Topic

Game Development

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

News

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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Defold gains support for the Teal programming language

The Defold game engine has recently received an update, adding support for the Teal programming language. Teal is a typed dialect of Lua, which is the default scripting language in Defold. Similar to how TypeScript benefits JavaScript developers, Teal helps improve the code quality and reliability of Lua. This addition is part of the new initial support for Lua transpilers in the build pipeline. Currently, this support is limited to transpilation and does not include automatic extern generation for Defold's Lua APIs. Consequently, it is better suited for writing type-safe standalone logic rather than interacting directly with the Defold runtime. Nevertheless, Teal does provide the option to manually write the necessary externs.

Published: 3. Jun. 2024

News

PureRef 2.0 - An updated reference image tool for artists

PureRef is a stand-alone software designed to help creatives organize a collection of images in a visual way. Users can freely place and scale images, allowing them to create mood boards or set up reference images for tasks such as painting, 3D modeling, and more. The application features a drag-and-drop system, where images can be imported from various sources, including the host file system and web browsers. Additional features include the ability to write quick notes, toggle image desaturation, and arrange or align images.

Published: 27. May. 2024

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Deep Paint - A new blender add-on for stylized 3D illustrations

Deep Paint is a new Blender add-on created by visual artist Gaku Tada. This add-on provides a user-friendly set of tools that allow users to easily model and paint in 3D, enabling them to create hand-drawn 3D illustrations similar to those made by the artist himself. Deep Paint is designed to expand the capabilities of Blender's Grease Pencil by adding features like "GP to Mesh," which instantly converts Grease Pencil strokes into 3D meshes, including brush strokes, curves, and mesh lines.

Published: 20. May. 2024

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Visual Studio Code has received a new update (1.89)

Visual Studio Code, the popular text editor from Microsoft, has received a new update titled the April 2024 release (version 1.89). The update introduces several workflow improvements and gives developers more control over their projects. One notable addition in this release is the local workspace extensions, which allow users to restrict extension installation and usage to a particular project. This feature offers an alternative to the existing global extensions and was designed to meet users' specific workspace requirements.

Published: 13. May. 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