Issue #158 - Indie Tips
This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com
Lots of useful info and tips in this issue whether you are just starting out or a game dev veteran. Hope you enjoy
Don’t start the trailer with your logo - I’d like to address a mistake I often see from eager new indie game developers. It’s become one of the main things I look for when I see someone else’s game trailer. If you want to engage your audience and build a fanbase for your indie game, don’t start the trailer with your logo.
plasmabeamgames.wordpress.com
Prototypes & Vertical Slice - Most indies mix up the purpose of the Prototype and the Vertical Slice, and lose out on a lot of time and money in doing so.
ltpf.ramiismail.com
Benchmarks - Wonder what is normal? Want to know what to expect with your launch? I have created a top to bottom timeline of major milestones and what metrics you can expect to see at each. The benchmarks in this timeline are divided into 4 tiers of gross lifetime income.
howtomarketagame.com
Unity 3D Game Development: Designed for passionate game developers—Engineered to build professional games - You'll learn the 3D and C# fundamentals before starting to build one short segment of the full game — a vertical slice. With every progressing chapter, you'll learn to improve this game (alongside building your own) to make it ready to pitch to studios.
How is this book different from any other book that teaches you 3D game development with Unity? This book is not a step-by-step tutorial to create 3D games — it's a compendium of over 50 years of collective experience condensed in just about 360 pages._ [Published by Packt]_
packt
Entities 1.0 Experimental - To celebrate the release of Entities 1.0 Experimental TODAY, enjoy this fresh top ten links to help you get up to speed!
Andrew Parsons @MrAndyPuppy
Overview of .NET in Unity - Unity Official documentation has an amazing page called Overview of .NET in Unity that highlight 8 points about the usage of .NET in Unity.
diegogiacomelli.com.br
How to add Bullet Holes and Stickers in Unity (URP) - You can use Decal Render Feature of Unity to place bullet holes and stickers on the objects in your game. Video also available]
sunnyvalleystudio.com
Crafting Death’s Door’s intricate environments - David Fenn (composer and sound designer, codesigner, producer, and level designer) alongside Mark Foster (lead programmer, codesigner, animator, and writer) recently joined Unity’s Hasan Al Salman on Twitch to share insights on building the world of Death’s Door.
Unity
5 common lightmapping problems and tips to help you fix them - I recently developed a guide to Progressive Lightmapper troubleshooting in order to help developers get the most out of Baked Global Illumination (GI) in the Unity Editor. Here, I unpack five of the most common lightmapping problems and their solutions, supported by images and links to pages in the Unity Manual.
Unity
Unity 2023.1.0 Alpha 12 - Unity versions 2023.1.0 Alpha 12 and 2022.2.0 Beta 9 have been released.
Unity
Videos
COMPLETE Unity Multiplayer Tutorial (Netcode for Game Objects) - Let's learn how to get started with Netcode for Game Objects which is Unity's Official Multiplayer solution. This is possibly the longest tutorial I've ever done and it's the only tutorial you need to get started making Multiplayer games!
Code Monkey
Unity | How to make Shock / Lightning Particles (VFX Breakdown) - In this post I’ll show off how I set up my stylized lightning particles using Mesh Particles, a custom shader, Distance Field Texture, and Custom Data in the particle system. [Post with Resources]
MinionsArt
Giving "Weight" to Buttons - When I was a kid, I was blown away by how I could use my hands to move things around on-screen. We play games by receiving information with our eyes and ears, then sending information back with our hands—making the feel of the controls vitally important. I always try to keep this in mind when programming, designing, or setting parameters.
Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games
How to set up Game Server Hosting | Unity Gaming Services - Find out how to get Game Server Hosting (Multiplay) up and running fast, with a step-by-step demo from our in-house expert Andy.
Unity
Unity VR Tutorial : How To Make A Flashlight - Let’s make a flashlight in VR! [Read the blog post]
Fist Full of Shrimp
TextMeshPro's Text Styles make working with Texts in Unity so much easier! - With text styles, you can quickly change the look of your Unity TextMeshPro Texts and game UI, even without having to change anything in your prefabs. Plus, you will see how you can use custom fonts, colors and font sizes in your Text Mesh Pro Style Sheets, and the changes will update immediatly wherever you used them in your UI!
Christina Creates Games
How to customize your Unity splash screen in personal edition - It is super easy to customize your own Unity Game's Splash screen! Have a watch and never use the default greyish-brown of the standard Unity Splash Screen again (please, I beg you). You can either just change the background color to something actually nice looking, or go all out with logos, backgrounds and a touch of animation too! This will take you six minutes to watch but change how people react to your splash screen forever
Christina Creates Games
Assets
Fall 2022 Asset Refresh Sale - Features more than 150 of the year’s top new assets at 40% off.
Some of our faves:
- Technie Collider Creator 2
- Quantum Console
- Animation Designer
- Fantasy Map Creator
- ... and a lot more! Unity Affiliate
Librarium Statics - Golem Series II - ooking for animated battlers to spice up your projects? Need a huge Library of visually compatible assets for an upcoming Jam or project? Need a huge array of creatures and characters with matching 4-direction map sprites? Need these assets to not be restricted to an specific engine or format? Librarium is the Answer for you!
aekashics.itch.io
RecordPhysicsAsAnimations - A Unity tool that lets you bake physics movements of an object and its children into animation and possibly let you save fps.
guraysenova Open Source
Unity PlayableGraph Monitor Tool - PlayableGraph monitor tool inspired by PlayableGraph Visualizer and implemented in UIElements.
SolarianZ Open Source
IconRenderer.cs - Unity Automatic 3D Icons Rendering. [Read more on the Reddit post]
Marc-Ducret Open Source
Simple Active-Ragdoll - Simple implimentation of Active-Ragdoll in Unity.
CollieMollie Open Source
NetworkPositionSync - Network Transform using Snapshot Interpolation and other techniques to best sync position and rotation over the network.
James-Frowen Open Source
Text2Mesh [Project Page] - Text2Mesh is a method for text-driven stylization of a 3D mesh, as described in "Text2Mesh: Text-Driven Neural Stylization for Meshes" (forthcoming).
threedle Open Source
Text To TextMesh Pro Upgrade Tool for Unity - Upgrade Text, InputField, Dropdown and TextMesh objects to their TextMesh Pro variants in Unity
yasirkula Open Source
SmartImage - A smarter way with dealing with images loaded at runtime in Unity.
Auros Open Source
StbImageSharpForUnity - Provides an Unity extension of StbImageSharp.
Decodes a binary image file byte[] or Stream and converts to Texture2D on Unity with pure C# (without any native libraries).
mochi-neko Open Source
Segi - A fully-dynamic voxel-based global illumination system for Unity.
sonicether Open Source
Rusty Hub - Very simple alternative for Unity Hub. Rust pet project. For now it does work properly only on Windows, but support for other platforms is on the roadmap.
Leinnan Open Source
Sword 3D Model (Low-Poly) /Free - All models are unwrapped and textured. Textures are available in PNG format 1k, 2k, 4k textures.
fruviri.itch.io
$P Point-Cloud Recognizer - The $P Point-Cloud Recognizer is a 2-D gesture recognizer designed for rapid prototyping of gesture-based user interfaces.
DaVikingCode Open Source
NOVA Shader: Uber shader for Particle System - NOVA Shader is a multi-functional shader for the Particle System that supports Universal Render Pipeline (URP). General-purpose functions commonly used in visual effects are implemented so you can create high-quality effects efficiently.
CyberAgentGameEntertainment Open Source
Unity Art Bundle - Characters, environments, music, SFX, and artists’ tools galore Bring your game to life with this bundle of incredible art assets & artists’ tools—specifically curated for Unity creators! Featuring characters, environmental elements, SFX, music, animations, and prefabs, this library of thousands of assets and creative utilities will help you realize game worlds for a wide range of genres. Included: Quibli: Anime Shaders and Tools MSRP: $60, POLYGON Dungeons - Low Poly 3D Art by Synty MSRP: $79.99, Total Music Collection MSRP: $135, Monsters Ultimate Pack 02 Cute Series MSRP: $159.90, Ultimate Sound FX Bundle MSRP: $19.99, Meadow Environment - Dynamic Nature MSRP: $50, Boing Kit: Dynamic Bouncy Bones, Grass, and More MSRP: $60, Toon Fantasy Nature MSRP: $48, ProPixelizer MSRP: $25, Forest animals MSRP: $200, Party Monster Rumble PBR MSRP: $25, Eternal Temple MSRP: $45, Quirky Series - Animals Mega Pack Vol.1 MSRP: $89, Quirky Series - Animals Mega Pack Vol.2 MSRP: $89, Underwater FX MSRP: $25, Monster Sounds Pack MSRP: $19.99, Character Creator 2D MSRP: $30, Magica Cloth MSRP: $25, Footsteps Sound Pack MSRP: $19.99, Basic Motions MSRP: $18, BIRDS PACK MSRP: $54.99, Little Dragons: Tiger MSRP: $39.99, Pixelate MSRP: $20, Map Graph MSRP: $49.99, RPG VFX Bundle MSRP: $48, Brute Force - Snow & Ice Shader MSRP: $19.99, Seamless Texture Generator MSRP: $5.99, and a 10% Off Coupon for the Unity Asset Store
Humble Bundle Affiliate
Spotlight
Paper Animal RPG - Paper Animal RPG is a cute roguelike game where you can explore a colorful world, fight scary enemies and relax with your friends at the campfire!
[Visit their Kickstarter, Steam and website]
Cuddling Raccoons Studio
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