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.
The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman, has purchased a 33.3 percent stake in Japanese game company SNK through his charity ‘Misk.’
As explained in a press release (via Google Translate), the deal cost Misk around 813 million riyals ($216.7 million) and roughly values SNK at around $650 million.
This won’t be the last investment the charity makes in the Metal Slug and Samurai Showdown developer, either, and Misk is now set to purchase another 17.7 percent of SNK’s shares to raise its ownership of the company to 51 percent — giving it a controlling stake.
The deal will likely come under scrutiny given Saudi Arabia’s poor human rights record, with a recent report from Human Rights Watch highlighting the current regime’s poor treatment of activists, women, and migrants (to name but some of the issues in the region).
Earlier this year, Misk itself was placed under review by Saudi Arabian leaders after being linked to a number of alleged scandals. As reported by the Financial Times, the organization and some of its officials have been tied to assassination and espionage attempts — leading to questions about the integrity and purpose of the charity.
Fall Guys developer Mediatonic is opening a new UK studio in Leamington Spa. The office will be led by company vice president of art, Phil Warner, and will be hiring staff across a “wide range of disciplines.”
Mediatonic currently has studios in London, Brighton, Guildford, and Madrid, and said its latest site will be an “important complement” to that existing network as it looks to continue supporting Fall Guys in the long-term.
“Mediatonic’s new studio will operate under COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines while they’re in place, but the team are eager to warmly welcome new faces once everything’s fully open,” reads a press release.
“With a long-term commitment to creating engaging seasonal content for the Fall Guys playerbase and with plenty of other exciting projects in the pipeline, there should be some great opportunities for people looking to take their next step in games with Mediatonic.”
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.
American publisher Tinybuild has invested $3 million into Secret Neighbor developer Hologryph.
As reported by Venturebeat, the deal will also see Tinybuild acquire a majority stake in the studio — which has worked with the publisher on multiple titles including Secret Neighbor and Party Hard 2.
Secret Neighbor is a multiplayer spinoff in the popular Hello Neighbor franchise, which according to Tinybuild has now amassed over 60 million downloads across all platforms.
Explaining what’s next for Hologryph, Tinybuild chief exec Alex Nichiporchik said the studio will look to expand its team and push ahead with an unannounced project for next-gen consoles.
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!
Square Enix has explained that sales of Marvel’s Avengers were lower than expected, and that the advertising push for the title also proved costly.
Commenting on the game’s performance in a translated version of Square’s recent fiscal briefing, company president and representative director Yosuke Matsuda said its HD sub-segment posted a loss because Marvel’s Avengers failed to meet internal sales targets.
“Sales of [the game] were lower than we had expected and unable to completely offset the amortization of the game’s development costs,” they commented. “In the second half of the fiscal year, we hope to make up for slow initial sales by offering ample additional content to grow our sales.”
Adding more context during an investor Q&A, Matsuda said the HD sub-segment would have been in the black had the company discounted “factors associated with Marvel’s Avengers,” indicating the game took a significant toll on the division.
“In addition to the amortization of that game’s development costs, another significant factor associated with the title was the fact that we undertook a major advertising campaign at the time of its launch to make up for delays in our marketing efforts resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic,” continued Matsuda.
“There is a certain amount of development costs still to be amortized in 3Q, but we want to recoup it by growing our sales going forward.”
When asked what the profitability of the game could look like in the next quarter, Matsuda seemed to skirt the question by explaining Square is solely focused on adding more sales. With that in mind, it’ll be interesting to see how the high-profile title is shaping up when the company releases its next set of financials.
If you are creating a commercial PC game using Godot there is a good chance you are going to want to publish on Steam. If that is a case if your game requires any network services such as achievements, a leaderboard or DLC you are probably tempted to use Steam’s own Steamworks suite of APIs. In that case you most likely want to know about GodotSteam an open source implementation of the SteamWorks API for Godot 2/3, providing convenient GDScript interfaces for the vast majority of the Steamworks features.
GodotSteam is an open source project hosted on GitHub that is implemented using the Godot module system. The source code is under the flexible and permissive MIT license. There is a GDNative branch available although sadly it appears to have been abandoned. Being a module means you will have to download and build your own version of Godot, a process I describe in this video. If the world of Godot, modules and GDNative are all new to you, don’t worry, we have an overview available here.
If you want to get started with GodotSteam there are excellent tutorials and comprehensive documentation available here. You can learn more about Godot, Steamworks and GodotSteam in the video below.
The third-person survival shooter launched in August 2019 for PC, Xbox One, and PS4, and has since been bolstered with the release of two premium DLC packs — Swamps of Corsus and Subject 2923 — that have amassed nearly 1 million sales combined.
David Adams, president of Remnant developer Gunfire Games, called the milestone both “exciting and humbling,” and thanked players for their continued support.
During a recent interview with Gamasutra, he also explained how Gunfire managed to transition into live game development and drive player engagement by creating a different kind of shared online world.
