Category: Game Development

Found yourself with a lot of free time on your hands lately?  Yeah, you’re not alone.  Why not spend the time improving your programming ability, which is exactly what you can do with the Software Development by O’Reilly bundle on now.  A collection of e-Books on a broad range of subjects including better programming habits, test driven design, algorithms and design patterns.  As always this bundle is organized into tiers:

1$ Tier

• Technology Strategy Patterns
• Apprenticeship Patterns
• 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know
• The Art of Readable Code
• Algorithms in a Nutshell

8$ Tier

• Test-Driven Development with Python
• Introduction to Machine Learning
• Becoming a Better Programmer
• Regular Expressions Cookbook
• Head First Agile

15$ Tier

• Learning CoreDNS
• Programming Quantum Computers
• Cloud Native
• Real-World Software Development
• Head First Design Patterns

All of the books are available in PDF, MOBI and EPUB formats.  As with all Humble Bundles you can decide how your money is allocated, between the publisher, Humble, charity and if you choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GFS using this link.  You can learn more about the bundle in the video below.

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GameDev News Sale

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At not-GDC this year, DirectX 12 Ultimate was announced.  DirectX 12 Ultimate is a new baseline version of Direct X for new Xbox consoles and PC’s, to make development as easy as possible.  In addition to existing features including DirectX Raytracing and Variable Rate Shading, Ultimate includes the new features of Mesh Shaders and Sampler Feedback.

Details of DirectX 12 Ultimate from the Microsoft developer blog:

Microsoft’s Game Stack exists to bring developers the tools they need to create bold, immersive game experiences, and DX12 Ultimate is the ideal tool to amplify gaming graphics. DX12 Ultimate is the result of continual investment in the DirectX 12 platform made over the last five years to ensure that Xbox and Windows 10 remain at the very pinnacle of graphics technology. To further empower game developers to create games with stunning visuals, we enhanced features that are already beginning to transform gaming such as DirectX Raytracing and Variable Rate Shading, and have added new major features such as Mesh Shaders and Sampler Feedback.

Together, these features represent many years of innovation from Microsoft and our partners in the hardware industry. DX12 Ultimate brings them all together in one common bundle, providing developers with a single key to unlock next generation graphics on PC and Xbox Series X.

Of course, even the most powerful features are of limited use without the tools necessary to fully exploit them, so we are pleased to announce that our industry-leading PIX graphics optimization tool and our open-source HLSL compiler will provide game developers with the ability to squeeze every last drop of performance out of an entire ecosystem of DX12 Ultimate hardware.

NVidia are currently the only video card maker with DX12 Ultimate compatible devices detailed here.  AMD however are the company behind the GPU of the next generation XBox and will be supporting DX12U in their upcoming RDNA 2 hardware.

If you are interested in learning more about DirectX 12 Ultimate you can start with the Getting Started guide available here.  You can learn more about the release in the video below.

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GameDev News

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With so many people stuck at home due to the quarantines around the COVID-19 virus, Unity technologies have released Unity Learn Premium for free to developers for the next few months.  Unity Learn Premium is a great source of Unity tutorials, courses, lessons and projects and even included non-Unity related content on topics such as Max and Maya.  You can learn more about Unity Learn in our prior hands-on video.

Details from the State of Unity 2020:

As the world continues to change, we are committed to helping all of you learn new skills and capabilities that can help bring your vision to life. We are pleased to announce that we are giving everyone complimentary access to Unity Learn Premium starting today through June 20. Just log in to access live sessions with Unity experts and more than 350 hours of bite-sized tutorials, hands-on projects, and in-depth courses for game developers and any creator that can benefit from the power of real-time technology. This includes everything from Game Mechanic Design Fundamentals to Getting Started with Post-Processing Stack for VR. Additionally, we are delivering Create with Code Live, live virtual classes taught by Unity experts for students, educators, and anyone who wants to learn how to code, starting on Monday, March 23.

Even if you are an existing Premium subscriber, Unity have you covered there, having released the following email:

Monthly Subscribers
We are pausing your monthly payments for three months, from March 19 until June 20. If your payment date falls within this period, you will not be charged for Unity Learn Premium. You don’t need to do anything – we’ll take care of it.

Annual Subscribers
We are adding three months of access to your Unity Learn Premium subscription. For example, if your subscription is scheduled to renew on October 1, 2020, it will now renew on January 1, 2021. No action is required on your part; we’ll automatically shift your renewal date.

30-day Trial Subscribers
If you are currently in a trial period and want to continue using Learn Premium past this trial period, we will waive your monthly payments through June 20.

Class move by Unity in these troubling times.  You can learn more about the announcement in the video below.

GameDev News Unity

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In continuing not-GDC news, Unity have just released Unity 2020.1 beta.  This beta continues the trend of moving more and more functionality into packages, including new code performance and analysis tools, support for Visual Studio and VS Code and more.  Additionally 2D physics was improved, raytracing support was added and more.

Details from the Unity blog:

The Unity 2020.1 beta is a milestone in the development cycle of the first TECH stream release this year, one of two 2020 TECH stream releases that lead up to the 2020 Long-Term Support (LTS) release next year.

As a token of our appreciation, everyone who tries out the 2020.1 beta and submits at least one bug report gets a chance to win one of four NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 2080 graphic cards. See the end of this post for details on the prize draw.

On April 20, we will be hosting a webinar for people interested in a guided tour of the features and updates in this beta. You can register here and find more information at the bottom of this post.

To get started, download the Unity 2020.1 beta from the Unity Hub or from our beta page. We recommend that you check out the beta to evaluate the technology while planning your future development, and don’t use it to work on projects that are live or in production. As always, make sure you back up existing projects before you test them with beta and Preview technology. Read our guide for more details.

For more complete details be sure to check out the video below.  If you are interested in the Physics2D samples mentioned in the video, it is available here on GitHub.

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GameDev News Unity

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Today at not-GDC, Khronos Group announced the release of Vulkan Ray Tracing, with initial support via beta drivers to NVidia cards.

Details from the Vulkan announcement:

Vulkan Ray Tracing consists of a number of Vulkan, SPIR-V, and GLSL extensions, some of which are optional. The primary VK_KHR_ray_tracing extension provides support for acceleration structure building and management, ray tracing shader stages and pipelines, and ray query intrinsics for all shader stages. VK_KHR_pipeline_library provides the ability to provide a set of shaders which can be efficiently linked into ray tracing pipelines. VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations enables intensive driver operations, including ray tracing pipeline compilation or CPU-based acceleration structure construction to be offloaded to application-managed CPU thread pools.

Vulkan Ray Tracing shaders are SPIR-V binaries which use two new extensions. The SPV_KHR_ray_tracing SPIR-V extension adds support for ray tracing shader stages and instructions; SPV_KHR_ray_query adds support for ray query shader instructions. Developers can generate those binaries in GLSL using two new GLSL extensions, GLSL_EXT_ray_tracing and GLSL_EXT_ray_query, which are supported in the open source glslang compiler. Engineers at Khronos member companies, including NVIDIA, have also added support for the SPIR-V extensions to DXC, Microsoft’s open source HLSL compiler, enabling Vulkan Ray Tracing SPIR-V shaders to be authored in HLSL using the syntax defined by Microsoft, with minimal modifications.

Beta drivers are available from NVidia here although it should be cautioned, these drivers are very much for developers only!  You can read more about the announcement in this 20 page pdf presentation, as well as a more in-depth technical overview of raytracing support in this blog post.

You can learn more about raytracing support in Vulkan in the video below.

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GameDev News 3D

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With many people looking for a way to pass the next few weeks, this Humble Bundle might come at the perfect time.  The Coding Starter Kit by No Starch Press Bundle is a collection of eBooks from No Starch about teaching kids and beginners programming, often through the lens of game development.  As with all Humbles, this bundle is organized into tiers.

1$ Tier

• Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things
• The Official ScratchJr Book
• 25 Scratch 3 Games For Kids
• Build Your Own Website.  A Comic Guide to HTML, CSS and WordPress
• Make Your Own Scratch Games!
• Super Scratch Programming Adventure!

8$ Tier

• A Beginner’s Guide to Circuits
• Learn Robotics With Raspberry Pi
• Micro:bit For Mad Scientists
• JavaScript for Kids
• Electronics for Kids

15$ Tier

• Coding with Minecraft
• Python For Kids
• Doing Math with Python
• Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
• Mission Python – Code a Space Adventure Game!

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

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GameDev News Sale

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Sadly due to Corona Virus/ COVID-19 concerns, this years GDC 2020 had to be postponed and most likely cancelled.  Fortunately however, not everything is lost!  The GDC have announced they will be streaming a number of talks scheduled for GDC 2020 completely free this year.  Details from gdconf.com:

Just a quick reminder that while the Game Developers Conference is no longer happening next week in San Francisco, organizers invite you to watch livestreams of the awards and some of the talks planned for GDC 2020!

For the most up-to-date details on what’s streaming when, check out the new GDC 2020 Virtual Talks hub and be sure to follow the official GDC Twitch channel. That’s where organizers will be streaming speaker-recorded versions of the talks they’d planned for GDC 2020, for free, from 9am to 5pm PT Monday through Friday.

Expect to enjoy some expert talks from studios like 343 Industries, Playground Games, BioWare, Gearbox and more, as well as insightful behind-the-scenes explorations of notable indie games like Baba Is You, A Short Hike, and Kine.

Plus, there will be an assortment of talks offering new and useful advice on how to tackle the core challenges of game development. You’ll have the opportunity to practice new ways of planning, developing, and marketing your game, and get up-to-date insights on everything from UI design to scaling your online infrastructure.

The Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards ceremonies will also be free to stream virtually starting at 5pm PT (8pm ET) next Wednesday, March 18th on GDC’s Twitch channel.

The virtual awards ceremony will feature the same hosts (Trent Kusters for the IGF and Kim Swift for the Game Developers Choice Awards) and identical awards categories planned for the original physical event — with the exception of the alt.ctrl.GDC award, which will not be awarded this year.

Directly before the awards at 4pm PT (7pm ET) on March 18th, Double Fine & iam8bit will debut a virtualized 2020 edition of its Day of the Devs showcase that promises to bring “visual beauty, charming design, poignant voices, and just plain cool games” to the official GDC Twitch stream.

As mentioned above, the schedule of talks is available here with times listed in Pacific Time.  The talks are available on Twitch but will eventually make it to the GDC YouTube channel as well as the GDC Vault.  Be sure to keep an eye on the GDC official Twitter channel too for updates through the week.  Or of course just tune in here at GameFromScratch for the top announcements and reveals at virtual GDC 2020!  You can learn more in the video below.

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Unity are currently running a Mega Bundle over on their asset store.  Organized into 3 tiers $49.99, $79.99 and $99.99 and representing savings up to 90%.  The Bundle runs until the end of March 2020.  The bundle breaks down as follows:

49.99$ Tier or Higher

• Snaps Art HD Sci-Fi Military Base
• Realistic Explosion Pack
• Snaps Prototype Sci-Fi Military Base
• Snaps Art HD School
• SciFi Cockpit Bridge 6

79.99$ Tier or Higher

• Animal Controller
• InControl
• Poly Art Animals Forest Set
• Dwarven Expedition Pack

99.99$ Tier or Higher

• Unity Learn Premium 1 Year Subscription
• SciFi Laboratory Pack 2
• Playmaker
• DarkTree FPS 1.3
• Snaps Art HD Buried Memories Volume 2: Serekh
• POLYGON – Battle Royale Pack
• Space Skyboxes & Planets

It is important to realize that some of these assets have been included in prior bundles such as this Humble Bundle.  Fortunately the 1 year Unity Learn Premium stacks with existing subscriptions, extending your subscription.  The links to the Unity Asset Store contain an affiliate code. 

You can learn more about this Bundle in the video below.

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GameDev News Unity

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Fast on the heels of the Blender 2.82 release, comes a minor but appreciated stability release, Blender 2.82a.  This release fixes 20+ bugs, including:

• Fix T74003: Autocomplete bug with mesh.loop_triangles. in Blender Python Console. (rB69c587888)
• Fix T73898: UDIM crash changing form tiled to single (rBd6977b5)
• Fix T73862: Fluid Sim file handle resource leak (rB60890cc)
• Fix T74182: Crash saving images from non-image spaces (rB096936fe1)
• Fix T72903: Bone envelope & bone size tool functionality swapped (rBdd2cdd436)
• Fix T74278: camera border gizmo size (rB9cac5fa681, rB360443a48)
• Fix T54270: Reset last_hit and last_location when reading the file (rB2df040ed58fb)
• Fix T74431: crash when compiling renderpass shader on some AMD drivers (rB9c4523b1fde4 + rBe5f98c79b0ed)
• Fix T74295: Cloth + Internal springs crashes on a non-polygonal geometry (rB1648a7903672)
• Fix Fix (unreported) Separate bones creates empty armature (rB498397f7bd8)
• Revert “Constraints: remove special meaning of Local Space for parentless Objects.” (rBf881162f81e)
• Fix T73932: modifying keyframes in nodes fails when there is an image sequence (rBf0a22f5)
• Fix crash loading .blend file saved with Blender 2.25 (rBed8aa15)
• Fix potential crash with Eevee render of missing image textures (rBab18dbb)
• Fix T72253: Mantaflow adaptive domain cuts off (rB32fc22db5679)
• Keymap: Add front/back Alt-MMB absolute view axis switching (rBa200986273)
• Fix T72028: Crash switching to vertex paint (rB31aefdeec5)
• Fix bone envelopes displaying wrong when armature is scaled (rBee7034949fd)
• Fix Vertex weight gradient tool show wrong weight/strength values in the UI (rBf38c54d56e)
• Fix T74225: Image (from sequence) cannot be loaded (rB9dbfc7ca8bf)
• Fix T63892: Tools cannot be registered into some contexts (e.g. PAINT_TEXTURE) (rBd95e9c7cf8)
• Fix T73369: corner pin & sun-beam nodes gizmos are too big (rB212660f467)
• Fix T74425: Cannot texture paint an images sequence anymore (rBca717f0489)

You can learn more about the release in the Blender release notes.  Blender is available for download on multiple platforms right here.  You can learn more about the recent 2.82 release here or in the video below.

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GameDev News Blender

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