Game Dev Digest Issue #144 - Graphics Programming

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Some great general knowledge on how graphics and rendering works in here, plus a lot more. Enjoy!

Pixel Art: Common Mistakes - We've all been there: you learn a few things and it all seems so simple, but when it comes time to make something yourself, it doesn't look right! In this tutorial, we'll start with some "beginner's pixel art" and we'll make edits to it in order to show off some common mistakes and their solutions. One of the hardest parts of making art is self-critique - we're often too close to our art to look at it objectively. Asking other artists to edit your work by way of feedback can be a great way to illuminate problems that you may not see. (But keep in mind that it's considered rude to create an edit of someone's work unless they specifically asked for one.)
derekyu.com

Glitch/Wireframe Effect - Hi all, here's the glitchy shader finally. It's not a real wireframe shader, it's just a trick! :D [Here's the Shader Graph version]
Minions Art

Command design pattern for flexible controls schemes - The Command is probably one of the most essential operational design patterns out there. It is often the case that games allow their players to set their peripheral devices to their liking. There is always some sort of a configuration panel granting the ability to adjust the way we play the game. This can range from changing the colours of our HUD panel to assigning the controls to available buttons. Linking inputs with hardcoded methods make the task cumbersome. In this article we’ll look into the implementation of the Command design pattern in a configurable game.
pavcreations.com

Detecting performance bottlenecks with Unity Frame Timing Manager - Creating a standout experience that runs smoothly on a variety of devices and platforms can be challenging. That’s why we continue to refine our tools, such as our improved Frame Timing Manager, for optimization across the board. Read on to discover how the Unity 2022.1 update provides enhanced platform support for this feature, enabling you to collect more data than previously possible.
Unity

How to build a BVH – Part 1: Basics - In this series we explore the wonderful world of the bounding volume hierarchy: the mysterious data structure that enables real-time ray tracing on recent GPUs, in complex, animated scenes. Whether this is actually useful for you, or just interesting as background information, depends on your needs, obviously. This series consist of ten articles.
jacco.ompf2.com

Animation-Magic - A cool visualization of all the math that powers 3D character animations. [Source on Github, and Hacker News post]
diegomacario

Updated for 2021 LTS: The definitive guide to lighting in the High Definition Render Pipeline - The definitive guide to lighting in the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) is now updated with tips for taking on the latest capabilities in Unity 2021 LTS. Learn how to create high-end lighting with production-ready HDRP features – from Light Anchors to Lens Flares, and beyond.
Unity

Creating games for everyone: Introducing Unity Learn’s new accessibility course - How should you go about prioritizing accessibility as an emerging creator? If you’ve never done it before, it might feel overwhelming – but we’re here to help!
Unity

Code, code and more code. - I haven’t seen this discussed a lot, so: “be the change you want to see” - here’s my attempt to sell you on the glory of ref foreach.
blog.marcgravell.com

Grow your games with Google Play’s Indie Games Accelerator & Festival - At Google Play, we are committed to helping developers of all sizes reach their full potential, and go further, faster. To continue supporting indies as they bring some of the most innovative titles to players worldwide, today we’re opening submissions to the 2022 edition of our two annual programs - the Indie Games Accelerator and Festival.
developers.googleblog.com

Unity Releases - Unity 2022.2.0 Alpha 17 and 2019.4.40 have been released.
Unity

Videos

Unity Tutorial: Build a Simple Demolition System (w/ Free Deform Tool) - Here's a Unity tutorial for building your own demolition system.
The Secrets of Apagayo Island

How to Create 3D Moving Platforms (Unity Tutorial) - In this Unity tutorial we're going to look at how we can add moving platforms to a game, and have the character travel along on top of the platforms.
Ketra Games

BUG 10/27/2021 Adventures with the Scriptable Render Pipeline with Mark Mayers - Hi BUG! This month we're excited to be joined by Mark Mayers, who will be discussing his work on developing a Custom Scriptable Render Pipeline for the game Desolus.
Boston Unity Group

GPU Programming For Video Games - These are video lectures from the Summer 2020 and 2021 offerings of GPU Programming for Video Games at Georgia Tech, brought to you as a result of Covid-19 forcing Tech to operate in "distance learning" mode.
Lantertronics - Aaron Lanterman

30+ Websites for FREE 3D Models Download and Animations! - Have you ever wondered where can I get 3d models for free? In this video, I'll show you 30+ websites where you can download free 3D models and animations!
ReForge Mode - Unity Tutorials

How classic Sierra game graphics worked (and an attempt to upscale them) - Back in 1984, Sierra On-Line's adventure games dominated the PC game scene. Did you ever wonder how they fit such awesome graphics in so little disk space? This video explains how they did it.
eviltrout

How Isometric Coordinates Work in 2D games - Isometric games often use hand-drawn 2D sprites to add depth to a game without having to deal with full 3D rendering.
Jordan West

Assets

Polygon Game Dev Assets Bundle - Lightweight, fun, and flexible assets for your game world.
Looking for an instant library of vibrant and versatile assets to help build your game world? This bundle has the environments and props you need! Craft wild spaces for a survival game. Build out a city environment. Get models for items, vehicles, and more for a variety of genres, and support Save the Children and World Central Kitchen with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate

RPG Models Pack from Birthday Stream (COMPLETE!) - All Items are done, full pack was made on stream with requests from viewers :) The zip file with all models and the texture file is attached, have fun with it!
Minions Art

Runtime Monitoring - Runtime Monitoring is an easy way for you to monitor the state of your C# classes and objects during runtime. Just add the 'Monitor' attribute to a field, property or event and get its value or state displayed automatically in a customizable and extendable UI. [Also available on the Asset Store]
JohnBaracuda Open Source

Unity Screen Navigator - Library for screen transitions, transition animations, transition history stacking, and screen lifecycle management in Unity's uGUI.
Haruma-K Open Source

Rumor - Rumor is a free, open source narrative content framework meant to be integrated into any Unity3D game that needs a dialog system. It is easy to diff, easy to read, and it is very flexible!
exodrifter Open Source

Grid Game Groundwork for Unity - A Unity project & level editor for making grid-based/block-pushing/Sokoban-like games.
mytoboggan Open Source

uLipSync - uLipSync is an asset for lip-syncing in Unity.
hecomi Open Source

Raymarching-Engine-Unity - A raymarching engine for Unity.
aniketrajnish Open Source

Simple Settings - A micro-framework for creating ScriptableObject settings files that automatically create an automatic copy when initialized. Useful for settings, one time setup, object references and more. Only meant for runtime usage.
ashblue Open Source

Config Assets - Simple & Lightweight solution for managing configuration assets in Unity projects.
caneva20 Open Source

Needle Console - Improved Unity Console adding better stacktrace readability, log filtering and more. Needle Console is available on the Asset Store for commercial use.
needle-tools Open Source

GarageKit for Unity - GaraegKit is Unity C# framework. provide the template scene, some manager scripts, state scripts, utility scripts and directory structure.
sharkattack51 Open Source

Lightspeed - Coding Utility Library for Unity - Coding extensions library: New basic datatypes, static helper methods and extensions on Unity datatypes
Rhinox-Training Open Source

com.pixelwizards.utilities - Some useful Utility tools for Unity.
PixelWizards Open Source

Unity Editor Toolbox - Improve usability and clarity of key features in Unity Editor for better workflow! This Toolbox not only extends functionalities, it does so with the user in mind. Written to be as flexible and optimized as possible. Now you and other programming professionals will be able to create a readable and useful component editor simply by using attributes. You’ll get fast and clear access to data from GameObjects placed in the Scene. Lastly, you’ll gain more control over the Project window. Go ahead, customize those folder icons.
arimger Open Source

UnityCustomTextureRenderer - A high performance graphics utility to update textures from native plugins. The function for updating textures runs on another thread.
sotanmochi Open Source

UniSonic - A simple implementation of Sonic the Hedgehog's physics and movement controls in Unity.
Giometric Open Source

A Star Pathfinding for Unity - This is an A* Pathfinder for Unity. It inlcudes 3 axis pathfinding and multi-threading.
sharpaccent Open Source

Runtime Node Editor - Unity runtime node editor using with Unity UI.
cemuka Open Source

Signature Samples - Hi guys I have recorded cities, coffee shops, malls and airports with my Zoom over the past few years and thought you guys might find a use for these sounds.in your games They're all free to download and are CC0 so no copyright whatsoever. [See Reddit post]
signaturesounds.org

I've made 60+ textured nature models you can use in any of your projects, for free! - 63 Nature assets (Normal, birch, maple, palm and pine trees, flowers, grass, rocks) with textures and normal maps.
QuaterniusDev

Type References for Unity3D - A plugin that allows you to choose types from a drop-down menu in the inspector.
SolidAlloy Open Source

Unity - Display missing component type info - Serializes and renders missing component info (if available)
needle-tools Open Source

UnityBoneVisualizer - Visualize your character's bone.
Shaun-Fong Open Source

Fluid Unique ID - Unique ID management for Unity3D projects. A customizable micro-framework for managing consistent unique IDs across multiple scenes on your GameObjects. Built with large projects in mind and tools to prevent ID conflicts.
ashblue Open Source

UnityDataTools - The UnityDataTool is a set of command line tools showcasing what can be done with the UnityFileSystemApi native dynamic library. The main purpose of these tools is to analyze the content of Unity data files.
Unity-Technologies Open Source

Blueberry - Asset that allows Multiplayer games to be played through Bluetooth and using Mirror between Android devices.
javierfoe Open Source

Frame Rate Booster - Optimizer for Unity's Mono assemblies. Unity has a lot of methods/properties that unnecessarly call the constructor on structures like Vector3 or Color. Frame Rate Booster (FRB for short) will modify your build to replace those methods/properties with optimized equivalents.
ehakram Open Source

Mesh Animation - Mesh Animation is lightweight library for rendering hundreds of meshes in one draw call with GPU instancing.
Mesh Animation bakes vertex positions for each frame of animation to texture. Custom shader then move mesh vertexes to desired positions on GPU. This allows draw the same original mesh multiple times with GPU Instancing. Unique animation parameters are overridden for each instance with Material Property Block.
codewriter-packages Open Source

Unity Mega Bundle And Coupon Code - First time customers can save 25% off their first purchase with the code WELCOME2022.

Also a new Mega Bundle available that features assets made by Unity Asset Store Publishers from Ukraine. With this bundle, users can save up to 95% off three curated sets of must have assets.
Unity Affiliate

Spotlight

DESOLUS - Desolus is an atmospheric puzzle game where you explore a city of Gothic architecture torn between universes. Solve puzzles using black holes and portals to move architecture through space and time. Witness a cataclysm which threatens to merge past with future, and help prevent a city's destruction.

[You can also follow them on Twitter]
Mark J. Mayers

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.