Issue #171 — Look Good And Feel Good

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Enjoy these tips on how to make your game look better, feel better, and more. Enjoy!

Cozy assets for your cozy games — Almost out of nowhere, the term cozy games has slipped into the lexicon. But what exactly does it mean, and how does one make a game “cozy”? Unity

How to feel GOOD about your unfinished games — Are you like me, where you have folders of unfinished games? Do you feel bad about not finishing them? Well what if you could feel good about them instead? valadria.com

Color-Ramp Lighting Tutorial — Wanna make a ramp or colors in Unity’s URP? It’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it. Buckle up! bodardr

AI assisted graphics: Character modeling — I have been working in the games industry for 20+ years, modeling characters and backgrounds for a large part of it. So it would be interesting to see how AI would enable me to work faster. And by how much? traffickinggame.com

Are Vampire Survivor-likes Dead? — There is a funny thing that Indie game developers do anytime there is the tiniest bit of good news for them, they almost instantly say “Well it was good, but it is probably over by now and things will be worse.” howtomarketagame.com

The Problem With Dependency Injection Frameworks — No, my problem isn’t with dependency injection. My problem is with dependency injection frameworks. jamesshore.com

How to move from traditional tech into game dev? — [A Hacker News discussion] news.ycombinator.com

Videos

Why Old Games Still Look Great! — I love the 8-bit gaming era, there’s a reason many gamers do, and I believe it’s to do with the simple but striking animation. Video Game Animation Study

Cinematic Lighting in Unity — From Creation to Final Render — Lighting an atmospheric night time scene in Unity brings with it many a challenge for the artist, both technically and creatively. In this masterclass size video lesson we will go through the entire workflow of creating this urban sci-fi scene, from how the environment was built, adding volumetric fog and atmosphere, and of course a deep dive into how you light a scene like this from scratch for cinematics, film or virtual production. Lars Stranden

Unity VFX Graph — Pokémon Bite Attack — Let’s recreate Pokémon Bite Attack VFX in Unity! It’s an inspired version, a fan made version, accompanied with a tutorial for anyone who wants to learn the magic of Visual Effects in Unity. We are going to use VFX Graph and Krita. Enjoy! Gabriel Aguiar Prod.

Unity VFX — Ground Cracks | Fissure | Hole Effect Tutorial — Let’s open holes, cracks or fissures on the ground! This is an awesome technique that uses a custom configuration of the stencil buffer to render holes on top of other 3d objects. Love it! Gabriel Aguiar Prod.

I Made Crazy Taxi CRAZIER — I remade Crazy Taxi for the modern times. Here’s how that went. samyam

Efficient Game Dev: 10 Lessons from a Fulltime Indie — Reduce risk in your game dev business with my game dev lessons from 2022. I share game developer mistakes I made and how to improve success of an indie game by avoiding those mistakes yourself! Tim Beaudet

1 Year Of Game Dev Opinions ANALYSED! — I created a bunch of polls during 2022 and I wanted to include all my favourites with the results, that could help you improve your game! We talk about features that Gamers and Game Devs, Unity, things you might find annoying, ideas you all share together and lets think of some great polls for 2023! SpeedTutor

Using Compute Shaders for World Texture Painting in my VR Game with Unity — With this Unity compute-shader based 3d texture painting system, you can cover every inch of a scene with liquid filth, just to clean it all up again. I created this as an improvement to the preexisting decal system, which was featured in a previous video. Now the player can interact with the environment in much more detail than before, with the liquid map allowing for a range of possibilities, from massive corrosive acid spills to tiny drops of spilled soda. Lone Developer

How to blend Unity terrain and model colours (Tutorial) — In this tutorial, we take 3 separate models from the Polygon Farm pack and import them in to Blender, find the color of the model on the UV map and create a Unity Terrain layer that matches the model that can be painted on to the terrain. synty studios

Floating Progress Bars in Unity — How to make a health bar that floats over the player’s head! Or a mana bar. Or a stamina ba… look it’s a bar for whatever you want to track! The end result of this video is a bar that you feed two values — maximum and current amounts — and it handles the rest. By default, it is designed for 2D games, but I also show you how to set it up for 3D games! b3agz

Learn how to create a Typewriter Effect for Text Mesh Pro in Unity — In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a typewriter effect for Text Mesh Pro in Unity. This effect will allow you to control the writing speed, pause after interpunctuation, speed up or skip the writing of text entirely, and invoke events on every letter and at the end of the text box. This way, you can easily hook it up to other systems in your project. Christina Creates Games

The Power of Command Buffers in Unity | JellyCar Worlds — Tim Fitzrandolph, owner of Walaber Entertainment shows us how to utilize the power of command buffers to create animated 2D backgrounds. An optimized alternative to rendering a second camera! Unity

How do non-euclidean games work? | Bitwise — What are “non-euclidean” games and how do they work? We’ll discuss the inner workings of games like Antichamber and Superliminal as well as discussing the theory behind non-euclidean geometry. DigiDigger

Assets

The Complete Unity Game Development Bundle — Build Games with Unity

Learn to create games with Unity! The world’s most popular game engine, Unity is behind hits like Pokémon GO, Genshin Impact, and Beat Saber. With this bundle of courses, you’ll build RPGs, FPS, racing, idle, survival, and strategy games, and master core skills like implementing procedural maps, multiplayer, VR, and cutscenes — no prior experience required.

Plus, you’ll support Lotus Outreach International with your purchase! Humble Bundle Affiliate

InfLightProbe — Automatic Light probe generator for Unity engine. Based on “Light Grid” of “Precomputed Lighting in CoD IW 2017”. and “Light probe interpolation using tetrahedral tessellations” by “Robert Cupisz”. limztudio Open Source

Game Workstore Protocol UI — Protocol UI is a small framework to work with multiple screens on a easy and organized way and manage layered panels on Unity. GameWorkstore Open Source

Unity Proportional Navigation Collection — A Collection of ProNav implementations in Unity. A proportional navigation missile calculates the optimal intercept position, instead of simply pursuing the target head-on, making the missile WAY more accurate and realistic. Woreira Open Source

Anone Can Learn To Code — The Complete 2023 Online Course — Become a programming pro. Learn coding fundamentals and become a software development master with this massive bundle from the training experts at Mammoth Interactive! Through dozens of online courses, you’ll learn the essential tools, languages, and techniques you need to build websites, mobile apps, Unity and Unreal Engine games, and much more. Pay what you want and choose how much of your purchase helps us support Starlight Children’s Foundation below! Humble Bundle Affiliate

Asset Management Tools for Unity — Small collection of tools for Unity used to manage your assets. Part of the DevLocker project. NibbleByte Open Source

Excite-O-Meter — The Excite-O-Meter is a user-friendly Unity plugin for XR creators to integrate physiological user information in the development and evaluation of XR content. Specifically, it allows to record, analyze, and visualize validated metrics of heart activity from the chest strap sensor Polar H10 and movement trajectories from VR headsets. luisqtr Open Source

Kaimira Weighted List (C#) — A generic collection for selecting random elements by weight in O(1) in C# cdanek Open Source

UV Checker Map Maker: Free Tool to Create Custom Maps — It can generate UV maps at up to 8K resolution. [Direct link to tool] 80.lv

Create Script Folders and Assemblies with Tests — This Unity Editor Extensions create script folders (Editor, Runtime, and each Tests) containing assembly definition file (.asmdef). nowsprinting Open Source

Machine Learning And Artificial Intelligence Book Bundle — Understand, build, and tap into AI. Curious about artificial intelligence? Need practical advice on working with machine learning? Pick up this library of ebooks and unlock a deeper understanding of today’s most talked-about technologies! Explore the realms of data science, neural networks, computer vision, and AI ethics, and find out how to use tools like Python and Spark to harness the power of machine learning for your own applications. Plus, your purchase helps support Prevent Cancer Foundation! Humble Bundle Affiliate

C# and .Net Ultimate Book Bundle — Learn skills for modern software development. Sharpen your skills with C# programming and .NET cross-platform development with this bundle from the experts at Packt. Through a mix of books and video courses, you’ll learn about the technology that powers many of today’s professional websites, apps, and services — and get the tools you need to take your career or studies to the next level. Pay what you want, and choose how much of your purchase helps us support Starlight Children’s Foundation below! Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

PaperKlay — A classic 3D platformer with a tactile twist. Open, unfold, and rotate your way through a stunning open world with a varied moveset of double-jumps, dashes, and glides. Explore, solve puzzles and make friends as you try to find every last egg!

[You can download the demo from Steam, and follow them on Twitter] WhyKev

You can subscribe to the free weekly newsletter on GameDevDigest.com

This post includes affiliate links; I may receive compensation if you purchase products or services from the different links provided in this article.