Game Dev Digest Issue #134 - Unity's Latest Changes

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Get all the latest news from Unity's GDC updates as well as the usual batch of great content from the Unity community. Enjoy!

Rendering realtime caustics - I will go over my method of rendering real-time caustics. The goal is not to generate physically accurate result, but rather to achieve real-time, controllable, good-looking water caustics effects.
alexanderameye.github.io

Skybox tutorial part 1 - Recently I've shown my skybox, which has a new shader and code to calculate the positions of the sun and moon. People quite liked the result, and as such I thought it was time to also write a tutorial on this.
kelvinvanhoorn.com

Toolbar Overlays in Unity - Overlays exhibit some undocumented behaviour that you'll need to be aware of to use them - it took me a while to figure it out so I've compiled what I've learnt here to help future developers.
carbidefunction.co.uk

Don't Let Offscreen Objects Ruin Your Performance - Unity CullingGroup API - Learn how to make your expensive scripts cost nothing while they are offscreen.
thegamedev.guru

Introducing Unity’s latest sample game, Gigaya - At GDC 2022, we highlighted a glimpse of our upcoming puzzle-platformer sample game, Gigaya. Gigaya is still in active development, but when it’s done, it will be a free downloadable project designed to help developers learn from its creation process.
Unity

Loop Around Index with C# Collections - This post will show two implementations for building an IndexAtLooped extension method for the IList interface.
khalidabuhakmeh.com

Shader bits: World space reconstruction, orthographic camera texture projection & fake perspective UVs - I’ve found that I’ve been copying around some shader code from different files here and there, and I thought it’d be handy for me and for you to have those around in a new Shader Bits post.
halisavakis.com

Copying BlendShapes in Unity with a Script - I found blend shapes someone had added to another VRoid character, so I thought maybe I could copy them across to my character! This blog are notes from my journey.
extra-ordinary.tv

Unity 2022.1.0 Beta 13 - Unity 2022.1.0 Beta 13 has been released.
unity3d.com

Videos

Recreating Loop Hero's CRT Shader - In this shader case study we analyze and recreate the CRT effect from Loop Hero. CRT Shaders are an effective way to add a nostalgic feel to your pixel art and should be part of any technical artist's visual library.
Acerola

Enemies – real-time cinematic teaser | Unity - Enemies is the latest project by Unity’s award-winning Demo Team. It showcases Unity’s capabilities for powering high-end visuals in 2022, including the latest improvements to its High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), new high-end Adaptive Probe Volume lighting system, an all-new strand-based Hair solution, and an evolved Digital Human toolkit.
Unity

SECRETS Behind the Enemies Cinematic Teaser | Unity - Unity’s Demo productions drive advanced use of the Unity real-time 3D platform through autonomous creative projects, led by Creative Director Veselin Efremov.
SpeedTutor

Unity DOTS Updated! (Massive changes!) - Unity DOTS finally got an Update! Version 0.50 is now here and it's a massive update from 0.17 This also gets Unity closer to ECS 1.0 which will hopefully be production ready by next year.
Code Monkey

Flexible Pickup / Collectible System in Unity With Events - Almost every game has some sort of collectible or pickup system - the player runs into the item and picks it up. But many people struggle to setup a system thats flexible to handle a whole bunch of different types to collect without getting their code all tangled up.
BMo

Reuse Images at Different Sizes Using 9 Slicing (Unity Tutorial) - In this Unity tutorial we're going to look at how we can reuse an image at different sizes using a technique called 9 slicing.
Ketra Games

Quickly Change Define Symbols in Unity - I've usually using symbols to be a pain, as resetting them for different code execution is hidden away in various settings and properties. This is a walkthrough of how make a menu item that will switch the define symbols in Unity's properties, alter Visual Studio settings in real time, and with a few seconds after, have the code updated.
Dan Violet Sagmiller

Assets

Time Warp Asset Store Sale - Unity Asset Store is launching a new time travel themed sale! More than 150 selected assets will be available for 50% off.

Customers can save an additional 10% off on-sale orders of $200 or more with the code TIMETRAVEL22.
Unity

SerializedProperty.GetValue - The general GetValue extension of SerializedProperty in Unity Editor.
douduck08 Open Source

Owl and Jackalope UX - Owl and Jackalope UX is a simple data binding and UX prototyping tool designed to make iterating on UI screens without needing to write code to back up the original models. It also includes several quality of life features intended to make reusing data models and UX states easier.
AnonyBob Open Source

UMVC - UMVC - Model-View-Controller Generator built for Unity.
loic-lopez Open Source

Bounce Effect - Vertex shader that creates a bounce effect in geometry.
adcimon Open Source

Mesh Deformer - Mesh deformation using the Unity Job System.
adcimon Open Source

SimpePostEffects - Simple post effects for Unity URP using Shader Graph
keijiro Open Source

Unity3D BSP Importer - A lightweight plugin for importing BSP maps into Unity3D as meshes. Currently only imports World and Entities and their surfaces.
wfowler1 Open Source

Unity Editor Toolbox - Improve usability and clarity of key features in Unity Editor for better workflow!
arimger Open Source

UMarkup - UMarkup is a simplified extension for Unity RichText Markup，It can enhance the text style of Log / UGUI Text / GUI Label, also for TextMeshPro.
ls9512 Open Source

NavMeshPlus - NavMesh building components provide you with ability to create navigation meshes that are generated automatically from your Scene geometry, which allows characters to move intelligently around the game world.
h8man Open Source

Fireworks Visual Effect - Awesome Fireworks VFX to celebrate Happy New Year 2022 created using Visual Effect Graph System from Unity Engine and using High Definition Render Pipeline(HDRP) project.
BillyFrcs Open Source

RecordAndRepeat - RecordAndRepeat is a plugin for Unity3d, which supports recording of custom data and playback via the Unity3d Timeline.
fx-lange Open Source

OpenKCC - This project is a sample of the Open Kinematic Character Controller. A Kinematic Character Controller (KCC) provides a way to control a character avatar as a kinematic object that will interact with the environment.
nicholas-maltbie Open Source

Simple Shader Inspectors - Unity Editor library with the objective to make medium to complex shader inspectors easier to create and manage.
VRLabs Open Source

PaddingIgnoringImage.cs - Modified version of Image component that ignores the sprite's padding in Unity
yasirkula Open Source

Spotlight

Colossal Cave 3D Adventure - Ken And Roberta Williams Are Remaking Colossal Cave Adventure.

After officially announcing their return to games last year, Sierra On-Line founders Ken and Roberta Williams are ready to show off their new project. Previously referred to as The Secret, it will be a “reimagining” of Colossal Cave Adventure — the seminal 1970’s text adventure game credited with inspiring Zork, Rogue, and other formative PC games, as well as for laying the groundwork for the PC role-playing genre as a whole.

Titled Colossal Cave 3D Adventure, it is a first-person adventured designed in Unity for VR and PC. Like the original, the underlying concept is relatively simple: players explore a cave seeking treasure, encountering characters along the way including a troll, a bear, a snake and a pirate. The quest, apparently, is to “find all the treasure.” The reimagined adventure will be challenging and will feature a “wide variety of puzzles to overcome” in a “completely immersive 3D world” with more than 143 locations.
Cygnus

You can subscribe to the free weekly newsletter on GameDevDigest.com

This post includes affiliate links; I may receive compensation if you purchase products or services from the different links provided in this article.