Topic

Game Development

Unreal Engine 5.4 now available

Unreal Engine version 5.4 has recently been released with a significant focus on its animation and rendering aspects, including improvements in performance, visual fidelity, and productivity. Without further ado, let's go over the highlights of this release: On the animation front, there have been several new additions. Firstly, Automatic Retargeting simplifies the process of reusing bipedal character animations, ensuring excellent results. The Skeletal Editor has been expanded with new features, and a range of new deformer functions have been introduced to the Deformer Graph.

Published: 29. Apr. 2024

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Nevercenter rolls out Pixelmash 2024.1

Pixelmash, presented as the next-generation pixel art and animated sprite editor for Windows and macOS, has received a new update. For those who are unfamiliar, Pixelmash is a tool for pixel art and animation that allows artists to blend high-resolution vector-based layers with low-resolution per-pixel layers. Vector layers are dynamically pixelated to a lower resolution in real-time, offering novel methods to create pixel art through transforms, tweening, and advanced layer effects. Additionally, Pixelmash includes essential features for pixel art work, such as Pixel Perfect Editing, Onion Skinning, Reference Layers, and more.

Published: 15. Apr. 2024

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Flax Engine 1.8 has been released

Flax Engine, described by the development team as "The most agile game engine," has recently been updated to version 1.8. For those unfamiliar, Flax Engine is a fully featured, source-available game engine featuring a modern editor interface and a component-based architecture similar to engines such as Unity. Some of its standout features include multiple scripting options such as C#, C++, and visual scripting, open-world tools including terrain, foliage, and fog systems, and support for large worlds with 64-bit precision coordinates.

Published: 8. Apr. 2024

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Blender has been updated to Version 4.1

Blender, the powerful open-source 3D creation suite, has received a new update. The new version introduces a multitude of new features, along with performance and workflow improvements, particularly beneficial for modelers and animators. Additionally, according to the Blender team, this release includes hundreds of bug fixes, code cleanups, and refactors, making Blender more stable and facilitating future contributions from developers.

Published: 1. Apr. 2024

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Cascadeur 2024.1 has been released

Cascadeur, the AI-driven 3D animation software, has received an update. Nekki, the company behind its development, states that the new 2024.1 version is a significant update, introducing functionality designed to improve users animation projects and streamline the workflow. One of the key additions in this release is animation unbaking, allowing you to convert baked (fully keyframed) animations into regular ones with fewer keyframes and various types of interpolation set automatically.

Published: 25. Mar. 2024

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The Defold game engine gets support for Playstation 5

Defold, the 2D-focused yet 3D-capable game engine, has recently added support for a new console target — this time, the PlayStation 5. This announcement was expected since the Defold Foundation outlined their console support plans back in June 2023, coinciding with the introduction of support for the PlayStation 4. PlayStation 5 is now an additional export target for the Defold game engine, joining an already extensive list of supported platforms.

Published: 4. Mar. 2024

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Steam Audio released as open source

Valve has recently released a new update for Steam Audio. Alongside this release, a new open-source licensing model has been introduced for the Steam Audio SDK, making the entire Steam Audio codebase open source. Steam Audio is a spatial audio solution that has been used in Valve's own game titles including Half Life: Alyx and DOTA 2. It offers features such as real-time sound propagation, occlusion and reflection, backed propagation, HRTF (Head-related transfer function)-based 3D audio, support for ambisonics, and more.

Published: 26. Feb. 2024

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New worldbuilding tool for Unreal Engine previewed

A new worldbuilding tool for Unreal Engine 5 is being developed by Paul Martin Eliasz, a Senior Technical Artist and recognized Unreal Engine enthusiast. The tool is built upon the Procedural Content Generation Framework (PCG), which was featured in our coverage back in March 2023 during the preview release of Unreal Engine 5.2.

Published: 19. Feb. 2024

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Stride has been updated to version 4.2

Stride, the open-source cross-platform C# game engine, has received a new update. This update focuses on improvements to performance, stability, and the developer experience. Some of the standout features of this release include integration with .NET 8, a new tool named Stride Diagnostics Analyzer, added support for F# and Visual Basic programming languages, and editor enhancements.

Published: 12. Feb. 2024

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Weatherade - A new snow and rain system for Unity

Recently launched, Weatherade is a new snow and rain system designed for Unity. Developed by Vitaly Okulov, an experienced 3D Artist and asset developer, this system enables the creation of remarkably realistic digital snow and rain. Weatherade includes two different sets of shaders for snow and rain scenes. Additionally, it features "Cover Instance", a manager that enables users to globally customize the appearance of scene surfaces and create a coverage occlusion mask. This mask is automatically generated and prevents objects located under roofs or canopies from being exposed to snow/rain.

Published: 5. Feb. 2024

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Godot games can now be ported for free to the Nintendo Switch

The Godot game engine is rapidly evolving, providing an ever expanding list of features and improvements. This makes it a great choice for developing a wide range of games, from 2D to 3D and from smaller to larger titles. Despite its strengths, exporting games for consoles has posed challenges due to the open-source nature of the project. Up until this point, if you aimed to port your game developed in Godot to the Nintendo Switch, you had to undertake the task independently, subscribe to W4Games Consoles or rely on porting services such as Lone Wolf Technology or Pineapple Works. While these can be effective solutions, they might not be suitable for smaller indie projects with tighter budgets.

Published: 29. Jan. 2024

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The Global Game Jam 2024 is starting!

The world's largest game creation event has kicked off once again today. The 2023 edition witnessed the creation of over 7,600 games, with tens of thousands of participants from over one hundred countries. This year, even more enjoyable games are anticipated. For those unfamiliar with the Global Game Jam (GGJ), it is an annual event, this year running from 22 to 28 January, where participants gather either physically, online, or in a hybrid setting (blending online and on-premises) for a short period of time to create games based on a shared theme.

Published: 22. Jan. 2024