Game Dev Digest Issue #105 - Double Stuffed

This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com

Newsletter is back this week, hope you enjoy it as usual!

Depth Of Field in Unity for 2D Games With Semi-Transparent Sprites - The Co-Founder of The Sixth Hammer Dimitar Popov has shared the company's findings on setting up DoF Blur in 2D games, discussed the problems they faced, and how they overcame the challenges of this task.
80.lv

No Bloom? No Problem: Glowing Stuff without Post Effects - In this lesson, we're going to look at ways to make the things in your game appear to glow without the use of bloom!
Team Dogpit

URP Compute Grass Shader + Grass Painter Update - A few months ago I made a Geometry shader for interactive grass. While this works great on Windows, Geometry Shaders aren't that well supported on other platforms. A better option for the same effect is a Compute Shader, which is supported on PS4/5, Xbox, Switch, iOs, Android, and Windows. [built-in pipeline version also available]
Minions Art

Pixelate Filter in URP using Compute Shaders - This article will use the pixelate image filter from the previous post but in URP, the Universal Render Pipeline. We’ll set up a ScriptableRendererFeature and ScriptableRenderPass to run the compute shader at the end of the rendering pipeline. I recommend you read the previous pixelate filter post before this one to understand the full context.
[Don't miss the HDRP version as well]
Bronson Zgeb

Voronoi Noise - This is the sixth tutorial in a series about pseudorandom noise. It introduces various flavors of Voronoi noise.
catlikecoding.com

Optimize your mobile game performance: Expert tips on graphics and assets - In the final installment of this optimization series, we focus on how to improve the performance of your assets, project configuration, and graphics. In case you missed them, check out our previous posts on profiling, memory, and code architecture, as well as physics, UI, and audio, for a more complete picture of how to optimize your game – or, download the free e-book for a rundown of all these topics.
Unity

2D art creation in Dragon Crashers - Talking with Eduardo from the Unity 2D team, Jarek opened up about his creative process, tips for creating sprites, 2D lighting and animations, and using Affinity Designer and Photo, his art and design software of choice.
Unity

How to sort sprites by Y axis in Unity 2D - Creating the illusion of 3D in 2D.
sunnyvalleystudio.com

11 Useful Unity C# Extension Methods - This time I will show you a list of useful Unity extensions and the cases where you can use them. I had been looking around to expand my list of useful extensions and some of them were pretty interesting plus I already had a few I normally use.
monoflauta.com

Create an item management editor window with UI Toolkit - This tutorial will cover the fundamentals of creating a custom editor tool, including what scriptable objects are and how to create, delete and bind to one. You will also learn about ListView and the Object Picker.
gamedev-resources.com

Introduction to TextMesh Pro in Unity - Learn about TextMesh Pro in Unity by creating a spooky text-based adventure game where the style of the text changes based on what happens in the story.
raywenderlich.com

Going forward, Unity devs will need Unity Pro to publish on consoles - In late June, Unity quietly updated its licensing policy requirements for developers working on “closed platforms” like Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Google Stadia. Unity developers starting new projects will now need either a Unity Pro license or a Preferred Platform License Key to develop for these platforms.
[Watch Gamefromscratch's take]
gamasutra.com

Videos

Creator Spotlight: Minute of Islands by Studio Fizbin - Studio Fizbin joins us on Twitch to explore the tech behind their gorgeous 2D narrative puzzle platformer, Minute of Islands. We answer questions from the community as we open up the engine and learn how the team built their hand-drawn environment, the challenges they faced, and what tools helped achieve their vision for this vibrant world.
[don't miss these other Creator Spotlights as well: Harold Halibut | Slow Bros. and Praey for the Gods | No Matter Studios]
Unity

Batman Arkham's Freeflow Combat | Mix and Jam - This project is a take on the Freeflow Combat system from the Batman Arkham series of games! Let’s explore game dev techniques and try to achieve a similar system!
Mix and Jam

I Made The Legend of Zelda Boss Fights but they’re 3D - I Made The Legend of Zelda Boss Fights but they’re 3D. . . Last time when I made The Legend of Zelda but it’s 3D, I said at the end of the video that I might continue on with the dungeons and boss fights in another video since I had never made a boss at that point. After a couple months I’ve finally finished up with doing all the different dungeons, along with the enemies and the bosses.
CodyCantEatThis

LEARN UNITY AUDIO - The Ultimate Guide to Audio, Implementation & Scripting - If you're struggling to implement sound effects, audio in Unity - Need help scripting them? Then this Unity tutorial is for you! This video will have details on adding 2D and 3D audio effects, understanding the basics around these, scripting audio sources, audio clips, using triggers, unity events, UI buttons and custom events. Looking at playing and pausing audio and understanding AudioMixers and how to change that at runtime. I'll lave time stamps under here for your convenience! :)
SpeedTutor

Creating a Dynamic Modal Window in Unity - Modal windows are a crucial part of Game UI, so let's make one in Unity that's flexible and versatile!
Game Dev Guide

Unity Visual Scripting in 2021! (changes from 2020, BOLT) - Let's explore the changes in Unity Visual Scripting 2021 and Bolt.
Code Monkey

Quickly & Easily Create Hit Impact Effects - In this video, we’ll show you how to quickly & easily make hit impact effects for your games.
Game Dev Republic

InGame Tilemap Editing - PART 2: Lines & Rectangles - 2D Level Editor with Unity - Tutorial - In this tutorial series you will learn how you can create an ingame UI where your players can draw on a grid. We are going to use Unitys Tilemaps and there will be a lot of coding involved. You'll learn how you can add the UI with clickable buttons, how to show a preview where an item would be placed and of course you can place it. It will then be drawn onto a tilemap.
Velvary

Input System Interactions Explained | Press, Hold, Tap, SlowTap, MultiTap - Unity - Today we go over Interactions in Unity's New Input System. I go what makes an interaction, how it impacts the actions, the individual actions themselves, code overview, interaction priority and multiple interactions, and custom interactions.
samyam

Best practices: Async vs. coroutines - Unite Copenhagen - Before async was introduced in Unity 2017, asynchronous routines were implemented using coroutines and/or callbacks. This video covers the benefits of async over coroutines. You'll see how one example problem – building an asynchronous prompt popup – can be solved using async vs coroutines.
Unity

Assets

Smash Hit Summer - Asset Store Sale - 50% off
Unity Affiliate

The Animation Publishers Sale Begins Today! - All assets from 3 Animation Publishers, Kevin Iglesias, Explosive, and we make the game, are on sale for 50% off from August 2, 2021 00:00:00 PT through August 15, 2021. In addition, each Animation Publisher has one asset that will be offered for free with coupon code: ANIMATE2021 during the sale:

UniRate - Unity plugin to easily manage the application frame rate and rendering interval. Preventing battery power consumption and device heat, especially on mobile platforms.
renanwolf Open Source

UniTask - Provides an efficient allocation free async/await integration for Unity.
Cysharp Open Source

PlayRecorder - PlayRecorder lets you record Unity scene logic into binary files that work in both the editor or builds. Once a recording is made with a scene, even if that recording is created within a build, it can be played back within the editor, making it incredibly useful for recording data from user studies or analytics. Data can also be recorded within the editor, and then played back within a build.
Ultraleap Open Source

MonoMod - C# modding swiss army knife, powered by cecil.
MonoMod Open Source

Unity NLP - Natural Language Processing in Unity.
voxell-tech Open Source

Fungus - The goal of Fungus is to provide a free, open source tool for creating interactive storytelling games in Unity 3D. Fungus is designed to be easy to learn for beginners to Unity 3D, especially for people with no coding experience. For power users, it provides an intuitive, fast workflow for visual scripting and interactive storytelling. Fungus is being used to create Visual Novels, Point and Click Adventure Games, Childrens Stories, Hidden Object Games, eLearning apps and also some frankly weird stuff which defies classification :)
snozbot Open Source

AnyRPG - Open source Role Playing Game engine for Unity 3D written in C#.
michaelday008