News! Tech! Tools! Talks! Games! And Stuff Worth Sharing!

[jonaz.dk]

Aaand Subways Surfers passes 3 bazillion downloads!

Grats to SYBO and Kiloo!

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/368 ... nloads.php

[jonaz.dk]

A tiny bit old. But 3 DK winners at the Mobile Gaming Awards Ceremony.. pretty good there!

Bedtime Digital Games: Figment -- Best Game Design.
Triband: WHAT THE GOLF? -- Best Innovation.
ThroughLine Games: Forgotton Anne -- Best Storytelling.

Grats all!

The 16th International Mobile Gaming Awards Ceremony

[jonaz.dk]

@runevision's VR game. Eye Of The Temple is out with a playable demo version-

[jonaz.dk]

A Total War Saga: TROY is free for 24 hours



https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p ... -troy/home

Also this week.. just you know.. crazy times to be a gamer.

Remnant: From the Ashes
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p ... ashes/home
The Alto Collection
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p ... ction/home

[jonaz.dk]

Dark mode is now free from Unity 2019.4.8 and up.

TLDW

QUICK, HOW TO ENABLE DARK MODE IN UNITY:
--> Edit / Preferences / General / Editor Theme / Professional

[jonaz.dk]

Codice Software joins Unity Technologies to bring version control to real-time 3D workflows
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2020/08/13/co ... workflows/

Well good for Unity! I have never worked with Plastic SCM. But the word on the street is that it is an excellent version control solution for games with large binary files. And clearly Unity wants more developers on paid subscriptions.

The pricing doesn't seem to have been affected at this moment in time?! The medium tier for 5GB cloud storage is pretty useless though. And your small team can find really great free alternatives in Eg. Github.
5GB will be gone in no time on any slightly demanding project.

https://unity.com/products/plastic-scm? ... 1518523258
https://www.plasticscm.com/pricing

The enterprise version will sort of grow a bit expensive with team size. For well funded teams it's probably no big issue and worth the price. Well running version control is just super important. But for financially struggling teams it might be a little too much to bite every month. Not sure how much storage is included with the Enterprise subscription.


I also gave GitHub Desktop a go on my side project. It just works super smoothly! And super easy to setup and start a new repository. Though the version I worked with, seemed a bit under-featured compared to the likes of SourceTree. But for the price of free. I'll take it for my own projects!
https://desktop.github.com

[Jesper Kondrup]

Unity joins the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member.

As a guy who switched from 3ds max to blender 3 years ago, it has been really exciting with all the stuff that has happened recently and the new awesome 2.8 release is just so good.. great times for blender indeed




https://www.blender.org/press/unity-joi ... on-member/

[jonaz.dk]

Nice Jepser! Blender is certainly on fire! I have virtually replaced 3dsmax in my daily workflow. Also it's just fun to learn new software.
Love the Quick Favorites!

Not super games specific but inspirational none the less.

Hard Worldbuilding vs. Soft Worldbuilding | A Study of Studio Ghibli

[jonaz.dk]

Now it gets nerdy!

Games fitting in the boot sector of a floppy disc on 512 bytes.



CubicDoom, a ray-casting game in 512 bytes of x86 machine code (boot sector)

[jonaz.dk]

More techy volumetric modeling projects in the works.
Mentioned Clayxels for Unity earlier.

Unbound. Soon with a beta. Seems like it's more of a stand alone thing. With possible very limited use.

More at
https://www.unbound.io/

Mudbun for Unity. Currently there an open beta available.
http://longbunnylabs.com/mudbun/

[jonaz.dk]

Monkey King inspired Black Myth: Wu Kong

[jonaz.dk]

Features Preview: RealityCapture 1.1 Blaze


See a more in-depth explanation of our NEW RELEASE, RealityCapture 1.1 Blaze!

Download it Now: http://bit.ly/2sotr7h

Highlights:
- Import of PPK/RTK data
- Point cloud classification and DTM generation
- Export of LOD models, Cesium 3D Tiles and direct upload to Cesium ion
- Import of Z+F scans (.zfs and .zfprj file formats)
- Import of Lecia BLK3D data
and many more features and improvements.

Read the full release notes here:
https://bit.ly/31pmZuf

[SorensenDK]

Hi here ..

I just want to show you my project and at the same time show that the good old 'Torque game engine' can still make its mark with 3D graphics on PC.

My project is called 'VirtuChat 1' and comes from the original VirtuChat, which was a 'multiplayer' online game dating back to 2003.
After a good 10 years, the game 'died out' due to server problems and lack of participation, among other things.

I have now taken up the aging game again, but this time have turned it into 'a pure sigleplayer game' without servers.

You are welcome to visit VirtuChat's very large 3D world by following this 'link thread' and move on from there:
http://www.virtuchat.com/filer/index.html

The game takes up about 1 GB. as a ZIP file and is completely free.

The game does not have to be 'installed in the normal way', just unpacked to a place in your PC with an Icon for 'VirtuChat.exe' and started from there. Once you are tired of the game, simply delete the 'main folder'.

I can not offer a complete listing of the entire 'game scripting' for the entire VirtuChat, but for those who want to play with the game code, here is a link to one of my tools, complete with 'game script code' and built-in script compiler plus explanatory help:
http://www.virtuchat.com/filer/VirtuChatTest.zip

PS: The game is without commercial interests and is solely my personal hobby project. Hope you like it and comments here are very welcome.

Best regards, Jan .

PS: Håber jeg har skrevet det rigtige sted i det kære forum...

[jonaz.dk]

So the long rumored Unity IPO is moving forward! Let's see where it takes the company. Hopefully somewhere good! Fingers crossed!
They are in pretty pressured situation from Unreal Engine's competition and their revenue has been dropping quite significantly for the past years. So some dials could possibly be adjusted in the coming years. Be it internal structure and/or pricing to turn the boat around, from burning investor money to inflate user base to actually making money.

Unity files for IPO, reveals $163 million loss for 2019 and 1.5 million monthly users
https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/24/unit ... hly-users/

Unity is officially cementing its long-rumored plans to go public in 2020.
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/368 ... orward.php

The full Form S-1 document here: (Fun to snoop around in. Salaries for the top people and all)
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data ... 875ds1.htm

[jonaz.dk]

And hi @@SorensenDK
Wow! That's some persistence. Didn't even know Torque was still around. Great they went open source.
And yes it's totally fine posting your project here. It's not the perfect thread for feedback though. But I'll give it a quick shot of the bow.

So I gave it a quick run.. But I never found anything to actually do?! With no multiplayer enabled. It's just en empty non-interactive world as far as I could tell. Kind of beats the purpose of the project. A single player chat room with no one to talk to? Or did I miss something?


Easy fixes:
** Never use Comic Sans. **

The control scheme should be updated to match current conventions.
Use WASD for movement. Space to jump. Hold shift to run.
The cursors keys only and right click to jump approach felt pretty strange and archaic.

Bugfix - I found one thing to do! And that was to die in front of a still standing car. I guess that should be reported as a bug.

Walking speed could also need a tweak to something faster. x2 or something. It's super slow to navigate the world.


Harder fixes:
You really need to add something interesting to the world. In it's current form it's just not doing anything for the player besides exploration. In a so-so graphical world.


Tough choice recommendation:
From a complete outsiders perspective you should kill the project instead of trying to revive it.
And start on something new >small<, fun and fresh.
I think you will also find it WAY more fun and invigorating to do a new, much smaller project with a focus on doing something fun for the player. Perhaps on a new engine?! https://godotengine.org if you enjoy open source. It's always fun to learn new engines.

But if you still are having fun developing the project after all these years. Than who am I to say. Enjoy your project! I'm not here to take that away from you.

Enjoy what ever path you choose.

[jonaz.dk]

@SorensenDK
Oh just thought of a little something!

An alternative solution that sort of could work! Is to take your assets and put them in Roblox Studio. And have a DK focused chat server inside Roblox.
Now you wouldn't have to worry about server cost.
And people not downloading your chat application.
Also Robox is huuuuge! For kids mainly.

Obviously the audience is >very< young in Roblox. And chatting in native languages is difficult due to word filters.
So that will represent some challenges depending on the direction of the project.

But if you want to fulfill your original vision. Or as close to as possible. I think this is your best bet with realistic eyes.
And don't spend 10 years doing it. A few months tops. Could probably be done in a weekend with some effort.

Should be pretty straight forward with some LUA scripting for extra functionality.

Everything else comes out of the box.

[SorensenDK]

Hi jonaz.dk.

First thanks for your comments and good advice very nice .

Maybe from the beginning I have expressed myself a little wrong with my presentation in the forum.
I just chose this forum because I know that there are not only people here as gamers, but mostly people who make games with technical insight and maybe bring our ideas forward.

My intention is not to publish or further develop on VirtuChat 1. But only to show our work with the old Torque TGE graphics engine we made all the way back from around 2003 and at the same time show that it can make a reasonably good graphics, even by today's standards. So let's call it 'showcase a museum game'

To accomplish this, I had to 'remove' the multiplayer part because VirtuChatten would only be able to work with multiple servers plus a master server running if it was to work in its old form.

About VirtuChatten itself:
Yes it's true there is a bit 'loneliness' in there, but you have to remember i.a. to 'talk' with the infobots, there are several exciting 'illustrative' tasks to solve.
VirtuChatten is a very big world, with both an 'adventure part' and a part that takes place out in space, things that can not just be described without even traveling around in there.
A little info ... You can move both the player and vehicles, by using both 'arrow keys' and the usual 'W, A, S, and D'.

I hope my explanation is reasonably complete about my dear VirtuChat.
I can only say look in, despite the aging system, there is a lot to experience .

[jonaz.dk]

Cool thanks for clarifying!

[jonaz.dk]

So our new basement buddies Octato has their new Airhead demo available on steam!

I'm busy right now setting up my new 3D printer. But I will give it a go ASAP!

[jonaz.dk]

And today is launch day for DK project, Stilstand from Niila Games. Launching on mobile and Steam.




Full playthrough

[jonaz.dk]

HITMAN is currently free on the Epic Store.
Also HITMAN 3 will be an Epic Store (I suppose? 1 year time limited exclusive when it launches on PC. Not eeeeverybody is super happy about that. But that's law of the gamer jungle)

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/p ... rd-edition

[jonaz.dk]

So VR is getting more (looking like a few years ago) AAA titles. (Quest support via link cable)

Also a few days old. But Oculus hardware now requires Facebook login. So that can be a deal breaker for some people, understandably.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/19/2137 ... ompetition

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond | Story Trailer | Oculus Rift Platform

[jonaz.dk]

Pretty neat tools!
Blender also has something similar in the works in regards to the smart extrude.

3ds Max 2021 Update 2 / Smart Extrude / Free tools

[jonaz.dk]

DK project Scarlet Republics from Audacity Interactive will go live on Kickstarter tomorrow. 1st of September.

So far described as a story-driven tactical RPG, rich with choice and consequence.

UPDATE: Kickstarter is live. And going fast.
Impressive work for a debut team!

GIF.. if the link works




Kickstarter for Scarlet Republics
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16 ... -republics

[jonaz.dk]

Bender 2.90 is out!

https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-90/