Issue #241 - Game Design, VFX/Shaders, and more

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Hope your week went well, we are back with another bunch of game dev content to head into the weekend. Enjoy!

Combat Design: A Comprehensive Overview to Creating Satisfying Game Combat - When it comes to this highly complex and detail-oriented aspect of game design, there’s a staggering array of approaches to solve any problem as well as a great deal of subjectivity in “finding the fun,” but underlying every approach are various fundamental ideas to keep in mind.
gamedesignskills.com

Ways to interact with the network in Unity with examples for organizing multiplayer games - Many people, when they start developing their multiplayer game think about the realization of the network part. In this article I would like to tell you about the main methods of network communication in the framework of client-server relations.
Devs Daddy

Developing Custom Unity-Based Engine For Underwater Action Roguelike - RetroStyle Games' Eldar Kalinin joined us to talk about a custom game engine, built specifically for the studio's debut game Codename: Ocean Keeper, delving into the engine's modular design and highlighting its flexibility and ability to integrate with any future project seamlessly.
80.lv

Dr. Strange Portal using Unity VFX Graph - In this tutorial, we are going to replicate the portal effect from the movie Marvel Dr. Strange. Even though it looks really impressive, it is actually quite simple to make this kind of effect.
steveimm.id

Autotiling Technique - As a game developer, if the thought of hand crafting a level does not appeal to you, then you may consider looking into procedural generation for your next project. Even using procedural generation, however, you still need to be able to turn your generated map arrays into a tilemap with clean, contiguous walls, and sprites that match up cleanly, as if it was drawn by hand. In this article, I will explain the concept of auto-tiling, Wang Tiles, binary and bitmasks, and then walk through the process and algorithms associated with using this tool in a project.
excaliburjs.com

Starcraft (A History in Two Acts) - Great success brings with it great expectations. And sometimes it brings an identity crisis as well.
The Digital Antiquarian

Videos

Unity Playables is Actually a Game-Changer - The Playables API holds hidden potential that can transform your game development. In this video, you'll learn how to add runtime animations to your characters that come from objects that provide their own animations, automating complex sequences and creating more dynamic environments with minimal coding. Join us to unlock the secrets of these powerful tools and elevate your game's animation system to the next level!
git-amend

3 Shaders EVERY 2D Dev should know about - In this Unity tutorial, we'll use shadergraph to create 3 different shaders that you can add to your gamedev toolbelt. If you're new to shadergraph this will teach you a good amount of the common nodes you'll need to know about!
Sasquatch B Studios

The Low Tech Way Resident Evil Tricked You - Just a jpeg
Pop Strikers

Make your games JUICIER with these 5 rules - Let me show you 5 things to make your juice even JUICIER
MrElipteach

3D Toon Rendering in 'Hi-Fi RUSH' - 'Hi-Fi RUSH' is a 60fps rhythm action game rendered in a stylish 3D toon art style using a customized Unreal Engine 4. In 'Hi-Fi RUSH', the developers at Tango Gameworks used toon shading for the entire world, both character and environment, while providing modern 3D graphics features, all at 60fps at native resolution. In this GDC 2024 talk, learn about the development of a deferred toon renderer developed for toon shading a 3D world in a 2D way.
GDC

How I Solved Real Time Motion Blur - In computer Graphics the motion blur effect is added to computer renders when wanting to simulate the effect of a real world camera shutter resulting in the blurring of objects that are at motion along their Direction with the amount of blur correlating to their speed
Sphynx_Owner

Reverse Engineering Age Of Empires - I reverse engineered the original Age Of Empires to see how its AI works
Nathan Baggs

5 Things Every Game Programmer Should Know - I want to talk to you about things that I think every game programmer should know
Dylan Falconer

Shader Graph: Production Ready Shader Samples | Tutorial - We created a new sample set – Production Ready Shaders – that contains over 25 Shader Graph shaders that are ready to use in your project. The sample also contains a step-by-step tutorial on creating a forest stream environment using the assets from the sample.
Unity

Assets

Blender Market's Essential Game Modding Toolkit Bundle - The essential Blender suite

3D artists, it’s time to optimize your workflows, build up your arsenal, and level up your skills with this bundle of tools, assets, and tutorials. If you’re a Blender user, get ready for a smorgasbord of invaluable tools, ranging from Retopoflow, which introduces a full retopology toolkit to the industry-standard open-source program, to Faceit, an add-on that makes facial rigging, mocap, and animation a breeze. You’ll also get a host of ready-to-use software and engine-agnostic assets, plus a curated selection of in-depth tutorials focusing on essential 3D graphics topics.

Pay what you want for this amazing package, and help support One Tree Planted with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

SPECTACULAR EFFECTS SALE - 50% Off Sale. Create gaming magic with immersive VFX, particle systems, shaders, audio, and more at 50% off.
Unity Affiliate

Post-Processing-Scan - A 3D scan/sonar-like post-processing effect for Unity. Essentially a visualization of a spherical signed distance field (SDF).
MirzaBeig Open Source

save-async - Save Async is BUCK's Unity package designed for asynchronous saving and loading of game data.
buck-co Open Source

UnityGLTF - Runtime glTF 2.0 Loader for Unity3D
KhronosGroup Open Source

ZString - Zero Allocation StringBuilder for .NET and Unity.
Cysharp Open Source

APFrameworkUI - A Text Mesh Pro based text only UI system for Unity
dklassic Open Source

UniGame.ViewSystem - MVVM Views System for Unity3D
UnioGame Open Source

Game Programming - Taylor Francis Book Bundle - Full spectrum game dev library. Ready to immerse yourself in the wide assortment of skills that make up the vocation of game development? This bundle of books from Taylor & Francis has you covered. Learn the nuts and bolts of game building with The Fundamentals of C/C++ Game Programming. Get schooled on level design with 3D Game Environments: Create Professional 3D Game Worlds. Understand what it takes to invest players in your universe with Once Upon a Pixel: Storytelling and Worldbuilding in Video Games. And more! Pay what you want for a vast library on this multifaceted craft and help support the Hidden Genius Project with your purchase.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Learn Game Dev - Godot, Unreal, Unity, GameMaker - Software Bundle - Master today’s leading game engines. Ready to get started making games in Unreal Engine, Unity, and Godot? This bundle is packed with comprehensive online courses for all those popular and powerful game engines, and more! Learn to harness Godot’s 2D capabilities and create challenging tower defense games, brutal bullet hells, and more. Leverage the power of Unreal Engine to build everything from exciting multiplayer experiences to spooky horror games. Craft your ultimate turn-based game in Unity, pick up essential game dev skills like asset creation in Blender, coding in Python, and much more! Plus, your purchase helps Code.org.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

UnityBlackTheme - Oled black theme for Unity Editor
haywirephoenix Open Source

TMPEffects - Easily animate Unity text and apply other effects with custom tags
Luca3317 Open Source

UnityTilemapMask - SpriteMask component but for Tilemaps
justcore69 Open Source

unity-camera-fov-fit - Automatically adjust cameras' FOV to 3D objects bounds in Unity
gilzoide Open Source

unity-liquid-wobble - Implementation of simple liquid wobble using Shader Graph in Unity
SteveImmanuel Open Source

Unity-Service-Locator - This repository contains a Service Locator implementation for Unity, designed to manage dependencies across different scopes – individual game objects, scenes, and globally. The Service Locator pattern, while often considered an anti-pattern, can be a practical solution in certain Unity development scenarios, providing a centralized point for service registration and retrieval.
adammyhre Open Source

Unity-build-settings-presets - This asset lets you save build settings presets in Unity and switch easily between them.
Telroshan Open Source

Stat-System - An extensible stat system with modifiers for the Unity game engine
meredoth Open Source

StaticFileOptionsExtender - A .NET library that extends the content-type/MIME-type mappings for serving static files which have been compressed.
colinwilliams91 Open Source

cscore - cscore is a minimal-footprint library providing commonly used helpers & patterns for your C# projects. It can be used in both pure C# and Unity projects.
cs-util-com Open Source

Dissonity - Open source project that makes it easy to interact with the Discord Embedded App SDK using Unity
Furnyr Open Source

templ - Integrates Scriban template engine with the Unity editor
willykc Open Source

50% off Alan Dalcastagne da Cunha - Publisher Sale - AD Sounds have been creating sound effects through foley for over two years. They offer a vast collection of audio recordings, including cars, animals, footsteps, and more. Bring your games to life with the magic of sound. PLUS, get Combat Magic Spells - Volume II for FREE with code ALAN2024
Unity Open Source

Audio Arcade - The Definitive Collection Of Music And Sound From Ovani Sound - Expand your audio arsenal. Give your project that last bit of audio polish it needs to truly shine with this bundle from Ovani Sound. You’ll get a vast collection of royalty-free music and sound FX ready to plug into your project, as well as powerful time-saving audio plugins usable on all major game engines. From masterfully crafted gunshots and explosions and music packs that span moods and genres, to music and ambiance plugins for Godot, Unity, and Unreal Engine, your audio needs will be well and fully sorted. Plus, your purchase helps the Children’s Miracle Network.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

Sporeborn Dark - Break out of a maze surrounded by darkness, infested with growths and filled with hideous monsters. Explore the randomly generated locations of the experimental zone to find something that will help you delay your doom. A dark, atmospheric, scary top-down horror roguelike

[You can wishlist it on Steam and follow them on Twitter]
ValiantLight

My game, Call Of Dookie. Demo available on Steam

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