Category: Game Development

It’s the first Tuesday of the month, meaning its time for the monthly Unreal Engine Marketplace giveaway! Every month Epic Games gives away several assets from the Unreal Engine marketplace, so long as the assets are “purchased” before the start of next month’s giveaway.

The February 2020 giveaway includes:

· Amplify LUT Pack

· Auto Settings

· Combat Systems – Constructor

· First Person Puzzle Template

· Open World AI Spawn System

Additionally, the following asset has been made available as part of the permanently free collection:

· Advanced Locomotion System V4

You can learn more about the monthly giveaway on the Unreal Engine blog and by watching the video available below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDaVZM-iYIs&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Unreal

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TerreSculptor is a free Windows based application for creating landscapes and terrains for games and other media.  Starting life in 2005 as a tool for creating maps for the Unreal Developer Kit, the tool has come a long way in the years since.

On Demenzun Media homepage, TerreSulptor is described as:

It all started back in 2005 with the HMCS HeightMap Conversion Software, as a need to convert various heightmap file formats to Epic’s proprietary Unreal Engine G16 format.  As an Unreal Engine licensee, developer, and consultant, I wrote this utility for free use for Engine Licensees and Community Mappers.

2008 saw the release of HMES, an updated build of HMCS with limited editing capabilities.  Both of these tools are still available for download.

In 2010, TerreSculptor was born out of the desire to create a powerful 3D application that rivaled all existing terrain heightmap software.  The initial public alpha release was delivered in 2012.

Since then, TerreSculptor has continued to evolve and become more powerful and feature rich.  TerreSculptor is now one of the main terrain tools available to the industry.  Over it’s lifetime to-date, TerreSculptor has had more than 50,000 downloads, and like its predecessors, it remains free software for any use.

TerreSculptor is still under active development, with the recent 2.0 release happening earlier this year.  In the following video we go hands-on with this powerful tool and show how quickly and easily you can create terrain for your game.  As part of the video below, we showcase how you can import real world data-sets, in this case captured from the massive USGA Earth Explorer website.  TerreScultpor is available as a free download here and is comprehensively documented here.  If you like the software, consider supporting the developer on Patreon where you can get early release access, as well as access to sample projects and more.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrI3i5FfmLc&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Tools Review

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After 10 months in development, Godot 3.2 has been released.  The release includes dozens of new features including C# support for Android and WebAssembly, glTF2.0 support, a new Android build system and a ton more.

The primary features of the Godot 3.2 release include:

This only represents the top level features, there were a ton of smaller changes and improvements, for a complete list of changes check out the complete changelog.  You can learn more about this release in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoVMAUJeqTU&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Godot

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Unity just released version 2019.3 containing several long awaited packages that are now ready for prime time.  The two programmable pipelines (HDRP and URP) are both considered verified at this point, as are a number of other key packages.

Highlights from the 2019.3 release include;

• High Definition Render Pipeline now verified
• Universal Render Pipeline now verified
• Visual Effect Graph now verified
• Update UI including new font, icons and better highDPI performance
• Improved Package Manager including ability to install from git
• New Asset Database system
• New Input system
• Incremental Garbage Collector now no longer experimental
• DOTS GameObject converter in preview
• Unity Live Link
• Havok Physics for DOTS now available
• Configurable Enter Play Mode optimizations

You can learn more about the features in this release on the Unity blog or by watching the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x_7B7bCJq4&w=692&h=389]

GameDev News Unity

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The Ursina Engine is a recently released open source Python based 3D game engine.  The Ursina Engine is built on top of the well established Panda3D game engine (learn more here).  Key features of the Ursina Engine include:

* hotreload code/textures/models while in-game
* automatic import of .psd and .blend files
* play in fullscreen while developing
* easy to use mesh class for making procedural geometry
* lots of included procedural 3D primitives

The Ursina Engine is available for Windows, Mac and Linux with the source code available on GitHub under the MIT license.  To get started with the Ursina Engine you need to have Python 3.6 or later installed as well as the pip package manger and git.   Once installed, simply run the command:

pip install git+https://github.com/pokepetter/ursina.git

If you encounter a permissions error, add the –user parameter to the above line.  From the examples, here is the code required to create an application and display a grid:

from ursina import * app = Ursina() r = 8 for i in range(1, r): t = i/r s = 4*i print(s) grid = Entity(model=Grid(s,s), scale=s, color=color.color(0,0,.8,lerp(.8,0,t)), rotation_x=90, position=(-s/2, i/1000, -s/2)) subgrid = duplicate(grid) subgrid.model = Grid(s*4, s*4) subgrid.color = color.color(0,0,.4,lerp(.8,0,t)) EditorCamera() app.run() 

You can learn more about the Ursina Engine in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCpBzdciU0o&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News 3D Engine

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Tiled, the open source map editing software, just released version 1.3.2.  Along side that release was a development snapshot with new features that will be available in the next release.  If you want learn Tiled we have an in-depth tutorial series available here.

Details of the 1.3.2 release:

• Fixed initialization of selected layers (#2719)
• Fixed stamp action shortcuts not being configurable (#2684)
• Fixed the tileset view to respect the ‘wheel zooms by default’ preference
• Fixed insertion position when using drag-n-drop to rearrange layers
• Fixed displayed layer data format in Properties
• Fixed repeating of export when map is saved by a custom command (#2709)
• Fixed issue when multiple worlds are loaded that use pattern matching
• Issues view can now be hidden by clicking the status bar counters
• macOS: Fixed black toolbar when enabling OpenGL rendering (#1839)
• Windows: Fixed context menus activating first item on release (#2693)
• Windows installer: Include the ‘defoldcollection’ plugin (#2677)
• Windows installer: Signed by SignPath
• libtiled: Avoid inheriting Properties from QVariantMap (#2679)
• docs: Added some notes to Python and JavaScript pages (#2725)
• Updated Qt from 5.12.5 to 5.12.6
• Updated Finnish translation (by Tuomas Lähteenmäki and odamite)
• Updated part of Italian translation (by Katia Piazza)

As well as details from the developmental release:

Tinting Layers

Layers can now be tinted by multiplying their pixels with a color. This way you can darken or colorize your graphics in various ways without needing to set up separate images for it! The new “Tint Color” property is supported on tile layers, object layers and image layers, and is inherited from group layers.

Object Alignment

Ever since tile objects were added as a feature, their alignment has been inconsistent with the other shapes. Whereas a rectangle had its origin in the top-left, tile objects had their origin in the bottom-left (or even bottom-center, on isometric maps). While useful in some contexts, this inconsistency has annoyed many people over the years.

Now, a new tileset property specifies which alignment to use for tile objects using that tileset. If you set it to top-left, the tile objects will align consistently with the other objects. But of course you could also choose for bottom-center or center alignment depending on your needs.

Object Reference Properties

This change is a big step towards the Connecting Objects feature, which is planned for Tiled 1.4. You can now choose “object” as the type when adding a custom property, and the property will be interpreted as a reference to an object on the map, referring to it by its unique ID. A special dialog makes it easy to search for the object you want to refer to and the name of the referenced object will be displayed.

Tiled is available as a free download for Mac, Windows and Linux here.  The source code for Tiled is available on GitHub.

GameDev News 2D Applications Tools

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Phaser Editor just released version 2.1.6.  Phaser Editor is an open source commercial game editor built on top of the Phaser game engine built on top of the Eclipse editor.  The 2.1.6 release brings Phaser editor to parity with the most current versions of Phaser and Eclipse.

Details from the release notes:

Phaser 3.22.0

The latest version of Phaser is now built-in. It is included in the project wizards, the Scene Editor, and the Phaser Labs tools.

The Phaser runtime files of your old projects are not updated. If you wish to update your game runtime to the new Phaser version you should do it manually. Learn more about it in the docs.

Eclipse IDE

We updated the editor to the latest Eclipse version (2019-12).

Asset Pack

• #139: Use relative names of asset pack files in the new file dialogs:

• #137: Bugfix: the New File wizard adds the new file to all the asset packs.

• #138 Parameter to use the container folder as the key prefix of the new file items.

Now you can enable the Use container folder as a prefix for new asset keys parameter. It is in the global preferences (Window > Preferences > Phaser Editor > Asset Pack Editor). By default it is disabled.

If the parameter is enabled, when you add new assets it will use the name of the container folder of the asset pack as the prefix of the new key. For example, if you add a file background.png and the asset pack file is in the folder level3, then the new key will be level3.background. Only in case of scene files, the prefix is ignored.

Texture Packer

• #141 Show import button in Properties.

macOS Mojave users are experiencing problems to drop files into the Texture Packer editor. We added a new button in the Properties view to import the files selected in the Blocks view.

Text editors

• #142: Bugfix: cursor is lost in a text editor after save (Windows 10).

Phaser Editor is available for download on Linux, Mac and Windows here.  PhaserEditor is open source under the EPL license available here on GitHub.  Learn more seeing Phaser Editor in action in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCRf83Eaa0w&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Phaser

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