Issue #235 - Rendering Tutorials, Physics, Community, and more

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Get it while it's hot! Another jam packed issue of game dev content. Enjoy!

Voxel Displacement Renderer — Modernizing the Retro 3D Aesthetic - I’ve been developing a custom real-time renderer which uses very small voxels to produce a distinctive visual style that modernizes the look and feel of classic 90’s 3D games. By approaching the problem of rendering voxels in an unusual way, I’m able to produce these visuals from conventional art assets — low-poly triangle meshes and textures — that are familiar and efficient to create.
blog.danielschroeder.me

City In A Bottle – A 256 Byte Raycasting System - Hello size coding fans. Today, I have something amazing to share: A tiny raycasting engine and city generator that fits in a standalone 256 byte html file. In this post I will share all the secrets about how this magical program works.
frankforce.com

The secrets to gaming gravity - “Find“Find the fun.” Game development’s common refrain can manifest as the creation of a new game mechanic, the refinement or combination of existing mechanics, or making something simple — like jumping, flying, and fighting — feel great. Even falling.
polygon.com

2D Rigid Body Collision ResolutionPart 1: Defining the problem - From Mario bouncing off a Goomba to two cars bumping into each other in a racing game, dealing with collisions is such an integral part of most video games that we often take it for granted.
sassnow.ski

Unity Tutorial: Fake Cloud Shadows - Fake cloud shadows are a great way to add depth to your scene, providing the illusion of high-quality environmental shading for negligible cost and effort. Below is an example from Warhammer 3, where it's apparent in the sped-up footage the clouds in the sky are looping/repeating and don't match the actual shadows on the ground.
mirzabeig.substack.com

Instantly Boost Unity Game Performance With IL2CPP_USE_SPARSEHASH - Unity abstracts away many low-level details, allowing game developers to focus on creating amazing experiences. However, as your game scales and grows in complexity, you may need to dive deeper into the internals of abstracted engine components like IL2CPP. In this post, we will uncover one of these low-level details to boost the performance of your game in one easy step.
gamedev.center

How To Use Steam's Marketing? - Earlier this month, Steam released an article addressing some of the big questions you might have about marketing your game. As you want to sell your game on Steam, having a good understanding of how it works is key.
stepupyourgame.blog

Pathfinding Part 1 with Dijkstra's Algorithm - One of the most common problems that need solved in game development is navigating from one tile to a separate tile somewhere else. Or sometimes, I need just to understand if that path is clear between one tile and another. Sometimes you can have a graph node tree, and need to understand the cheapest decision. These are the kinds of challenges where one could use a pathfinding algorithm to solve.
excaliburjs.com

Climbing content mountain - Tips & advice for climbing content mountain, that gigantic, intimidating middle part of finishing a game.
valadria.com

Unity 6: A Deep Dive Into the Update's New Features & Enhancements - In light of Unity 6 Preview's recent release, Unity Technologies' Mathieu Muller has joined 80 Level to provide an in-depth overview of the update, discuss the new graphical features and improvements it introduces, and explain how you can get the most out of the engine's new version.
80.lv

The good within: Designing a memorable horror game protagonist - The survival horror genre has no shortage of leads who share the player's eagerness to go through hell and back to achieve their goal of living to see another day.
gamedeveloper.com

Introducing our new e-book: Unity’s Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) for advanced developers - This 50+ page e-book, Introduction to the Data-Oriented Technology Stack for advanced Unity developers, is now available to download for free. Use it as a primer to better understand data-oriented programming and evaluate if DOTS is the right choice for your next project. Whether you’re looking to start a new DOTS-based project, or implement DOTS for performance-critical parts of your Monobehaviour-based game, this guide covers all the necessary ground in a structured and clear manner.
Unity

Unity Shader Variants Optimization & Troubleshooting Tips - Here, I’d like to share a few practical tips on how to handle variants, understand where they are coming from, and some effective ways to reduce them. Your project build time and memory footprint will greatly benefit as a result.
Unity

Videos

Lerp smoothing is broken - a journey of decay and delta time - I had to learn differential equations for this oh boy
Freya Holmér

Collision Detection in my Procedural Animation State Machine - Collision detection is crucial for my procedural animations, and in this video, I’ll show you exactly how I implemented it in my state machine.
iHeartGameDev

Get Started with Custom Unity Packages (Step by Step) - Learn how to package your custom code in a modular, version controlled way with Unity Custom Packages, that include Dependency management! Understand the difference between a basic unity packaged Asset and a Custom Unity Package. Today we're taking our Improved Timers code from the previous video and packaging it to share with the community! …
git-amend

Why Photorealistic And Stylized Graphics Are The Same - Despite aesthetic diversity, the math that drives video game and movie lighting is almost always derived from the same exact lighting model. Knowing is half the battle, so today we go over how Disney derived their hallmark principled BRDF and how you could do it yourself!
Acerola

Creator Spotlight: Finding Your Community - The teams at SF Game Development, RVA Game Jams, and Gumbo Collective Inc. are here to share there stories and tips on how to find your community. We will be welcoming them on our next Creator Spotlight to talk about community building.
Unity

Unity - Foil Card Shader Graph - I've made a tutorial on how to create a foil card with a 'fake depth' effect.
Game Slave

Damaged Glass Shader In Blender | Tutorial - learn how to make a damaged glass shader in Blender.
PIXXO 3D

Assets

Template Toolkit Sale: Up to 60% off - Get the templates, system packs, and tutorials you need to build your games faster. Discover over 200 assets on sale.
Unity Affiliate

Epic Environments Mega Bundle - Unity & Unreal - Create fantasy worlds in Unity & Unreal. Bring the fantasy world of your dreams to life in your Unity or Unreal Engine game project with this massive bundle of assets! From bustling medieval urbanscapes to ancient temple environments teeming with mystery and majesty, you’ll get tons of modular assets with which to craft play spaces that’ll enchant and transport your players. Also included are a host of characters and props to help make your environments feel convincing and lived-in. Pay what you want for this epic toolkit, valued at over $1,000, and help support Code.org with your purchase.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

unity-prefs-editor - Unity Player/Editor Prefs Editor
fish-ken Open Source

Lattice - A visual scripting system for Unity ECS. Quickly create gameplay logic.
Pontoco Open Source

YNL-Simple-AI-System - Implement basic AI behaviors effortlessly using this straightforward toolkit. It’s designed to handle object behaviors and interactions.
Yunasawa-Studio Open Source

zombie-ai - Advanced Zombie AI or Zombie NPC for Unity Game Engine with State Machine and Behavior Tree Controlled.
baponkar Open Source

junelite - Make Unity prettier. A free, open-source, and redistributable post-processing stack for Unity and VRChat.
kleineluka Open Source

UnityDxrTest - A testbed project for Unity real-time ray tracing features
keijiro Open Source

SimpleUDP - SimpleUDP - UDP library for C#
StrumDev Open Source

JoltPhysicsUnity - Jolt Physics bindings for Unity
seep Open Source

EasierVRAssets - A collection of prefabs, scripts, and assets that can be dragged and dropped into Unity for the Oculus Quest. Requires the Oculus Implementations package from the Oculus Store, but makes various aspects about using it easier.
kimryan0416 Open Source

unity-webgl-microphone - Microphone interface for Unity when using WebGL/WebXR build target
bnco-dev Open Source

Responsible - Reactive asynchronous automated testing utility for .NET and Unity
sbergen Open Source

50% off Blink - Publisher Sale - Blink takes pride in helping independent developers succeed by providing them with innovative tools and high-quality art. Mixing assets from different publishers can be difficult, so Blink Art has created asset types from all categories that can be seamlessly combined together. PLUS, get 100+ Stylized Weapons Bundle - Fantasy RPG for FREE with code BLINK2024.
Unity Affiliate

Low Poly Game Dev Bundle - Low-poly building blocks. Nail the evocative retro look of the 32-bit era in your next project with this bundle of low-poly game assets, usable on Unity, Unreal, and other game engines big and small! You’ll get thousands of individual assets across dozens of themed packs, allowing you to create everything from awe-inspiring futuristic space colonies, to post-apocalyptic ruins teeming with hazard—plus, all the props you need to bring them to life! Everything in this bundle is in FBX format, so you’ll be able to integrate it all seamlessly, regardless of your workflow. Play what you want for this bundle of amazing building blocks and help support Save the Children with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Gamedev Market's RPG Adventure Essentials Bundle - Build stunning 2D worlds. Game makers, get ready to supercharge your 2D creations with this massive bundle, overflowing with pixel-perfect assets ready to drop into your next project! You'll get dozens of versatile tilesets, from somber cyberpunk cityscapes to idyllic medieval villages, allowing you to bring the worlds in your imagination to life. Populate them with a vast array of diverse characters, fearsome monsters, and charming critters, and add the finishing touches with slick icon packs, sound effects, and retro-inspired music. Pay what you want for this expansive toolkit, ready to use whatever your specific workflow, and help support the Michael J. Fox Foundation with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

Unlanded - Drift your way through space of hazards! In Unlanded you'll drift among colourful environments and bizarre hazards. The game has semi-realistic physics: there is no speed limit, your ship won't stop automatically and its thrust is not instant. Some players may find it confusing, some won't be able to complete the tutorial.

[You can get it in Early Access on Steam and follow them on Twitter]
Eki-Eki-Eki

My game, Call Of Dookie. Demo available on Steam

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