#116 — April 09, 2023
From news: WebGPU 1.0 standard has been released in Chrome, the Rotenbergs will develop video games, the head of the indie division of Xbox does not think that Game Pass is having a devastating effect on the industry.
Of interest: a guide to matrices, a small (not quite) life hack on the set of wishlists on Steam, a little about normals, an interview with the lead mission designer of Caliber.
Updates/releases/news
WebGPU 1.0 standard released in Chrome
New version of Chrome will include support for the new WebGPU 1.0 standard by default.
More flexible and optimized GPU experience in the browser. Babylon.js is already supported, Three.js and PlayCanvas are in progress.
Head of indie division of Xbox: “I don’t think that Game Pass has a devastating effect on the industry”
ID@Xbox Program Manager Chris Charla answered in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz about the fears of developers and publishers that the Game Pass service could negatively affect game sales and the gaming industry as a whole. According to a Microsoft spokesman, business representatives’ concern about subscription services is normal, but there is no real threat in them.
Rotenberg will develop video games
Founded by Boris Rotenberg organization SMP Racing wants to do “Russian Assetto Corsa”. She asked the Russian authorities to support the development of a racing simulator and suggested that it be included in the program of the Games of the Future tournament.
They will do it on Unity, 300 developers want to attract (not from criminal liability).
Luma Plugin for Unreal Engine 5 Alpha Released
NeRF plugin allows you to create incredible cinematic footage.
Freebies/Giveaways/Bundles/Courses
Bundle Learn to Create RPG Games in Unity
Kit courses and assets to create your own RPG.
Free moss generator for Blender
3D artist Nino (also known as defoq) has released Mossifya plugin for Blender that generates procedural moss on top of 3D models.
Interesting articles/videos
I animate tentacles and get paid for it
Have you ever seen a strange, sexualized or even offensive advertisement for a mobile game on the Internet? Have you thought about who did this lewdness? The author of such things wrote an article.
Matrix Reference
AMD engineers collected information in Transformation in Computer Graphics in a blog series. There about matrices, their transformations, nuances due to non-commutativity of operations (A∗B≠B∗A ) and anti-commutativity (a⃗×b⃗=−b⃗×a⃗).
I recommend to all lovers of matrices.
A small (not really) life hack for a set of wishlists on Steam
We create a small cut of the game for 30-45 minutes.
We make it clear in the description that this is a prologue to the main game, leaving a link to the main game.
$100 for adding a new game to Steam.
We make the prologue free, set the release date to “coming soon” (but we won’t release it yet).
We advance the prologue so that at least 7k fishlists are accumulated.
Release to appear in popular news.
We hope that there will be many simultaneous players to get into the tops.
We get a bunch of wishlists in the main game (but this is not accurate).
Can be combined with demo and fests.
There are too many BUTs. You are wasting time and money on this build. Method not suitable for everyone.
A little about normals
Shader sources on poke too attached.
The Epic Games Team on Lumen, MetaHuman, UE5.2 Demo, and AI
Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri, Vice Presidents Nicholas Penwarden and Vladimir Mastilovich discussed the company’s announcements at GDC 2023, explained how Lumen came to be for UE5, talked about the production process behind the UE5.2 demo, and shared some behind-the-scenes information about the Unreal Engine and MetaHuman procedural tools.
Interview with Caliber Lead Mission Designer
In an interview with the leader of the team of mission designers Mikhail Lubyagov toldwhat has changed in the game with his appearance, what he appreciates in colleagues the most, and how missions are done in general.
Firaxis Games on the development of Marvel’s Midnight Suns
When the studio had the opportunity to jump into the Marvel Universe, they didn’t want to just mix XCOM and Marvel together. Instead, the team aimed to develop a game with a more pompous superhero flair. An older, deeper version of Marvel comics was used as a starting point. epic games talked to Firaxis about how they changed the XCOM formula for Marvel’s Midnight Suns, how they went about giving players a real connection to Marvel heroes, and why they decided to give this property a supernatural twist.
Revisiting Goodbye Volcano High’s Narrative to Find Meaning in the Apocalypse
Narrative Director Jenna Yow explainshow they tweaked Goodbye Volcano High’s unwieldy narrative to help the game’s main characters shine.
Make players feel like their choices matter to the story
In his GDC 2022 keynote, Tony Howard-Arias details how they tackled such issues at both the micro and macro levels.
Development of an improved Full-Body Ragdoll system
Nan Ma from LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS told about Wobbledollan advanced ragdoll system presented during GDC 2023, discussed the features of the system and explained why machine learning was introduced into it.
Creating a Multiplayer Game with Netcode for GameObjects
Brief pomace about a series of webinars on working with mesh and GemaObjects.
How Big Ambitions Succeeded on Steam
Over 3700 extremely positive (95% positive) reviews. A game included in the top 10 for “total first week time-adjusted Steam reviews” in GameDiscoverCo Plus’ March monthly post-release chart of nearly 950 new games. How did it happen?
Creating a Cinematic Short Film with Blender and UE5
Sam Goldwater shared detailed information about the cinematics of New Moon, explaining how it was created, animated and rendered using Blender and Unreal Engine 5.
Stray: giving character to a futuristic city
Learn more about the unique environment art in the award-winning indie game Stray and how artists used Adobe Substance 3D toolsto revive your city.
Flashing the Retro-Go emulator on the Nintendo Game & Watch
A little soldering and available really cool handheld game console.
Customize rocks and vegetation for a realistic 3D environment
Florian Obschett told about the production process of the Dry Environment project on UE5, explaining how the rocks and vegetation of the scene were created using Blender and Substance 3D Designer.
About creating animated videos
Sergey Krystiev showed workflow for creating animations and demos and shared tips for emerging artists.
Runner 2
The third article in a series about prototypes. In it the author creates an endless runner with side scroll.
Use references to design the user interface
A quick guide that you can try on your next UI.
Creating a Short Film in Unreal Engine 5
Antonis and Stavros Phylladitis told about the process of creating their fan made short film Superman Awakens, discussed how they created the environments and characters, and detailed how they set up various lighting scenarios.
Real-time sparse distance fields for games
Presentation introduces with an implementation of Brixelizer, AMD’s real-time SDF generator.
Miscellaneous
Experimenting with Styling Techniques in UE5
Sam Gao revealed several techniques to achieve stylized effects in real-time rendering.
Creating Stylized 3D Grass with Procreate and Blender
Eris Soares demonstratedhow to turn 2D grass into 3D objects.
If you want to support the release of the digest and other materials, you can do this in one of the ways.
