Category: Game Releases

Serif, the makers of Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo are currently offering all of their products at a 50% discount.  Additionally they are now offering a completely functional 3 month demo download.

Full details from the Affinity announcement:

With all that’s going on right now due to the COVID-19 pandemic and in response to the many stories we’re hearing from the creative community about how they’re being severely impacted, we felt it was our responsibility to try to offer as much support as possible during this incredibly difficult time.

That’s why we’ve put in place three new measures which we hope will help at least some of you out there. These are:

• + A new 90-day free trial of the Mac and Windows versions of the whole Affinity suite
• + A 50% discount for those who would rather buy and keep the apps on Mac, Windows PC and iPad
• + A pledge to engage more than 100 freelance creatives for work, spending the equivalent of our annual commissioning budget in the next three months (more details of this will be announced soon).

The introduction of the 90-day free trial and deeply discounted pricing is done in the hope that this will make life a little easier for people who rely on creative software to make a living, but may be stuck at home without their usual tools, or for students who might not have access to their Affinity apps on their personal devices.

In addition, by increasing our spend on commissioning work from freelancers we can also put some extra money into a part of the industry which will be particularly affected.

We plan to make the free trial and additional discount available until 20 April, but we’ll continue to review the situation as time goes on.

We know we’re not saving the world, but we hope these measures can at least provide some form of relief to those who need it. We’ll pull through this together…

You can learn more about the deal and promo in the video below.  If you want to learn more about Affinity products check out our hands on video available here.

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GameDev News Tools

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Epic Games have just announced a massive giveaway of asset packs from Project Nature.  This is a collection of trees, bushes, grasses and controlling blueprints for creating nature scenes in your Unreal Engine games.

Details from the Unreal Engine blog:

In collaboration with Project Nature, Epic Games has released over 20 environment and vegetation products for free on the Unreal Engine Marketplace.

The collection includes over 75 varieties of plant species, many of which were photoscanned from real-world vegetation, ranging from towering trees to the smallest of ground plants and flowers. Create a refreshing oasis retreat, escape to a serene meadow, or adorn a warm desert landscape for your audience to explore; with more than 550 optimized models, the sky, or the ground, is the limit on what you can grow!

The pack consists of:

• Hundreds of optimized plant models and materials
• The shader-based Project Nature Wind System 2.0
• The Project Nature Interaction System 2.0, including replicated animations
• A dynamic low-poly grass system
• A dynamic ivy creation pack
• And more!

You can download the assets using the Epic Game Launcher or via the website available here.  There is no time limit on this giveaway, all 21 packs are available free forever.  If you want to learn how to export from Unreal Engine to another engine or tool (such as Blender) you can learn more here.  Learn more about the asset giveaway in the video below.

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GameDev News Unreal

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Found yourself with a lot of free time on your hands lately?  Yeah, you’re not alone.  Why not spend the time improving your programming ability, which is exactly what you can do with the Software Development by O’Reilly bundle on now.  A collection of e-Books on a broad range of subjects including better programming habits, test driven design, algorithms and design patterns.  As always this bundle is organized into tiers:

1$ Tier

• Technology Strategy Patterns
• Apprenticeship Patterns
• 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know
• The Art of Readable Code
• Algorithms in a Nutshell

8$ Tier

• Test-Driven Development with Python
• Introduction to Machine Learning
• Becoming a Better Programmer
• Regular Expressions Cookbook
• Head First Agile

15$ Tier

• Learning CoreDNS
• Programming Quantum Computers
• Cloud Native
• Real-World Software Development
• Head First Design Patterns

All of the books are available in PDF, MOBI and EPUB formats.  As with all Humble Bundles you can decide how your money is allocated, between the publisher, Humble, charity and if you choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GFS using this link.  You can learn more about the bundle in the video below.

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GameDev News Sale

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At not-GDC this year, DirectX 12 Ultimate was announced.  DirectX 12 Ultimate is a new baseline version of Direct X for new Xbox consoles and PC’s, to make development as easy as possible.  In addition to existing features including DirectX Raytracing and Variable Rate Shading, Ultimate includes the new features of Mesh Shaders and Sampler Feedback.

Details of DirectX 12 Ultimate from the Microsoft developer blog:

Microsoft’s Game Stack exists to bring developers the tools they need to create bold, immersive game experiences, and DX12 Ultimate is the ideal tool to amplify gaming graphics. DX12 Ultimate is the result of continual investment in the DirectX 12 platform made over the last five years to ensure that Xbox and Windows 10 remain at the very pinnacle of graphics technology. To further empower game developers to create games with stunning visuals, we enhanced features that are already beginning to transform gaming such as DirectX Raytracing and Variable Rate Shading, and have added new major features such as Mesh Shaders and Sampler Feedback.

Together, these features represent many years of innovation from Microsoft and our partners in the hardware industry. DX12 Ultimate brings them all together in one common bundle, providing developers with a single key to unlock next generation graphics on PC and Xbox Series X.

Of course, even the most powerful features are of limited use without the tools necessary to fully exploit them, so we are pleased to announce that our industry-leading PIX graphics optimization tool and our open-source HLSL compiler will provide game developers with the ability to squeeze every last drop of performance out of an entire ecosystem of DX12 Ultimate hardware.

NVidia are currently the only video card maker with DX12 Ultimate compatible devices detailed here.  AMD however are the company behind the GPU of the next generation XBox and will be supporting DX12U in their upcoming RDNA 2 hardware.

If you are interested in learning more about DirectX 12 Ultimate you can start with the Getting Started guide available here.  You can learn more about the release in the video below.

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GameDev News

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With so many people stuck at home due to the quarantines around the COVID-19 virus, Unity technologies have released Unity Learn Premium for free to developers for the next few months.  Unity Learn Premium is a great source of Unity tutorials, courses, lessons and projects and even included non-Unity related content on topics such as Max and Maya.  You can learn more about Unity Learn in our prior hands-on video.

Details from the State of Unity 2020:

As the world continues to change, we are committed to helping all of you learn new skills and capabilities that can help bring your vision to life. We are pleased to announce that we are giving everyone complimentary access to Unity Learn Premium starting today through June 20. Just log in to access live sessions with Unity experts and more than 350 hours of bite-sized tutorials, hands-on projects, and in-depth courses for game developers and any creator that can benefit from the power of real-time technology. This includes everything from Game Mechanic Design Fundamentals to Getting Started with Post-Processing Stack for VR. Additionally, we are delivering Create with Code Live, live virtual classes taught by Unity experts for students, educators, and anyone who wants to learn how to code, starting on Monday, March 23.

Even if you are an existing Premium subscriber, Unity have you covered there, having released the following email:

Monthly Subscribers
We are pausing your monthly payments for three months, from March 19 until June 20. If your payment date falls within this period, you will not be charged for Unity Learn Premium. You don’t need to do anything – we’ll take care of it.

Annual Subscribers
We are adding three months of access to your Unity Learn Premium subscription. For example, if your subscription is scheduled to renew on October 1, 2020, it will now renew on January 1, 2021. No action is required on your part; we’ll automatically shift your renewal date.

30-day Trial Subscribers
If you are currently in a trial period and want to continue using Learn Premium past this trial period, we will waive your monthly payments through June 20.

Class move by Unity in these troubling times.  You can learn more about the announcement in the video below.

GameDev News Unity

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