Category: Game Development

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I Was Blackmailed–Any YouTuber Could Be Next

If you follow Gamefromscratch on Twitter, you may have already seen this tweet I put out last night about a blackmail demand that was made against our YouTube channel:

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First off, I really want to give a gigantic shout out to all of the people that helped get the message out, the tweets, retweets and even Reddit post.  You are an amazing community and hopefully if we yell loud enough, YouTube will here and fix this!

Basically it started with a message in the GFS Discord server claiming to have taken down my Animate CC video.  This video unfortunately has been taken down and reinstated 4 times in the last two months, this happened after YouTube turned up the bots responsibility due to Covid-19, so I had written it off as bots malfunctioning.  Each time it was taken down, I appealed and it would be restored.  After I didn’t pay the $50 in bitcoin, I started getting Circumvention of Technology notices for 3 of my videos.  That ultimately resulted in a community strike and loss of access to my channel for a week (or until appealed).  Thankfully those  three takedowns were reversed in about 2 hours and channel privileges were restored.

Today I was just waiting for YouTube to restore my 2 year old Animate CC video… then to my shock, it was reviewed and found to be in violation!  Even after multiple previous reviews, as you can see from these email snippets!

YTEmailThread

So that is where things stand now.  My channel is back, 3 out of 4 of my videos are returned.  Thing is, anyone that wants can do this exact same attack whenever they want.  It was reported to YouTube and frankly they did nothing.  Any YouTube creator you love can have their channel taken down by spamming Circumvention of Technology claims, and there really isn’t anything you can do about it.  YouTube assumes your guilt and until the review clears you name, your video is down.  As you can see from the above emails, your video doesn’t always come back.

The single biggest piece of advice I can give to any YouTube creator, make sure your content is mirrored on another network!   After my Animate CC video was taken down the second time, I started mirroring to Lbry.tv and I recommend you do to!  Thanks to mirroring to Lbry, my Animate CC video lives on!  So if you want to try to spot the copyright circumvention YouTube reviewers “found”, you can!

Hopefully if we yell loud enough, YouTube will hear and creators will be protected from insanity like this in the future!  You can learn much more in the video below.  Once again, thank you to everyone that helped amplify my voice, it was and is much appreciated!

Totally Off Topic

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Unreal Engine Marketplace Spring Sale On Now

Epic Games are running their Annual Unreal Engine Spring Marketplace sale.  You can get a collection of 5000+ asset store items for up to 70% off, which 2k+ being at the maximum discounted amount.

Details from the Unreal Engine blog:

With up to 70% off more than 5,000 select Unreal Engine Marketplace products during the Spring Sale, the Marketplace is teeming with content to make development a breeze. Now through Wednesday, June 3 discover discounted construction kits, character collections, captivating countrysides, and so much more!

Uncover a treasure trove of products to help you construct lavish hotels and lively low-poly campsites, or vast solar systems with starry skyboxes and advanced sci-fi spaceships. Don’t miss out on ambient sounds and tracks to envelop your audience, explosive effects, and handy tools to tidy up your projects.
Sale lasts now through June 3 at 11:59 PM EDT. Happy shopping!

Please not the above Marketplace link was editing to the correct location.  You can also access the sale in the Epic Game Launcher.  You can learn more about the sale and assets available in the video below.

GameDev News

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Building Tools Blender Add-On Released

As discovered on BlenderNation, a new plugin for Android was released that makes quickly creating buildings in Blender a breeze.  Building Tools is available for download here in both zip and tar.gz formats.  Simply download the archive and add it as a plugin in the Blender add-ons panel.  Building Tools enables you to rapidly create houses, from simple single story bungalows, to 100 story towers.

Buildings feature the following configurable assets:

  • Floorplans
  • Floors (slabs and walls)
  • Doors
  • Windows
  • Multigroup (door-window combinations)
  • Roof
  • Stairs
  • Balcony

The add-on is also open source under the MIT license on GitHub.  You can see how to create buildings quickly and simply using Building Tools in the video below.

GameDev News Art

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Krita Beta On Android And Chrome OS

Earlier today, Krita just launched the first beta releases of Krita on Android and Chrome OS.  Unfortunately for now it only works for Android tablets and the UI still has many desktop requirements so it may not work as expected, at least without a mouse and keyboard attached.

Details from the Krita website:

Thanks to the hard work of Sharaf Zaman, Krita is now available in the Google Play Store for Android tablets and Chromebooks (not for Android phones).

This beta, based on Krita 4.2.9, is the full desktop version of Krita, so it doesn’t have a special touch user interface. But it’s there, and you can play with it.

Unlike the Windows and Steam store, we don’t ask for money for Krita in the store, since it’s the only way people can install Krita on those devices, but you can buy a supporter badge from within Krita to support development.

Install
Notes
  • Supports: Android tablets & Chromebooks.
  • Currently not compatible with: Android phones.
  • If you have installed one of Sharaf’s builds or a build you’ve signed yourself, you need to uninstall that first, for all users!

Do to the limited number of Android tablets and the massive size of some Android phones, it’s unfortunate a phone release isn’t also available.  Do keep in mind this is early access software, so expect all the bugs that come with that.

Art GameDev News

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Magic Leap Secures Funding and Avoids Layoffs

In a time where far too many people are being laid off, it’s nice to get a bit of good news for a change.  AR tech start-up Magic Leap, have had a bit of a rocky year cumulating in the announcement they would be laying off half of their employees.  Thankfully it was just announced that they received a $350M investment and those layoffs have been cancelled.

Details of the new funding from SiliconAngle:

Troubled augmented reality company Magic Leap Inc. has raised $350 million in new funding, according to an internal memo to employees obtained by The Information.

Details on the round, which depending on its form should be a late-stage Series F, are somewhat vague. The investors are described only as current and new investors with the suggestion that a key healthcare company may have been involved.

Although the fundraising itself is surprising, it was good news for employees as Magic Leap withdrew a notice to terminate about 1,000 staff issued in April — meaning that staff on the chopping block will now keep their jobs. Notably, at that time, Magic Leap said it was in the process of negotiating “revenue-generating partnerships.”

The news that a healthcare company may have invested in the company follows Magic Leap’s announcement in December that it was shifting to enterprise augmented reality after failing in the consumer market. The company’s first product, the $2,295 Magic Leap Creator Edition, sold only 6,000 units, a huge disappointment give that the company predicted sales of 100,000 units.

It is nice to see that Magic Leap lives to fight another day, although it’s less and less likely we will see Magic Leap in game development with the shift towards enterprise computing, where they will compete directly with Microsoft’s HoloLens.  More details of the investment and Magic Leaps rocky recent history check out the video below.

GameDev News

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ezEngine Free and Open Source 3D Game Engine

ezEngine is an open source 3D game engine with a complete editor written in C++ using the Qt framework.  It is hosted on GitHub and available under the MIT source license.

Details of the ezEngine:

ezEngine is an open source C++ game engine in active development. It is currently mainly developed on Windows, and higher level functionality such as rendering and the tools are only available there, but the core libraries are also available for other platforms such as Mac and Linux.

ez is built in a modular way, enabling users to either use all available functionality, or to pick and choose individual features and build the rest yourself. Larger features are implemented through engine and editor plugins and can therefore be easily removed or replaced. For instance sound (Fmod), physics (PhysX) and particle effects are all provided through runtime plugins.

The ezEditor is a full blown editor used for editing scenes and importing and authoring assets.

ezEngine documentation is available here, while Windows binaries are available for download here.  You can learn more about ezEngine in action in the video below.

GameDev News

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Defold Engine Open Sourced

The Defold game engine is now open sourced under the Apache open source license.  The source code is now available on GitHub and Defold development is now controlled by the newly created Defold Foundation.

EDIT – The above contained an error.  The license is not Apache, it’s Apache derived.  This is unfortunate as Godot creator @reduzio points out:

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The alteration from the Apache licenses appears to be this limitation:

a) You do not sell or otherwise commercialise the Work or Derivative Works as a Game Engine Product

I can understand the desire for this limitation, but I do not think it is worth it.  Edit over, back to the announcement!

Details of the open sourcing:

We are happy to announce that as of May 2020 Defold, the ultimate cross platform game engine, has been transferred to the Defold Foundation and made available as a free and open project with a permissive license! We believe this move will bring transparency to the development process and we invite our community members to get involved.

We have covered Defold extensively in the past, including this more recent step by step tutorial using Defold 2.x as well as this older more comprehensive tutorial series.  You can learn more about the Defold Engine and the Defold Foundation in the video below.

GameDev News

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Learn You Some Python By No Starch Bundle

Humble are running a new bundle of interest to game developers, the Learn You Some Python by No Starch Press bundle.  This is a collection of Python ebooks including a few specifically about game development.  Be aware though, a very similar bundle Python Programming ran about a year ago with many of the same titles.  As with all Humble Bundles, it is organized into tiers:

1$ Tier

  • Teach Your Kids to Code
  • Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
  • Black Hat Python
  • Gray Hat Python

8$ Tier

  • Mission Python: Code a Space Adventure Game
  • Python For Kids
  • Cracking Codes with Python
  • Python Playground
  • Math Adventures with Python

15$ Tier

  • Python Crash Course
  • Automating the Boring Stuff with Python
  • Python Flash Cards
  • Serious Python
  • Impractical Python Projects

As with all Humble Bundles, you decide how your money is allocated, between Humble, charity, the publisher and (thanks so much if you do!) to support GFS using this link.  You can learn more about the bundle in the video below.

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ENVE–2D Animation Software

ENVE, or Enve is Not a Video Editor, is a new in development 2D animation software, completely free and open source.  Even in this early state, Enve is remarkably capable animation tool, with a full suite of drawing tools for both vector and result art, including MyPaint brush integration.

ENVE is described as:

Enve is a new open-source 2D animation software for Linux and Windows. You can use enve to create vector animations, raster animations, and even use sound and video files. Enve was created with flexibility and expandability in mind.

The source code is available on GitHub under the GPLv3 license with binaries available for Windows and Linux.  You can check out a complete review of ENVE in action in the video below.

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Humble Launch Indie Publisher Humble Games

Humble, famous for the Humble Bundle deals, have just launched an indie game developer focused publisher Humble Games.  Humble have already worked with a number of developers to bring games such as Void Bastards and Slay the Spire to market.  In celebration of the Humble Games launch, they are also running a “Make Your Own Bundle sale” featuring games they have published.

Reasons to publish with Humble Games include:

BRAND

Humble Bundle has done right by millions of gamers and thousands of industry partners – Humble Games is no different.

IP OWNERSHIP

Our Humble terms allow you to own your IP.

MARKETING

We will help you market your game with a dedicated team of experienced publishing marketers.

12M CUSTOMERS

As part of the Humble family, Humble Games will help you connect with customers across Bundles, Store, and Choice.

FINANCING

We give you money upfront so you don’t need to starve to finish your game.

CREATIVE CONTROL

We look for developers and games we believe in. We want you to be able to build the game of your dreams.

PRODUCTION

You’ll receive a dedicated producer to help you with all technical milestones, processes, and challenges you may encounter.

CROSS PLATFORM

We will help you succeed not just on the Humble Store, but on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and more.

If you are interested in applying, the form is available here.  You can learn more in the video below.

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