Shadergraph, and by the end you'll have lots of tweakable options so you can get it to look just right. Then we'll take it a step further by making the foliage interact with our player when he walks past it, taking the player's velocity into account!
Sasquatch B Studios

[TUTORIAL] Stencil buffer in Unity URP (cutting holes, impossible geometry, magic card) - Here we are: the mighty tutorial about the stencil buffer that I’ve been working on for weeks now. I hope you’ll enjoy it ;)
PixTrick

Assets

30 for $30 Mega Bundle - With the 30 for $30 Mega Bundle, users can save up to 95% off two curated sets of empowering tools and inspiring art to further their projects.

$20 Bundle - Save up to 95%
This bundle contains UI Particle Image, Mirrors and reflections for VR, Fighter Pack Bundle, 2D Pixel - RPG Monster Pack, Horror Bundle - Sound Effects, Wireframe Shader Effect, Magic Slashes FX, Medical Equipments, Geometry Algorithms, 3D Scifi Base Vol 1, Toon Dinosaurs 2, Pixel Heroes Editor, TPS Shooter (Military Style), Ultimate Screenshot Tool, and Stylized Karts #1

$30 Bundle - Save up to 97%
This bundle contains everything from the $20 bundle, plus POLYGON Nature - Low Poly 3D Art by Synty, I2 Localization, Atlas - terrain editor, Damage Numbers Pro, Bad Word Filter PRO, Super Realistic Diamond Shaders, Invector Third Person Controller - Basic Locomotion Template, Cave & Blacksmith Pack - Ores, Gems, Props, Tools, Grid Builder 2, EndlessBook, Tropical Forest Pack, Advanced Foliage Pack 2.0, The Lost Temple, Nodachi Animset, and PBR Fighters (Pack)
Unity Affiliate

Publisher Sale - 50% off Danil Chernyaev - Get 50% off Danil Chernyaev assets. Danil Chernyaev creates stylized, high-quality 2D art assets with a unique art style. His focus is creating useful and easy to implement game assets for great projects.
PLUS, get 2D Isometric Village for FREE with code 2DVILLAGE.
Unity Affiliate

QuickEye Utility - New type and property drawer to serialize and edit dictionaries in inspector.
ErnSur Open Source

Blender-like SceneView Hotkeys - This Unity Editor extension allows you to select the viewing direction for a SceneView with the Blender -like hotkeys.
nowsprinting Open Source

Style Components - Library for styling game objects in Unity
codewriter-packages Open Source

Tailwind CSS for Unity UIToolkit - Style Unity UIToolkit UI elements with Tailwind CSS syntax
BennyKok Open Source

Smart Addresser: Automate Addressing, Labeling, and Version Control for Addressables - Automate Addressing, Labeling, and Version Control for Unity's Addressable Asset System.
CyberAgentGameEntertainment Open Source

Unity Scripting Utilities - Stuff I use a lot, and a simple AnimationCurve-based tweening interface.
williamrjackson Open Source

Authentication Package for Unity - OAuth 2.0 Client for Unity
cdmvision Open Source

FREE Input Prompts Pack - 800 Icons for PC and Consoles for Unreal Engine or Unity - Enhance your gaming experience with our comprehensive input control icons pack. Our pack includes a wide range of icons for various platforms, including PC and consoles. Whether you prefer gamepads, mouse and keyboard, or a combination of both, we have you covered. Our icons are designed to work seamlessly with any type of game, ensuring a smooth and immersive gameplay.
juliocacko.gumroad.com

Project Curator - A convenient tool to cleanup and maintain your Unity projects ! Project Curator is an Unity Editor window that, based on the currently selected Asset, displays the following information: Each asset it depends on (called dependencies). Each asset that depends on it (called referencers) Very useful to know if an Asset is can be safely deleted or not.
Whether the asset is included in the build or not, depending on the nature of the Asset and its referencers (checked recursively)
ogxd Open Source

Chronity - Library for running functions after a delay by creating timers in Unity3D.
SushiWaUmai Open Source

Reliable Mecanim Events - Reliable Mecanim Events is intended for replacing the existing Animation Events in Unity.Events placed directly in clips are replaced by event handler on animator states. Inspired by Firewatch's animator events.
beatrate Open Source

Navigation Drawer - The navigation drawer is a UI panel that shows your app's main navigation menu. It is hidden when not in use, but appears when the user swipes a finger from the left edge of the screen or, when at the top level of the app, the user touches the drawer icon in the app bar.
psvantares Open Source

unity-mod-manager - This mod adds modding support for games created on Unity engine.
newman55 Open Source

UABEA - c# uabe for newer versions of unity
nesrak1 Open Source

Colorlink - An editor tool that allows to quickly change the entire color palette of the game. Works with materials, components, prefabs and assets, by directly linking serialized properties and material properties to the palette — no extra components needed! The tool is editor only and can't be used in builds.
leth4 Open Source

SkToolbox - This toolbox is used for designing overlay menus in Unity Games. Typically used for creating a custom menu for use with existing projects. Includes loader module.
derekShaheen Open Source

BasicEventBus - Basic event bus for unity
pointcache Open Source

Scene Loading - A package that standardizes scene loading operations between the Unity Scene Manager and Addressables, allowing multiple alternatives of awaiting such as Coroutines, Async or UniTask; and adds support for batch scene operations.
mygamedevtools Open Source

Sharing my 2500+ tracks of Music and Sound effects - Greetings Developers! I've created over 2500 tracks of original music and sound effects that you are welcome to freely use in your games and projects. All I ask is to be attributed as detailed on my website: https://soundimage.org/
soundimage.org

UnitySSReflectionURP - Screen Space Reflection for Unity URP (Universal Render Pipeline).
jiaozi158 Open Source

SynicSugar - SynicSugar is the syntax sugar to synchronize a game via the internet. The backend is EOS, so the server cost is free. The goal is an easy online-game dev for everyone!
skeyll Open Source

Actors - Actors is a framework empowering developers to make better games faster on Unity.
PixeyeHQ Open Source

StableFluids - This is a straightforward GPU implementation of Jos Stam's Stable Fluids on Unity.
keijiro Open Source

9 Verified Solutions on the Unity Asset Store's new AI Marketplace - Explore a wide range of third-party solutions for AI-driven development and gameplay enhancements, now available on the Unity Asset Store’s new AI Marketplace.
Unity

Multiverse Of Music - An Ovani Music Sample Bundle - Realms of royalty-free music! Embark on an unforgettable audio adventure with our thrilling new bundle in partnership with Ovani Sound! Experience a variety of genres, from the thunderous Metal Music Pack and mesmerizing Electronic Music Pack to the enchanting Fantasy Music Pack, spine-chilling Horror Music Pack, nostalgic Chiptune Music Pack, and more—over 500 music files total. Score your game, film, or other creative project, and help support the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, amplifying the power of music and compassion.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

Bionic Bay - A scientist uses a unique teleportation instrument to escape an ancient biomechanical world filled with imaginative technology, deadly traps, and hidden secrets.

[You can download the demo on Steam and follow them on Twitter]
Psychoflow Studio, Mureena Oy

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