Game Dev Digest Issue #92 - Delving Into The Arcane

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Tips aplenty this week. Plus topics on HUDs and UIs, how to improve your code, performance, visuals, and much more. Enjoy!

The Uninomicon - Do you spend hours (or days) debugging arcane Unity bugs? Announcing… The Uninomicon. An encyclopedia of the dark technical corners of Unity.
John Austin @kleptine

Impress your friends with these #unitytips from the community - We’re back with another edition of the #unitytips roundup. When we released our first roundup earlier this year, you told us that it took your projects to the next level, so we’re back with even more best practices.
Unity

Unity Architecture Pattern: the Main loop - This article will show the benefits of using a main loop as a foundational structure for your Unity games.
Bronson Zgeb

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

Facade - A Unity design pattern to access singletons without typing .instance
Lazlo's Unity Patterns & Tips

The Legend of King Arthur: Making an Environment in Unity - Gabs Hega discussed the workflow of making an environment in Unity and shared some important knowledge about making vegetation textures.
80.lv

5 Simple Ways to use Level Design to Improve Player Experience - Want to give your players a sense of freedom while keeping them on track? ‘Structural composition patterns’ aren’t as complicated as they sound.
gameanalytics.com

Create a health bar that hovers over the player with UI Toolkit - This tutorial will go over the same mechanics that I used to create a runtime bar, but apply them to a health bar that hovers over the player and enemies.
gamedev-resources.com

Improved wireframe shader - Unity comes with a wireframe shader meant for VR debug. But with some tweaks, it's a great addition to any synthwave-y tableau.
Team Dogpit

Unity 2021.2.0 Alpha 15 - Unity 2021.2.0 Alpha 15 has been released.
Unity

Videos

The Power of Video Game HUDs - The heads-up display can change how a game works, feels, looks, and is made. Let's find out how.
Game Maker's Toolkit

Opening Doors with Unity Navigation Mesh (NavMesh) | Part 1 - Player Controller - This is the first part in a video series where I will show how to make a system that will allow your Navigation mesh agent (navmeshagent) to navigate through multiple doors along its path. The agent will pause and wait in a designated position while each door animates open and then proceed on to its destination.
MetalStorm Games

An Easy Tutorial for the New Unity Input System - In this video, I show how to use the new Unity Input System to build a basic third-person controller in the simplest way possible. I do my best to be clear and explain every step.
NowWeWake

Easy Joystick for Mobile with Input System in Unity - Today we will use the new input system in Unity to add an on-screen joystick to our game. This works on both desktop and mobile phone devices.
samyam

Mouse Pointer in Screen and World Space! Mouse Picking in Unity! | Game Dev Tutorial - The mouse pointer is essential to almost all PC games. In this video, I show how to get it's position and work with it in screen, viewport, and world space, as well as how cameras affect these spaces. I also explore two ways to implement mouse picking, or how to tell if the pointer is over an object in the world.
Ned Makes Games

Weapon Wheel - Unity Beginner Tutorial - In this beginner easy tutorial I will show you how to make a weapon wheel unity. This tutorial will cover how to create the mechanics, animations and extra little details. If you want more tutorials then leaving a like is great way to tell me.
Zyger

2D Character Generator in Unity using Scriptable Objects - I made a little prototype in Unity to generate new 2D characters using body parts of already existing characters in Spine 2D. I rely on scriptable objects to easily work with all skin parts.
Arman Harutyunyan

Devlog 4: Packaging content with Addressable Assets | Open Projects - Games have tons of assets, and they need to be packaged and loaded in a smart way to provide a smooth experience for the players. In this fourth devlog we explore how we did it in "Chop Chop" using the power of Addressable Assets.
Unity

Assets

UModeler - Model your World - New Feature: Hotspot texturing feature has been shipped! It will make your uv mapping work a breeze.
Unity Awards 2018 Best Development Tool Finalist. UModeler provides you with the best convenient environment for 3D modeling and prototyping within Unity.
[You might also be interested in Hotspot UV for ProBuilder on Github]
TRIPOLYGON, Inc. Affiliate

Unity Gameplay Ability System - Gameplay Ability System for Unity (or GAS for short) is a Unity framework for creating games which contain any kind of abilities (e.g. DotA, Skyrim). The framework helps to simplify the interaction between components in a unified manner.
sjai013 Open Source

Crest - Crest is a technically advanced ocean renderer implemented in Unity3D 2019.4.8 and later.
wave-harmonic Open Source

MessagePipe - MessagePipe is a high-performance in-memory/distributed messaging pipeline for .NET and Unity. It supports all cases of Pub/Sub usage, mediator pattern for CQRS, EventAggregator of Prism(V-VM decoupling), etc.
MessagePipe is faster than standard C# event and 78 times faster than Prism's EventAggregator.
Cysharp Open Source

XCharts - A powerful, easy-to-use, configurable charting and data visualization library for Unity. A data visualization chart plug-in based on UGUI.
Cysharp Open Source

EditorScenes - This script by Alexander Fedoseev is a BIG timesaver for Unity AdditiveSceneLoading users! It auto unloads/reloads the extra scenes open in Editor, when entering/exiting Play Mode, avoiding duplicate scenes. [via @andymiira]
Alexander-Fedoseev Open Source

Pump Editor - Collection of Unity editor helpers to boost productivity.
rfadeev Open Source

Libplanet - Libplanet is a .NET library for creating multiplayer online game in decentralized fashion, which means the whole gameplay occurs on a peer-to-peer network among equal nodes rather than an authorized central server. Under the hood, it incorporates many features (e.g., digital signature, BFT consensus, data replication) of a blockchain.
planetarium Open Source

Develop Unity Template - Responsive WebGL template for Unity 2020+ with togglable in-DOM Console. Makes development for mobile a lot easier, since accessing the console is really easy.
JohannesDeml Open Source

Unity Behavior Tree Visualizer (Beta) - A tool built in Unity that draws a graph representation of behavior trees running in the scene.
Behavior Trees are a fantastic way to write modular AI that can scale in complexity. Unfortunately, it can be quite hard to visualize how your tree is being executed which makes it difficult to debug potential failure points. The Behavior Tree Visualizer tool was created to solve these problems! The tool will scan for active behavior trees in your scene and group them in a drop down for easy toggle. A graph will be drawn, and nodes will light up, showing you which part of the tree is currently running.
Yecats Open Source

Blockout - Blockout is a collection of prototyping tools for Unity that speeds up the creation of level design mock-ups. Tried and tested by various industry developers, everyone who has tried it loves it.
Radical Forge Affiliate

3D Game Shaders For Beginners - Interested in adding textures, lighting, shadows, normal maps, glowing objects, ambient occlusion, reflections, refractions, and more to your 3D game? Great! Below is a collection of shading techniques that will take your game visuals to new heights. I've explained each technique in such a way that you can take what you learn here and apply/port it to whatever stack you use—be it Godot, Unity, Unreal, or something else. [also check out the discussion on Hacker News]
lettier Open Source

Quixel Mixer 2021 Is AWESOME ...and Free! - Epic Games have just released Quixel Mixer 2021 and it's an awesome release. This 3D texturing app just got UDIM support, texture sets, collapsable layers, 100+ smart materials and more.
Gamefromscratch

Sprint into Spring Sale - Save 50%: Sprint into Spring Sale, last day of the sale!
500+ of our most popular assets at 50% off. Plus, get an extra 5% off on-sale purchases of $100 or more and 10% off on-sale purchases of $150 or more with coupon code SPRING2021. Check out the sale now!
The final deal of the Daily Deals available at 70% off is CCG Kit (Save $104)
Unity Affiliate

HUMBLE BOOK BUNDLE: HEAD FIRST PROGRAMMING BY O'REILLY - Get a head-start on learning to program with O'Reilly in our newest bundle, Head First Programming by O'Reilly! Dive into ebooks like Head First Java, 2nd Edition, Head First Python, 2nd Edition, and Head First C#, 3rd Edition. Plus, your purchase helps support Code For America!
$772 WORTH OF AWESOME STUFF
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Humble Bundle Affiliate

HUMBLE SOFTWARE BUNDLE: VEGAS PRO - DISCOVER YOUR ENDLESS FREEDOM - Everything you need to produce stunning videos with epic soundtracks: Enter the big screen with VEGAS Pro 16 Edit plus Hollywood effects like proDAD ReSpeedr and FXhome Enhance Ultra. Create your own songs with the Music Maker Score Edition, produce videos with VEGAS Movie Studio 16 and record & edit audio with SOUND FORGE Audio Studio 13. Discover your endless freedom with one of our best selling bundles ever! Plus, your purchase will support Stop AAPI Hate.
$756 WORTH OF AWESOME STUFF
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Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

Of Love and Eternity - Do you feel that? It is the void. It surrounds you. It crushes you as though it were the deepest darkest ocean. You feel as though you are falling from a dream. A dream with no end in sight.

It is with my sincerest regret to inform you that you are dead. Murdered in fact. Your life was taken in this most unnatural way and so your soul will wonder the void as nothing more than a lost and broken memory. Somewhere beyond this unfathomable expanse is the fractured soul of your beloved who has suffered equally so. Two parts of one soul set adrift in this impossible abyss and left to wait for the malevolent grip to loosen.

[Play an early demo now, and follow development on Twitter]
acornbringer

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