Issue #258 - Graphics Resources, Optimization, and more

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Welcome back for another week of game dev tips and resources. Enjoy!

Fake it til’ you make it - faking extended draw distance in mobile games - How Block City Wars developers use shaders and fog effects to fake distant objects, optimizing draw distance for better performance.
gamedeveloper.com

Creating Seamless Portals in 2D Games: Behind the Scenes of Ingression - I wanted to achieve the seamless feel of portals from the 3D games in a 2D game. To achieve “seamlessness” I had to make sure the player can’t tell when they get teleported or better, if they get teleported. For this, I decided to make the player stay in the same position on the screen while its global position changes.
Ata Türkoğlu

The Impact of Jungle Music in 90s Video Game Development - Jungle music was found in countless games from the early 90s. This article explains what jungle is, where it comes from, and why its soundtrack was such a perfect match for titles of the PlayStation & Nintendo 64 era.
pikuma.com

C# Records - Records were first introduced into .Net in version 5(C# 9). The basic premise was that, whilst classes work well, for some very typical instances of simply storing data, they work less well. Records were introduced as a specialised type of class to provide some of this functionality.
pmichaels.net

Unity 6 graphics learning resources - To help you get started with graphics in Unity 6, we’ve put together this reading list. These resources represent the latest and greatest content for learning our Scriptable Render Pipelines (SRPs) in the newest Unity version, whether you’re building your project with the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) or High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), or learning how to leverage updates in VFX Graph and Shader Graph.
Unity

Get hundreds of tips from new Unity 6 optimization guides for console, PC, mobile, web, and XR - Let’s take a brief look at what’s new in each e-book, as well as recently published video tutorials on the Unity Profiler, one of the most important tool sets you’ll use for optimizing the performance of your Unity projects.
Unity

Videos

Hierarchy Hack: Add Indicator Icons for EASY Debugging - By hooking into existing Unity Editor Events we can easily display custom information and icons at the Game Object level in the Hierarchy for fast debugging and easy problem solving - or displaying any kind of information you want.
git-amend

Alexey Merzlikin - Architecture Behind Our Most Popular Unity Games - Are you curious about how some of the most successful Unity games are built? Do you want to learn the best practices and tips for designing scalable and maintainable game architectures? We are going to talk about the Controllers Tree architecture that is used across multiple games made by Playtika. Obviously, there is no silver bullet and this architecture is not suitable for every game, but it works great for the ones we are going to talk about. Let’s together dissect its pros and cons.
Digital Dragons

Smaller Than Pixel Art: Sub-Pixel Art! - A video about making sub-pixel art? I don't know what's wrong with me, ha ha.
Japhy Riddle

Optimization for web, XR & mobile games in Unity 6 - In today’s fast-paced gaming world, optimization isn’t just an option, it’s essential. Whether you’re targeting the web, pushing the limits of XR, or reaching millions on mobile, the tools and processes to identify and fix bottlenecks are similar.
Unity

Making Waves with DREDGE - Black Salt Games Creator Spotlight - Join Unity Host Jackson and Nadia, Joel and Alex from Black Salt Games to talk about DREDGE's creation, challenges and success - through choppy water.
Unity

Assets

Award Winning Assets - The Crown Collection - Nature made easy with amazing assets

Game developers—build rich worlds, unique environments, and lush landscapes with Award Winning Assets - The Crown Collection. This bundle from NatureManufacture, winner of Unity's publisher of the year award, features environments, characters, meshes, models, animations, music, SFX, and more!

Get the assets you need to help bring your game to life, and help support Starlight Children's Foundation with your purchase.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Learn Unity - Game Development Bundle 2024 - Get started in Unity today Learn to create games with Unity with these online courses from GameDev.tv! This comprehensive curriculum covers core skills and advanced concepts for the powerful and popular development platform. Find out how to make a 2D RPG combat system, VR experience, or turn-based strategy game. Get trained up on visual scripting, multiplayer, network coding, and more. Level up your Unity game dev skills, and help support Oceana with your purchase! GameDev.tv have spent the last decade working with world class instructors to create the perfect learning experience for game development. Join our global community of over 2 million students and start making your own games today!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Flags, Banners, Emblem - Asset Pack (FREE) - Bring life to your game worlds with this Stylized Flags Asset Pack! Featuring a variety of colorful, hand-painted flags in unique designs and vibrant colors, these assets are perfect for medieval, fantasy, or stylized settings. Each flag comes with detailed textures, giving you a polished, cartoon-inspired look that enhances any scene. Ideal for RPGs, strategy games, and fantasy environments.
freestylized.com

rivet - The only backend your multiplayer game needs. Open-source & self-hostable.
rivet-gg Open Source

Talo backend: self-hostable game dev tools - A self-hostable game backend - the easiest way to integrate authentication, stats, leaderboards and (so much) more into your game
TaloDev Open Source

Wacs - WebAssembly Interpreter written in C# 9.0/.NET Standard2.1
kelnishi Open Source

Spax-Dialogue-Thing - Unity Dialogue system using Ink, Mix and Jam's Animal Crossing Animated Text, and Dotween
JoshHux Open Source

VR-Builder - VR Builder lets you create better VR experiences faster. Our code is open source and designed to be extended. Plus, our GUI empowers everyone to create fully functional VR apps - without writing code.
MindPort-GmbH Open Source

UniSdf - Signed distance shader library for Unity (including shader graph)
johanhelsing Open Source

Inputs-Manager - A new customizable and dynamic Input alternative for Unity, based on the New Input System
BxB-Studio Open Source

AStar - A Unity package for basic AStar pathfinding
nothke Open Source

Super Game Assets Bundle (+7,000 Assets For Unity, Godot, and Unreal) - So many assets, so little time Game developers, build your worlds with the Super Game Assets Bundle for Unreal, Godot, and Unity—featuring 7,000+ audio, visual, and environmental assets. This high-quality bundle features a truly diverse collection of themed assets ranging from medieval to cyberpunk. Create the next great RPG or action game with the Super Game Assets Bundle and help support Direct Relief with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

NDraw - Runtime line drawing utility for Unity
nothke Open Source

DeleteMissingScripts - The Unity tool designed to locate missing script components.
snoopyuj Open Source

UniJoystick - It is a powerful joystick and touchpad component for UGUI.
Bian-Sh Open Source

TrueTrace-Unity-Pathtracer - A High Performance Compute Shader Based Mesh Pathtracer in Unity3d without RT Cores
Pjbomb2 Open Source

Unified-Universal-Blur - UI blur (translucent) effect for Unity.
lukakldiashvili Open Source

massive-ecs - Sparse set ECS with rollbacks. Unity package.
nilpunch Open Source

Design With CorelDraw & Perfect With AI - Software Bundle - CorelDRAW for novices and professionals. Master one of the most widely adapted design programs with our CorelDRAW 2024 Bundle. Get amazing software like Corel Painter 2023, PaintShop Pro 2023, and Vision FX. Learn professional graphic design software with vector, technical illustration, and CAD software options to design logos, posters, drafting, and more. Level up your creative skills and help support Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals today!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Shop up to 50% off RamsterZ - Publisher Sale - RamsterZ is a small business located in Maryland, USA. We're two people with a combined 20 years experience in the video game industry. We provide a wide variety of animations, from combat and martial arts animations, to creature, horror, and more built using a mixture of motion capture and hand animation. PLUS get Hand to Hand Set for FREE with code RAMSTERZ
Unity Affiliate

Spotlight

Gravelord - Gravelord is a fast-paced boomer shooter voiced by a badass protagonist featuring hand-crafted levels filled with secrets and hordes of enemies to kill. Dish out some brutal carnage with powerful guns and collect Tarot Cards to gain even more killing power. Let's put the fun back in funeral!

[You can get the demo on Steam and follow them on Bluesky and Twitter]
Fatbot Games, s. r. o.

My game, Call Of Dookie. Demo available on Steam

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