Issue #224 - Visuals How-Tos And More

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Lot's of great stuff on visuals and their technical implementations, plus a lot more. Enjoy!

2D Destructable Terrain in Unity using QuadTrees - In this tutorial we will create somewhat optimized destructible 2D terrain that will seem familiar to anyone whose childhood remotly resembled mine.
Kajetan Radulski

How video games use LUTs and how you can too - Look-up-tables, more commonly referred to as LUTs, are as old as Mathematics itself. The act of precalculating things into a row or table is nothing new. But in the realm of graphics programming, this simple act unlocks some incredibly creative techniques, which both artists and programmers found when faced with tough technical hurdles.
blog.frost.kiwi

Physicallybased - A database of physically based values for CG artists
physicallybased.info

Look, Ma, No Matrices! - Since the 2019 SIGGRAPH course, Geometric Algebra, and Euclidean PGA (plane-based or projective geometric algebra) in particular, has been gaining traction within the computer graphics and machine learning communities. Despite its broad applicability, including for higher dimensional geometry and physics, its adoption in traditional 3D graphics has been limited, often merely re-branding a dual quaternion as a PGA motor. The ’Look, Ma, No Matrices!’ project aims to broaden PGA’s application by introducing a modern, glTF-compliant, forward-rendering 3D engine that fully integrates the PGA algebra.
enkimute.github.io

Mesh Texture painting in Unity Using Shaders - Let’s say you want to paint or render something directly in the texture of a mesh. In this article, I am going to cover how to implement that in Unity, using shaders and GPU.
Shahriar Shahrabi

NormalMap-Online - GPU powered!
cpetry.github.io

Hex Map 3.2.0 - Separating Search Data
catlikecoding.com

"The Unity Shaders Bible" Author on Using Unity For Technical Art - The author of "The Unity Shaders Bible", Fabrizio Espíndola, explained how he got into technical art 10 years ago, discussed shader creation in Unity, and shared some advice on how to stand out professionally.
80.lv

Data-oriented design roundtable: Your questions, answered - The Q&A was on fire during the webinar, with many insightful questions from the audience – so many that we couldn’t get to them all live. To follow up, we asked Joe Valenzuela, director, software engineering at Unity, and Rasmus Höök, technical director at Stunlock Studios, to answer some of our favorite questions from the session.
Unity

Videos

How Persona Combines 2D and 3D Art - Persona 3 Reload is the official remake of my favorite game of all time and I'm very impressed with the visuals! Today we take a look at how much of it is shader work versus artist illustration and how it all gets put together. Topics covered: Non photorealistic rendering, fresnel, ray traced vs screen space reflections, z prepass, shadow mapping, forward rendering, deferred shadows, screen space ambient occlusion, global illumination, transparency, 3d models as ui elements
Acerola

This Problem Changes Your Perspective On Game Dev - A new approach for thinking about game development and my very best advice for how to make a successful indie game.
Jonas Tyroller

I made Mario Kart in C++! - In this video, I will recreate one of my favorite games, Mario Kart, in C++, using my own custom OpenGL engine!
Low Level Game Dev

The Power of Unity Editor Tools - Solo Game Dev - As a solo game developer it is very important to use my time as optimally as possible, which is why I have been creating a lot of Unity Editor tools to help speed things up!
The Naked Dev

Unity Chef - Matt Smith | Full Interview (Unity Cookbook 5th Edition) - Hello and welcome everybody today I'm here with Matt Smith one of the authors of the Unity Cookbook Fifth Edition
Jason Weimann

How to Come Up with Unique GAME IDEAS (Game Dev) - Game Ideas are one of the most important parts of a game developer's journey. The base idea is what you take to build off of as you go through that game's development. Whether you use Godot or another game engine, coming up with a game idea takes a lot of time and mental energy so I thought I could maybe help you out with that process. Maybe you need to come up with an idea quickly for a game jam or maybe you are ready to build a massive project but just don't know where to start. I really do hope this video helps!
DevWorm

Creating a Neural Network in Unity - In this video we will create a Neural Network in Unity. After that, we will train the network, so it can be used to help characters find their way to a portal.
Game Dev World

Better Save/Load using Data Binding in Unity - Data Binding in Unity can speed up your save times tremendously by keeping the persistent state of the game ready to save at a moments notice. Data binding is a fast and efficient way to save data quickly at runtime, and can help improve your data modelling. Let's build a Save/Load system to see this in practice.
git-amend

Making your game look good - How to make a Endless Driving Game in Unity Tutorial EP5 - In this episode we'll go through how you can make your game look great in Unity instead of the bland and dull colors it has using the default settings. We'll tune the shadows, lightning and also add post processing (Tonemapping, Bloom, Color Adjustments) to make the graphics look amazing with vibrant colors. With few changes it really makes a big difference and will make your game look a lot better. We'll also cover how you can easily add braking light to the car.
Pretty Fly Games

How AI is Actually Used in the Video Games Industry - As AI becomes increasingly more involved in the development of video games, it's worth taking stock of just how many ways it can be used. In this episode of AI 101 we dig into every facet of AI for games, and how it's actually being used in the industry.
AI and Games

Identifying Indie: A Study of Who Plays What and Why - Humble Games worked with an independent analyst group on a study that has identified modern indie gamers, their values, interests, and motivations—and this GDC 2023 session walks through the findings.
GDC

Assets

Game Architecture, World Building, And AI - Worldbuilding & more for game makers

Game makers aspiring and pro alike, don’t miss out on this bundle of books presenting a wealth of knowledge related to the subtler aspects of your craft. Once Upon a Pixel examines the storytelling and worldbuilding techniques driving recent hits like Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Last of Us. The Indie Game Developer Handbook runs you through all aspects of running a dev studio, from initial concept to release. Game Design Deep Dive: Platformers delves into the history and design evolution of this enduring genre.

Get all these books and more, valued at over $1,200, and help support the Hidden Genius Project!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

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

SoftMaskForUGUI - UI Soft Mask is a smooth masking component for Unity UI (uGUI) elements.
mob-sakai Open Source

com.utilities.rest - RESTful utilities for the Unity (UPM)
RageAgainstThePixel Open Source

PixelationFx - Pixelation post effect for Unity Urp
NullTale Open Source

InkPainter - Texture-Paint on Unity.
EsProgram Open Source

ComponentCacheGenerator - A source generator that automatically generates a cache of components for Unity.
AnnulusGames Open Source

NetworkPositionSync - Network Transform using Snapshot Interpolation and other techniques to best sync position and rotation over the network.
James-Frowen Open Source

DynamicInteractableShader - Unity Package containing an interactable shader, with a dynamic interactor count
Umbrason Open Source

SpecularProbes - Bake specular highlights into Unity Reflection Probes, allowing baked lights to cast sharp specular highlights for free
zulubo Open Source

Publisher of the Week: All Stars - Get 50% off top publishers, including SURIYUN, MalberS Animations, N-hance Studio, Meshtint Studio, and Aquarius Max. PLUS, get all of these assets for FREE with code ALLSTARS2024: Masa, The Ancient Set - Templates, Undead Horse And Knight, Modularized Fantasy Stylized Human Female, and Dragonfly Arrow Cute Series
Unity

UnityEngine.UI.DropdownEx - Added support for multiple option selection to a clone of the UnityEngine.UI.Dropdown (https://bitbucket.org/Unity-Technologies/ui/src) component.
chriscow Open Source

BlobShadowBaker - Simple tool for baking blob shadow textures in Unity!
Helix128 Open Source

UnityAssetManagementTools - Tools for managing assets in Unity 3D.
NibbleByte Open Source

Serializable-Dictionary-Unity - Create a serializable dictionary in Unity with all necessary error detections
EduardMalkhasyan Open Source

GameArkiSetup - Game Architecture, a set of game libraries.
GameArki Open Source

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

Spotlight

Adventure of Rikka - The Cursed Kingdom - The Adventure of Rikka is a top down 2D action RPG with a focus on puzzles, exploration, secrets and collectibles. You must defeat the dark forces that has cursed the lands, fight enemies using your sword and an arsenal of items such as the bow and fire wand and save the kingdom!

[You can get the demo on Steam and follow them on Twitter]
Poorly Drawn Squid

My game, Call Of Dookie. Demo available on Steam

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