Even if you already have the bundle we have you covered as there is a bonus draw containing 5 additional asset packs that are not part of the bundle. Be sure to specify which bundle you are interested in entering for when you enter. On Monday we will randomly select two winners who will receive the highest tier of the Ultimate Fantasy bundle and one winner of the bonus bundle. Good luck!
You can learn more about the Fantasy Bundle here and learn more about the giveaway and see additional bundle assets in action in the video below.
The Godot game engine recently released a developer update of their Web export development progress. This blog post discussed some of the upcoming features of the new WIP web exporter, including work to support GDNative on the Web, which would be a huge step forward.
Of perhaps more interest though is the new version of Godot Online, a version of Godot that runs entirely in your browser. Getting started is remarkably simple, go to Godot Online url, then upload a zipped copy of the project you want to edit by clicking Choose File then selecting the zip, once done hit the Start Godot Editor button:
Next click the Import button, then navigate to the zip file containing your project.
Next you need to create a project, this is the same process as normal Godot, create a new empty folder in your projects directory then click Import & Edit:
At this point everything else should be exactly like using normal desktop Godot. The only major difference is exporting your project. When you are done you can export your project as a zip file using the Project->Tools->Download Project Source.
You can learn more about Godot Online and see it in action in the video below.
The Machinery by Our Machinery is an in development professional game engine that just entered open beta. We went hands-on with The Machinery earlier in the year when it was still in closed beta if you want an in-depth but slightly out of date hands-on experience. With the move to open beta all you need to do is register an account and download the engine to get started.
In a world dominated with game engines, what makes The Machinery unique? This engine is being developed by members behind the Stingray/BitSquid engines, used in such titles as Magicka and Warhammer Vermintide. The engine is light weight, modular and written in the C language with a focus on customizibility. Details from the open beta announcement:
If you are still wondering what The Machinery is, it’s a new lightweight and flexible game engine, designed to give you all the power of a modern engine in a minimalistic package that is easy to understand, extend, explore, rewrite, and hack. Beyond games, the API can also be used for simulations and visualizations as well as building custom tools, editors, and applications.
Some of the things that make The Machinery more hackable than other game engines are:
The Machinery’s API is written in C. It’s easy to understand without learning the complexities of modern C++. And don’t worry, you still have type-safe vectors and hash tables, just as in C++.
We use a modular design that is completely plugin-based. This makes it easy to extend and replace parts of the engine.
The engine can be stripped down to a minimalistic core. Don’t need physics, animation, or sound? Just ship the engine without those DLLs.
Individual DLLs can be hot-reloaded. You can modify gameplay, UI, etc, while the editor is running.
The codebase is small, readable and well documented.
We offer licenses with full source code for both small and large developers.
You can learn more about The Machinery open beta and a quick hands-on/getting started guide in the video below.
The 001 Game Creator game engine is currently featured in the Game Dev STEM Humble Bundle that just launched. 001 Game Creator was previously featured in a Humble, so be sure to check your library to make sure you aren’t purchasing it twice. If you are interested in learning more about 001 Game Creator, check out our hands-on review available here.
As with all Humbles, this bundle is organized into tiers:
1$ Tier
Misc design documents
10$ Tier
001 Game Creator Engine
001 Basics E-Book
001 Resource E-Book
20$ Tier
Point and Click Adventure Kit
Dragons Den Resource Pack
Retro Fantasy Music Pack
Sound Effects Pack Vol 1
25$ Tier
Enhanced RPG Kit
FPS Kit
MMORPG Kit
Visual Novel Kit
As with all Humble Bundles you get to decide how your money is allocated between the publisher, charity, Humble and if you so choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GFS using this link. You can learn more about the bundle in the video below.
Recently updated, today we are checking out the free and open source ODIN 2 synthesizer. It is built on top of the JUCE audio framework (also open source). ODIN 2 is described as:
Ever dreamt of a kickass synthesizer which is available on every platform? With a deep synthesis engine, endless modulation capabilities and it is literally for free? Look no further, Odin’s got you covered!
The sound of this 24-voice polyphonic beast will take you from your studio right to Valhalla. Earth shattering basses, exquisite leads or mad FX, Odin’s got them all! Use the classic sound of analog waveforms – or draw your own. High quality emulations of legendary analog filters like the Moog-ladder or the Korg-35 further shape your signal. Round your sound off with four onboard FX, or get crazy with modulation. There’s much to discover in Odin 2.
The source code for Odin 2 is available on GitHub under the GPL 3 open source license. Odin 2 is available for Windows, MacOS and Linux operating systems and is implemented as an VST compatible with most modern DAWs. If you are looking for a DAW to host Odin 2, check out our coverage on Reaper, LMMS, Mixcraft or ZRythm.
You can check out Odin 2 in action in the video below.
Codecks is a project management tool in the vein of Trello but aimed specifically at game developers. Modelled around the concept of a card game, decks are created for the various different tasks that need to be accomplished. Individual users interact in the form of hands, formed from cards either created locally or taken from community decks. There are also milestones as well as integration into several other technologies such as Github and Discord, as well as Trello import.
Key features of Codecks include:
Cards, Decks & Projects
Well designed collectable card games provide a great sense of the current state of your game. Let’s apply those design cues to project management.
Conversations & Notifications
Ever lost track of a comment thread? Conversations in Codecks are very explicit about who is part and whether it’s been resolved.
Time Tracking
Codecks’ optional time tracking allows you and your team to see how much time you’re actually spending on your tasks.
Search & Order
Use our advanced search and ordering options to dice and slice your work just the way you need.
Metrics & Reports
“Will we manage to release in time?” is a tough question. Especially in game development. Codecks is here to help.
Milestones
Plan for your release – one milestone at a time.
Codecks has a free tier available for teams up to 3 developers in size with several other pricing tiers available.
You can learn more about Codecks and see it in action in the video below.
Earlier this week the first beta of Godot 3.2.4 was released bringing several fixes and improvements as well as a few new features.
The primary features of the first Godot 3.2.4 beta from the Godot blog include:
Android App Bundle and subview embedding support.
2D batching for GLES3 (remember that we added it for GLES2 in 3.2.2), and improvements to GLES2’s batching.
A new software skinning for MeshInstance to replace the slow GPU skinning on devices that don’t support the fast GPU skinning (especially mobile).
Several smaller fixes and improvements
Downloads for all major platforms are available for download here. The major new feature of most interest to me is the new sprite batching, an optimization trick to improve 2D rendering speeds. In the video below we run the popular Bunnymark test on Godot 3.2.3 and the new Godot 3.2.4 and we saw respectable improvements.
With the recent Fantasy 3D Models humble bundle there were a number of questions about how assets can be extracted from the Unity game engine for use in other engines such as Godot, Unreal, Lumberyard, Stride, CryEngine or basically any other 3D game engine. That is exactly what we will look at in this tutorial, as we have in the past in this tutorial for Unreal Engine. Fortunately assets in the Unity game engine are generally stored as FBX files and textures are stored in image file formats, making this process a fair bit easier than it was in Unreal.
First and foremost you need to download the assets. Unfortunately to do this you will need to have Unity installed to perform the download process. (If you know a way to download unitypackage files from the command-line or outside of Unity, please let me know and I will update!) First you are going to need to purchase an asset from the Unity Asset store (or one of the several available free options). Once you have one or more assets on your account, fire up Unity and create a new project (type doesn’t matter). Next select the Package Manager in the menu Window->Package Manager.
Next in the Package Manager, in the top left corner drop down the menu and select My Assets option.
This will load your assets. If you have several assets, you may need to click Load More and the bottom to find your asset. Once located, select your asset in the left hand list, then select the Download button on the bottom right menu.
Repeat this task for each package you want downloaded. Once you have all of your assets downloaded you can close Unity. Now (on Windows at least) go to Windows Explorer and enter %APPDATA% in the location box.
This will automatically expand into the relevant folder name. Next navigate into the folder Unity, then Asset Store-5.x. In my case the full directory is C:\Users\serap\AppData\Roaming\Unity\Asset Store-5.x.In this folder will be a list of companies, these are the creators of the assets as named on the Asset Store, pick the one you downloaded earlier, then open up the asset within that directly. You should now see one or more files with a unitypackage file extension. Copy the asset you want to use to a directory of your choice.
Now we are going to need Unity Package Extractor, download Unity Package Extractor. Extract the zip file to the same location that you copied your unitypackage earlier. Now open a command prompt and CD into that directory, in this example lets assume c:\temp. Run the commands:
cd \temp
extractor ‘packagenamewithextension.unitypackage’
This will extract out all of the assets ready for your use. Tada, done! You can learn more about this process, step by step in the tutorial video below.
There is a new Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, this one is the Ultimate Fantasy Game Development bundle. It’s a collection of fantasy themed models, full rigged, textured and animated with tons of modularity and different texture packs. Even more impressive, the package is available as keys for both Unity and Unreal Engine asset stores and the models and textures are in a format that can be used in any 3D game engine with ease. As with all Humble Bundles, this one is organized into tiers:
1$ Tier
Plant Monster
Rock Monster
Mushroom Monster
15$ Tier
Giant Worm
Minotaur
Mimics & Chests
Medusa
Locks and Lockpicks
25$ Tier
Spiders
Dragons
Humans
Armor Pack 1
Weapons & Armor 1
Character Accessories
Trolls
Demons
Magic & Melee Sounds Library
Devils
As with all Humble Bundles, you get to decide how your money is allocated between Humble, Charity, the publisher and if you so choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GFS purchasing through this link. You can get additional asset packs in the same art style created by Infinity PBR on the Unity Asset Store. You can learn more about the asset pack in the video below.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Unity Asset Store, Unity are running the Mega Bundle X sale. This is a collection of assets organised into tiers, very similar to a traditional Humble bundle. If you buy a higher dollar value tier you get all of the assets in the lower tiers as well. The tiers of this bundle consist of:
10$ Tier
25$ Tier
36$ Tier
Be sure to use the bundle link and not the individual links above, as the sale pricing is only on the bundle itself, individual assets are all still full price. You can learn more about the bundle in the video below. Links to the bundle, including this one, contain an affiliate code that pay a small commission to GFS if used (and thanks if you do!).
