Epic Games have announced a very cool new promotion where they are collaborating with Unreal Engine Marketplace developers to make their assets available to the broader community completely free for a limited time.  For the month of November you can get the follow assets completely free:

WaterMill Environment– SilverTm

POLYGON - City Pack - Synty Studios

Dead Hills Landscape v2.0 - Pixel Perfect Polygons

DESERT DRAGON - PROTOFACTOR INC

Advanced Magic FX 13– Kakky

You can add the above assets to your account for free for the remainder of the month of November 2018, and they will remain yours to use forever.  In addition to the above 5 assets, they have also made a number of other assets free for all time, such as water materials, voice packs, soundtracks and more.  Be sure to check the Unreal Engine blog for details on all of the newly free assets as well as for more details on the above assets.

They are also intending to do this again next month, and hopefully continuing into the future.  If you are an Unreal Engine marketplace developer and are interested in having your content featured, be sure to visit this site for more details.  While this is certainly amazing news for Unreal Engine developers, it will be interesting to see what it will do for the Unreal Engine marketplace going forward.

It seems 2019 is almost upon us, and this is especially true if you are a Unity developer.  They just released Unity 2019.1a07, the first alpha release of next years edition of the Unity game engine.  Do be aware this release is marked as an alpha, which is even less stable then a beta release and simply should not be used in a production environment.  Unlike the first 2018.1 Unity release, 2019.1 isn’t a game changer, containing relatively minor improvements like a new short cut manager.

Summary of the releases major features from the Unity forums:

• New Keyboard Shortcut Manager configuration interface
• More GPU Lightmapper Functionality:
  • Support for double sided GI flag on the materials
  • Support for shadow casting and receiving on meshes
• Android: Added OpenGL ES 3.2 support
• Graphics: Native rendering plugin support for Vulkan
• Physics: Added methods to determine the closest point to a Collider2D

The release also contains a large number of fixes and improvements typical to a new beta release.  You can read the full details of the 2019.1a release in the release notes available here.  If you are interested in checking out the alpha, you can download it using the most current version of the Unity Hub.  If you do not upgrade to the most current version, it will not show that newest releases.  If you are interested in learning more about this release, or seeing Unity 2019.1 in action, be sure to check out the video available here and embedded below.

The Tombstone Engine, the successor to the C4 Game Engine, just got a new update, it’s first since 2017.  The Tombstone game engine is a commercial game engine that runs on 64bit Windows machines, and is capable of targeting major desktop platforms as well as the PlayStation 4.  The 2.9 update is free for existing developers and focuses heavily on new font related functionality, as well as bumping the OpenGL version required to 3.3 or higher.  Full details of the update from the release notes:

Core Engine

• All of the unsigned integer types that previously began with unsigned_ have been changed to begin simply with u. For example, unsigned_int32 is now just uint32.

• The Array::FindArrayElement() function has been renamed to Array::FindArrayElementIndex() to make it clear what kind of information is returned.

Graphics Manager

• The Graphics Manager on Windows and Linux now require OpenGL 3.3 plus the GL_ARB_clip_control, GL_ARB_direct_state_access, GL_ARB_multi_bind, GL_ARB_texture_storage, and GL_ARB_texture_storage_multisample extensions. Since Apple does not support some of these extensions (and never will), this means that Tombstone 2.9 does not run on the Mac. We are planning to implement a Metal back end for the Graphics Manager in version 3.0.

• The projection matrices used by the engine have been modified to produce device-space z coordinates in the range [0,1] with reversed depth. This greatly increases depth buffer precision and eliminates Z fighting artifacts when parallel surfaces near each other are viewed from far away.

• Generalized depth offset modifications and depth bounds test optimizations have been implemented to handle oblique near plane projections. This can improve the appearance of decals in reflection or refraction images, and it can improve performance of point/cube/spot light sources in reflection or refraction images.

• The motion blur algorithm has been improved and now generates better results. The velocity buffer has been changed to a two-channel format using 8 bits per channel, using half the space it previously used.

• The method used to split linear 32-bit depths into two 16-bit depths for the floating-point structure buffer has been improved. This gives better precision farther from the camera position.

Interface Manager

• The font format has changed in this version. Any custom fonts that were previously imported must be imported again before they can be used.

• There are many new text rendering capabilities, including underline, strikethrough, horizontal stretch, transform-based subscript/superscripts, right-to-left writing directions, bidirectional layout, adaptive supersampling, rectangle primitives, fraction formatting, and hyphen-minus substitution. Settings have been added to the Text Widget that can be used to enable these in the Panel Editor, and new embedded format directives have been added to control them within a block of text. See the Slug User Manual for details about all of the text rendering features.

Effect Manager

• A new Text Effect node has been added to the engine. This is used to place text on surfaces within a game world and apply materials to the glyphs so they appear to be painted on the surfaces. (This is completely different from using text in a panel effect.)

Terrain

• The functions that build terrain geometry have been improved so that vertex sharing occurs as often as possible. Rebuilding terrain geometries can reduce the data size by roughly 5–10%.

Tools

Font Importer

• The Font Importer contains new settings for the size and position of underline and strikethrough decorations and the transforms for subscripts and superscripts. These are initialized to the values specified in the input TrueType font file.

Tutorials

• Two basic game projects called SimpleBall and SimpleChar are now included with the engine. See Simple Games.

• Several new tutorial worlds are included in the Data/Tutorial folder. Some of them are starting points for tutorial articles on the wiki.

The following video goes hands-on with the downloadable demo, a quick showcase of what the Tombstone engine is capable of, as well as a look at the tooling that is included.

Launched at Unity Unite LA, there is an ongoing contest showcasing newer 2D features that have been added to the Unity game engine since Unity 2018 was released.  This includes new features like improved tilemap support, inverse kinematic animations, 2D animation improvements, cinemachine support, spriteshape and more.  Contest entries must:

• be made using Unity 2018.1, Unity 2018.2, or Unity 2018.3 (beta) and highlights use of one of the following tools: 2D Animation, 2D IK, 2D Cinemachine, 2D Tilemaps (square, hexagons or isometric), 2D SpriteShape, 2D Pixel Perfect, or Vector Graphics. Assets from Asset store are allowed but not required but use must comply with these Rules;

• be in a single language, ideally English or Japanese (in the case of non-English/Japanese submissions, Entry should focus on visual, non-verbal elements);

• be your Team’s own original work;

• not have been submitted previously in any promotion of any kind;

• not contain material or content that:

1. is inappropriate, indecent, obscene, offensive, sexually explicit, pornographic, hateful, tortious, defamatory, or slanderous or libelous;

2. promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or individual

3. promotes discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age;

4. promotes alcohol, illegal drugs, or tobacco;

5. violates or infringes another’s rights, including but not limited to rights of privacy, publicity, or their intellectual property rights;

6. is inconsistent with the message, brand, or image of Unity, is unlawful; or

7. is in violation of or contrary to the laws or regulations of any jurisdiction in which the Entry is created.

Entries are judged on a 100pt scale using the following weighting:

up to 50 points will be awarded for quality of execution, interesting/fun gameplay and good usage of new 2D Unity tools;

up to 25 points will be awarded for documentation of your project; and

up to 25 points will be awarded for project creativity.

Prizes are as follows:

1st Place Prize (highest scoring Entry) - $2000 in cash

2nd Place Prize (second highest scoring Entry) - $1000 in cash

3rd Place Prize (third highest scoring Entry) - $500 in cash

Special Mention Prize (Entry with most innovative editor tool) - $500 in cash

You can learn more about the contest here, while the legal details are available here.  When ready, you can submit your entry here.  The contest runs until December 16th, 2018.

Defold Engine 1.2.141 has just been released.  By far the biggest aspect of this new release is WebAssembly support, which should result in faster loading HTML5 games.  If you are interested in learning more about the Defold game engine, be sure to check our new tutorial series over on Devga.me.  We also have a full tutorial series covering the 1.x version of Defold available here.

Details from the Defold forums:

This release adds support for WebAssembly . Bundling for HTML5 will now output both WebAssembly and the older AsmJS version of the engine. Depending on browser support the appropriate version will automatically be selected and loaded at runtime. In most cases this new version can decrease initial load time for HTML5 games.

Engine

• DEF-3540 - Added: New WebAssembly platform (bundled together with Asmjs on HTML5).
• DEF-3582 - Added: Support for dynamicLibs in the platform context in NE config files.
• DEF-3565 - Fixed: Boot crash on iOS 6.
• DEF-3523 - Fixed: NE error log parsing for malformed Defold SDKs.
• DEF-3568 - Fixed: Release audio focus before closing down platform sound.
• DEF-3574 - Fixed: Internal GUI node optimizations.
• DEF-3433 - Fixed: Improvements to pprint.

Editor

• DEFEDIT-1474 - Fixed: GUI box node using tile source anim as texture did not respect h/v flip.

The 2geom library is a math library for “Paths, curves, and other geometric calculations. Designed for vector graphics, it tackles Bézier curves, conic sections, paths, intersections, transformations, and basic geometries”.  It was developed for use in the open source Inkscape graphics application in collaboration with Monash University.  Designed originally to improve Inkscape 1.0, the 2geom library was just officially released for public consumption outside of Inkscape development.  This cross platform C++ library is released under a dual LGPL 2.1 and MPL 1.1 open source license.

Features of 2geom:

• C++
• Functional programming style.
• Points
• Efficient affine transformations
• Rectangles
• Convex Hulls
• Bounded error
• General purpose paths:
  • Exact elliptical arcs
  • Area
  • Centroid and bending moments
• Path Locations:
  • Determination of special spots (e.g. maximum curvature)
  • Splitting
  • Point, tangent, curvature at location
  • Efficient arc length and inverse arc length
• Path algebra:
  • Computations such as offset curves can be written with their mathematical definition and still get a bounded error, efficient curve. (preliminary trials indicate offset done this way out performs the method used in Inkscape)
• Arbitrary distortion (with bounded error):
  • Mesh distorts
  • Computational distorts such as the GIMP's 'vortex' plugin
  • 3d mapping (perspective, flag, sphere)
• Exact boolean ops (elliptic arcs remain elliptic arcs)
• Efficient 2d database
• Implicit function plotting
• NURBs input and output
• Tunable path simplification
• PDoF constraint system for CAD/CAGD

If you are interested in learning more about this release, be sure to check the following post on the Inkscape website, while more details and the library itself are available on GitLab.

Discovered on Phoronix.com, Microsoft have just released a new open source project that attempts to solve a very familiar problem, converting from one shader format to another, specificcally converting from HLSL to a variety of different shader formats.  The MIT licensed open source project Shader Conductor, doesn’t actually convert shaders between formats, instead makes use of existing projects Direct X Shader Compiler and SPIRV-Cross to make the process work.  Shader Conductor enables you to:

• Converts HLSL to readable, usable and efficient GLSL
• Converts HLSL to readable, usable and efficient ESSL
• Converts HLSL to readable, usable and efficient Metal Shading Language (MSL)
• Converts HLSL to readable, usable and efficient old shader model HLSL
• Supports all stages of shaders, vertex, pixel, hull, domain, geometry, and compute.

You can see the entire conversion process of Shader Conductor in the following diagram.

As you can see, SPIRV-Cross is used to convert SPIRV generated by the DirectX Shader compiler, then SPIRV-Cross enables conversion to a number of different APIs, including interestingly enough earlier versions of Direct3D.  Currently Shader Conductor is only available on Windows, with Mac and Linux support coming soon.  The project is still young and is under active development.  The source code, as well as more information, is available on GitHub.

MegaScans Quixel Mixer 2018.2.2 was just released.  Quixel Mixer is a tool for quickly creating photorealistic textures by combining existing textures, in addition to using several built in painting tools integrated directly into Photoshop.  The new Mixer release includes several new features including a new eye dropper tool, a new orthographic view, straight line painting tools and more.

New features from the release notes include:

• Added Eyedropper, both via quick access (shift-left click color swatch), via Color Picker and via Q
• Orthographic View, toggled via the shortcut “P” (Including Angle-based Snap Rotation)
• Added Straight Line Painting, which can be canvas-aligned or camera-aligned (Shift or Shift+S respectively)
• Change layer textures, without changing the current layer settings (Right-click menu on layer)
• Added several new HDRIs
• Match Color to Base functionality (Middle mouse click color swatch)
• Added Quick Export (Ctrl+Shift+E)
• Several new stock paint brushes added
• Major improvements to Mixing performance!
• Numerous other minor bug fixes and quality of life improvements!

You can learn a great deal more about this release on the MegaScans blog or by watching the features video embedded below.

Tiled, the open source 2D map editor, just released version 1.2.1.  The new release is entirely focused on bug fixes and stability improvements.  If you are unfamiliar with Tiled, it is an excellent 2D map editor, able to create 2D, isometric and even hexographic maps and is supported by almost every single modern 2D game engine in use today.  You can learn more about how to used Tiled through our complete tutorial series available here.

Details of the Tiled 1.2.1 release:

Changelog

• Fixed JSON templates not being visible in Templates view (#2009)
• Fixed Maps view to show all readable map formats
• Fixed crash when deleting a command using the context menu (by Robert Lewicki, #2014)
• Fixed crash after a world file failed to load
• Fixed Select None action to be enabled when there is any selection
• Fixed disappearing of tile types on export/import of a tileset (#2023)
• Fixed tool shortcuts when using Spanish translation
• Fixed saving of the “Justify” alignment option for text objects (#2026)
• Changed Cut, Copy and Delete actions to apply based on selected layer types
• Windows: Updated builds to Qt 5.9.7
• Updated Russian translation (by Rafael Osipov, #2017)

You can download Tiled here and learn more here.

The folks over at Humble Bundle are running another bundle of interest to game developers, the Humble RPG Game Dev Bundle.  It’s a large collection of RPG Maker (don’t worry, they can be used outside of RPGMaker in your engine of choice) assets including sprites, tiles, sound fx, icons and more.  Humble Bundles are collections with different priced tiers, with a portion of the proceeds going to the content maker, a charity of choice (Child’s Play in this case) as well as to Humble Bundle themselves.  I normally full heartedly recommend Humble Bundles to people, but this time I must give a bit of a warning due to the attached license.

From the license:

4.1. A “Licence” means that the Seller grants to GDN (purely for the purpose of sub-licensing to the Purchaser) and GDN grants (by way of sub-licence thereof) to the Purchaser a non-exclusive perpetual licence to;

(a) use the Licensed Asset to create Derivative Works; and

(b) use the Licensed Asset and any Derivative Works as part of either one (1) Non-Monetized Media Product or one (1) Monetized Media Product which, in either case, is:

i) used for the Purchaser’s own personal use; and/or

ii) used for the Purchaser’s commercial use in which case it may be distributed, sold and supplied by the Purchaser for any fee that the Purchaser may determine.

That 4.1 b is going to be a huge deal breaker for many people.  If you are intending to use these assets for personal use, the license wont matter.  If you are looking to distribute your works however, do be sure to go over the license with a fine tooth comb, as that clause seems to limit you to a single product, commercial or otherwise!  There is a discussion of the bundle going on over on /r/gamedev if you are interested in learning more.

EDIT – An update on the licensing terms.  The publisher of the assets have reached out to me on Twitter to announce they’ve heard the complaints regarding the license and are updating it to be more developer friendly.

The source code to the indie game Delver was just released under the GPL2 license on Github.  The release includes full source code to the engine and editor, but does not contain the binary assets needed to run the game.  Delver itself is available on Steam and can be purchased here.  Delver is a 3D roguelike game, a bit of a mashup between Spelunky, Minecraft and Ultima Underworld.  The source code is written in Java and is configured to use  the IntelliJ IDEA IDE.

Delver is described as:

Delve into the shifting dungeons on your hunt for the Yithidian orb, but getting it might just be the easy part. Delver is a single player first-person action roguelike dungeon crawler, just like you wished they used to make.
Slay monsters, blast wands, hoard potions, and loot everything.

• A silky smooth mix of 90s FPS combat with classic RPG mechanics.
• In these dungeons once you're dead you stay dead. Permadeath means that when you die, you begin each run into the dungeon anew.
• Tough as nails gameplay will test your skills, no grinding will save you here.
• A procedural dungeon that will keep you on your toes, no two runs will ever be the same.
• Delicious chunky pixels!

If you are interested in checking out the Delver source code, be sure to watch the following video for instructions on how to install, navigate and run the source if you are new to Java or IntelliJ development.

The Game Creators have just released an updated version of the AppGameKit GameGuru Loader (phew, that’s a mouthful).  GameGuru is an extremely easy to learn 3D game engine with a complete game editor and loads of 3D content available to help you get started.   The 1.6 release adds several new features including LOD support, new 3D environmental effects (rain and dust), particle based bullet holes and more.

New features in the 1.6 release include:

• Added 3D environment dust system
• Real LOD support - 100% automated for much faster rendering
• Fixed shadow fading errors in non PBR shaders
• Fixed issue with rotation speed
• Added ShadowCameraBias# to adjust shadow camera near plane, if you use a large spotlight object
• Improved orthographic projection matrix to better centre on spot light position
• Work in progress Shadowflashlight!
• Added fake volumetric light - use "volumetric.lua" on a spot light to create the light cone
• Added fake volumetric light shader that animates/rotates the light rays/smog
• Fixed spot shadow camera rotation problem
• Background GameGuru objects like billboard now don't get any light, results in better visual
• Shaders expanded light ranges for improved smooth light
• Fixed terrain distance improvement (did not work when using gamegurescale 1)
• Improved terrain height map - it now matches GameGuru more precisely 
• Added useVegNaturalPlacement = 1 - places grass using a formula, reduces the number of grass objects but still looks packed
• Added PBR alpha control from AppGameKit code, so special alpha can be set per object
• Fixed shadow bias for more precise shadows in new shaders.
• Added speedShadows = 1 - will double the speed of your cascade shadows (really fast realtime shadows)
• Added faster foliage/trees handling around 15 percent faster
• Improved setup time for vegetation
• Added makeBulletHoles = 1 - adds particle bullet holes where they hit
• Added makeCharHitBlood = 1 , adds particle blood when you hit a NPC
• Added environment rain, just set env_rain = 1 - many settings to control how it looks like speed/color/size/gravity!
• Added rain_make_splash = 1 - make rain drops splash on the terrain and objects
• Added rain_stop_when_indoor = 1 - stop rain when an object is above you ( you're indoors )
• Added rain_sound = 1 - when raining play a rain loop sound
• Added global maxNormalSize = 4096 - set max normal texture size to use
• Added global maxDiffuseSize = 4096 - set max diffuse texture sizes to use
• Improved: super sampling when using: "postprocessshaders = 5" - stops more flicker in distance
• Added a additive blending particle effect sample
• Improved: main game loop speed up by 50%! - Way better FPS when you have many objects on your levels
• Improved: speed of water reflection render
• Added tryconvertingmedia = 1 - source code can now convert .dbo to .x (no need to use fixpbr), and convert .dds to .png (Windows only)

If you are interested in learning more about GameGuru, be sure to check out this video also embedded below.

Substance Painter, the popular PBR based texturing application, just received a major update.  The fall update comes with a completely new rendering engine resulting in better performance with lower hardware demands by incorporating Sparse Virtual Textures, which simulate large textures using less memory.  The new engine also supports up to 300 UV Tiles at once enabling support for massive scenes.  There are also several new tools aimed at mobile users including a new 2D viewport exporter with the ability to bake into a single high resolution texture and more.

Complete details on new features from the release notes:

Added:

• Summary: a huge boost in performance, viewport upgrades, proper 2D view export, new UI helpers, an enhanced symmetry tool and new content
• [SVT][Engine] Sparse Virtual Textures (SVT)
• [SVT][Preferences][UI] SVT hardware support acceleration option
• [SVT][Log] Additional information for Sparse Virtual Texturing feature (e.g. size disk)
• [SVT][UI] Message window at start if size on disk too low for the cache
• [SVT][Preferences][UI] Substance Painter global cache location
• [SVT] New environment variable to specify the path of the cache of Substance Painter
• [SVT] New environment variable to activate the SVT hardware support acceleration
• [SVT] Detect sparse support by hardware
• [SVT][Hardware Sparse] Raise minimum driver version for Nvidia GPU
• [SVT][Shader][[Viewport][UI] Warn user if artefacts present with Sparse Virtual Texturing at project opening
• [Anti-aliasing][Viewport] New temporal anti-aliasing filtering for 3D viewport (via Display Settings)
• [Export] Export the content of the 2D viewport as a single texture
• [Export][Dithering] Expose dithering at export
• [Layer stack] Colors on layers and folders
• [Layer stack] Quick activation and deactivation of multiple layers and effects
• [Layer stack] Easier navigation for blending modes with up down keys and mouse scroll
• [Proj][UI] Additional rotation manipulator on all three axis for triplanar
• [Proj][Shorcuts] - and + to change the UV projection manipulator size
• [Shader] Control coated layer parameters with channels in the PBR-coated shader
• [Substance] Expose new mesh-based texture inputs for filters and generators
• [Symmetry][Viewport][UI] Control symmetry offset with manipulators
• [Symmetry][Contextual toolbar][UI] New symmetry panel with options
• [Symmetry] New symmetry line intersection mode
• [Symmetry] New symmetry clone cursor
• [Symmetry][Shortcuts] Q to hide and -, + to change size and shift to snap
• [Log] Improve error messages when unable to export textures
• [Scripting] Allow to change or update the resources in Display Settings
• [Scripting] Allow to create or remove channels in Texture Sets
• [Content][Shaders] Add support for anisotropy with a dedicated shader (pbr-metal-rough-anisotropy-angle)
• [Content] Update of the preview sphere with anisotropy and modified angle
• [Content] Updated matFx shutline
• [Content] New Texturing.XYZ seamless face scan
• [Content] New anisotropic procedurals
• [Content] New filter: baked lighting stylized
• [Content] New environment map: studio automotive neutral
• [Content] New project template: PBR - metallic roughness Anisotropy angle (with anisotropy channels)
• [Content] New project template: PBR - metallic roughness Coated

Fixed:

• [Color Picker] Painting cursor appearing when trying to pick a color
• Crash by Selecting or Unselecting layers in a specific order can lead to crash
• Crash when pasting as an instance a layer with a mask
• [User Channel][Regression] Crash when renaming user channel
• [User Channel] Grayed brush preview
• [Alembic] Only one texture set from several materials after import
• [Engine] Exported texture differs from viewport for brush stamps
• [Engine] Invert with a level effect does not fully affect a texture
• [Material picker is applying a brush stroke while picking
• Switching resolution to 128x128px leads to a crash
• Mesh map links are not updated properly when rebaking or instancing layers
• [Substance] UserData ColorSpace does not work on Baked Mesh Normal requested as input
• MDL association mismatch when using multiple shaders instances
• [Symmetry][Fill Layer] Symmetry plane and its manipulator active in Fill Layer
• [Viewport] Pivot point for translation not always updated after clicking
• [UI] Fixed icons and removal of placeholders for HDPI monitors

Known Issues:

• Computation freeze on AMD VEGA GPUs
• Huion tablet issue with shortcuts on Windows OS
• Anti-aliasing and shadows when active together may give unexpected results

You can learn a great deal more about this release in this blog post.

As has become a tradition here on GameFromScratch, every year we track down and present the best Black Friday deals of interest for game developers.  This year is no exception, so here they are!  Although it is becoming less and less of a thing, this page will also track applicable Cyber Monday deals as well.  If you know of a missing deal, let me know in the comments down below and I will do my best to add it.

3D Coat (Store Link)

3D Coat is a 3D sculpting, paintings and PBR texturing application that is currently $100 off during Black Friday, valid through Nov 26th.

Adobe (Store Link)

Adobe are offering 25% off their entire creative suite annual subscription service.  This includes seminal products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Animate and more.

APress (Store Link)

Any aPress published ebook for $7.

Affinity Paint/Designer (Store Link)

All Serif products are currently 30% off for Black Friday, including Affinity Designer, Painter and Painter for iOS.  If you want to learn more about Affinity Designer, check out our recent video.

Allegorithmic (Substance) (Store Link)

Save 33% on annual subscriptions for their Substance Suite of PBR texturing tools (Painter, Designer, B2M).  For more information on Substance Painter, check out our recent hands on video.

Amazon

Amazon is always heavily involved in Black Friday and sell a wealth of software and hardware that’s useful for game developers.  I will be updating this category as deals come online.

Asus GX501 15” Ultra Portable GeForce 1070 Laptop $400 Off

Corel Draw 30% Off

Corel Painter 2019 33% Off

CyberPowerPC PC Towers – @20% Off

Dell XPS 15 Laptop with 1050 Geforce $200 Off

Gigabyte Aero 15x 1070 Thin Laptop $550 Off

Google PixelBook 19% Off

MacBook Pro 13” $100 Off

MSI GS63VR Stealth $350 Off

Microsoft Surface Go 10% Off

Logitech MX Master 50% Off

Oculus Rift $50 Off

Razer Blade Stealth $200 Off

Samsung Monitors @25% Off

Samsung Tablets 33-44% Off

Smith Micro Software (Anime Studio, MoHo, Poser, etc) – Moho 30% off

CGTrader (Store Link)

CG Trader are offering up to 50% discount on 3D models this Black Friday.

ClipPaint Studio (Store Link)

ClipPaint Studio (the successor to Manga Studio) is an anime style painting application that is currently 50% off for Black Friday.

The Foundry (Store Link)

The Foundry are offering 30% discounts to Modo subscriptions and 15% off maintenance.

Humble Bundle RPG Game Dev Bundle (Store Link)

Technically not a Black Friday sale, but the Humble RPG Game Dev Bundle is going on during the same period.  Now with an improved license, you can get a ton of RPG related graphics, music and icons for a low price while helping charity.  I got hands-on with the bundle in this video.

Marmoset (Store Link)

Save up to 50% on all Marmoset Software, such as Toolbag, Viewer and Hexels.  See Hexels in action in this video.

Microsoft Store (Store Link)

The Microsoft store is an ecceletic mix of software, computers and devices, with a variety of items on sale during Black Friday such as laptops, tablets and VR headsets.

PluralSight (Store Link)

Pluralsight offer online training and courses.  Their Black Friday sale includes 33% off on subscriptions.

Packt Books (Store Link)

All eBooks and videos from Packt Publishing are available for $10 during the sale.

Quixel (Store Link)

Quixel’s sale doesn’t actually start until Black Friday.  Generally its a discount of their texturing software as well as their texture resources.

Safari Books Online (Store Link)

Safari Books is O’Reilly Press’ online book repository, offering full access to thousands of computer related books.  This sale, good through Monday, is good for 50% off an annual subscriptions, a $200 value.

Steam Autumn Sale (Store Link)

Steam is also having their annual autumn sale with tons of game development software available at discounted pricing.

• 001 Game Creator -- 60% Off
• Aartform Curvy 3D – 75% Off
• ACID Music Studio 10 Steam – 75% Off
• App Game Kit (Multiple) – 77% Off (Learn More)
• articy:draft 3 – 30% Off (Learn More)
• Asesprite – 15% Off  (Learn More)
• AutoTileGen – 65% Off
• Axis Game Factory AGFPRO v3 – 65% Off
• CopperCube 5 Game Engine – 88% Off (Learn More)
• FaceRig – 30% Off
• GameGuru – 60% Off
• GameMaker Studio 2 (Multiple) 20% Off (Learn More)
• Indie Graphics Bundle – 30% Off
• Leadwerks Game Engine – 80% Off
• Marmoset Hexels 3 – 50% Off (Learn More)
• Marmoset Toolbag – 30% Off
• Mindtex 2 – 40% Off
• Pixel Game Maker – 20% Off (Learn More)
• Pro Motion NG – 50% Off
• RPG Maker (Multiple) – 70-80% Off
• S2Engine – 50% Off (Learn More)
• Shadron– 25% Off (Learn More)
• Shoot ‘Em Up Kit – 20% Off
• Silo 2 – 20% Off
• SMILE Game Builder – 70% Off
• Space Galaxy – Graphics Pack – 30% Off
• Spriter Pro – 35% Off
• Substance B2M 3 – 34% Off
• Substance Designer 2018 – 34% Off
• Substance Painter 2018 – 34% Off (Learn More)
• The Game Creators Collection – 77% Off
• Vegas Pro 15 Steam Edition – 72% Off

TurboSquid (Store Link)

TurboSquid is offering select 3D models from their catalog for up to 40% off.

Udemy (Store Link)

Udemy is offering most of their thousands of online courses for $10 each.

Unity Asset Store (Store Link)

There are sales across the entire Unity Asset Store for Black Friday, generally 50% off or better.  Pretty much all kinds of assets are currently on sale, models, plugins, tools, you name it.  They have also organized several discounted bundles specifically for Black Friday.

Unity Essentials Bundle – 55% Off

Unity World Building Bundle – 55% Off

Unity Ultimate Characters Bundle – 55% Off

Unity Quick Prototyping Bundle – 55% Off

Unreal Engine Marketplace (Store Link)

Unreal Engine aren’t having a Black Friday sale… they are having a “Fall Sale”.  Same thing, different label.  Save up to 90% off on 3,100 items in their online asset store.  The “totally not a Black Friday” sale ends on November 27th.

YoYo Games (Store Link)

YoYoGames are offering 20% off all licenses for all GameMaker products.

Some of the above links contain affiliate codes, meaning if you make a purchase through a link on this site you help GameFromScratch.

One of the biggest challenges for game developers working with Unity is dealing with the garbage collection.  The current system they use, Boehm–Demers–Weiser garbage collector drops everything when memory management occurs, which can lead to framerate slowdowns until the garbage collector is done.  In an attempt to improve this situation, Unity have implemented Incremental Garbage collection in the most current alpha of Unity 2019.1.  Essentially Unity attempts to split memory collection across multiple frames to minimize the impact over all to performance.

Details from the Unity blog:

Enter Incremental Garbage Collection. With Incremental GC, we still use the same Boehm–Demers–Weiser GC, but we run it in an incremental mode, which allows it to split its work into multiple slices. So instead of having a single long interruption of your program’s execution to allow the GC to do its work, you can have multiple, much shorter interruptions. While this will not make the GC faster overall, it can significantly reduce the problem of GC spikes breaking the smoothness of the animation by distributing the workload over multiple frames.

There are however downsides to this approach including greater overhead and possible performance issues if your memory changes during collection.

If you enable incremental GC, the garbage collector will split up the garbage collection work across multiple operations, which can then be distributed across multiple frames. We hope that in most cases where GC spikes were an issue, this will mitigate the symptoms. But Unity content is extremely diverse and can behave in very different ways – and it’s likely that there are cases where incremental GC may not be beneficial.

Specifically, when incremental GC breaks up its work, the part which it breaks up is the marking phase, in which it scans all managed objects to find which other objects they reference, to track which objects are still in use. This assumes that most of the references between objects don’t change between slices of work. When they do change, the objects which have been changed need to be scanned again in the next iteration. This can cause a situation where incremental collection never finishes because it will always add more work to do – in this case, the GC will fall back to doing a full, non-incremental collection. It’s easy to create artificial test cases changing all the references all the time, where incremental GC will perform worse than non-incremental GC.

Also, when using incremental GC, Unity needs to generate additional code (known as write barriers) to inform the GC whenever a reference has changed (so the GC will know if it needs to rescan an object). This adds some overhead when changing references which can have a measurable performance impact in some managed code.

For more information on incremental garbage collection, including step by step instructions on how to enable it, be sure to check out the following video, also embedded below.

The hotly anticipated Blender 2.80 release just got one step closer with the first beta being made available.  A bit of a warning, their servers are taking a beating so it might take a bit of time to download your copy.  This release is one of the biggest changes Blender, possibly ever, with new features such as a new real time PBR based viewport called EEVEE, a new 2D animation system built around the expanded grease pencil, cycles improvements, a new glTF exporter and of course a vastly changed user experience and workflow. 

New to the Blender UI is a new consistent high contrast icon set, pie menus now enabled out of the box, improved context sensitive tools, a massive overhaul to the hotkeys and yes… left click select is now finally the default.  Of course the 2.80 release also marks the removal of the Blender Game Engine from Blender.

You can download Blender 2.80 here.

You can get an overview of Blender 2.80’s major new features here.

You can read the complete WIP release notes here.

The Blender foundation have put out a video showcasing the top 5 features in Blender 2.80 which can be viewed here.

Plus of course you can watch my own overview of the 2.80 release here or embedded below.  Sadly no hands-on footage of Blender 2.80 in action, as the Blender servers are getting absolutely slammed right now.  Stay tuned for more Blender 2.80 coverage in the near future.

Cocos Creator has just taken the jump into the world of 3D with the release of Cocos Creator 2.1.  While still a 2D game engine, the underlying renderer is fully 3D.  This release adds a new 3D node, a new renderer component, a new animation node, a new 3D camera as well as the ability to load 3D content in FBX file formats.  This release also marks a bit of a fork in Cocos Creator development, with the existing 2D only game engine staying on the 2.0.x versioning scheme, while the new 2.1.x will develop more rapidly in the future.  This hopefully will fix some of the bad backward compatibility changes they have made in the past, but it will be interesting to see how much development both branches receive.  If you are interested in learning Cocos Creator, be sure to check out our comprehensive tutorial series available over on DevGa.me.

Full release note details of the 2.1 release:

What’s New

3D Node
In v2.1, newly created Node objects are still 2D by default. When needed, you only need to click the 2.5D button at the top right of the Node to switch to 3D mode. After switching, you can edit the z axis. See 3D Node 8.

3D Camera
Like Node, Camera is also divided into two modes. When you add a Camera component to a normal 2D node, it becomes a 2D Camera. When you switch Node to 3D mode, Camera will also enter 3D mode, and then you can edit Camera'sFOV and other parameters in 3D mode.

3D model import
Currently, Cocos Creator supports importing 3D model formats for a very wide range of .fbx files. .fbx is the de-facto standard in 3D modeling software. The process of importing is very simple, just drag the .fbx model into the Explorer and wait a few moments for the import to complete. After the import is completed, you can see that the imported model is a folder that can be expanded in Explorer. When importing the model, the editor will automatically parse the content of the model and generate a Prefab, a Grid, a Bone Animation and other resources. See Import Models 1

Mesh Renderer Component
Mesh Renderer is used to draw grid resources. See Mesh Renderer 1.

Bone Animation Component
The Skeletal Animation component inherits from the Animation component. The Skeletal Animation component is not much different from the Animation component. The exception is the Skeletal Animation component uses a clip that can only be a Skeletal Animation clip. The Skeletal Animation component is automatically added to the model’s Prefab when it is imported. See Bone Animation Component for details.

For more 3D instructions, please consult the documentation 3D System 1.

Optimize automatic gallery build speed
v2.1 greatly optimizes the speed of auto-atlas construction. If the atlas has not changed, the results of the last build are used.

Further improve rendering performance
Between v2.0 compared to v1.x, there are some cases where the engine does not render batches, resulting in an increase in draw calls. v2.1 re-optimized these conditions. If the previous color or opacity cannot be batch processed, sliced and non-sliced share the same texture and cannot be batched. The problem that the opacity 0 node still occupies the draw call is solved.

Add simulator debugging function
In the Project Settings -> Preview Run Panel, the Open simulator debugger panel option and the Wait for debugger connect option have been added. The purpose of the Open simulator debugger panel option is to automatically open the debug window when the simulator previews the project. The Wait for debugger connect option is used to suspend the boot process until the debugger connection is complete for debugging the load process.

Texture Auto Compression
The compression required by the texture can be set directly in the editor, and Cocos Creator will automatically compress the texture when the project is published. Exporting multiple image formats simultaneously on the web is supported. The engine will automatically download the appropriate format according to the different browsers. See Compressed Textures 4 for details.

Enhancements

Editor

• Dashboard is closed when the project is opened, and automatically opened when the project is closed.
• Dashboard will automatically record the last created project path.
• Optimize the preview of the Button under the editor.
• Optimize the way Button Click Event indexes components, avoiding the loss of indexes after scripts are renamed.
• QQ light game construction allows direct packaging of zip files for uploading servers.
• The new plug-in mall automatically prompts the user to install after the plug-in download is completed.
• When building a WeChat mini-game main domain project, the subdomain will not be emptied again.
• Modify the API Level selected by default when building the Android platform to the current highest level (Target API Level).
• The node path bar in the scene editor is removed, and the node path can be obtained through the node right-click menu of the hierarchy manager.
• The animation editor defaults to Constant curves for values ​​of type cc.Enum and cc.Integer, without interpolation.
• Animation editor key frame addition and deletion experience optimization.
• The optimization engine automatically compiles the experience.
• Added a series of other experience optimizations.

Engine

• [UI] Added the affectedByScale property to the Layout component. If the developer wants the scaling of the Layout subnode to affect the layout, you can turn it on manually.
• [UI] supports fnt files in XML format.
• [UI] The Content Size of the node will be refreshed immediately when the Label node is onEnable.
• [UI] When the target of Button is not defined, the current node will be used by default.
• [UI] ToggleContainer adds a checkEvents event property similar to Toggle, which fires only when Toggle’s isChecked state becomes true.
• [Action] Added support for four actions of cc.Rotate3DTo, cc.rotate3DTo, cc.Rotate3DBy, cc.rotate3DBy.
• [Native] Rejoined WebView and VideoPlayer support removed in v2.0.0 on iOS and Android platforms.
• [Native] The Mac native platform switches to the V8 engine. If you need to use JSC, you need to manually modify the macro. For details, see #1515.
• [Native] Add the missing key and length properties of the native platform LocalStorage, see #1371 1.
• [Native] Adopts Pinyin input behavior unified with Android on iOS native platform, does not retain input of unfinished pinyin.
• [Android] Upgrade Android compilation to NDK r16+ Clang, and compile Android pre-compiled library with Clang.
• [Android] Upgrade the Android build tool to configure Gradle to 4.4, plugin to 3.1.4. (Gradle 4.6 has a known issue that will cause resource packaging to fail).
• [Android] Optimize Android input box experience.
• [Android] Squeeze Android empty package body, the minimum package body is reduced from 7.0MB to 6.3MB.
• [Web] Increase transparency support for WebView on the web platform.
• [Web] Optimized display position of WebView components.
• [Web] Optimizing the performance of VideoPlayer on the X5 browser.
• [Wechat] Supports getting the res and referrerInfo parameters passed to the platform when responding to the cc.game.EVENT_SHOW event on WeChat games.
• [VideoPlayer] Optimized the performance of VideoPlayer full-screen playback.

Bug Fixes

Editor

• Fix an issue where the animation editor node list may not be updated.
• Fix the problem of selecting the RichText subnode in the scene editor.
• Fixed an issue where the error code always returned 0 when building a project using the command line, whether or not an error occurred.
• Fixing the background of the mesh in the scene editor will penetrate above some translucent images, causing some differences in color and runtime.
• The editor will report an error when repairing an external drag resource to an invalid location in the resource manager.
• Fixed remote server ip getting error when publishing Android Instant platform.

Engine

• [Core] Problem with activeInHierarchy being true after fixing node destroy.
• [Core] Fix filter in RenderTexture, premultiply alpha setting is invalid.
• [Core] Fixed an issue where the scene introduced by the plugin could not be loaded.
• [Web] Fixed a problem with white afterimages on Chrome 69, 70. (Since 2.0)#3357 1.
• [UI] Fix Button may have some state invalidation when multiple states are superimposed on each other.
• [UI] Fix LabelOutline setting invalid color problem.
• [UI] Fixed an issue where setting Toggle.isChecked to be invalid in the start method.
• [UI] Fix the problem that the LabelOutline component is not synchronized when the state is modified.
• [Animation] Fixed an issue where the parameters of AnimationState might be parsed as a string type.
• [QQPlay] Fix the problem that QQ light game does not respond to the background background switching event.
• [QQPlay] Fix the problem that the font will become very small if you use italics on QQ light games.
• [QQPlay] Fix the problem that the QQ light game can’t replay when the lock screen re-enters or the front and back switches.
• [QQPlay] Fixes the problem of the ended event after the audio setCurrentTime is fixed #3373.
• [Native] Fix native platform connection socket.io server may report Bad Request error.
• [Native] Fix iOS and Android can’t detect gravity sensor.
• [Native] Fix iOS call cc.game.restart Restart the game and then enter text will crash.
• [Native] Fixing the problem that the opacity attribute of Label on Windows native platform does not work.
• [Native] Fixed an issue where Android could not listen to onKeyUp.
• [Native] Fix the problem that the Android phone will fail to load if the built-in SSL certificate expires.
• [Native] Fixed an issue where server redirection was not supported when downloading images from Android native platform #PR.
• [Physics] Fixed an issue where MouseJoint failed to respond to touch cancel.
• [Spine] Fixes the problem that textures may be lost when Spine is reloaded under Mask.

NVIDIA just announced that their upcoming (December 20th) release of PhysX 4.0 will be available under the BSD3 open source license.  Additionally effective today, the existing PhysX 3.4 will also be available under this open source license.  It is important to note however that this is for desktop and mobile consoles only, as PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch versions are all still under the existing EULA (this I believe).  In addition to the license change, the 4.0 release has a number of new features including:

• Temporal Gauss-Seidel Solver (TGS), which makes machinery, characters/ragdolls, and anything else that is jointed or articulated much more robust. TGS dynamically re-computes constraints with each iteration, based on bodies’ relative motion.
• Overall stability has been improved with reduced coordinate articulations and joint improvements.
• Increased scalability via new filtering rules for kinematics and statics.
• New Bounding Volume Hierarchies support fast scene queries for actors with a huge number of shapes.
• Infrastructure can now incorporate Cmake projects.

You can download PhysX 3.4 here and stay tuned on December 20th to download PhysX 4.0.

Steam just got another major competitor and this one is pretty amazing.  Fresh on the success of launching their own store and payment ecosystem to support the game Fortnite, Epic Games are opening that system up to other game developers.  Perhaps most impressive, they are doing it with a 88/12% revenue split, massively lower than the standard 70/30% cut at other game stores such as Steam, Google Play and the Apple App Store.  It will initially launch for Windows and Mac, with Android and other platforms coming soon.  You are not required to use Unreal Engine to publish your game on the store, however if you do the deal gets even better.  As part of their 12% royalty, they will also cover the Unreal Engine 4 license costs!  Additionally they are also launching an affiliate program to help encourage influencers to drive traffic to the game store.

Details of the new program from the Unreal Engine blog:

Soon we'll launch the Epic Games store, and begin a long journey to advance the cause of all developers. The store will launch with a hand-curated set of games on PC and Mac, then it will open up more broadly to other games and to Android and other open platforms throughout 2019.

The Epic Games store will operate on the following principles:
All Developers Earn 88%
Developers receive 88% of revenue. There are no tiers or thresholds. Epic takes 12%. And if you’re using Unreal Engine, Epic will cover the 5% engine royalty for sales on the Epic Games store, out of Epic’s 12%.

Have a Direct Relationship With Players
People who buy your games automatically subscribe to your newsfeed so you can reach them with game updates and news about upcoming releases. The newsfeed is front-and-center.  You’ll also be able to reach your players through email, if they choose to share it.

Connect with Creators
YouTube content creators, Twitch streamers, bloggers, and others are at the leading edge of game discovery. The 10,000-strong Epic Games Support-A-Creator program helps you reach creators, so they can help you reach players. If you opt to participate, creators who refer players to buy your game will receive a share of the revenue that you set (tracked by code or affiliate marketing link). To jumpstart the creator economy, Epic will cover the first 5% of creator revenue-sharing for the first 24 months.

Developers Control Their Game Pages
As a developer, you control your game page and your newsfeed. There will be no store-placed ads or cross-marketing of competing games on your page, and no paid ads in search results.

All Engines Are Welcome
The Epic Games store is open to games built with any engine, and the first releases span Unreal, Unity and internal engines.

When You Succeed, We Succeed
We’ve built this store and its economic model so that Epic’s interests are aligned with your interests.  Because of the high volume of Fortnite transactions, we can process store payments, serve bandwidth, and support customers very efficiently. From Epic’s 12% store fee, we’ll have a profitable business we’ll grow and reinvest in for years to come!

Watch the following video for details of why I think this move is going to be absolutely game changing!  The words “Steam Killer” are said a lot, but I honestly think this one is the biggest competitor yet.

The Epic Game Store, first announced a few days back is now live and additional information is available for those interesting in publishing their game on Epic’s new store.  Beyond the incredibly generous 88/12% revenue split, there are a number of advantages to the new store such as an affiliate program, completely customizable store pages and of course… Fortnite.  As an additional draw to the store, Epic are offering a free game every two weeks, with the first free offering being Subnautica on Dec 14th, then Super Meat Boy (oddly no link) two weeks later.

Additional details on how the store functions are available in their about page:

Why is Epic Games opening a store?

As a developer ourselves, we have always wanted a store with fair economics that connects us directly with our players. Thanks to the success of Fortnite, we are now able to share our capabilities with other developers and make that store a reality.

What’s the catch? Is this 88% revenue share a special introductory rate?

There is no catch; the 88% share to the developer is the permanent rate. Epic’s 12% share covers the operating costs of the store and makes us a profit.

Will the Epic Games store be an overnight success?

This will be a long term effort. Epic Games has been around for 27 years. We expect to invest in and work to grow the store for many years to come.

How are you selecting titles for the Epic Games store?

We are prioritizing developers who have flexibility in timing and a willingness to work through the early phases of a store with us. We consider many other factors as well, so there is no set formula.

How can I make Epic aware of my interest to put my game on the store?

Complete and submit the form at the bottom of this page or if you have an existing relationship with Epic through Unreal Engine licensing, reach out to your business contact.

When is the store launching for all developers?

We are planning to open the store for all developers in the second half of 2019.

Which platforms does the Epic Games store support?

We are launching with PC and Mac support. Support for other open platforms, such as Android will come later.

What does it mean when Epic wants to give me direct access to my audience?

Players who own your games will see your news posts in their newsfeed, providing you a direct connection to your players. When purchasing a game, players can choose to share their email addresses directly with developers of games they purchase.

My game is built with Unity or another engine, can I bring it to the Epic Games store?

Yes, the Epic Games store is engine-agnostic. Epic is aiming to bring great games to players, regardless of your engine choice.

My game is built with Unreal Engine. Why should I ship on the Epic Games store?

Beyond the normal ease of shipping on every platform, there are no engine royalties for UE4-based games sold on the Epic Games store. If you’re using the default free license with a 5% royalty, for example, you won’t pay the licensing fees from your sales on the Epic Games store. Royalties from sales on other platforms would remain the same 5%.

What is the Support-A-Creator program? What does it mean to me?

Support-A-Creator is the program full of amazing content creators who will help promote games on the Epic Games store. Creators earn a share of revenue from each attributable sale. Developers set the rate of the revenue share and Epic pays the first 5% for the first 24 months. Developers get immediate access to thousands of creators who can promote their titles with no friction. We believe this will make a more direct and sustainable connection between game developers and content creators (streamers, influencers, etc). There are currently more than 10,000 content creators in the program, with tens of millions of supporters, and that number is growing every day.

Where is the Epic Games store available?

The Epic Games store is available to players in most countries in the world except for China and where prohibited by US law, such as North Korea and Iran. Certain regions, such as South Korea, may have additional legal requirements that you may need to implement in your game in order to be compliant and to be distributed there.

Does the Epic Games store have regional pricing?

Yes, we do support regional pricing. We also have a set of suggested regional discounts based on local norms that are regularly reviewed.

Which currencies do you accept and in which currencies do you display prices?

We currently support local pricing in USD, Great British Pound, Euro, Polish Zloty, Russian Ruble, South Korean Won, Japanese Yen, Turkish Lira, and Ukrainian Hryvnia.

Does the Epic Games store have mandatory sales?

No. While we do plan to offer multi-game sales events, they are voluntary.

How will player feedback and game ratings work on the Epic Games store?

We will offer developers an opt-in ratings system for games on the store in the future.

How do refunds work on the Epic Games store?

We will offer two no-questions-asked refunds per player within two weeks of purchase.

Which payment methods are supported?

The Epic Games store supports credit cards, Paypal, and a variety of alternative payment methods. Approximately 80% of store transactions use credit cards and Paypal. The other 20% comprise alternative payment methods, primarily in countries where credit cards aren’t widely available. Some of these alternate payment methods carry payment processing fees, which Epic charges directly to the purchaser, and are not included in revenue-sharing calculations. This is a list of the alternative payment methods we currently support. Methods carrying additional payment processing fees are marked with an *asterisk.

The about page is also where you find the submission form if you want to publish your own game on the Epic store.