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

[jonaz.dk]

Sexy! Really nice use of tech!

The basic version of Voxel Plugin for Unreal is free by the way.

[jonaz.dk]

Anarchy Online 20th Anniversary video! Grats to our Norwegian friends! And it's still going strong.

I know a few DK people who worked on it at Funcom.

Ohh.. also just discovered Funcom is 100% owned by Tencent now a days...



Oh just discovered Funcom is are working on Dune! Has completely flown below my radar. Currently listed as an unannounced survival game on their website.

[jonaz.dk]

Loop Hero Developers Reveal the Design Origins of their Breakthrough Hit

[jonaz.dk]

Free online course 'Summer of Unreal' with the Animation Workshop in Viborg.

In collaboration with Epic Games and our amazing partners!
Do you work in the animation, 3D or CGI industry within Europe? We invite animators, VFX artists, motion graphic designers, and everyone related to the creative industries inside for an Epic Summer! The Summer of Unreal is a free four-week course in Unreal Engine designed to give you animation superpowers!

Title: Summer of Unreal

Language: English

Credits: The course is not accredited with ECTS-points

Duration of the program: 4 weeks

Next program: July 26 to August 20, 2021

Application deadline: July 16, 2021

Fee: Free!

Place: Online

More on
https://animationworkshop.via.dk/progra ... -of-unreal

[jonaz.dk]

GDScript 2.0 in Godot 4 -- What's New?


How Holographic Doom Works on a Lightfield Display
(Not really relevant for gamedev in general.. but a cute novelty regardless. Perhaps in many years these kind of displays will play a slightly larger role. But super tiny hybid AR/VR glasses/lenses will probably be substantially more widespread by then for most holographic purposes)

[jonaz.dk]

Math for Game Developers: End-to-End Procedural Generation in Caves of Qud

[jonaz.dk]

The Best Games from GMTK Game Jam 2021

[jonaz.dk]

Getting Started with Photogrammetry Using Your Cell Phone

[jonaz.dk]

So 3 days left of Invisible Walls Funderbeam crowd financing campaign.
Currently at 89% so it's getting close but no cigar juuust yet. I still have hope for the last stretch but it could also go the other way. Hard to tell. Usually in crowd funding it's fine. But crossing fingers big time!

https://www.funderbeam.com/syndicate/invisible-walls

For the first part of First Class Trouble Early Access launch they had an amazing start. Super awesome!!
But now it seems the latest reviews has gone from Very Positive to Mixed. And the active player base seems to be shrinking. So that is sadly the worst feedback loop you can imagine for a multiplayer game. A lot of it seems to stem from banning loud mouth players.
Players that are also much more likely to leave a negative review.
It is absolutely VITAL for the company to turn the current situation around or else there will only be first class trouble for the project ahead. Mixed reviews are hard to shake and will taint the project for a long time.

Doing any PVPish game with required voice chat and social mechanics on top is just a recipe for trouble with the community for any game attempting that. It just is incredibly difficult to pull off to everyone's satisfaction and keep players happy.

My personal suggestion would be to NOT ban players (unless they are actually breaking laws or actively cheating).
But instead put them on their own servers and let them have their loud mouth super trolling toxic fun.

Perhaps it should even be a direct player choice! That would probably be the best solution.
Troll server: >"If you like to talk smack and troll around this is the server for you!"<
Fluffy server: >"If you like a friendly fluffy atmosphere this is the server for you"< (You will be transferred to the troll server if you break the rules)

Could be something simple like that!

That's my humble suggestion for a proposed solution anyways. (Still haven't played the actual game yet) so take my ramblings with a grain of salt. And surely there are more issues beyond player banning leading to the situation that has to be addressed.

Also I could imagine Mixed reviews and a shrinking player base for the current state of the game is indeed not helping with the last stretch of the funding goal.

Hoping the absolute best for the team and game. So rock on and get down with it!

**Update** Aaaaand boom! The funding goal is now met at 104% with 2 days left still. Grats to the team!

[jonaz.dk]

Lumberyard goes open source and will now be known as Open 3D Engine (O3DE).
- Currently in developer preview mode - Releasing in late 2021.

Nice move! All good for developers and it sounds a bit like Amazon has finally admitted their less then stellar adoption of Lumberyard.
Not really seeing any immidiate wide adoption in the short term of the engine. But who knows! Perhaps with time this will grow into something significant. It is certainly very good news for developers in general. And might just nudge other well known actors on the game engine stage to go fully open source sooner or later.. Unity maybe next? Certainly wouldn't disregard the theoretical possibility. But there could be issues like the current business model and being a publicly traded company preventing such a move in the short term. Let's see.
Adding.. and of cause free open source is no magic bullet that automatically will make everything awesome. It requires a strong oversight to steer in the best possible direction.

Existing Lumberyard projects might not (depending on project) directly transfer to O3DE.
Amazon still retains their services integration in O3DE.
Also it has been completely rewritten from scratch from its CryEngine 3 origins.

Open 3D Engine (O3DE) is an Apache 2.0-licensed multi-platform 3D engine that enables developers and content creators to build AAA games, cinema-quality 3D worlds, and high-fidelity simulations without any fees or commercial obligations.
https://o3de.org/

FAQ:
https://github.com/o3de/o3de/discussions/1862

More info:
https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/06/amaz ... Jl0f-vDXHM

O3DE - Developer Overview

[jonaz.dk]

The monthly free stuffs on the marketplace is here!

[jonaz.dk]

The Realms Deep event is returning in August.

[jonaz.dk]

Of cause there is no "one truth". But some general principles are at work to take into consideration when indie publishing.


The ugly truths of indie publishers
I’ve worked with several publishers, game studios and worked on 20+ games at different stages of their development. Today, I’d like to share with you some ugly truths about them, some stuff that isn’t very sexy, clickbaiting or that you cannot act upon.
https://tavroxgames.medium.com/the-ugly ... 416289fbce

Follow up article on gamasutra
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonCa ... rticles%29

[jonaz.dk]

The Machinery Game Engine Released*


More on
https://ourmachinery.com

[jonaz.dk]

AI in automated testing


NVIDIA’s GANCraft AI

[jonaz.dk]

Demon's Souls: Remaking a PlayStation Classic - Documentary

[jonaz.dk]

Seems like a pretty nice mocap solution. Even affordable for smaller studios.

Motive 3.0 // What's New


More on
https://www.optitrack.com/software/motive/

[jonaz.dk]

I guess the Varjo VR-3 VR headset is a small preview of what is coming to consumer VR headsets sooner or later. And probably the best money can buy for civilians. Currently it's a expensive B2B headset (including a subscribtion plan) so mostly relevant for clients work.
The next step would probably be a smaller formfactor, stand alone, and even bigger FOV.

A look at Varjo VR-3 Through The Lens


From our Finnish nordic brethren at Varjo.. more here
https://varjo.com/

[jonaz.dk]

Tencent To Acquire CryEngine/Crytek?

China influence is growing in the games industry. Not sure that is the best idea.. but people will dance for money.
Full list on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent



https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/385 ... illion.php

[jonaz.dk]

Level Design Workshop: Designing Radically Non-Linear Single Player Levels

[jonaz.dk]

The Dark Side of Steam - Laundering Money


The Community Torn Apart by Hackers - Apex Legends and Titanfall

[jonaz.dk]

Also GameMaker Studio 2 added a free learning tier.
A great introduction to making games.

It's a pretty easy to get into 2D engine. I did some smaller prototypes in GM before it became Studio many moons ago.

The recently released Mind Scanners was made in game maker. At least the original prototypes. Maybe the went Unity with the full release?! can't remember.
Also a long list of indie games has been made with GameMaker.

https://www.yoyogames.com/en/get

[jonaz.dk]

Why Wildermyth's Best Story Wasn't Written By Anyone

[jonaz.dk]

Speaking of Mind Scanners!.. one of the internets biggest gaming youtubers Markiplier (Currently the worlds 6th biggest in gaming) with almost 29.6 million subscribers took the game for a spin. And is so far clocking in on 2 million+ views. Not too bad!

The "sad news".. not that it's really sad.. a bit disappointing perhaps given the volume of views.
Is that from what I can see the impact on sales has been marginal. Atleast in the short term.

From 6125 to 6453 Steam page followers within the time frame.. so very marginal uptake of the game and projected immidiate sales impact of having 2 millions views of your game.
https://steamdb.info/app/1389550/graphs/

I hope the wishlisting has gone significantly more up and waiting for the next sale will push the sales further.

But it is also a sobering trend I have noticed that the actual direct sales value of big ass youtubers playing your game for millions of views. Doesn't really do >THAT< much to your sales from a single video.
Of cause things will obviously vary from project to project. Some games will probably cater better to various youtubers audiences.

I heard a similar story of a DK company that paid (A VERY LARGE SUM) to get featured on the biggest ol' youtubers Pewdiepie's channel. And the effect was almost not visible in downloads/sales.

So curb your dreams of hitting the big youtubers.. they are hard to get a date with, super expensive and the result may very well be disappointing.

I have no idea if the publisher paid Markiplier for the play or if it was an lucky shot. But it would be a realistic scenario to have the publisher pay the youtuber for the featured game.

Another thing is having a game that is being played over and over for long periods of time by a base of biggish youtubers. And things might start to look a bit different. But that requires a game designed from the ground up to support that. And not a one off game that you play through once and never touch again. Design for retention!

No sign of a part 2 just yet. I guess it's in the pipe.

But awesome nonetheless! To have millions of eye balls on the game. That's pretty sweet! And there might be a long tail effect?! Time will tell.

BRAINS PLEASE | Mind Scanners - Part 1

[jonaz.dk]

So the previously rumored Steam Pal is launching this December!
And the name is Steam Deck. Not Steam Pal.
So thats a bit better in terms of naming.

A bit generic perhaps. But I dont hate it.

Device looks fine for what it is. 7 inch screen is compareable with the new Switch.
Plays hi end PC games on the hardware. Nice!
The thumbsticks looks far better than the Switch by the way. Really didn't like thouse stubby little things on the Switch.

Biggest problem is the storage capacity the smallest 64GB version is basically >nothing<. Even still the biggest 512GB version is not a whole lot either when running a PC system. But >it is< upgradeable so yeah can be fixed..

It is also a fully fledged PC. So that's a game changer! Makes it way more useable beyond gaming. That's a welcome. Buuut I don't think it would be able to compete with my practical laptop use anyways in my life.

Also worth mentioning is that it's running SteamOS (*Arch Linux based).. they say you can run any PC thing on it. Buuut let's see how that translates to anything Windows in the real world. There will probably be problems relating to combatibility I'm sure.

Let's see where the Steam Deck goes! I have a good feeling!

More on here
https://www.polygon.com/22578782/steam- ... date-price

Steam Deck
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/