Issue #231 - New And Retro

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Missed last week but hopefully made up for it with this issue. Another crop of excellent content to learn something from thanks to the game dev community. Enjoy!

Unity 6 Preview Has Been Released - Featuring accelerated rendering, new lighting options, multiplayer workflows, and much more.
80.lv

Get over 80 tips to speed up in Unity with our latest productivity e-book - This new edition brings together numerous steps, settings, and workflows from across Unity 2022 LTS toolsets and systems that each in their way, make creating in the Editor more efficient and fun. Whether you’ve just recently begun to learn Unity or have shipped multiple projects with it, we’re confident you’ll find plenty of helpful hints for getting things done faster in your game development with Unity.
Unity

What Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Can Teach Us About Early Access - I will be honest, I don’t get Early Access. Why would teams want to subject themselves to that exposure to the community with an unfinished game? How do you navigate having the game feel good and have enough content but not TOO much content? So I used this as a chance to ask them some important questions about how Early Access works and whether your game is right for it.
howtomarketagame.com

Don't Do This With Extension Methods - Extension methods are great. They give so much power and flexibility. They allow developers the opportunity to write clean code. It allows for helpful reuse of code.
adamstorr.co.uk

Engineer’s Codex - These rules are common enough that I daresay that at least one of them will be useful for a project that any software engineers reading this are currently working on.
read.engineerscodex.com

Hobby’s algorithm for aesthetic Bézier splines - Hobby’s algorithm is a technique for fitting a curve onto a sequence of points on the plane, such that it passes through all of the points in order. The resulting curves appear smooth and tend to form pleasant, relaxed shapes.
jakelow.com

Mouse Parallax in Unity - Interactive mouse parallax is an effect that's been common since (I'm guessing, based on old memories memories) around mid-2000s and onward. Adding a layer of dynamic animation makes for a more engaging and 'fun' interface.
mirzabeig.hashnode.dev

How To Get Special Daily Deal Featuring On The Steam Front Page - I started this project because I want to answer, what is required before you get a Daily Deal, and what do you get from it?
howtomarketagame.com

Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges - One of the remarkable characteristics of the Super Nintendo was the ability for game cartridges (cart) to pack more than instructions and assets into ROM chips. If we open and look at the PCBs, we can find inside things like the CIC copy protection chip, SRAM, and even "enhancement processors".
fabiensanglard.net

Videos

Recreating Balatro's Game Feel | Mix and Jam - All those hours playing Balatro were purely research! I swear!
Mix and Jam

Math in Game Development Summit: A Visual Guide to Quaternions and Dual Quaternions - Sometimes people say "Quaternions are 4 dimensional". They are trying to scare you. It's no more true than "3x3 matrices are 9 dimensional", and no more helpful either. There is a concrete, 3D way to visualize quaternions. In this GDC 2023 session, Hamish Todd dives into how quaternions are created, interpolated, and composed together.
GDC

Why the limitations of the N64 and PS1 mattered - The Sony PlayStation 1 and the Nintendo 64 generation was one of the most interesting era's in history. Both were early adopters of 3d technology, but their respective hardware architectures were vastly different from each other. The N64 and PS1 handled 3d and their games in different ways, and both systems limitations are ultimately what allowed for developers to come up with some of the very best video games ever made.
Modern Vintage Gamer

Programming Retro Games in Python | 80s Usborne Computer Coding Book - Please note, this video is not intended as a programming tutorial, it's just to show me having a go at converting the games. Hopefully seeing this will inspire others to have a go themselves :)
Kari

Top tips for scripting in Unity 2022 LTS | Tutorial - In this video, we’re going to look at different tips for scripting to increase your productivity in Unity 2022 LTS. You’ll learn more about creating a code style guide, the object pooling pattern, Unity Muse, as well as methods to debug and test your code.
Unity

Game Narrative Summit: It's Not in the Writer's Manual: A Q&A Session for New Writers - How do newer writers fit into game design and narrative design teams? Do writers coming from the worlds of film and comics have advantages getting work over prose writers? Is it easier to be a freelancer or employee? Do you have the skills to be a writer in this industry? How do you know when you've "made it"?
GDC

Optimal Goal-First Pathfinding - D* Lite - Unlock the Secrets of D* Lite Pathfinding Algorithm! Today we're planning backwards from the Goal to find the Start with an algorithm that can be updated with changing nodes at runtime with minimal cost. Ideal for AI agents or any problem you need to solve when you clearly know where you want to go!
git-amend

Unity | I Added Grass Cutting to my Free Grass System - Here's the Grass Cutting Extension post
MinionsArt

The #1 Way To Get Better At Programming - Strangler Fig, Introducing Seams and Wrap Method are just some of the refactoring techniques that will help you level up your code and help you start to think in Systems, identify where to use Patterns and uphold the Principles of Software Engineering in your Games. We're revising Stats and Modifiers to add optimizations and new features suggested by the community!
git-amend

I Made A Fully Ray Traced Game - Acerola Jam has ended and I was actually participating the whole time! I made a fully ray traced solitary confinement simulator with a realistic sun cycle driven by real world time. I made everything from the shaders to the materials to the music. The only thing I didn't make is the skyboxes.
Acerola

The Future of Game Development - Hello, world! It's been a while! 😊
Brackeys

Unity New AI Tools Review - Muse Animate, Chat, Texture, Behavior and Sprite - Are They Any Good? - A little bit over a year ago Unity announced Unity AI, a set of AI assisted tools for the Unity game engine. Most of what they showcased was pure BS, but over a year later we do have 5 new "Muse" AI tools for Unity developers. In this video we go hands-on with all 5, Muse Sprite, Muse Texture, Muse Chat, Muse Animate and Muse Behavior in a review that answers the question... are they any good?
Gamefromscratch

Let's Dev: DOTS Livestream - Today we're going to be talking about dots we're going to do some some questions and answers with some of the folks from the dots team!
Unity

Assets

Unreal and Unity Assets GIGA Bundle - Total asset madness for Unreal & Unity
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Spring Sale – 50% off - Feed your creativity with 50% off 300+ of top assets, including tools, 3D animations, audio, and more.
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CC0 Textures and 3D Models - High Quality & Quantity We provide high-quality 3D models and 1000+ textures that you can use on your projects.
sharetextures.com

splines - The official Dreamteck Splines for Unity repository
Dreamteck Open Source

unity-asset-tabs - This package allows for you to easily make docked tabs for your assets
nomnomab Open Source

better-scene-management - Unity Scene Management
techno-dwarf-works Open Source

Unity-Utils - Extension Methods and Utils for Unity Game Dev
adammyhre Open Source

unity-history-window - A simple selection history window for Unity.
acoppes Open Source

Unity-Stats-and-Modifiers - Broker Chain Implementation of Stats and Modifiers
adammyhre Open Source

UIBinding - Unity ugui binding
zhzl Open Source

fluid-dialogue - A Unity dialogue system that features an easy to use drag and drop graph. ScriptableObject driven with the ability to write custom actions and conditions to create complex dialogue workflows.
ashblue Open Source

Wave-Simulator - Interactive wave simulation in Unity.
MirzaBeig Open Source

1000+ Base Meshes 100% Free. CC0 License. - Whether you need a mesh for Digital Sculpting, creating a High or Low poly model, Game Prototyping, draw-overs for concepting or any other creative endeavour, this asset library has you covered.
The Base Mesh

ChoiceReferenceAttribute - An attribute for selecting a subclass to be serialized in Unity.
Paulsams Open Source

Unity-NavMesh-adding-Obstacles-To-Terrain-Trees - This small addon for the unity NavMeshComponents that allows you to load your Terrain trees as actual obstacles into the navMeshSurface.
Malikir324 Open Source

Unity-CoroutineSequence-Asset - A lightweight utility class for managing and sequencing coroutines in Unity projects. It provides a convenient way to create complex sequences of actions, delays, and conditions using a fluent API.
disas69 Open Source

50% off Maksim Bugrimov - Publisher Sale - Maksim Bugrimov is a 3D artist with a demonstrated history of creating popular 3D models. He has been publishing and selling assets on the Unity asset store for the past 10 years. PLUS, get PBR Fighters (Pack) for FREE with code MAKSIMBUGRIMOV
Unity Affiliate

Blender Core Skills - The Ultimate Blender Basics Bundle - Level up your Blender skills. It’s time to begin the next step in your Blender journey with this bundle of video courses from CG Cookie, designed to get you up and running a number of essential skills and disciplines in the realm of 3D art. If you’re just starting to get your bearings, kick things off with a full course on 3D mesh modeling with Blender, then learn to create lifelike organic shapes with a course on sculpting. Bring your creations to life with thorough courses on rigging and animation. Master skills like these and many more, and help support One Tree Planted with your purchase!
Paulsams Affiliate

Learn To Make Games in Godot 4 Bundle - Godot 4 Mastery Awaits. Been sitting on your game dev ambitions? Jump on this bundle of online courses from GameDev.tv, packed with expert instruction on the skills you need to develop both 2D and 3D games using Godot 4. Learn the fundamentals of game mechanics, animation, scripting, and more with courses dedicated to both 2D and 3D game development. Spread your wings with specialized courses covering topics like C#, multiplayer and mobile game development, and more. Also included are a host of premium asset packs to help your creations stand out. Kick off your game project today and help support Kiss the Ground with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

Faeland - Take on the role of skilled hunter, Sam, in Faeland, an adventure RPG set in a beautiful world inspired by 8-bit classics.

[You can get it on Early Access on Steam and follow them on Twitter]
Talegames

My game, Call Of Dookie. Demo available on Steam

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