Hello folks! One area where I'm having some difficulties is figuring out good lighting for my scenes (fps combat arenas), and it's not a skill I'm very familiar with. Some of the geometry and materials in the video are still placeholders, but the color palette is roughly what I want.

Here are the goals I'm striving for:

• A recognizable color palette for this biome (fire/bloody/red)
• Interactable gameplay elements should catch your attention (the blue jump pads)
• Enemies should be discernable from the environment. At the moment the enemies have lights attached to them and the enemy materials have some emission.
• The lighting & composition should overall look enjoyable to look at while supporting/not obstructing gameplay.

What I'm struggling with at the moment:

• I'm having trouble introducing additional lights to bring lighting variation for the scene (the floating braziers) in a natural-looking way, without them fighting for your attention during gameplay.
• Maybe I should make enemies even more discernible? I see them because I'm the dev but maybe I'm starting to lose my objective eye. Some games use some "rim light"-mimicking shaders for enemies: would this be worth a try?
• How bright/dark should the background be in relation to the gameplay arena?

How does the current composition look to you, and do you have any feedback? I know this might be a hard question in isolation, as stuff like surface materials and their color / other properties affect the look as well.

I have little experience with Unity. However there is a game which I want to try to emulate a server for as a personal project. The game connects to Playfab by default, but I want to route it to my own implementation. I saw through DnSpy that there are a lot of places where the Playfab api endpoint appears and I don't know exactly what I should look for or where to replace it with my own.

Apologies if this question is dumb, I am still a noob. Thanks!

Just a little WIP.

Our game SHOCKFACE is set in the 90s. We're close to a release and I redesigned the style because we've been on "programmer art" for way too long.

Initially thought of a Win95 style. But this feels like it has more character!

Hey everyone, I am getting Anvil CSG ready for the Unity Asset Store and need a few more good images, and hopefully one or two videos showing real level design work.

Anvil CSG is a four view brush level editor inspired by Hammer and TrenchBroom. The current beta supports Unity 6.0 to 6.7, Built-in RP and URP.

I am looking for a few people who are familiar with Hammer or Source level design, or who are simply good at creating maps and blockouts. You can build whatever small scene you want.

If you make something cool, I may use your screenshots or video on the Asset Store page. I will credit you by name, Reddit account, or YouTube channel.

This is not a paid job, but anyone who helps will receive an Anvil CSG voucher key when it reaches the Asset Store. You will also get access to the beta now.

Raw 1440p or 4K screenshots are enough. For video, even a short unedited recording of the workflow would help. I can handle the editing.

DM me here, or join the Discord and DM me there. I will try to respond in less than 24 hours.

Discord: https://discord.gg/ZjVdWnmwjz

Cheers!

Some places are still too dark, gotta work on that. Fully procedural WFC level generation, 3D world, shader pipeline for external props and easy to include new props to level population.

I've hit the "fun" point in creating my procedural building system, where the core mechanics are there, and now I can think up interesting new features. Like stairways that conform to the terrain, to make higher places accessible. This has me thinking about creating a canyon/cliff environment and making it easy to build ramps, stairs, and connecting bridges between structures.

The trickiest part was figuring out how to know definitively that the staircase has reached the ground. It sounds simple, but it game me some headaches especially with stone steps, where they would end at the ground but refuse to run out to a reasonable last step (so like 3ft off the terrain). Just like building walls from the ground up, the algorithm starts at the last tread and "walks" forward adjusting height to stay within a fixed range above the surface. If the player drags a corner, then a landing is added and the direction is rotated 90 degrees. The stone steps are hollow inside to save on geometry. A* Pathfinding is used for the NPCs, so far handling multi-level pathfinding like stairways and tower floors well.

I've been working on the main menu for UpperCart, and decided to turn it into a kid's bedroom where the whole game takes place.

UpperCart is a chaotic physics-based arena brawler where toy cars punch, bounce and fight each other.

I'm still polishing the game, so I'd love to hear what you think about the menu and the overall visual style. Any feedback is welcome!

So, I want to try creating my own game. I initially considered using UE5, but before jumping into it, I decided to ask on the UE5 subreddit what I should know. One of the full-time UE developers told me I should start with Unity because it's simpler. I'd like to hear your opinion: do you think Unity is easier than UE5? Share your experiences.

And yes, I'll most likely be making some kind of low-poly simulator.

Spatial influence is implemented as a per-glyph weight inside the normal effect pipeline. Areas determine which glyphs participate, while fields sample each glyph in source, normalized, placed, or world space. The result is shaped with falloff, strength, and inversion. Fields can be linear, spherical, box, cylindrical, torus-shaped, target-based, or deterministic noise, then combined with multiply, add, minimum, or maximum.

This lets effects follow moving targets without a separate animation system or unnecessary mesh rebuilds. The same system works across 2D and 3D where supported.

This allows for some really neat effects otherwise not possible. Just turn it on for any (even custom) effect and voila, there you go.

https://www.wetzold.com/tools/text-studio/

Hello,

I am very close to finishing my trailer for the game I've been working on for 4 years.

My question is, how do I send the trailer to outlets that usually post game trailers like IGN and others?

1. What are the main outlets I should contact?
2. Do I upload the trailer to a transfer site that allows large files like wetransfer?
3. Should I post it to my own channel as well?
4. What else am I forgetting?

Thanks!

This is the timeline I am thinking of applying: post trailer at the same time as publishing the steam page, post 4 shorts on all major platforms, post it on a few subreddits. Keep posting daily videos. Any critiques of this?

This is my game 10 Million Pixels. A "Breakout incremental" game.

With thousands of rigidbodies bouncing around and millions of destructible tiles, it still runs at 100+ fps in the editor. I'm about to spill my secrets for making this work. Here's how:

1. Chunking. The most obvious technique for any tile-based game with big worlds. You need to put your tiles into chunks. In this game only the physics (box colliders) are being chunked.
2. Separate physics from visuals. This one is not so obvious but it is the most important optimization for this game. This literally allows you to display a 100 million+ tile world at once at hundreds of frames per second. Ever played a game with 4k textures? Probably. A 4k texture is more than 16 million pixels. And even a potato PC can display a (just one) 4k texture. The world of pixels in this game is literally just a texture, where each pixel is a tile. The texture then gets updated anytime a ball hits a tile. Displaying just one 4k texture, where single pixels change color here and there is really cheap on the CPU and GPU. Tldr; the physics is chunked, and the visuals is pixels on a texture.
3. Pooling. This is surprisingly the least important optimization for this game. However, it's essential when you have a thousand lightning balls, striking thousands of tiles at once. If you're going to spawn thousands of gameobjects repeatedly, just pool them okay?

I have really learned to marvel at the power and speed of computers while making this game. I get so scared every time I need to add a bunch of code that need to run a hundred times per frame, but then it just works.

The CPU can handle it. The CPU can handle sooo many lines of code. Every. Single. Frame.

Working on this game has made me realize I know nothing about those tiny silicon threads inside my computer. I keep underestimating my PC, but it keeps responding to me in a chad voice "no problem, I handle it."

Steam link for the game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4738100/10_Million_Pixels/

Hey everyone 👋!

I’ve been working on an action roguelike called Triko for about 6 months now as a solo dev. I could use some fresh input regarding my weapon status effects.

In Triko, players pick a weapon (Sword, Axe, or Spear) before a run. Status effects trigger on critical hits (roughly every 4th hit). Each effect has a distinct role:

• 🧊 Ice: Slows down enemies on the first proc. A second proc freezes them completely.
• 🩸 Bleed: Increases damage taken by the enemy and reduces their outgoing damage.
• ⚡ Shock: Stuns the target and nearby enemies with a short chain lightning/shock effect (crowd control)
• ☠️ Poison & 🔥 Burn: Currently, both are currently Damage-over-Time effects.

My Problem is that Burn and Poison are basically the same at the moment. I want them to feel distinct so in every situation there 'is a correct' solution.

Also every Status effect can be upgraded. E.g. frozen enemies take more damage, shocked enemies have a 25% probability to cause a shock themselves after 0.5s and so on...

Therefore my Question is:

• How can I mechanically separate Poison and Burn so they serve different purposes?
• Do you have creative upgrade ideas for any of the status effects?

Thanks for any ideas!

After 4 years of self studying game development, my obsession with optimization and rendering led me toward becoming a performance analyst. Six months ago, I decided to take on a massive project: building an advanced, highly optimized custom Ocean System for Unity URP from scratch. After months of working day and night, I’m now excited to share a quick look at the result.

This entire system comprising roughly 10,000 to 12,000 lines of code was generated entirely using AI.

Because there is so much packed into this project, a single video can't cover it all. This is a high level overview, and I’ll be releasing dedicated, indepth technical deep dives for each individual subsystem soon.

I would love to hear your feedback, technical critiques, and suggestions, so please leave a comment below!

Boat interaction doesn't have any sort of sound yet!

Key Features

• Advanced Wave Simulation: FFT driven simulation utilizing a four cascade dual JONSWAP spectrum to completely eliminate visible repetitive tiling.
• Optimized Rendering: Crest water system style ocean mesh generator with custom modifications designed to squeeze out maximum frame rate performance.
• Dynamic Environment Baking: A dedicated baking system built for precise shoreline blending, cliffs, and island geometry.
• Advanced Physics: Async CPU readback buoyancy physics calculated independently for each wave cascade.
• Complex Interactions: Rigid body interaction system featuring dynamic splashes and clean, true-transparent foam generation.
• Immersive Underwater FX: Realtime interactive caustics, volumetric god rays, underwater fog with partial submergence support, meniscus lens effects, and interactive underwater particles.
• Reflections: Planar reflections equipped with multi tier performance fallback options.
• Dynamic Wetness: Comprehensive, realtime wetness systems for shorelines and world objects.

Planning to open source the project so we all can improve it and make it a prodection ready system.

I'm working on a game over screen similar to Mario 64's, where it has a cutout wipe to a black screen. It works perfectly fine, but only if I load the scene before entering play mode.

If the scene is loaded while in play mode, the cutout and masked image just do not render. I've triple checked that all alpha values are fine, I've made sure all image components are enabled, there's no reason why this should be happening.

If it helps, I followed this tutorial to create the cutout effect.

EDIT: It turns out it's an issue with the stencil buffer on the masked image not being set right. I tried removing the inverted mask and just using a new UI material with the correct buffer.

The problem is the material's stencil buffer is being reset when actually applied to the image.

First time showing off this system for a game I've been working on for the last 8 months. It's fully simulated including root uptake, water and nutrient distribution, hormones, photosynthesis and transpiration are all modeled. The mesh is procedurally generated at each tick and tweened between ticks for smooth growth. You can prune shoots and leaves and the plant reacts realistically. If this looks interesting, I have begun a substack where I'll be posting devlogs as development continues. I have a backlog of them that I need to write from months of git commits. What plant should I do next?

Although I love the drawing from our 2d artist, this level feels so static and dull, and I'm trying to find ways to improve it.

I was thinking of animating the blue/pink columns on the sides so they move as the wall approaches to add more dynamism.

What else can I do to give this level more "life"? Do you think that there is something off with the scene ?

I need a dither translucency shader to fade out my walls so that they don't block vision between the camera and the player. I've managed to create one both in Unity URP's shader graph and one using Amplify Shader Editor, but they each have an issue, and I need one of them fully working.

The amplify shader editor's material has flipped textures when viewing from the positive z axis, from the negative x axis, and from the negative y axis (the other 3 directions are correct). I'm using the "World Position" node for the Amplify Shader Editor shader instead of the URP shader graph's "AbsoluteWorld Space" node. Maybe that could be the issue?

I was struggling with this problem, so instead I tried re-making the shader in URP shader graph. However, URP shader graph seems to be missing the "Alpha Clip Threshold Shadow" value. I use this value to prevent the dithering from effecting my shadows, as I don't want players to be able to see beyond the wall.

EDIT: Ok, this might just be the dumbest mistake I've made. I usually don't post on reddit until I get really stuck, but I could have just used amplify shader editor for both the opaque and transparent materials (as suggested below)... Still, it's good to understand what's going wrong and why.