Issue #215 - Shaders, Performance, Design and more

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Learn to design your game, make it look good, and run fast. Enjoy!

Ultraviolet Lights & Invisible Ink - Lately I’ve been thinking about effects that involve revealing hidden objects (especially decals). This post will provide example shaders/graphs of how to achieve effects similar to these.
cyanilux.com

Hexagons/Shield Shader - 100% Procedural | Code + Node Graph - Procedural Hexagons, ported to Unity.
Mirza Beig @TheMirzaBeig

From 34 to 200+ FPS in Unity: Taming the resource-hungry animator! 1300 sheep playing an animation. - There are 1,300 sheep playing an animation with the animator controller. The animator controller drastically reduces the frame rate when there are so many GameObjects. To reduce the impact, we manually update the animator controller and adapt the update frequency according to the camera distance.
DuckReaction

Curves in Games: The Art of Bezier Curves - Bezier curves are one of the most important concepts in computer graphics, known for their flexibility and precision in representing curves.
gamedeveloper.com

65+ Tips: How to improve a Unity Game's Performance - We've compiled a comprehensive list of Unity performance optimization tips to help you improve your game.
occasoftware.com

Why Am I Not Getting Wishlists? A Step By Step Solution - In today’s blog I am going to help you identify why your game is not getting wishlists. There is no guarantee here. I will just help you look at the most common problems I see from games.
howtomarketagame.com

Ray Marching - Ray marching is a technique used in computer graphics to render a 3D scene by casting "rays" from the viewpoint and tracing them by moving points step by step. This method is popular for rendering complex scenes with relatively simple shader code. It is also a great tool for understanding and experimenting with various concepts behind 3D rendering. [Also part 2]
Kenichi Yoneda

Blender Secrets e-book - Tired of watching hour-long tutorials to find a simple answer? These tips and mini-tutorials will improve your Blender workflow in no time, with 1989 pages featuring 632 short step-by-step tutorials for Blender. This consists of 1 PDF file with a convenient searchable index.
blendersecrets.gumroad.com

Get our 2022 LTS best practice guides for optimizing mobile, console, and PC games - Optimize your game performance for mobile and Optimize your game performance for consoles and PC include the latest updates from Unity 2022 LTS and provide you with an arsenal of useful tips, tactics, and workarounds to optimize your projects.
Unity

Videos

Unity | How to make a Portal Decal Effect (VFX Breakdown) - In today's video we're going to delve into creating this cool portal effect in unity using decals and the stencil buffer
MinionsArt

How I polished my indie magnet puzzle game - Developing is an on-going YouTube series, where I share the step-by-step process of making my first video game: Mind Over Magnet!
Game Maker's Toolkit

How To Chop Trees In Unity (Tutorial 2024) - In this video, I'll show you how to easily implement a tree-chopping / tree cutting system into your game in Unity. This can add more realism to your game or better integrate loot into it.
JD Dev

Wave Function Collapse Tutorial for Unity3D! (Super Easy!) - Hey all! Here's the latest tutorial for the Wave Function Collapse algorithm in Unity 3D.
Garnet

What Is A Graphics Programmer? - While graphics programming is the magic behind all the beautiful imagery on your computer screens, it's incredibly niche and hard to figure out. What do they even do? How do you become one? How do I get started? Is it hard? All of this will be answered and more!
Acerola

Service Locator: Inversion of Control in Unity C# - Often considered an anti-pattern, the Service Locator offers a unique approach to managing dependencies in software design, particularly within the context of game development in Unity. This video dives into the construction of a Service Locator, demonstrating how it can operate efficiently across different scopes – at the level of individual game objects, entire scenes, and globally across the entire application. We will explore its relationship with principles like Dependency Inversion / Inversion of Control.
git-amend

How to build a Character Rig and State Machine for Procedural Animation | Unity Tutorial - Learn how to rig a character and start programming a state machine for procedural animation in Unity! This tutorial takes a deep dive into two of the constraints of the animation rigging packages and teaches you how to apply them to your own game characters for procedural animation. We'll also start the programming a state machine for procedural environment interactions using our reusable state manager implementation!
iHeartGameDev

Rules of Open World Game Design - 80 Level Podcast - Join 80 Level Podcast for a deep dive into game design with Jamie Smith, Principal Game Designer at People Can Fly. We discuss the core principles that make open world games stand out. Jamie shares how to design captivating gameplay mechanics, maintain player engagement, and balance form and function. If you're a game developer or simply fascinated by the world of video games, this episode uncovers the creative and technical aspects that drive the industry forward.
80lv

Best Of Open Source Game Development Tools - Are you interest in game development but what to use an entirely open source set of tools? In that case you are in luck as in this guide we list the best open source (not source available like Unreal, fully OSI compliant open source) game engines, graphics and audio tools available.
Gamefromscratch

Creating immersive games for the latest platforms – a roundtable | Unite 2023 - Join Kevin and his guests from Resolution Games to learn the best practices for creating and migrating your immersive games to the latest spatial computing platforms from Apple, Meta, and others. You’ll hear about the opportunities and challenges each faced, including the workflows and solutions they developed to succeed in the rapidly growing landscapes of immersive devices.
Unity

Assets

Unity Power Tools Dev Assets Bundle - Supercharge your game development.

Make your game dev life easier with this power pack from the Unity Asset Store, featuring dozens of plug-ins, FX, and tools from a variety of developers to help you…

• Manage character movement and create animation more easily
• Add systems for dialogue, physics, or survival game mechanics
• Implement lens flare, lightning, projectiles, and other visual effects
• Build landscapes, manage assets, and a whole lot more!

Streamline your game dev processes, and help support Girls Make Games Scholarship Fund with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

The Ultimate Game Development Software Bundle - Build worlds beyond imagination. Open the door to a dizzying universe of game development possibilities with this bundle of Unreal Engine and Unity assets. You’ll get a vast trove of ready-to-use game assets for the two most popular game engines in the world—everything from gritty cyberpunk sets and serene seaside vistas, to weapons from across history, high quality icons for your UI, and stunning special effects. Also included in the bundle are a host of tutorials to broaden your skillset, as well as handy plugins that you can quickly add to your workflow. Pay what you want for this vast toolbox of assets valued at over $3,000 and help support Direct Relief with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

2D Game Creation Mega Bundle - Full game asset kits for your 2D game. Game developers, build your 2D game with this massive bundle of art and sound assets from GameDev Market! This varied and versatile collection features characters, creatures, UI elements, environments, music, and SFX for a variety of 2D game genres. Create your outer space epic, zombie apocalypse, or whatever game you’re imagining—and help support Save the Children with your purchase.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

23 for $23 Mega bundle - SAVE UP TO 95%. Shop the best 23 tools, 3D assets, templates, and more from this year for only $23. Including: UPixelator - Pixelize 3d Scenes, RPG - Stylized Fantasy Environment, Live Script Reload (on device Hot-Reload), Retro Horror Template, DLSS - Upscaling for Unity and much more!
Unity Affiliate

CompositeCanvasRenderer - CompositeCanvasRenderer bakes multiple source graphics into a bake-buffer (RenderTexture) and renders it. Additional material modification, mesh modification, and baking effects are supported! Let's enjoy the effects that were difficult to implement with UI shaders, such as blur, soft outline, and soft shadow!
mob-sakai Open Source

SceneViewUIObjectPickerContextWindow.cs - Select the UI object under the cursor via right click in Unity's Scene window
yasirkula Open Source

QuickSave - The highly optimized implementation makes it a solid foundation for ambitious features since it can easily run on every frame. (Non-commercial license)
JonasDeM Open Source

GrassBending - A replacement for Unity's terrain grass shader with alpha blended rendering and touch bending effect
elringus Open Source

unity-flexible-buff-system - Framework for a flexible buff system using unity scriptable objects
xjjon Open Source

UnityEditorGitTool - A tool which automatically saves the git hash into a text asset before build. Useful if you want to use the hash at runtime. For example to display it in addition to the current version of the game.
kamgam Open Source

unity-signals - A Signal is a ScriptableObject which holds a value and triggers a UnityEvent when a new value is assigned.
jheiling Open Source

LineRenderer2D - Scripts for rendering pixel-perfect GPU-calculated lines in 2D (Unity URP 2D Renderer).
QThund Open Source

AnimateUIMaterials - Animate UI Materials allows editing and animating materials for a single UI component.
lgarczyn Open Source

UnityGradient - An Alternative to default gradient from Unity3D
victorafael-com Open Source

real-world-map-data - Getting real world map data into Unity
codehoose Open Source

Learn To Create Game Art In Blender Bundle - Your complete Blender learning kit Learn Blender with the help of the creators at GameDev.tv! This comprehensive bundle features everything you need to get started or level up your skills with the free, open-source 3D art software. Learn about animation, rigging, modeling, environmental art, and more with GameDev.tv’s courses. Pick up Alpha Brush Packs and materials to help carve out details in your creations. Get a complete kit for your Blender learning journey, and help support One Tree Planted with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

DAVIGO: VR vs. PC - DAVIGO is a VR vs. PC physics-based battle game. Become the GIANT in VR or a small KNIGHT on PC and fight your friends in local or online matches. KNIGHTS play for free with DAVIGO KNIGHT'S PASS.

[You can get it on Steam and follow them on Twitter]
Davigo Studio

My game, Call Of Dookie. Demo available on Steam

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