Issue #265 - Game Dev Lessons: Visuals, Input, and 2024 Insights
This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com
Some lessons learned from 2024 and more. Enjoy!
Portals and Quake - Ever wanted to know how exactly did Quake’s precomputed visibility work? I did, so I wrote vis.py, a reimplementation of their algorithm in Python. This guide has all the information you need to understand vis, the tool used by Quake, Half-Life and Source Engine games.
30fps.net
Standard Patterns in Choice-Based Games - When I was analysing the structures of CYOA works a few years back, I began to recognise some strong recurring design patterns. I came up with some home-brewed terminology, but didn’t ever lay it out in a nice clear way. This is a non-exhaustive look at some of the more common approaches.
These Heterogenous Tasks
Game design for indies: Webbiness - Webbiness describes how big of an impact a game element has on your game. Let's podcast about it!
valadria.com
What I Learned Failing to Finish a Game in 2024 - In 2024, I didn’t finish any games, but I learned a lot about game development. I tackled three projects: a multiplayer turn-based RPG (Kinship), a puzzle simulation game (ClarityCorp), and a co-op side-scroller shooter (no name yet). The biggest challenges included managing scope, learning multiplayer mechanics, and handling art requirements.
georgeallen.dev
I emailed over 400 content creators. Here are the results. - There’s an important symbiotic relationship between indie devs and content creators. We all know that. And so I spent a lot of time reaching out to creators as part of a promotional effort, and recorded the results to share with ya’ll.
reddit.com
6 elements of visual guidance - Visual guidance is a crucial aspect of game environment that helps players navigate and interact with the world effectively.
gamedeveloper.com
Parsing the c64 Bubble Bobble Wind Currents - This christmas, I tried again and finally solved it. Below is the annotated 6510 disassembly. I’ll walk you through it.
geon.github.io
Videos
Were there too many games in 2024? - What were the top trends on steam in 2024?
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How To Get REALISTIC GRAPHICS in UNITY 6 URP (ArchViz Vol.10 Tutorial) - Lets take a look at ArchVizPRO Interior Vol.10 is a beautifully crafted asset for your game or virtual environment! The building features a covered pool and solarium as its focal point. It has six rooms on the ground floor and three upper-level rooms with terraces and outdoor baths. You will love the serene atmosphere of this place. The combination of concrete, metal, wood, and terracotta creates a unique and harmonious look that is both modern and timeless.
SpeedTutor
3 Projects for Beginners: Game Design and Art Fundamentals - What I want to take you through is some projects that we used to give students to do on our game design course in the first year
Indie Game Clinic
Unity Stop Motion Animator | Works With Any Animation! | Unity Tutorial - Learn how to create a simple script to play back the Animator component at fixed intervals to simulate a stop motion effect. Because this effect is at the Animator level it will work with any animation, rig type (humanoid, generic, and legacy), blend tree, transition, animation curves, and even still calls Animation Events!
Game Development Beyond the Basics
Unity Input System Demystified: 3 Easy Workflows You Need to Know - Discover the three main workflows of the Unity Input System in this comprehensive guide designed to demystify its features and make them accessible to everyone. Learn how to use the Input Actions panel for project-wide actions and bindings, leverage the PlayerInput component for callbacks and multiplayer scenarios, and directly read device states for quick prototyping.
git-amend
THRIVING at Game Jams ft. Soaryn & Lana Lux - Unity Insiders Soaryn and Lana Lux are here to share their personal game jam experiences and ambitions. Tune in for tips and tricks, stories and advice
Unity
Assets
Game Dev Asset Mega Bundle - Unity and Unreal - Gamedev assets for any situation
Bring the worlds in your imagination to life in Unity and Unreal Engine with this mind-blowingly massive collection of environments, props, tools, and more! From sprawling cyberpunk dystopias to soul-stirring medieval villages, you’ll have the building blocks to create masterwork game environments that will transport your players. You’ll get over three dozen megapacks made up of modular assets that you can mix and match as you please, that utilize engine-native cutting-edge tools like Nanite and Lumen.
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New Year, New You - Programming Games Bundle - Explore the FUN-damentals of coding and computing. Challenge your brain and have a blast learning with these acclaimed logic and puzzle games exploring key concepts of programming and machine learning. Build a neural network to communicate with cats in while True: learn(). Automate office workers and create a living CPU in the award-winning Human Resource Machine, and its acclaimed follow-up 7 Billion Humans. Build a feline Learning Factory on Mars, become a hacker in EXAPUNKS, and learn something new in process—all while supporting Cool Effect!
Humble Bundle Affiliate
Unity-Textures-Hunter - Provides summary of all textures and atlases in Unity project
AlexeyPerov Open Source
InputBuffer - Input buffering for Unity
madeyellow Open Source
GameShield - GameShield - An open-source solution to protect your Unity-based games. Anti-cheat, time-control, data ecnryption and memory protection and other security modules for your games.
DevsDaddy Open Source
Oceana-URP - Oceana water for Unity URP
ZloyKorovanovich Open Source
pitaya - Scalable game server framework with clustering support and client libraries for iOS, Android, Unity and others through the C SDK.
topfreegames Open Source
Bayesian-Optimization-for-Unity - Unity asset that eases access to a Bayesian Optimization process (based on botorch.py). It uses a Human-in-the-Loop approach that iteratively queries user feedback (i.e. objective values) to designs (i.e. parameter values).
Pascal-Jansen Open Source
lithium-ui - reactive ui framework for Unity based on UI Elements
Niikelion Open Source
Simple-Screen-Manager-for-Unity-aka-SS - A simple and flexible Unity library for managing and navigating screens with high performance and reusability.
AnhPham Open Source
unity-twitch-chat-interactions - A Unity tool that will allow you to easily implement Twitch chat commands into your game!
danqzq Open Source
Shop up to 50% off KAMGAM - Publisher Sale - KAMGAM is a tiny (one man) game studio making games since 2011. I enjoy sharing my own tools in the Unity Asset Store. I believe the best tools are those that have been battle tested in released products. PLUS get Power Pivot - Rotate, Scale, Edit, Snap & Pivot Editor for FREE with code KAMGAM2025
Unity Affiliate
kondo - Cleans dependencies and build artifacts from your projects.
tbillington Open Source
UnityTimer - Powerful and convenient library for running actions after a delay in Unity3D. Fork from akbiggs/UnityTimer. Add some useful functions.
Mr-sB Open Source
artificetoolkit - A Unity toolkit that allows easy editor customization with simple C# attributes.
AbZorbaGames Open Source
Minity - A Unity extension framework that includes features such as object pooling, scene routing, UI manager, and behavior trees.
MorizeroDev Open Source
ThaiTextCare-for-Unity - Library for Enhanced Thai Language Support in Unity's TextMeshPro
phanphantz Open Source
unity-back-button-stack - Easily manage a stack of objects that respond to the ESC button / Android Back button in Unity, so that only the top object handles the event.
gilzoide Open Source
EditorAttributes - EditorAttributes is a unity package that adds some extra editor attributes to your project to easily customize your editors without having to write any editor code.
v0lt13 Open Source
Royalty-Free Music, SFX, & More - Bundle - Pitch perfect sounds, loops & more. Create the perfect audioscape for your next game with this bundle of professional quality sounds from GameDev Market! This massive library features over 40 hours of audio tracks and more than 6000 individual sound effects to bring your game to life. Craft exhilarating boss battle music with the Boss Battles & Combat Music, excite players with addicting loot tunes with the Game Music Treasury, and bring explosions and more to life with the Urban Destruction Demolition Debris & Explosions. Get the assets you need to achieve the sound you’re looking for, and help support Hilarity For Charity with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate
Make Your Own Games - Unreal Engie 5 Bundle - From gamer to game developer. Are you curious about turning your passion for gaming into a career in game development? Our latest bundle with GameDev.tv will help teach you how to use Unreal Engine 5 and get you started on an exciting new adventure. Master the universally beloved game engine with our comprehensive bundle composed of industry-leading courses like Unreal Engine 5 C++: Make Your Own Action Combat Game, Unreal Engine 5 Blueprints: First Person Shooter, and more! Start creating and help support Direct Relief with your purchase.
Humble Bundle Affiliate
Spotlight
03 - 03 is a bullet-hell rogue-like shooter. Set in a surreal world inspired by the art of H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński.
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My game, Call Of Dookie. Demo available on Steam
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