Blips Blog

The new music features in Godot 4.3 explained

Godot 4.3 brings exciting new features that make it easier to incorporate adaptive music into your games. In this article, I'll go over the new additions, explaining their functionality and how you can use them in your projects. The adaptive music capabilities come from three new audio stream types: AudioStreamInteractive, AudioStreamPlaylist, and AudioStreamSynchronized. These can be combined to create complex musical behaviors, offering functionality typically reserved for audio middleware solutions like Wwise, FMOD, or CRI ADX2.

Published: 26. Aug. 2024

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Godot has been updated to version 4.3

Godot 4.3 has been released, thanks to the efforts of more than 500 contributors over the past nine months since the 4.2 release. Project manager Rémi Verschelde noted that this release surpassed the original development plans, resulting in a substantial update. Verschelde highlighted that the user experience is now more stable and polished, with fewer obscure bugs that could disrupt games or workflows. Additionally, the feature set has been expanded with numerous highly anticipated improvements across all areas of the engine.

Published: 19. Aug. 2024

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Game UI Database 2.0 - A useful resource for designing better game UIs

The Game UI Database is a free online resource designed specifically for game UI/UX designers, but it can be equally useful for anyone looking to create better UIs for their games. Created by Edd Coates, a Lead UI/UX Designer at Radical Forge, it serves as a valuable tool for finding inspiration and quickly searching for reference materials. The database is one of the top resources in its field, featuring over a thousand games and more than 55,000 screenshots and videos. It offers references for various UI elements, including title screens, system menus, stage and level selection, stats, inventory, maps, controls, and more. Users can explore the catalog by game genre, theme, aesthetic, and camera perspective.

Published: 12. Aug. 2024

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RapidPipeline - A new tool for streamlining 3D workflows

RapidPipeline is a new 3D data preparation tool designed to simplify common, time-consuming tasks for all 3D creators. It functions as a batch processing tool for 3D models, offering an automated pipeline with customizable workflows. Users can adjust file formats, optimization methods, and target resolutions. Additional tasks include baking normal maps, compressing geometry and textures, generating LODs (Levels of Detail), and more. This flexibility ensures that 3D assets can be prepared quickly and efficiently for use in various applications and target devices.

Published: 5. Aug. 2024

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Evergine 2024 has been released

Evergine, formerly known as Wave Engine, is a multi-purpose game engine designed for fields such as entertainment and engineering. It is C#-based with a component-based architecture similar to engines like Unity. Evergine is free for commercial use and supports multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and the Web. However, the tooling is Windows-only, with the latest release requiring Visual Studio 2022 for development.

Published: 29. Jul. 2024

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Rig Creator - A free Blender add-on for creating character rigs

Rig Creator is a new Blender add-on developed by Edward Ureña, a 3D digital artist and illustrator. The add-on is currently in beta and is designed for creating rigs for various characters, including facial rigs. It provides a base rig that allows users to position bones to match a character's body, with the add-on automatically applying the necessary weights. The latest update introduced several additional features, including Bone Generators with default options such as Deformation Generator, Forward Kinematics (FK), Fingers, and Inverse Kinematics (IK). Another addition was a list-based Constraint Panel, which provides a more intuitive and efficient way to manage constraints.

Published: 22. Jul. 2024

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Zed code editor now available on Linux

Zed is a relatively new entry in the code editor space, designed as a high-performance text editor written in the Rust programming language. It is made by the creators of Atom, Tree-sitter, and the Electron software platform. Zed is an open source project created as an alternative to existing code editors like Visual Studio Code or Sublime Text. One of its major selling points is its performance, enabling developers to launch the editor instantly, load files quickly, and receive immediate responses to keystrokes. According to the developers, this performance is achieved by leveraging every CPU core using Rust's unique features and by utilizing Zed's own GPUI framework. This framework renders the entire window on the GPU, similarly to how graphics are processed in a 3D video game.

Published: 15. Jul. 2024

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The Bevy game engine has received a major update

Bevy has recently been updated to version 0.14. For those unfamiliar, this free and open-source data-driven game engine is currently one of the best options for game development using the Rust programming language. While it lacks a visual editor and functions more as a game framework, its design can benefit developers who prefer a code-driven approach and seek greater control, performance, and customization for their projects. With its comprehensive and constantly expanding feature set, Bevy is helping Rust become an increasingly viable option for game development.

Published: 8. Jul. 2024

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Rizom UV 2024 Released - The Most Significant Update in Years

Rizom-Lab has released RizomUV 2024, calling it the biggest upgrade since 2018. RizomUV is a comprehensive UV mapping application designed to integrate seamlessly with 3D content creation tools like Blender and Maya. It offers a fast workflow, significantly reducing the time typically spent on UV mapping in other applications. The latest update introduces a range of innovative features designed to enhance the user experience and streamline the UV mapping process. One of the standout features is the improved user interface (UI), which now supports HDPI with variable DPI on all platforms, ensuring sharp UI elements. The update also includes full UI scaling and zoom, allowing users to customize their workspace to their preference.

Published: 1. Jul. 2024

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GDevelop 5.4 released with support for multiplayer games

GDevelop, the user-friendly "no-code" game engine, has recently been updated to version 5.4. This update introduces significant new features, one of which is the support for real-time multiplayer games. Designed for ease of use, the new multiplayer functionality offers premade lobbies with UIs that support two to eight players. GDevelop multiplayer is built to scale from zero to thousands of concurrent users. It automatically synchronizes players and game state, including game objects, variables, visual effects, and more. Additionally, it provides out-of-the-box client-side prediction for game logic and object behaviors.

Published: 24. Jun. 2024

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Curve Architect - A new versatile deformation tool for Unity

Curve Architect is a new, general-purpose deformation tool for the Unity game engine. Developed by Mikael Danielsson, a Level Designer and Software Engineer, this utility allows users to deform meshes and Unity terrains, providing functionality to manipulate deformations along the tool's created curves. Additionally, users can animate objects and deformations along these curves using Unity's built-in animation system. Curve Architect has been used in the development of Touch Grind X, an upcoming extreme sports game by Illusion Labs. The tool is suitable for various purposes, including the creation of roads, forest paths, rivers, train tracks, ropes, and more.

Published: 17. Jun. 2024

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Reallusion launches Character Creator integration with Unreal Engine

Reallusion has released the CC UE Control Rig, a free plugin for Character Creator (CC) users. This plugin speeds up production by enabling users to animate custom characters directly within Unreal Engine. It uses the MetaHuman Control Rig, familiar to Unreal Engine users, to handle full-body movement and facial expressions. Reallusion has stated that despite the recent introduction of UE Modular Control Rig in Unreal Engine 5.4 and advancements in MetaHuman animation, preparing fully customized or original IP characters for animation in Unreal Engine remains challenging.

Published: 10. Jun. 2024