Category: Game Development

Every month for the last several months, Epic Games have made several assets available free on the Unreal Engine marketplace, and June 1st, 2019 is no exception.  You need to purchase the assets during the month to be able to keep them forever, but the purchase cost is zero.  Additionally, a few assets are made available each month permanently free on the market place.  Let’s take a look at the free marketplace assets for June…

June Free Assets:

Permanently Free Assets:

You can also find all of the above assets in the marketplace in the Epic Game Launcher.  Learn more about the June giveaway on the Unreal Engine blog available here.

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

GameDev News Unreal

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In 2017 Adobe announced the End Of Life for the Flash browser plugin was coming at the end of 2020.  Flash developers still had the ability to deploy their applications to desktops and mobile devices using Adobe AIR technology.  Today, Adobe announced the EOL for that platform as well.

As of June 2019, Adobe is transitioning ongoing platform support and feature development of AIR to HARMAN. This will coincide with an Adobe-issued update of AIR, v32, for supported mobile and desktop platforms. HARMAN has a long-standing history as an Adobe AIR partner, maintains knowledge of the platform and ecosystem, and is well-positioned to support AIR developers moving forward.

HARMAN (a wholly‐owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.) designs and engineers connected products and solutions for automakers, consumers, and enterprises worldwide. HARMAN’s software services power billions of mobile devices and systems that are connected, integrated and secure across all platforms, from work and home to car and mobile. Adobe has a long history collaborating with HARMAN, which is a key partner for Flash runtime migration and enterprise support as companies transition their existing ActionScript and Flex applications to new technologies. HARMAN has also been supporting customers with bespoke versions of Adobe AIR for the past decade.

Adobe will provide basic security support – limited to security fixes only for desktop platforms (Windows 7 and above, and Mac OS X) – for Adobe AIR v32 until the end of 2020. After that time, Adobe support for AIR will be discontinued and ongoing support will be managed by HARMAN and communicated by them directly. However, beginning with the release of AIR v33 by HARMAN, developers should contact HARMAN directly for AIR support on both mobile and desktop platforms – including bug fixes, platform compatibility, and new and improved functionality.

This means HARMAN will now control the future of the AIR platform and I would certainly expect Adobe tools to complete the transition away from supporting Flash, removing a great deal of the developer appeal in the first place.  You can learn more about HARMAN’s future plans for the Flash/AIR platform here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPg8FGqEnOg&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Applications

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Scirra announced today that they will be adding JavaScript language support to their currently codeless cross platform game engine, Construct 3.  We did a hands-on video on Construct 3 shortly after it was released, and the lack of scripting support was one of my biggest complaints.

Details of the new scripting support from the Construct blog:

We are well aware that not programming has been central to the design of Construct since Construct 2. We know many of our users will have chosen Construct specifically for this reason. Some may even have no intention of ever using coding. We’re still committed to this approach and also fully intend to keep developing features for events. So why are we doing this?

At Scirra we’ve always aimed to help get more people involved with and excited about technology. We want to make amazing tools that make incredible technologies accessible to all, allowing them to be active creators rather than passive consumers. With the rising profile of technology in the world today and more people than ever getting involved with technology and programming, we think this is an important step towards that goal.

Details about price:

Once we’re ready to launch it, the scripting feature will be sold as a separate add-on for Construct. However anyone who’s ever had a Construct 3 subscription – of any kind, past or present – will get the scripting add-on for free, for life, at no additional cost. Currently this still applies to new subscribers too, so if you want to use the feature and have been thinking about subscribing, you’ll save money if you subscribe now! We’ll announce the cut-off date for this offer in the near future.

Details about the timeline:

We are aiming to have an early version of the scripting feature in the next beta release of Construct some time in the next couple of weeks. If you’re already a subscriber, you’ll be able to test it as soon as the next beta. The feature will continue to develop and expand over time, and we’ll likely have more news about it in future. So stay tuned and we look forwards to seeing what you can all do with it!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GeMcDAiNBU&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News HTML5 2D

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One common problem with game development is compression, it’s a classic trade-off.  Do you save disk space at the cost of either performance or VRAM usage or do you favor performance at the cost of size?  When it comes to GPU Image Textures, this is exactly the trade-off Binomial is trying to get rid off.  Thanks to a recent partnership with Google, their work is now available and open source!

Details from the Google open source blog:

Today, Google and Binomial are excited to announce that we have partnered to open source the Basis Universal texture codec to improve the performance of transmitting images on the web and within desktop and mobile applications, while maintaining GPU efficiency. This release fills an important gap in the graphics compression ecosystem and complements earlier work in Draco geometry compression.

The Basis Universal texture format is 6-8 times smaller than JPEG on the GPU, yet is a similar storage size as JPEG – making it a great alternative to current GPU compression methods that are inefficient and don’t operate cross platform – and provides a more performant alternative to JPEG/PNG. It creates compressed textures that work well in a variety of use cases – games, virtual & augmented reality, maps, photos, small-videos, and more!

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How does it all work? Compress your image using the encoder, choosing the quality settings that make sense for your project (you can also submit multiple images for small videos or optimization purposes, just know they’ll share the same color palette). Insert the transcoder code before rendering, which will turn the intermediary format into the GPU format your computer can read. The image stays compressed throughout this process, even on your GPU!  Instead of needing to decode and read the whole image, the GPU will read only the parts it needs. Enjoy the performance benefits!

The project is available now, open sourced under the Apache 2.0 license on GitHub.  This new technology should be a great boon to game engines and tools hoping to support texture compression across a number of devices, and I assume will make it’s way into more Google products as time goes on.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG4vqQO1-nQ&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Tools

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Today GitHub just announced GitHub Sponsors, a new funding model that just may change the way a lot of open source projects get funded.  Instead of relying on third party services such as Patreon to fund open source development projects, GitHub sponsors will enable users to financially support their favourite open source projects directly on GitHub.

Details from the GitHub blog:

Zero fees

Open source is the heart of GitHub. The developers who build our shared digital infrastructure are what make this community so strong. As a thank you for these valuable contributions, GitHub Sponsors charges zero platform fees when you support the work of other developers. We’ll also cover payment processing fees for the first 12 months of the program to celebrate the launch. 100% percent of your sponsorship goes to the developer.

A global team

GitHub Sponsors supports payouts all around the world, in every country where GitHub does business. We are all part of a global software team. Expanding opportunities to participate on that team is at the core of our mission, so we’re proud to make this new tool available to developers worldwide.

All contributors welcome

Many contributions that are crucial to a well-functioning project are not visible in code review. GitHub Sponsors is built for funding all types of work that advance open source software. Anyone who contributes to open source—whether through code, documentation, leadership, mentorship, design, and beyond—is eligible for sponsorship.

One more way to contribute

GitHub Sponsors is one more way to contribute to open source: financially supporting the people who build and maintain it. Funding individuals helps them keep doing important work, expands opportunities to participate, and gives developers the recognition they deserve. Starting today, any GitHub user can sponsor an open source developer in the program.

Native to your GitHub workflow

You can now sponsor developers as a seamless part of your familiar workflow. When a contributor answers your question, triages your issue, or merges your code, you can head to their profile—or simply hover over their username—to sponsor their work.

Currently the system is launching on a waiting list system, you can join the wait list here (GitHub login required).

In addition to launching GitHub Sponsors, they have also launched the GitHub Sponsors matching fund:

To supercharge community funding, GitHub created the GitHub Sponsors Matching Fund, which matches up to $5000 per sponsored developer in their first year of sponsorship. In the first year, GitHub will not charge any fees, so 100% of sponsorships will go to the sponsored developer. In the future, we may charge a nominal processing fee.

With direct GitHub integration, global support and zero fees (at least for the first year), I imagine quite a few projects will transition over from a Patreon funding model.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNzpxXv0Bu0&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Tools

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In what may be my favourite Humble Bundle by far, the folks over at Humble just launched the Humble Book Bundle: Computer Graphics by CRC Press.  This is a collection of e-books on a huge number of computer graphics topics, including shaders, OpenGL, GPUS, VR, Volumetrics and much much more.  Humble Bundles are broken into tiers, if you buy a certain tier, you get all tiers lower than that one in price.

The tiers of this bundle are:

1$

• 3D Engine Design for Virtual Globes
• The Uncanny Valley in Games and Animation
• Production Volume Rendering
• Real-Time Volume Graphics

8$

• Essential Skills in Character Rigging
• Ray Tracing from the Ground Up
• OpenGL Insights
• Real-Time Shadows
• Multithreading for Visual Effects
• Graphics Shaders
• Fluid Simulation for Computer Graphics
• Digital Representations of the Real World

15$

• 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development
• GPGPU Programming for Games and Science
• Mobile Crowd Sensing
• Interaction Design for 3D User Interfaces
• Digital Character Development
• The Art of Fluid Animation
• Ultra-Realistic Imaging

When you buy a Humble bundle, you get to decide how your money is allocated, between the publisher, humble, charity and if you choose (and thanks if you do!) GFS.  The Bundle is available here until June 5th.

GameDev News Book

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