Category: Game Development

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Exporting From Blender 2.8 To Godot

With the release of Blender 2.8, there is a ton of interest in using Blender 2.8 with Godot.  The process of importing/exporting has always been one of the biggest challenges for game developers and the newest version of Blender 2.8 is no exception.  We already created a step by step tutorial on creating, texturing and animating a model in Blender 2.79 and successfully import it to Blender.  This video is slightly different, in that we are going to be looking at the options available to export from Blender 2.8. 

There are three primary options available, each with their advantages and disadvantages:

  • COLLADA
  • glTF
  • FBX

In this video we look at the process with each format when using Blender 2.8.  For this example we use the model Laiku freely available on Sketchfab, that is non-trivial, fully textured and simply animated.  Please also note that FBX import to Blender requires Godot 3.2 which is as of writing in development still.  If you don’t want to build Godot yourself, you can get nightly builds here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSAl3vgxu4M&w=853&h=480]

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Phaser 3.19 Released

Phaser, the popular open source 2D HTML 5 game framework, just released version 3.19.  Phaser 3.19 brings several new features and improvements Phaser319including a new Spine (learn more about this bone based 2D animation system here) plugin offering greater performance in a smaller package, a complete new Tweening system and several other new features.

Details from the Phaser blog:

This version will properly batch Spine skeletons where possible, potentially saving hundreds of draw calls. The plugin is fully documented and exports both debug and minified files, suitable for ES6 ‘importing’ or ES5 plugin inclusion. The whole plugin is just 68KB in size (min+gz), or a paltry 57KB if you only need the Canvas renderer! That’s a really tiny payload for such a massive feature-set. You can find out more about Spine from the Esoteric Software website.

3.19 also introduces a huge overhaul to the Tween system. Tweens now have 100% documentation and we’ve extended their capabilities significantly. There are lots of new Tween Events to listen for, such as ‘COMPLETE’ or ‘REPEAT’ to allow you to trigger actions without needing to create callbacks. Tweens can now tween both ‘from’ and ‘to’ a value, with the ability to set a starting value for any tweened property. There are lots of new handy methods and properties, such as Tween.hasStarted and a rewrite of the Tween seeking function, so it now allows you to seek to any point in time across a tween.

Finally, we’ve added in the great new ‘StaggerBuilder’. This allows you to easily add staggered offsets to a bunch of tween targets, including all kinds of options such as staggering across a grid layout, stagger directions, starting values and a lot more. Please see the docs and examples for more details.

Be sure to check the Phaser blog for complete details of this release.  Check the change log for an even more in-depth description of what is new and changed in the 3.19 release.  You can get an introduction and overview of Phaser 3 in our slightly dated Introduction To Phaser 3 video available here.

GameDev News

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Universal Sprite Sheet Character Creator

Today we are checking out the web based tool, the Universal LPC Sprite Sheet Character Generator, a free tool that enables you to quickly and easily create multi angle animated character sprite sheets.  The LPC in the name stands for Liberated Pixel Cup a contest/organization on OpenGameArt for creating open source 2D pixel art in a consistent style.  You can browse the entire content of LPC assets right here.  The assets on LPC and generated by this tool are available under split open source licenses, the CC BY-SA 3.0 and GPLv3.

The Sprite Sheet Generator enables you to quickly compose characters by selecting a male or female base sprite, then customizing dozens of attributes and accessories, such as eyes, hair style, clothing and weapons.  While the UI isn’t amazing, the process is remarkably straight forward, as shown in the following video.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTBbJ6qDY8o&w=853&h=480]

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Humble Coding & App Development by Packt BUndle

Humble are running another e-book/video bundle of interest to developers, this one is the Humble Book Bundle: Coding & App Development by Packt.  It is a collection of books and training videos on a broad variety of application development topics from iOS and Android development, to Dart, React and Node.js.  As always it is split into tiers, those tiers are:

1$ Tier

  • Locked content Architecting Modern Java EE Applications
  • Learn Qt 5
  • Learning jQuery 3
  • Learn Flutter and Dart to Build iOS and Android Apps (VIDEO)
  • Real-World iOS Projects (VIDEO)

8$ Tier

  • Mastering iOS 12 Programming
  • Android 9 Development Cookbook
  • ASP.NET Core 2 and Angular 5
  • Node.js Design Patterns (VIDEO)
  • Hands-On Full Stack Development with Spring Boot 2.0 and React
  • Universal JavaScript with React, Node and Redux (VIDEO)
  • Develop Advanced Cross Platform Apps Using Xamarin Forms and XAML (VIDEO)
  • Hands-On Full Stack Web Development With Angular 6 and Laravel 5

15$ Tier

  • Angular 6 for Enterprise-Ready Web Applications
  • React and React Native
  • Android Programming For Beginners
  • Vue.js Design Patterns and Best Practices
  • WordPress 5 Complete
  • Spring 5 Design Patterns
  • Mastering Xamarin UI Development
  • React Design Patterns and Best Practices
  • React Native Cookbook
  • Learning Node.js Development
  • Django 2 Web Development Cookbook
  • Hands-On Web Development with Vue.js (VIDEO)

Buying a higher dollar tier will entitle you to all the lower priced tiers as well.  When your purchase a Humble Bundle, you get to decide how your money is allocated, between Humble, the Publisher, charity and if you should choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GameFromScratch.  The Bundle is available here.  Check out the video below for more details on the contents of the bundle.

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

GameDev News

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Major Sketchfab Updates

Sketchfab, the online 3D model repository, just got several new features this year at SIGGRAPH.  Major new features of Sketchfab include:

Unfortunately the Sketchfab Blender plugin (previously featured here) hasn’t been ported to Blender 2.80 yet.  Learn more about the update and see the huge data set visualization in action in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLjGVw67-2s&w=853&h=480]

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Autodesk Announce Indie Versions Of 3DS Max and Maya

Autodesk have announced new Indie version of their popular 3DS Max and Maya DCC applications.  These are full versions, not subset’s like Maya LT, their other indie focused offering.  They do however come with some strings attached.  The new version (3DS in this case) is described as follows:

Autodesk 3ds Max Indie is the same industry-standard product used by professional studios, at a price point accessible to those who are just starting out. If you are a recent graduate or freelancer with less than USD$100,000/year in revenue, you can get started now. Please note that this is a limited-time offer.

The revenue limit is not the only limitation:

  • Your annual gross revenue from design work must be less than USD$100,000/year
  • Only one license can be used per user or organization
  • Offer is only eligible to those based in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK or the US

There is also one very big gotcha people should be aware of:

Note: In order to avoid an automatic renewal at the full subscription price of 3ds Max, you must turn off the automatic renewal once you subscribe to 3ds Max Indie. In order to turn off the automatic renewal setting, you must go to your Autodesk Account, and follow the instructions posted here. This offer is subject to certain restrictions.

So, if you do not turn off automatic rebilling, you could get hit for a VERY nasty surprise on your credit card in a years time, as you get charged for the full, non-indie version of Max or Maya!

It is a huge savings for those that qualify and it will be interesting to see if the deal expands to other markets or is offered beyond this year.  Have Autodesk noticed a new market between students and full professionals, or are they facing pricing pressure for alternatives like Blender?  Or perhaps it’s a bit of both?

You can learn more about the programs here (3DS Max) and here (Maya).

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Unreal Engine August Free Stuff

The first day of every month Epic Games make several assets available for free on the Unreal Engine marketplace.  Some of the assets are free forever, while others have to be “purchased” during the month, although once purchased they are yours forever.  August 2019 is no exception.  Let’s take a look at the free stuff for August announced on the Unreal Engine blog.

Free For August

Free Forever

Be sure to watch the video below for more details on this months free Unreal assets.

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

GameDev News

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Humble 2D GameDev Bundle

Another Humble Bundle is running of interest to game developers, this one is the Humble 2D Game Dev bundle, a collection of 35+ sprite and graphic packs from Game Dev Market.  As always, Humble Bundles are organized into price tiers, where if  you buy a higher dollar tier, you get all tiers below that as well.

The tiers of this bundle include:

1$ Tier

  • Game Character Sprite 20
  • Game BG Platformer Tileset 01
  • 10 Game Backgrounds
  • Cute Animals Pack
  • Explosives Pack
  • Water and Fluids Tiles
  • Chests n’ Keys
  • Platformer Game Tile Set 13
  • 18 Amazing Sprite Effects for Your Game

15$ Tier

  • Soldiers Pack
  • Platformer Tile Set Game BG 12
  • Sprite Sheet Animation
  • 10 Game Vector Backgrounds
  • Animated Soldier 2
  • Platformer Game Tile Set 2
  • 32×32 Gameboy Pack 5
  • Cyberpunk Platformer Tileset
  • Cyberpunk Character Sprites Set
  • Platformer Assets Pack 3

25$ Tier

  • 10 Game Sprites Bundle Boys and Girls
  • Game Character Sprite 06
  • 2d Game Obstacles Sprites
  • Mega Projectile Pack
  • Ship Level Construction Kit
  • 2D Fantasy Character Pack
  • Mega Castle and Dungeon Pack
  • 100 Cartoon Characters for 2D Games
  • Platformer Game Tile Set 12
  • Characters Spritesheets 9
  • Six Animated Pirate Crew Characters
  • Folding Platforms
  • Skeleton Army
  • Goblins Game Character Sprites
  • Monsters Enemies 2D Game Sprite Set

If you buy using this link you can choose to support GFS (thanks if you do!) as well as deciding how your money is split between Humble, Charity and the publisher.  Of course, the license of the assets is super important as well, and it’s available here.

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

Art GameDev News

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Unity 2019.2 Released

The Unity game engine just got another stable version release, Unity 2019.2.   As always it is available for download right now using the Unity Hub.  Unity 2019.2 contains over 170 new features and enhancements including updates to the ProBuilder and PolyShape plugins, a new 2D lightweight renderer supporting dynamic 2D lights, ShaderGraph updates and much more.

In this release we got much more comprehensive release notes, split across several files.

Or you can watch the video below to learn more about this release.  If you want to experiment with the new lightweight 2D renderer and lighting options you can start by cloning this project that was used in the video.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUz-3EdtF44&w=853&h=480]

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Cinema 4D R21 New Details Pricing and Subscriptions

At SIGGRAPH 2019, Maxon announced details of the upcoming R21 release of their Cinema4D 3D DCC application.  The release isn’t actually coming until September of 2019 we have details of the upcoming new features.

In addition to new features, there were two major announcements, a change to a single version and a change in pricing.  First details on the new single SKU approach:

  • Only one version of Cinema 4D:
    • No more Prime / Visualize / Broadcast / Studio / BodyPaint editions. 
    • All functionality is in the one version, no separate editions anymore.
    • Demo and Educational versions are no longer separate downloads. 
    • Demo and Educational can be upgraded to a commercial version.

    With a single SKU, there is now also a single price tag, however there are now several subscription options, detailed here.

    Cinema4D pricing details

    Essentially you can now pay for Cinema4D via subscription which are cheaper when paid on an annual basis.  Additionally you can continue to purchase Cinema4D with a perpetual licence, but unfortunately it is 3x more money that the most affordable version available currently.  Learn more in the video below.

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

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