Game Dev Digest Issue #88 - Find Out How To Optimize Your Code, Visuals, and Animation

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

There is surely something to learn for everyone in this week's issue. Learn how to level up your coding style, game performance and visuals. Enjoy!

Object Pooling in Unity 2021+ - Today, you will learn how to use the new Pooling API introduced in 2021.
The Gamedev Guru

Tales from the optimization trenches: Saving memory with Addressables - Efficient streaming of assets in and out of memory is a key element of any quality game. As a consultant on our Professional Services team, I’ve been striving to improve the performance of many customer projects. That’s why I’d like to share some tips on how to leverage the Unity Addressable Asset System to enhance your content loading strategy.
Unity

Hidden Features of C#? - We, C# developers, all know the basics of C#. I mean declarations, conditionals, loops, operators, etc. Some of us even mastered the stuff like Generics, anonymous types, lambdas, LINQ, ... But what are the most hidden features or tricks of C# that even C# fans, addicts, experts barely know?
stackoverflow.com

Jumping controls in 2D pixel-perfect platformers - Jumping is an inherent part of platformers. Over the years we have seen different implementation of this basic mechanic in games. Although it may seem trivial at first it can be quite challenging to get the jumping controls just right. Even the most experienced programmers may find it difficult to develop. In this article we are going to look at how we can improve the character’s jumping in 2D pixel-perfect Unity games.
pavcreations.com

Optimized Metaballs: Blur Pass with Scriptable Renderer Features - This article completes my approach to drawing pseudo-Metaballs in an optimized way using Unity, the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) and Scriptable Renderer Features.
Bronson Zgeb

Forward Decals Prototype - I was looking for a decal solution for Astro Kat, mainly for some level design and landmarking details.
Minions Art

Animated Text gamedev Thread! - Although text isn't really the star of #veryveryvalet, making it expressive and pleasant-to-read is essential! It levels up the polish AND is a cost effective injection of character via characters.
Toyful Games @toyful_games

Simulating Soft Body with Shaders - Making the shift to GPUs. [The shader code can be found on github]
Sachit Misra

Real-time 101: explore the end-to-end animation process in Unity - What happens when you take a badger, a bullfrog, a bunny, and a bear, and bring them together in a Unity scene?
Unity

Gridform - The following is a breakdown/tutorial of how most of the particle effects in Gridform are made. I will be using the standard particly systems in Unity(Not VFX Graph).
sherbb.itch.io

How we did the tutorial system in Academia: School Simulator, Part 3: Putting them all together - I’m going to discuss how we put them all together from the SSM framework discussed in part 1 and the actions in part 2.
COFFEE BRAIN GAMES

Build stunning mobile games that run smoothly with Adaptive Performance - Learn how to use Adaptive Performance to tune your mobile game – balancing frame rates and graphics. Get the latest details about updates to Adaptive Performance’s device simulator, samples and scalers.
Unity

Unity 2021.2.0 Alpha 11 - Unity 2021.2.0 Alpha 11 has been released.
Unity

Videos

How does Google write code in Unity? | TiltBrush VR Overview - Do you ever fear your Unity project is just a mess? Sometimes, I know I do.
ColorfulCoding

How to Manage In-Game Time [Unity Tutorial] - Lots of games use in-game time, Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, Grand Theft Auto! In this video I'll show you how you can add it to your own games as well as how to easily trigger events depending on the time of day using events/delegates/actions!
Comp-3 Interactive

Create a Sand Dune Shader Graph in Unity URP! No Textures Needed! | Game Dev Tutorial - In this video, I show how to create a sand dune material using Unity Universal Render Pipeline (URP) Shader Graph! There's no textures required - instead I use various functions to construct the needed shapes. The finished graph includes color, shines, and a normal map. In fact, I go over a way to create a smooth normal map from a generated height map.
Ned Makes Games

Unity GDC Showcase 2021 - Get an in-depth look at Unity features for game developers and behind-the-scenes creator stories like Oddworld: Soulstorm. We also share our tech roadmap, where the accent’s on quality, productivity, and performance.
Unity

The BEST Unity Feature You Don't Know About - Scriptable Object Singletons Tutorial - In this Unity tutorial I'll show you one great feature you don't hear too many people talking about: Scriptable Object Singletons! This technique implements the Singleton workflow that is often used with GameObjects and MonoBehaviours (e.g. Your game's GameManager) to ScriptableObjects.
whateep

New Look at Unity 2021 Visual Scripting(Bolt) - Unity 2021 is Out!!!
Smart Penguins - GameDev

Assets

HUMBLE BOOK BUNDLE: GAME DEV, DESIGN & GRAPHICS BY MERCURY - Stop dreaming about making games and start doing it! Grab ebooks like Game Dev, Design & Graphics by Mercury, Classic Game Design With Unity 2/E, and Photograph Enhancement Videos Using Photoshop CC 2021.

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Humble Bundle Affiliate

Gizmos - Used for drawing runtime gizmos in builds and editor from any context in the code. It was created when I realized that the built in unity gizmos (Gizmos.DrawWireSphere, etc) don't render in builds, so I made this utility to be able to use.
popcron Open Source

UnityLauncherPro - Handle all your Unity versions and Projects easily!
unitycoder Open Source

Bitmapflow - Bitmapflow is a tool to help you generate inbetweens for animated sprites. In other words, it makes your animations smoother. It uses optical flow to try to guess how the pixels move between frames, and blends them accordingly. The results are far from perfect, and probably require some editing by hand afterwards, but sometimes it can produce decent results.
[See video coverage by GameFromScratch]
bauxite.itch.io

HUMBLE SOFTWARE BUNDLE: BIGGEST GRAPHICS EVER - We bring you this unbelievable Professional Biggest Ever Graphics Bundle to help you create your next masterpiece with nearly 80,000 royalty-free assets and lifetime licenses. Get Lightroom presets, photo overlays, Photoshop actions, textures, LUTs and fonts. All LUTs are compatible with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic and the brushes are compatible with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Plus, your purchase will support Save the Children and Make a Wish Foundation.
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HUMBLE SOFTWARE BUNDLE: INTRO TO CODE 2021 - With this brand new bundle, you’ll master the world’s most popular languages by building real, portfolio-ready projects. From building games in popular styles - including RPGs, strategy games, idle games, and more - to web development, mobile apps, data science, and machine learning, the skills you’ll learn can be expanded upon to form strong foundations for your future projects.
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Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

Mauze Adventure - Indie Game Devlog #3 - Player Map and Fog of War

Hi! In the third indie game devlog of Mauze Adventure, I am talking about the player map and the fog of war system made on top of it using unity shader graph. In the game main character has a 3D map model in his backpack which is an animated object that opens like a scroll. I applied maze map texture on top of it and added a fog of war system to hide the unvisited maze cells.

Follow along on Twitter and on Discord
Sercan Altundas

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