FMOD, perhaps the most popular audio middleware solution for games, just updated their indie developer licenses effectively making the use of FMOD free for smaller indie game developers. So what defines an indie game developer here? First you need to make less than $200K gross revenue per year and second, you need to have less than $500K USD in funding for your game title. There are also some limitations on industry, so for example gambling and simulation projects do not qualify for this license.
The primary details of this announcement came via this tweet:
The key paragraph from the linked legal document is the following:
This EULA grants you the right to use FMOD Studio Engine, for Commercial use, subject to the following:
Total gross revenue / funding per year for the developer, before expenses, is less than $200k (Refer to www.fmod.com/licensing#licensing-faq for information);
FMOD Studio Engine is integrated and redistributed in a game application (Product) only;
FMOD Studio Engine is not distributed as part of a game engine or tool set;
Product includes attribution in accordance with Clause 3.
More details about the licensing changes are available here. FMod has support for several game engines including Unreal and Unity, if you are a Godot developer there is FMOD support available via this project, as well as a GDNative version available here. To learn more about FMOD and the new indie licensing check out the video below.
Epic Games have just release UE 4.26. In this release we see features such as hair and anisotrophy reach production ready status. Additionally there is a new water simulation system (previewed here) and better integration of the new Chaos Physics System (tutorial here) and a brand new system for creating better skies, lighting and environmental clouds. Additionally there were several advancements on the film making side of the equation along side hundreds of other small improvements and bug fixes. With each new Unreal Engine release more and more functionality traditionally done in your DCC tool of choice such as modelling, rigging, animating and sculpting are being added to Unreal.
A summary of new features from the Unreal Engine 4.26 release notes:
The production-ready Hair, Fur, and Feathers system enables you to design the most believable humans and animals. You can use the Volumetric Cloud component along with the Sky Atmosphere and Sky Light to author and render realistic or stylized skies, clouds, and other atmospheric effects with full artistic freedom. The new Water System makes it possible to create believable bodies of water within your landscape terrains that react with your characters, vehicles, and weapons. With an improved and expanded feature set, Chaos physics now lets you simulate Vehicles, Cloth, and Ragdolls in addition to Rigid Bodies so every aspect of the environment comes to life.
Sequencer now works in conjunction with Control Rig and the new full-body IK solution to create new animations inside of Sequencer, reducing the need to use external tools. Movie Render Queue (formerly known as High Quality Media Export) has been enhanced to support render passes enabling further enhancements to be made to the final image in a downstream compositing application. nDisplay multi-display rendering is easier to set up and configure in addition to enabling more pixels to be rendered at a higher frame rate, thus increasing performance and supporting larger LED volumes with existing hardware. The Collaborative Viewer Template has been significantly improved to enhance the collaborative design review experience, and enable more users to join a session. The Remote Control API has been improved to seamlessly connect properties and functionality in Unreal Editor to UI widgets giving users the ability to quickly change properties from an external device, such as an artist on stage changing the sky rotation or the sun position from an iPad.
In the video below we take a quick look at the new water system as well as a quick tutorial on creating Hair alembic files using Blender for export to Unreal Engine, then quickly showcase the new Groom hair functionality.
Over on the Godot Engine blog they recently put together a summary of some of the exciting new 2D features that will arrive in Godot 4. Today we go hands-on with the majority of these new features. In addition to the new tricks showcased in the video there are other 2D improvements in Godot 4 including across the board performance improvements (due to the new Vulkan renderer and internal optimizations) as well as support for 2D signed distance fields.
Highlighted new features include:
new 2D CanvasTexture with support for diffuse, normal and specular maps
better support for 2D lights (all drawn in a single pass)
directional light and shadow support
new child clipping feature
new CanvasGroup for grouping multiple sprites into a single draw call
In addition to these new features, Godot have also just released an update on the improvements to tilemap support, which will be covered in a separate video. Check out the video below to see these excellent new Godot 2D features in action.
Garena has teased its upcoming campaign for Free Fire. While we don’t know much, we do know that ‘Operation Chrono’ takes place in a ‘futuristic slum universe’ with advanced technology and sci-fi stylings. We also know that the campaign setup involves a hero rising to prominence as a source of inspiration. If previous campaigns are anything to go by, it’s likely that this character is going to modelled around Free Fire’s new partner for Operation Chrono.
Garena hasn’t announced who it is, yet, but is set to release some teasers on the official Free Fire YouTube and Facebook accounts in the next few days, before the official announcement rolls around on December 7. Either way, Operation Chrono is a bit of a departure for Free Fire, and it’ll be exciting to see what it does with a sci-fi setting, and potential futuristic weaponry.
For those that don’t know, Garena Free Fire is a hugely popular battle royale game, which sees you pick a character and face off against 49 other players. The game is also well known for its popular character collaborations with real world celebrities.
If you want to see some of the game for yourself, check out the trailer below:
Every month Epic Games giveaways several assets on the Unreal Engine marketplace and December is no exception. This month we have 5 new assets that are available for free until the first Tuesday in January, but once “purchased” those assets are yours to use free forever. Speaking of forever, there is also one new asset in the permanently free collection.
A common question with these assets is can the be used outside of Unreal Engine. Generally the answer is yes, unless the asset was owned or sourced directly by Epic Games, like the Power IK asset this month, in which case it can only be used in Unreal Engine projects. You can learn more about this months UE4 asset giveaway in the video below.
Bethesda has announced that it’s finally bringing Doom Eternal to Nintendo Switch on December 8, and it’s about bloody time (get it?). The critically acclaimed shooter arrives courtesy of Panic Button, the creator of many impossible Switch ports, including the original Doom, both Wolfensteins, and Warframe. Suffice to say, it should prove suitably impressive.
As you can expect, it also arrives with motion aiming, allowing you to use gyro controls to fine-tune your aim. Aside from that, this is the true Doom Eternal experience, complete with the lengthy single player experience, wide variety of weapons (including the Assassin’s Creed-style wrist-mounted blade) and abilities, and that sweet multiplayer experience.
This time around, the latter features the new Battlemode, err, mode, which pits one player, as a fully-armed Doom Slayer, against two demons, which you, the players, control. It’s a best-of-five battle to the death. And you can do all of the above a lot sooner than you might have first thought, when Doom Eternal arrives on Nintendo Switch as both a physical and digital release on December 8.
We first looked at the GDevelop game engine back in 2017 in our Closer Look Game Engine series. In the intervening years, GDevelop 5 has come a long way, bringing more and more features to this impressive open source cross platform 2D game engine. In the past year there have been over a dozen new beta releases to the engine including several community contributions. There have also been some updates as a result of the 2020 Google Summer of Code. While many of these releases aren’t large enough to justify a video, taken as a whole it is certainly time to revisit this game engine and the improvements it has seen.
add support for a new asset store with hundreds of ready made game objects
new analytics system without requiring a third party solution
better support for right to left languages
support for dynamic 2D lights
customizable keyboard shortcuts
peer to peer communication extension
live preview (hot reloading) support
command palette for quickly launching editors
new editor themes
These are just a few highlights of the dozens of releases over the last few months. If you are interested in checking out GDevelop it’s available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Online. It is also an open source project with the source code available on GitHub under the MIT open source license. If you want to learn more or run into problems, be sure to check out their Discord server. You can learn more about GDevelop and see it in action in the video below.
Sound Particles is a one of a kind program for rendering 3D audio, capable of supporting thousands to millions of sounds in your simulation. Sound Particles has been battle tested used in big budgets movies such as Alita, Ready Player One and the new Star Wars films, as well as games such as Assassins Creed Origin.
Sound Particles is a sound design software application capable of generating thousands (even millions) of sounds in a virtual 3D audio world. This immersive audio application will enable you to create highly complex sounds on the fly, which will ultimately enable you to design sound better and faster than ever.
Sound Design The best 3D software for complex sound design. Used for film, videogames and virtual reality.
Postproduction Working in postproduction? Use Sound Particles to add depth and richness to your sounds.
Immersive Audio Supports immersive audio formats, such as Ambisonics, Dolby Atmos, Auro 3d and much more.
If you are interested in trying this unique audio application they have a fully functional demonstration available for Windows and Mac available here. All licenses are currently 50% off during Black Friday/Cyber Monday from indie to enterprise licenses. You can see Sound Particles in action in the video below. Sounds used during this demo were all downloaded from the excellent FreeSound.org website.
Every year here on GameFromScratch we gather all of the relevant game development related Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and 2020 is no exception. What follows is a list of the best deals we have found for game developers, be it programmers, musicians or artists. It will be updated as additional deals are discovered so be sure to check back. Links below may contain an affiliate code that pays GFS a small commission if you make a purchase.
A collection of 700+ Assets 50% off as well as an asset of the day 70% off. Additionally Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise licenses come with a free gift up to $1600 value.
This one runs until the end of the year, get audio plugins and premium memberships at a 25% discount, with higher discounts the more items you purchase.
Lots of gear, computers etc on sale, free shipping.
Amazon
You Know… It’s Amazon
You can learn more about the above sales in the video below. Leave a comment on the video or the GFS discord if you spot another deal you want to share with your fellow game developers and I will add it to the list.
Lilith Games has announced that its upcoming battle royale shooter, Farlight 84, is arriving on mobile in 2021. The game combines elements of MOBA with multiplayer shooting, as you bring heroes to battle, and use their abilities to overcome opponents. Imagine something like Apex: Legends combined with Fortnite, as you also have the usual battle royale accouterments of crafting, and vehicles with which to rampage across the map.
In terms of story, Farlight 84 is post-apocalyptic, but more like the colourful post-apocalypse of Farcry: New Dawn than say, The Long Dark. The world has been taken over by zombie-cyborgs – zomborgs for short – and the last remaining heroes of humanity must face off against each other to scavenge what they need to survive.
This makes Farlight sounds pretty grim, but on the contrary, it looks like a fun-filled third-person shooter, channeling those same quirky Fortnite vibes, with fast-paced 40 player matches. Adding to the chaos, players are able to kit themselves out with super-powered weapons, courtesy of Farlight’s ‘Big Four’ arms manufacturers. They’ll also be a fair selection of ways to traverse the map, from multi-legged spider walkers to jet-packs, though players will have to be wary of the game’s energy system when using these.
If you want to see some gameplay for yourself, the new trailer is below:
Farlight 84 also features ‘refuges’ which are places you can hang out inbetween games with your buddies. But in order to construct and personalise these, you’re going to have to earn building matierials from winning matches.
If you want to find out more about Farlight 84, you can stay up to date with news on the official Facebook and Twitter accounts. For more similar recommendations, check out our list of the best mobile multiplayer games!
