Issue #223 - New And Old Approaches

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Get your dev on for another week. Enjoy!

A New & Unique Approach to Creating Mirrors for Games in Unity - According to the developer, the novel method is faster than ray tracing and more detailed than Screen Space Reflections.
80.lv

Exclusive: The Unity Team on Porting & Developing Multiplayer Games - Thom Hopper, Mathieu Muller, Kjetil Kalla, and Laurent Gibert from the Product Management team at Unity explained the nuances and different aspects of porting Unity-powered games and shared best practices and resources.
80.lv

How to Localize a Game with Procedurally Generated Text - This article aims to explain what procedural generation is, what types of generation exist, and how you can avoid the various pitfalls that are hidden in text generation.
allcorrectgames.com

Steam Annual Summary: 2023 - Another year, another colossal retrospective blog post: welcome to the Steam Annual Summary. Our annual recap of tools, features, and data.
Steam

Game Font Forensics - I was recently motivated to tackle a few riddles which had puzzled me for a while, and which happened to involve (are you sitting down for this?) ancient games and their fonts. [More interesting related links in the HN discussion]
int10h.org

The High-Risk Refactoring - Code improvements are risky as they aim to change a working system. That's true. However, in many situations, developers can mitigate the risk via different activities and make it bearable.
webup.org

Videos

Parallax Sci-fi Panels in Unity using Shader Graph - An overview of a parallax sci-fi effect in Unity using shader graph
AE Tuts

Mastering Unity DOTS: Configuration Guide and Fundamental Features - Welcome to our comprehensive guide on mastering Unity's Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS). In this video, we'll take you through the essential steps of configuring your Unity project for DOTS development, while also exploring its fundamental features.
WAYN Games

Null Testing - Unity Performance Tip - Optimization - we all have lines of code in our project that test whether it's something is null or not, so which way is best to get the null reference?
Game Dev Box

I Remade NARUTO VS SASUKE FIGHT, but in Unity! - Remade VFX for a certain moment of the fight! Even just a couple of shots was a lot of work for 2 days.
Gabriel Aguiar Prod.

Valve Open Source Steam Audio - 3D Game Audio Solution - Including Unity, Unreal, FMOD and C++ SDKs - Steam Audio is a 3D audio solution from Valve Software used in games such as Half Life: Alyx that enables you to create positional 3D soundscapes in your games. They just released an update to it and most importantly along with this update they have released the entire thing as open source, including the Unity, Unreal Engine and FMOD plugins.
Gamefromscratch

The biggest lie in video games - Water is an important aspect of many video games but is also one of the sneakiest. While doing research for my own open-world RPG game I looked into how thousands of games use water and came to the conclusion that it's the biggest lie in video games.
AIA

What size should your assets be? | HD 2D GAME ART - A moderately quick overview about asset sizes and graphics performance. This mostly relates to high definition or HD graphics, and relates less to pixel art, since it will have other limitations.
Nonsensical 2D

Assets

Epic Game Worlds In Unity - Amazing assets, audio & more for Unity

Bolster your game-maker’s toolkit with this Unity bundle, full of visual assets, plugins, audio, and more! You’ll get the Nature Renderer plugin to level up your game’s scenery with advanced features and custom shader support. The Big Fantasy RPG Music Bundle is packed with over 443 tracks of orchestral tunes to score all aspects of your epic adventure. If you’re going for retro vibes, the Low Poly Nature Pack puts 800 high-quality game-ready 3D nature assets at reach, crafted with botanical accuracy and low poly charm.

Pay what you want for all this and more, and help support Girls Who Code with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

The Unreal Environment Mega Bundle - Unreal developers, this bundle will give you everything you need to craft game environments that’ll enthrall and immerse your players! Included are 15 packs of full models, meshes, visual effects, and more, modular and ready to drop into your Unreal Engine project. You’ll get assets suitable for all kinds of genres, enabling you to create stunning fantasy worlds, blighted post apocalyptic settings, lush natural environments, and much more. Pay what you want for over $1100 worth of assets and help support Trees, Water & People with your purchase. [Note, using Unreal you can also export these assets out to use in other game engines]
Humble Bundle Affiliate

ThinkEngine - A Unity asset for a tight integration of AI in games: asset, showcase, web page.
DeMaCS-UNICAL Open Source

AkiGOAP - Modular and high-performed Unity Goal Oriented Action Planner with well designed visual graph editor
AkiKurisu Open Source

TinkStateSharp - Handle those pesky states, now in C#. An uncomplicated library for dealing with mutable state in a nice reactive way.
nadako Open Source

Alchemy - Provides a rich set of editor extensions and serialization extensions for Unity.
AnnulusGames Open Source

sunflower - Core ScriptableObject architecture for building Unity games (Anti-Singleton)
VirtueSky Open Source

GraphicsDraw - Unity Graphics Draw API wrapper for both play and edit mode
nukadelic Open Source

50% off Brooklyn Game Audio - Publisher Sale - Brooklyn Game Audio is best known for their electronic, traditional East Asian and horror game music assets. With years of experience both in AAA and indie game development, they aim to provide a wide selection of high-quality music in each of their packs, giving developers the freedom to bring their game visions to life. PLUS, get Techno Battle Themes for FREE with code BROOKLYNGAMEAUDIO
Unity Affiliate

CardHouse - Tools for making card games in Unity
pipeworks-studios Open Source

Unity.mathx - An Extension Library for Unity.Mathematics - Extension Methods, New Syntax, Optimized Functions, and more !
ltmx Open Source

Tween-Kit - Enhance DOTween with Tween Kit: Seamless, modular components for effortless Tweening.
AbdurRafay-Nasir Open Source

NewGraph - A general node graph solution centered on data management. This is based on the idea to visualize complex data structures as graph networks without having to modify already established data classes.
Gentlymad-Studios Open Source

Next-Gen-Dialogue - AI powered dialogue visual designer for Unity
AkiKurisu Open Source

FangAutoTile - Fang Auto Tile is an easy and fully featured auto-tiling system for Unity.
ruccho Open Source

Asset Refresh Sale - Get 50% off trending assets, including tools, characters, animations, audio, toolkits, guides and more.
Including: COZY: Stylized Weather 3, Zibra Smoke & Fire, Emerald AI 2024, Atavism X.9 On-Premises and much more!
Unity Affiliate

Melodic Mayhem - A Comprehensive Audio And Music Bundle - Your audio needs are met. Upgrade your next project with pro-level audio with this mind-bogglingly huge bundle, packed with all the music, sound effects, and engine-specific plugins you’ll ever need. You’ll get royalty-free tracks that span the genres, both musical and thematic—from atmospheric synthpop and hard-driving industrial, to tunes perfect for fantasy, sci-fi, and more. Also included is a vast library of sound effects suitable for all manner of genres and settings, as well as jingles and UI sounds, plus essential sound plugins for Unreal, Unity, and Godot. Pay what you want for a library that will cover your audio needs forever and help support the Children's Miracle Network with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

My Rusty Submarine - You are the proud owner of a rather rusty submarine, on your way to discover the deepest depths of the ocean. Now and then there might be a small leak or another annoyance but that's what you love about your very own submarine, it's a two way relationship giving repairs and in return receiving shelter and transportation. So grab a friend and go on a journey, be careful to stay on track to not end up loosing your valuable progress. Keep your boat intact and reach places nobody has reached before.

[You can play for free or buy the expansion on Itch.io]
Sebastian Lieb and Jonas Förster
Sebastian Lieb and Jonas Förster

My game, Call Of Dookie. Demo available on Steam

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