Tag: GameDev News

Tiled, the open source map editing software, just released version 1.3.2.  Along side that release was a development snapshot with new features that will be available in the next release.  If you want learn Tiled we have an in-depth tutorial series available here.

Details of the 1.3.2 release:

• Fixed initialization of selected layers (#2719)
• Fixed stamp action shortcuts not being configurable (#2684)
• Fixed the tileset view to respect the ‘wheel zooms by default’ preference
• Fixed insertion position when using drag-n-drop to rearrange layers
• Fixed displayed layer data format in Properties
• Fixed repeating of export when map is saved by a custom command (#2709)
• Fixed issue when multiple worlds are loaded that use pattern matching
• Issues view can now be hidden by clicking the status bar counters
• macOS: Fixed black toolbar when enabling OpenGL rendering (#1839)
• Windows: Fixed context menus activating first item on release (#2693)
• Windows installer: Include the ‘defoldcollection’ plugin (#2677)
• Windows installer: Signed by SignPath
• libtiled: Avoid inheriting Properties from QVariantMap (#2679)
• docs: Added some notes to Python and JavaScript pages (#2725)
• Updated Qt from 5.12.5 to 5.12.6
• Updated Finnish translation (by Tuomas Lähteenmäki and odamite)
• Updated part of Italian translation (by Katia Piazza)

As well as details from the developmental release:

Tinting Layers

Layers can now be tinted by multiplying their pixels with a color. This way you can darken or colorize your graphics in various ways without needing to set up separate images for it! The new “Tint Color” property is supported on tile layers, object layers and image layers, and is inherited from group layers.

Object Alignment

Ever since tile objects were added as a feature, their alignment has been inconsistent with the other shapes. Whereas a rectangle had its origin in the top-left, tile objects had their origin in the bottom-left (or even bottom-center, on isometric maps). While useful in some contexts, this inconsistency has annoyed many people over the years.

Now, a new tileset property specifies which alignment to use for tile objects using that tileset. If you set it to top-left, the tile objects will align consistently with the other objects. But of course you could also choose for bottom-center or center alignment depending on your needs.

Object Reference Properties

This change is a big step towards the Connecting Objects feature, which is planned for Tiled 1.4. You can now choose “object” as the type when adding a custom property, and the property will be interpreted as a reference to an object on the map, referring to it by its unique ID. A special dialog makes it easy to search for the object you want to refer to and the name of the referenced object will be displayed.

Tiled is available as a free download for Mac, Windows and Linux here.  The source code for Tiled is available on GitHub.

GameDev News 2D Applications Tools

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Phaser Editor just released version 2.1.6.  Phaser Editor is an open source commercial game editor built on top of the Phaser game engine built on top of the Eclipse editor.  The 2.1.6 release brings Phaser editor to parity with the most current versions of Phaser and Eclipse.

Details from the release notes:

Phaser 3.22.0

The latest version of Phaser is now built-in. It is included in the project wizards, the Scene Editor, and the Phaser Labs tools.

The Phaser runtime files of your old projects are not updated. If you wish to update your game runtime to the new Phaser version you should do it manually. Learn more about it in the docs.

Eclipse IDE

We updated the editor to the latest Eclipse version (2019-12).

Asset Pack

• #139: Use relative names of asset pack files in the new file dialogs:

• #137: Bugfix: the New File wizard adds the new file to all the asset packs.

• #138 Parameter to use the container folder as the key prefix of the new file items.

Now you can enable the Use container folder as a prefix for new asset keys parameter. It is in the global preferences (Window > Preferences > Phaser Editor > Asset Pack Editor). By default it is disabled.

If the parameter is enabled, when you add new assets it will use the name of the container folder of the asset pack as the prefix of the new key. For example, if you add a file background.png and the asset pack file is in the folder level3, then the new key will be level3.background. Only in case of scene files, the prefix is ignored.

Texture Packer

• #141 Show import button in Properties.

macOS Mojave users are experiencing problems to drop files into the Texture Packer editor. We added a new button in the Properties view to import the files selected in the Blocks view.

Text editors

• #142: Bugfix: cursor is lost in a text editor after save (Windows 10).

Phaser Editor is available for download on Linux, Mac and Windows here.  PhaserEditor is open source under the EPL license available here on GitHub.  Learn more seeing Phaser Editor in action in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCRf83Eaa0w&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Phaser

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Material Maker 0.8 was just released.  Material Maker is a free procedural texture generation software that was built on top of the Godot game engine.  We previously covered Material Maker in this video.  The 0.8 release brings several new features including several new nodes and examples.

Details from the itch.io page:

Regressions and incompatibilities

Bad news come first, as always:

• 2D SDF nodes do not output greyscale information and cannot be directly connected to greyscale/color/RGBA inputs anymore. you will have to use the sdShow Node

User interface

• the 2D and 3D previews are now in separate tabs
• the 3D preview in the background of the graph pane can now be shown and hidden using the “cube” button at the bottom left of the graph view and controlled independently,
• the 2D preview now shows a tiled version of the selected node (so it’s easy to check the result is seamless)
• the 2D preview now has controls that can be associated to (float) node parameters (this applies mainly to shape/transform nodes)the UI will now be dimmed when exiting the application (this change was contributed by Calinou)

Nodes and code generation

• 2 new types of node inputs/outputs have been added for 2D and 3D signed distance functions. Both types have a custom preview (distance field for 2DSDF and shaded scene for 3DSDF)
• shader nodes inputs now have a “function” attribute. When this option is selected, the input is generated as a function and is usable in instance Functions. This feature made all 3D SDF nodes possible.
• a few problems in convolution nodes have been fixed

New and improved nodes

• all 2D signed distance functions have been modified to use the 2DSDF inputs/outputs (that are shown in orange). The sdShow node is now the only way to generate an image. Added 2DSDF transform and morph nodes.
• the new 3D signed distance functions nodes can be used to describe 3D shapes. Many shapes (sphere, box, capsule, torus, cylinder…), transforms (translate, rotate, scale), operators (boolean, repeat, extrusion, revolution…) are provided and the Render node can be used to generate a height map and a normal map from 3DSDF information. All this is based on ray marching and can be used to describe 3D objects that can then be spread on the textures, as demonstrated in the “skulls” and “pile_of_bricks” examples.
• the new 3D box and a sphere nodes are not based on 3DSDF and just output a height map
• the new “workflow” nodes can be used to define base materials and mix them using height/orientation/offset maps, and to ultimately create complex materials without drawing spaghetti monsters in the graph view. A few simple base materials are provided in the node library as templates. The new “marble” and the updated “medieval_wall” examples show how to use all those nodes.

• the bricks node has been improved with round brick corners and output UV information for each brick and each brick corner. Also added an output that gives brick orientation.
• the new CustomUV node uses one of its input as coordinates to read the other input and can thus be used to implement psychedelic image transforms
• the new generic truchet node tiles its input, randomly flipping it horizontally, vertically or both
• the beehive node just outputs hexagonal tiles
• the new convolution nodes are 3 edge detectors and a sharpen filter
• the normal map node has a new option to disable its input buffer. The buffer should still be used when the input is complex, but disabling it will generate smoother normal maps
• the new greyscale node converts color input to greyscale with a choice of 5 algorithms
• the new swap channels node replaces all channels (R, G, B, A) of its output with 0, 1 or a (optionnally inverted) channel of its input

Material Maker 0.8 is available for download for Windows and Linux here.  You can learn more about Material Maker 0.8 in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en4THDP3D9k&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Applications

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The Armory game engine is an interesting open source project built on top of the Blender graphics application.  If you are interested in learning more about the Armory game engine, be sure to check out our complete tutorial series over on DevGa.me.  Details on Armory have been scarce since 0.5 was released due to a lack of release details.  The developer recently released an update with a bit of a roadmap of future Armory development.

Details of Armory 2020 from GitHub:

Welcome! With 2020 already in full swing, I would like to outline some plans for Armory architecture in the upcoming year.

• Move rendering to Graphics5. G5 is a newer API being developed in Kinc, leveraging modern graphics APIs like D3D12 / Vulkan / ..
• As a result, support for D3D12, Vulkan, Metal and WebGPU will be priority. Once running smoothly, older graphics APIs will be dropped.
• Implement ray-tracing for dynamic scenes. Right now Armory already has DXR support, but only handles static scenes. The goal is to have tanks demo running on a ray-tracing render path.
• Move low-level parts of Armory (like iron) to C. This is to better take advantage of multi-threading coupled with Graphics5 API. As a result, Armory will not be dependant on Kha (Haxe), but will interface directly with Kinc (C). An extended version of Krom which exposes Armory-specific functionality from C to Haxe/JS will be developed to accomplish this.
• Armory traits will be written in Haxe/JS like usual, or anything which compiles into WebAssembly.
• For web deployment, WebAssembly and WebGPU will be used.

Feel welcome to bring up any of these points for a discussion. If you have additional ideas which may improve the project further, please bring those up as well. The goal is to keep Armory viable long-term with a modern base ready for upcoming years.

My biggest thanks to everyone who already contributed to the project in any form over the years!

You can learn more about this release and recent Armory history in the video below.  You can learn more about Kha in this video and check out our recently created video on ArmorPaint, a PBR based painting application built on the Armory engine.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwdVwMTnCm4&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Armory Blender

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GotM.io (Game Of the Month) is a completely free hosting services for hosting and sharing your Godot developed game.  In just a few moments you can host your Godot developed game by simply uploading the PCK file.

First you need to be able to generate a PCK file, a process we just described in this tutorial.  With your generated PCK file, you simply have to register and account using your GitHub, Gmail or Twitter credentials and upload.  Gotm.io recently launched the Game Hosting Dashboard enabling you to configure your home page and manage installed games.

This is just the beginning of GotM.  According to their roadmap there are a number of great features coming down the road including statistics, leaderboards, commenting, achievements, remote play together and more.  Check out GotM.io in action, including how easy it is to make and publish a Godot title in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pathScTBsk0&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Godot

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The Khronos Group have just announced the release of Vulkan 1.2.  Containing 23 extensions, there are plenty of quality of life improvements for Vulkan developers in the 1.2 release including HLSL support, the new timeline sempaphore, a formal memory model and more.

Details of the Vulkan 1.2 release:

Today, The Khronos^® Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, announces the release of the Vulkan^® 1.2 specification for GPU acceleration. This release integrates 23 proven extensions into the core Vulkan API, bringing significant developer-requested access to new hardware functionality, improved application performance, and enhanced API usability. Multiple GPU vendors have certified conformant implementations, and significant open source tooling is expected during January 2020.

Vulkan continues to evolve by listening to developer needs, shipping new functionality as extensions, and then consolidating extensions that receive positive developer feedback into a unified core API specification. Carefully selected API features are made optional to enable market-focused implementations. Many Vulkan 1.2 features were requested by developers to meet critical needs in their engines and applications, including: timeline semaphores for easily managed synchronization; a formal memory model to precisely define the semantics of synchronization and memory operations in different threads; descriptor indexing to enable reuse of descriptor layouts by multiple shaders; deeper support for shaders written in HLSL, and more.

All three major GPU providers support Vulkan 1.2 today, as well as Mesa drivers on AMD devices.  If you are a developer looking to learn Vulkan Resources Page on GitHub is perhaps the best place to get started.  If you want to learn more about Vulkan 1.2’s release be sure to check out the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9m6QVPh1rA&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News 3D

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Terry Cavanagh, the author of VVVVVV, Super Hexagon and Dicey Dungeons, just released the source code for VVVVVV to celebrate it’s 10th anniversary.  Released on GitHub under a custom license, the repository includes both the Mobile (Flash/ActionScript) and Desktop (C++) versions.  It does not include the binary data however, although you can use the free version or you can currently buy VVVVVV for 73% Off On Humble right now.

Details of the release from the DistractionWare blog:

Or possibly tomorrow is, depending on who you ask – technically, the game first went live at 3am GMT on the 11th January 2010, after a very, very long day of fixing every last bug I could, making last minute builds, and trying to slowly upload everything on an extremely unreliable internet connection that kept cutting out. But I’ve always gone by “it’s not tomorrow until you wake up” rules, so I still think of January the 10th as the real launch day <3

Gosh, ten years.

VVVVVV is such an important game to me, I barely even know where to start. I wanted to do something special to mark the occasion: so, as of today, I’m releasing the game’s source code!

The repo contains two versions – the desktop version, ported to C++ by Simon Roth in 2011, and later updated and maintained by Ethan Lee – and the mobile version, written in Actionscript for Adobe AIR, based on the original v1.0 flash version of the game.

I wanna give a big big thank you to Ethan Lee, who helped a lot to prepare for this, including getting the repo ready for the public, and organising the reveal on AGDQ (hi speedrunners!)! Thanks Ethan!

You can learn more about the release in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GenVXp2fRwM&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News

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BrashMonkey have just launched a Kickstarter campaign Spriter 2 Alchemist.  Alchemist is an extension to the upcoming Spriter 2 Pro 2D animation system that adds procedural content generation and animation support.  Existing Spriter Pro customers are offered a preferred rate when backing Spriter 2 Alchemist.  The tiers break down as follows:

As of writing the Kickstarter is about 10% of the way towards it $50,000USD goal with 27 days to go.  Full details of the features of Spriter 2 Alchemist are available on the Kickstarter page, as well as discussed in more detail in the video below.

Spriter is not the only 2D animation package available and we have covered a number of them previously here on GameFromScratch.  A run-down of free 2D animation tools is available here on DevGa.me, while we have done feature videos on Spine, Creature(video), COATools for Blender (video) and Dragonbones(video) if you are looking for an alternative.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAbL_6HlIuw&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News 2D Applications

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