How Nintendo solved Zelda's open world problem

This video explores the biggest challenge faced when developing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Nintendo wanted to create a sense of freedom and exploration while also guiding players towards key story locations. They focused on creating a variety of attractive landmarks and points of interest, such as shrines, stables, and enemy camps, each offering unique benefits. They also used the triangle rule, designing the landscape with triangular formations that naturally guided the player's eye and revealed new locations gradually. This created a chain reaction of discoveries, drawing players organically across the map. With this approach, players freely explored while still ending up at important story locations.

https://youtu.be/CZzcVs8tNfE

#openworld #gamedesign #leveldesign

Post-Processing Wireframe/Outlines: A simple post-processing outline effect that uses depth-based edge detection (Built-in RP).

A wireframe and outline (2-in-1) effect for Unity that uses depth-based edge detection to render thick, quality post-processing wireframes and outlines. You can control the line thickness, edge detection threshold, colour, and blend state. Unlike the typical edge-detection techniques of using a sobel filter/kernel, we compare depth against the local area average- calculated using what is essentially box blur.

https://github.com/MirzaBeig/Post-Processing-Wireframe-Outlines

#postprocess #wireframe #shader

Dark and Stormy: a funky skybox shader for Unity.

http://vfxmike.blogspot.com/2018/07/dark-and-stormy.html

Repo: https://github.com/SquirrelyJones/DarkAndStormy

#shader #clouds

Multiplayer Unity FullBody FPS Controller: A collaborative test project with a simple Mirror Multiplayer game. Built to test a potential workflow with remote artists and programmers.

Built on top of Free Open-Source FullBody FPS Controller I shared recently.

https://github.com/TCKingCeryn/Multiplayer-Unity-FullBody-FPS-Controller

#character #fps #netcode

Managed Shell Objects: How Bad are Leaked Managed Shells?

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.memoryprofiler@1.1/manual/managed-shell-objects.html

Repo with a sample of a leaked managed shell: https://github.com/keijiro/ManagedShellTest

#memory

How to use RaycastCommand

RaycastCommand is API that allows multiple raycast requests to be made in jobs. By using RaycastCommand instead of multiple calls to methods like Physics.Raycast(), the time spent on raycasts on the main thread can be reduced. The post contains code samples to demonstrate the comparison between raycasts using Physics.RaycastNonAlloc() and RaycastCommand. The results show the benefits of using RaycastCommand for efficient raycast operations.

https://coffeebraingames.wordpress.com/2023/05/22/how-to-use-raycastcommand/

#physics #jobs #raycast

Art Design Deep Dive: Using a 3D pipeline for 2D animation in Dead Cells

I personally enjoyed so much amazing animations in Dead Cells. Here is the post about how they were made.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/production/art-design-deep-dive-using-a-3d-pipeline-for-2d-animation-in-i-dead-cells-i-

#animation

[60sec SHADER BREAKDOWN] How to make realistic photograph/paper burning VFX!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/13pmlam/60sec_shader_breakdown_how_to_make_realistic/

#shadergraph #burn

Accessing texture data efficiently | Unity Blog

An overview of API to access texture data on CPU and GPU with performance benchmarks as well as intricacies of using various approaches.

https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/accessing-texture-data-efficiently

#rendering #texture #performance

Generated Adventure — postmortem of a game made with chatGPT and Midjourney (prompts included)

The post discusses the development process, challenges faced, and insights gained from using AI models for generating an adventure game

https://blog.luden.io/generated-adventure-the-postmortem-of-a-game-made-with-chatgpt-and-midjourney-prompts-included-f87e7e615204

#aigeneration

Shaders Case Study - Dead Cells' Character Art Pipeline (3D -> 2D)

How to make a tool similar to one used in Dead Cells to create animated 2D characters from 3D models.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNDRre6q98g

#animation

How to properly implement movement in Unity 2D: Learn the basis of a proficient platformer controller

Games such as Super Meat Boy, Celeste, The King’s Bird, and Dead Cells represent the gold standard for 2D movement mechanics. These games have achieved this status by creating satisfying and intuitive movement mechanics that are centered around simple directional movement and satisfying jumps. They are excellent platformers because they use a variety of invisible tricks in their physics systems to create the illusion of tight controls. These tricks are crucial in ensuring that the player’s movements feel natural and responsive enhancing the overall gameplay experience.

https://fungies.io/2023/04/11/how-to-properly-implement-movement-in-unity-2d-a-short-guide/

#controller #platformer

InteractiveSmoke: Counter-Strike 2 smoke w/ Unity Compute Shader

https://github.com/aleksandrpp/InteractiveSmoke

#smoke #feature

InstantPipes: A Unity editor tool for quickly generating pipes — with pathfinding

https://github.com/letharqic/InstantPipes

#pcg #procedural #pipe

UnitySSReflectionURP: Screen Space Reflection for Unity URP (Universal Render Pipeline).

https://github.com/jiaozi158/UnitySSReflectionURP/

#reflection #urp

Matusson/UCloth: Burst-based Unity cloth simulation

This project is not production ready and no further work will be done. It is primarily intented to be a learning resource

https://github.com/Matusson/UCloth

#cloth

DOTS Samples
- Entities samples
- Netcode samples
- Physics samples
- Entities.Graphics HDRP samples
- Entities.Graphics URP samples

Also contains a list of links to learn more about DOTS

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples

#dots #ecs

Counter Strike 2 Smoke

Another example of the smoke implementation. Looks better to me than the previous sample.

https://youtu.be/ryB8hT5TMSg

#smoke #vfx

CI/CD pipeline Unity Part 1

How to use GitHub actions and GameCI to have a simple pipeline that ensures your Unit tests pass on every single PR.

https://medium.com/@RunningMattress/setting-up-a-ci-cd-pipeline-for-unity-part-1-344e74c4f35a

#ci

CI/CD pipeline Unity Part 2

Setting up a pipeline for automating the build and release of our project.

https://medium.com/@RunningMattress/setting-up-a-ci-cd-pipeline-for-unity-part-2-e5e6693d4546

#ci

CI/CD pipeline Unity Part 3

We’ll look at the following options:
- Improving the stability of main by enforcing PRs are up to date before merging.
- Caching to speed up job runs
- Separation and Parallelisation of Jobs
- Ensuring your main branch only contains conventional commit messages
- Self-Hosted Runners and Cache Accelerators
- Only testing code changes

https://medium.com/@RunningMattress/setting-up-a-ci-cd-pipeline-for-unity-part-3-5885016f4367

#ci