There are only a few days left in Unity’s 10th Anniversary MegaBundle X that we previously discussed here. Taking a quick look through the assets in the bundle it becomes clear that there are a number of assets that would be perfect for people looking to create a racing game. Today we are going to look at the following assets from the bundle:
Quickly and easily create and populate road networks using a simple spline based approach, both in the editor and dynamically at run-time, with a terrain aware system.
A collection of toon shader styled racing cars, rally cars and monster trucks. It also contains several props, track pieces and more for creating a full racing game with a consistent art style.
They’re trees. Oak trees. There are 5 of them, enough said.
The above links contain affiliate codes that pay GFS a small commission if you purchase anything (thanks so much if you do!). Of course be sure to use the Bundle Link and not individual asset links to get the savings, at least until November 12th. You can learn more and see all the above assets in action in the video below.
GIMP, or GNU Image Manipulation Program, just released version 2.99.2 beta, a giant step toward the upcoming 3.0 release. The heart of this update is the move to the GTK 3 UI toolkit from the existing GTK2 version. This has many advantages, especially when it comes to increasingly common HiDPI devices.
GTK3 based user interface, with native support for Wayland and HiDPI displays.
Major refactoring and cleanup
New plug-in API
Plugins now possible with Python 3, JavaScript, Lua, and Vala
More (color) space invasion
Render caching available for better performance
Be sure to check the complete release notes for further details on this release. You can also learn more about the 2.99.2 release and see GIMP in action in the video below.
LDtk, or Level Designer Toolkit, is an open source MIT licensed Haxe based 2D level editor from the creator of Dead Cells. If it looks familiar that is because we recently covered it when it was known as LEd. In just a few short months though, LDtk has come a long way, including community ports to Linux and MacOS. With the 0.5 release (the re-brand version number), tons of new features were added to LDtk including:
Tiles flipping: in Tile Layers, you can mirror tiles before painting them by pressing X or Y (or Z). This also works from group of tiles.
Tiles stacking: you can now optionaly stack multiple tiles in a single cell of a Tile layer, reducing the need for multiple layers. For example, you could paint a brick wall, then enable stack mode (T), and add details like cracks or vines over the same wall. Be careful though: erasing of stacked elements can be tricky, so you should use a mix of multiple layers and stacking to get the best results.
New editing options bar: Grid locking, Single layer mode and Empty space selection moved to a new more streamlined button bar.
File association: project files now use the extension *.ldtk instead of *.json. Therefore, on Windows, double-clicking such files will open the app accordingly. If you prefer the .json extension, you can force it in each project settings (but will lose benefit of the file association).
Auto-layer rule preview: when you move your mouse over a rule, you will now see which cells in the current layer are affected, making their testing MUCH easier.
Tiled (TMX) export: this optional export now generates proper standard tile layers. However, to support LDtk stacked tiles feature (see above), multiple Tiled layers might be generated per single LDtk layer. Also, IntGrid layers are now properly exported to Tiled (as standard tile layers, with an auto-generated tileset image).
New color picker: it supports copy/paste, manual hex value editing and a much better UI (thanks to simple-color-picker).
Flood-fill fixes: if you hold SHIFT while clicking in a Tile layer, it will flood-fill the area using currently selected tiles (randomly, or by stamping group of tiles, depending on the current mode).
Flood-fill erasing: just use SHIFT+Right click to erase a whole contiguous area.
The layer Rule editor now overlaps left panel and allows level editing while being open (makes rule testing much easier). Press Escape to close it.
In Tile layers, you can press L to load a saved tileset selection (using S key)
Renamed the Level panel to World (for the 0.6.x future update).
It’s now possible to change the tileset or even the source layer of an Auto-Layer without loosing your rules.
Auto-layer baking: turn a complex Auto-Layer into a standard Tile layer (think of it as the flatten feature in Photoshop). Be careful, it’s a one-way operation.
Unified “Show/hide grid” and “Grid locking” options. You can now just press G to toggle grid (which also implies “grid locking” in supported layer types).
All options (such as “Grid on/off”, or “Compact panel mode”) are now saved to a JSON file in your app folder, in userSettings/.
Help window is now a side panel.
Opaque tiles are detected in tilesets for use in various optimizations (mostly related to the new tile stacking feature).
Fixed a crash when deleting IntGrid layer while an AutoLayer uses it as source.
Added some colors to UI buttons
New exit button icon.
You can learn more about LDtk releases here, including an even newer 0.5.1 beta release. As mentioned earlier the project is open source with the code released under the MIT license and available on GitHub. You can learn more about LDtk here with downloads available on Itch.io. You can learn more about LDtk and see it in action in the video below.
LVM is a tool for logical volume management which includes allocating disks, striping, mirroring and resizing logical volumes. It is commonly used on Fedora installations (prior to BTRFS as default it was LVM+Ext4). But have you ever started up your system to find a message like the image above, after you logged in? Uh oh, Gnome just said the home volume is almost out of space! Luckily, there is likely some space sitting around in another volume, unused and ready to re-alocate. Here’s how to reclaim hard-drive space with LVM.
The key to easily re-alocate space between volumes is the Logical Volume Manager (LVM). Fedora 32 and before use LVM to divide disk space by default. This technology is similar to standard hard-drive partitions, but LVM is a lot more flexible. LVM enables not only flexible volume size management, but also advanced capabilities such as read-write snapshots, striping or mirroring data across multiple drives, using a high-speed drive as a cache for a slower drive, and much more. All of these advanced options can get a bit overwhelming, but resizing a volume is straight-forward.
LVM basics
The volume group serves as the main container in the LVM system. By default Fedora only defines a single volume group, but there can be as many as needed. Actual hard-drive and hard-drive partitions are added to the volume group as physical volumes. Physical volumes add available free space to the volume group. A typical Fedora install has one formatted boot partition, and the rest of the drive is a partition configured as an LVM physical volume.
Out of this pool of available space, the volume group allocates one or more logical volumes. These volumes are similar to hard-drive partitions, but without the limitation of contiguous space on the disk. LVM logical volumes can even span multiple devices! Just like hard-drive partitions, logical volumes have a defined size and can contain any filesystem which can then be mounted to specific directories.
What’s needed
Confirm the system uses LVM with the gnome-disks application, and make sure there is free space available in some other volume. Without space to reclaim from another volume, this guide isn’t useful. A Fedora live CD/USB is also needed. Any file system that needs to shrink must be unmounted. Running from a live image allows all the volumes on the hard-disk to remain unmounted, even important directories like / and /home.
Use gnome-disks to verify free space
A word of warning
No data should be lost by following this guide, but it does muck around with some very low-level and powerful commands. One mistake could destroy all data on the hard-drive. So backup all the data on the disk first!
Resizing LVM volumes
To begin, boot the Fedora live image and select Try Fedora at the dialog. Next, use the Run Command to launch the blivet-gui application (accessible by pressing Alt-F2, typing blivet-gui, then pressing enter). Select the volume group on the left under LVM. The logical volumes are on the right.
Explore logical volumes in blivet-gui
The logical volume labels consist of both the volume group name and the logical volume name. In the example, the volume group is “fedora_localhost-live” and there are “home”, “root”, and “swap” logical volumes allocated. To find the full volume, select each one, click on the gear icon, and choose resize. The slider in the resize dialog indicates the allowable sizes for the volume. The minimum value on the left is the space already in use within the file system, so this is the minimum possible volume size (without deleting data). The maximum value on the right is the greatest size the volume can have based on available free space in the volume group.
Resize dialog in blivet-gui
A grayed out resize option means the volume is full and there is no free space in the volume group. It’s time to change that! Look through all of the volumes to find one with plenty of extra space, like in the screenshot above. Move the slider to the left to set the new size. Free up enough space to be useful for the full volume, but still leave plenty of space for future data growth. Otherwise, this volume will be the next to fill up.
Click resize and note that a new item appears in the volume listing: free space. Now select the full volume that started this whole endeavor, and move the slider all the way to the right. Press resize and marvel at the new improved volume layout. However, nothing has changed on the hard drive yet. Click on the check-mark to commit the changes to disk.
Review changes in blivet-gui
Review the summary of the changes, and if everything looks right, click Ok to proceed. Wait for blivet-gui to finish. Now reboot back into the main Fedora install and enjoy all the new space in the previously full volume.
Planning for the future
It is challenging to know how much space any particular volume will need in the future. Instead of immediately allocating all available free space, consider leaving it free in the volume group. In fact, Fedora Server reserves space in the volume group by default. Extending a volume is possible while it is online and in use. No live image or reboot needed. When a volume is almost full, easily extend the volume using part of the available free space and keep working. Unfortunately the default disk manager, gnome-disks, does not support LVM volume resizing, so install blivet-gui for a graphical management tool. Alternately, there is a simple terminal command to extend a volume:
Reclaiming hard-drive space with LVM just scratches the surface of LVM capabilities. Most people, especially on the desktop, probably don’t need the more advanced features. However, LVM is there when the need arises, though it can get a bit complex to implement. BTRFS is the default filesystem, without LVM, starting with Fedora 33. BTRFS can be easier to manage while still flexible enough for most common usages. Check out the recent Fedora Magazine articles on BTRFS to learn more.
YouTube is an incredible resource for game developers, but sorting the gems out can be a challenge. Today we are going to highlight 6 excellent game development channels, especially if you are a Godot developer, as well as general game development guides, Blender, GameMaker and more.
AskGameDev is a collection of game developers that set out to answer your questions about game development. They cover many of aspects of gamedev that are often not covered, such as how to run a Kickstarter, how to get or deal with a publisher, as well as several game development themed compilations. AskGameDev also have a website available here.
GDQuest are home to dozens of Godot tutorials, in fact Nathan from GDQuest is a member of the Godot documentation team. In addition to Godot coverage, GDQuest has tutorials on all kinds of FOSS software such a Blender and Krita. The GDQuest website is available here.
HeartBeast started out as a GameMaker tutorial channel, of which there are dozens of high quality long form tutorial series. In more recent years, Heartbeast has been instead creating high quality multipart and stand-alone tutorials on Godot. HeartBeast also has a website available here.
BornCG has been making high quality Blender YouTube tutorials on his channel created in 2008! In more recent years BornCG has been increasingly covering the Godot game engine, as well as creating modern Blender tutorials as well.
DevDuck is the newest channel on this list, less than two year old and already over 100K subscribers, an impressive feat! DevDuck is a professional developer that is documenting his indie game development experience on the side. He started off with Unity but switched to Godot and of course did videos explaining why and how.
KidsCanCode have the project mission to get kids started in coding as young as possible, often through the process of creating games. Early on they did mostly Python and PyGame tutorials but then switched to Godot in recent years. They also run the Godot Recipes on their site, a collection of snippets on how to accomplish specific tasks in Godot and GDScript.
You can learn more about all the above channels in the video below.
Every month for the last couple years Epic Games have given away several assets for Unreal Engine with today being no exception. While the assets are completely free, they are only free until the first Tuesday of December. Once “purchased” the assets are yours forever.
This months free assets include:
Permanently Free Additions:
Unfortunately there is no video yet as YouTube Studio for creators is currently down and nobody can upload or edit videos right now. Once YouTube errors are fixed we will upload a video.
There is another Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, the Mastering Animation by CRC Press bundle. This is a collection of e-books around the concept of animation, from traditional to digital, comics, manga and anime, as well as animation related subjects such as legal and writing. The bundle is organized into the following tiers:
1$
Dream Worlds: Production Design for Animation
Animate to Harmony: The Independent Animator’s Guide to Toon Boom
Voice Over for Animation
Layout and Composition for Animation
Frame by Frame Stop Motion
How to Make Animated Films
8$
Animation from Pencils to Pixels
Designing Sound for Animation
The Art of Fluid Animation
Hybrid Animation: Integrating 2D and 3D Assets
Reel Success: Creating Demo Reels and Animation Portfolios
Acting and Performance for Animations
Animated Life
Making Toons That Sell without Selling Out
15$
Writing for Animation, Comics and Games
Directing for Animation
Acting and Character Animation
Animation in China
The Pocket Lawyer for Comic Book Creators
Animation: From Concept to Production
Independent Animation
Comics for Film, Games and Animation
Japanese Visual Culture
Lighting for Animation
All books are provided in PDF, EPUB and PRC(?) formats. As with all Humble Bundles you can decide how the proceeds are allocated between Humble, the Publisher, charity 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.
If you’ve ever dreamed of doing 3D modelling on the go, today’s product Nomad Sculpt may be perfect for you. Nomad Sculpt is a 3D sculpting application designed from the ground up to be mobile first. It brings all the functionality you would expect from a modern 3D sculpting application like ZBrush, Mudbox or Blender but it runs on your Android or iOS mobile device!
Key features of Nomad Sculpt include:
Clay, Crease, Trim, Smooth, Mask and many other brushes
Stroke customization with falloff, alpha and other options
Matcap rendering or Physically Based Rendering
Vertex painting, with roughness/metalness control
Multiresolution sculpting
Voxel Uniform Remeshing, along with subtractive boolean
Dynamic Topology, to refine locally your mesh
Robust layers that supports topology change
Designed from the ground up for a mobile experience
Support pencil pressure (Apple Pencil, Samsung S Pen, etc)
OBJ, STL and glTF support
Nomad Sculpt is available on the App Store and the Android Store. It is $15 for the complete version, but there is a reasonably full functioning, export disabled trial version available. You can also see Nomad Sculpt in action in the hands-on review below.
COPR is a collection of personal repositories for software that isn’t carried in Fedora. Some software doesn’t conform to standards that allow easy packaging. Or it may not meet other Fedora standards, despite being free and open-source. COPR can offer these projects outside the Fedora set of packages. Software in COPR isn’t supported by Fedora infrastructure or signed by the project. However, it can be a neat way to try new or experimental software.
This article presents a few new and interesting projects in COPR. If you’re new to using COPR, see the COPR User Documentation for how to get started.
Dialect
Dialect translates text to foreign languages using Google Translate. It remembers your translation history and supports features such as automatic language detection and text to speech. The user interface is minimalistic and mimics the Google Translate tool itself, so it is really easy to use.
Installation instructions
The repo currently provides Dialect for Fedora 33 and Fedora Rawhide. To install it, use these commands:
gh is an official GitHub command-line client. It provides fast access and full control over your project issues, pull requests, and releases, right in the terminal. Issues (and everything else) can also be easily viewed in the web browser for a more standard user interface or sharing with others.
Installation instructions
The repo currently provides gh for Fedora 33 and Fedora Rawhide. To install it, use these commands:
Glide is a minimalistic media player based on GStreamer. It can play both local and remote files in any multimedia format supported by GStreamer itself. If you are in need of a multi-platform media player with a simple user interface, you might want to give Glide a try.
Installation instructions
The repo currently provides Glide for Fedora 32, 33, and Rawhide. To install it, use these commands:
ALE is a plugin for Vim text editor, providing syntax and semantic error checking. It also brings support for fixing code and many other IDE-like features such as TAB-completion, jumping to definitions, finding references, viewing documentation, etc.
Installation instructions
The repo currently provides vim-ale for Fedora 31, 32, 33, and Rawhide, as well as for EPEL8. To install it, use these commands:
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.
