#Unity Game Development Solutions

[mobiloitteptyltd]

Mobiloitte's Visionary Game Development

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[mobiloittetechblogs]

Custom 2D, 3D, AR, and VR Game Development Services

[kpissolution]

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[mobiloitteinc02]

Unity Game Development Company in US- Mobiloitte

Get the  gaming excellence with our expert  platoon. We  produce custom games for iOS, Android, PC, and consoles using  slice- edge technology. Our contrivers craft visually stunning 2D/ 3D worlds, while our programmers  insure dynamic gameplay. Trust us to meet deadlines and budgets, delivering a thrilling gaming experience.

[here-fm-replacement]

Hello!!

︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶

Hi! I'm Asp3n (Gold3nDreams), and as of 22/07/24, here.fm is down. My solution? I'm making a replacement with the same dream!!

I'm a solo developer, and I specialise in making games on Unity and Roblox in C# and Lua.

This is a new project, on a new program, in an entirely new coding language! So it's safe to say this will be a learning experience for me, and I'm very excited!

Feel free to ask me questions in the ask box, I love seeing people engaged with my work!!

Love yall~!

︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶

~ Asp3n

[rathologic]

how might one go through the text assets in quarantine?

You'll want to start with either UABEAvalonia or AssetRipper to get files out of the game in the first place.

AssetRipper tries to reconstruct the developers' Unity project files, which will batch rip the TextAsset files into the output Resources\subfolder\Thing_English.txt (actual texts will not be extracted to the TextAsset folder). Caveat: the version I had installed can't read texture files from Quarantine, so it's not a total solution.

Avalonia is a modmaking tool, and way easier to navigate in my opinion -- you would use it to load Unity asset bundles from the (Quarantine)\Pathologic3_Data folder, then export anything you want to read or modify. Caveat: I don't know whether it can batch export multiple text files at once -- its menus are poorly explained, you'd have to try selecting multiple assets, then click "Plugins -> Export" in the right sidebar. UABEA might also let you replace text files with modded ones, but that's a whole other topic.

You'll see that there are separate text files for everything that is localizable: for example, the Abattoir map-menu name is stored in locations\Boini_English.txt and looks like this:

{Locations.Boyni.Name} Abbatoir {Locations.Boyni.Description} Abbatoir

Dialogue texts are found in prologue\dialogs\(subfolders). Happy hunting, and check out cutting-edge research in the Pathologic Modding Discord if you have questions or findings :-)

[eurothug4000]

INTERVIEWS WITH OLEANDER GARDEN, CRISPPYBOAT AND ADAM PYPE

For my current video on fictional dead MMO/servers in games (https://youtu.be/AXSJ27bTRzw), I interviewed some developers with experience creating such settings. Oleander Garden (Autogeny), Crisppyboat (NetEscape) and Adam Pype (No Players Online) kindly took the time to discuss the creation of their respective games, with their answers compiled here:

What gave you the inspiration to use an empty MMO setting?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

The post-vaporwave / hauntology / Dan Bell deadmall universe was at its apex when I started working on Autogeny in 2018; mostly I wanted to play with that sense of longing for lost futures, & put it in conversation with the ideas the Pagan games had been orbiting around (i.e. contemporary technological mythology, poetic-making, degraded game forms). The dead y2k MMO format was a fun solution that had a little tie in to everything I wanted the game to think about.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

The idea came to me when watching Redlyne's video series on dead mmos, and theories about cults within them. Just the atmosphere that brings with it, a seemingly derelict digital landscape, rich in history from past users, now occupied by some malevolent force (or one that’s always been around) really fascinated me! Especially with the popularity of liminal spaces, I really connected with the idea of exploring the online equivalent of that. For this game jam version it was on a fairly small scale (only about 4 areas) but we’d love to explore that idea with a more believable expansive online space, that was really the heart of the idea for me. Sitting alone at night and logging into an abandoned online game, shifting through the past memories of long forgotten players in a vast digital space. It has this sort of unnerving feeling to it, why's this still up after all this time and who knows what could still be around. 

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

I was actually doing an exchange at the time when I was making the original version of the game (from 2019) at a game design school in the netherlands. i reallyy hated this class because it was super designed focus without much practical work, and im really more of a design-by-doing person. anyways, one of the assignments was making a map for Unreal Tournament, and it was this tedious process of having to block out the level and then write endless documentation about the design process. i guess the class was super triple-A focused or something. since halloween was coming up and i was still doing game-a-month at the time, i really wanted to give a go at making something super scary. and as i was doing this assignment i really enjoyed just walking around the little map without any bots, and just taking in the vibes. i did a little extra flair to my map by adding ambient sounds to it (i have a video of that actually, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_22Q_oNwk0) and it really did a lot for the atmosphere. then i remember that as a kid i used to play GMOD a lot with my friend, and because I was always hosting the server and our computers were very slow, it would always take like 10 minutes at least for my friend to join. adding that ambient sound really reminded me of that, because gmod maps always have this ambient sound in them that's a bit unsettling. i remember being so scared to wander around on my own because these maps were always known to have jump scares, so i would just wait at spawn for my friend. so i realised that this would make for a cool horror game. i originally planned to just port the map into unity, but then i decided against it because it wouldve been more work than it was worth. so i really quickly made a map that didnt make a lot of sense and made it somewhat symmetrical. ironically, not thinking about it too much made it so good, because the map is a bit disorienting, which is perfect for a horror game. it's a little bit funny that i found the most success by making a multiplayer map that was badly designed instead of what this class was trying to teach me. :-)

Did you initially have specific themes you wanted to explore or did the idea of having an empty mmo setting come first?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

Ideas came first, setting later! A month before the game came out I still wasn't 100% sure I was going to commit to that framing device actually - otherwise it would have been a straightforward haunted-EXE type of deal, like luna game (2011) or those 2010s haunted video game creepypastas. I'm glad I went with it; 'digital space you inhabited' is a much cooler ('weightier?') frame for this sort of story.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

I think the setting had developed first before any specific themes came to mind, but to me NetEscape in a lot of ways represents the melancholy that comes from the loss of fun, safe virtual spaces. Like many people I grew up in these spaces and to see them shuttered in favour of a handful of social media platforms really fills me with a sort of nostalgic sadness, as genuinely I felt that these spaces were really important for kids and young adults. The term "dead internet" comes up a lot nowadays and I feel in part it can be attributed to the sort of forced migration towards a handful of social media platforms devoid of the liberties and expression niche online spaces provided for people. Other than that, existentialism as a theme kind of just fell into place when attempting to craft a story for the concept.

What was it about the empty server/MMO concept that helped you explore the game's themes?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

I think the multiplayer and especially persistent-multiplayer character of an MMO makes that kind of game world feel a lot more like /a space/ and less like a strictly authored object; that helped make things feel 'lived in', 'decayed', 'lost', &c. in a way that really worked with the whole 'self-making out of techno-mythic-rubble' thing the game was going for.  Likewise, I suspect the 1995-2004ish era of MMO design in particular - which was much less authored, much more sandboxy, much more scattershot and weird - is (A) /especially/ good at producing that impression, and (B) developed out of a very specific mythical-ideological project which has now been abandoned: the prevailing y2k notion that one might live a 'second life' in a 'digital world', which seems almost quaint or pastoral today. I figured this would produce a certain feeling of dislocation, of 'living in the ruins'.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

We use the internet as an escape from reality, and now with the progression of time a lot of these places no longer exist or stand dormant. The empty mmo, to me, represents a sort of time capsule for people you’ve never met. A public space where people put so much of themselves into it, you get to learn so much just through the fragments they’ve left behind. It’s this sort of melancholy nostalgia that I hope we can really channel in the game’s full release.

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

the first version of the game had no story at all. i just did the whole setup of being alone in a multiplayer game, and then a ghost showing up and it ended with a jumpscare. i showed this off at an event on the last day of the month and was planning to publish the game the day after. people really liked the setup but they were dissapointed it just ended on a jumpscare and had no point to it. so on the walk home i thought about adding a story to it. at the time i was really kind of against (or uninterested even) in adding a narrative to my games. looking back on it it's a bit stupid, but i figured it would be a good opportunity to try out adding a story to one of my games. so that same night i quickly added in a story by having the developer join just before the end and explaining that the ghost was his dead wife and that capturing the last flag would undo all of his work. it was a bit rushed, and most of the critique i got was that it was a bit cliché. but without it the game would have been super uninteresting and nobody would have liked it as much. really goes to show that people really like a story :) lesson learned! now many years later we're doing this big version of the game because the original was such a success (mostly thanks to the ARG i think). since i'm now much more of a matured developer I wanted to really focus in on the story and work it into something that is actually interesting, has depth, cool characters, and not just a story about a dead wife stuck in a game (which is a bit of an overplayed trope maybe). but, i had to work with what I had, since it is a successor. i think the direction we're going in now is much much more interesting, making it about old tech more broadly as a vehicle for horror and also telling the story about the relationship between john and sarah, and giving sarah more agency. for the full game we are kind of purposefully doing the opposite of what the original did. by not letting john say anything until the very end, and making sarah more of the main character. in the end I think the game is also much more about grief and using the concept of a dead person stuck in a game and the obsession of the developer to revive her as a kind of allegory about creative work and obsession over your work preventing you from finishing it. this is something i personally quite strongly believe in, that it's important not to let a project take control of your life, and making it so important that it never gets done. the unfinished fps game prototype is so much about this, here is this game that had so much potential and interest, but the developers were so busy trying to make it into this impossible thing that people just lost interest and it never becomes something real or alive. the dead server is literally a testament to a dead idea, a dead person, an unfulfilled potential and a constant reminder of not being able to let go.

What is it about this setting that lends itself well to the horror genre? What kinds of things in the empty server/MMO space did you specifically think about including and/or subverting to make the experience scarier? 

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

 Living in the shadowed ruins of a gestalt social project which has fallen away and left monoliths behind - this is the essential characteristic of the 19th century European gothic novel, and the 20th century southern gothic that followed. Maybe we could say that 'living in the ruins of an MMO' works as a sort of '21st century gothic', i.e., that the dead server spooks us for the same reason dead castles spooked Bram Stoker, and dead plantations spooked Faulkner. It's not the space, precisely: it's the social field that created that sort of space, and the way its influence still lingers. Playing too much Everquest will probably destroy your life, but there's something fantastical and romantic about early Everquest stories - people waking up at 3AM to go kill a dragon with 70-odd strangers in their shared digital space. There's nothing romantic about Meta or AI-girlfriends: only the life obliterating part survived. In the home stretch of development I tried to give Autogeny lots of little details that would scream 'early MMO' in particular. Open world dungeons with bosses to farm, impossible zone transitions: this sort of thing. I don't know if it would have worked if it felt like Final Fantasy XIV, you know? It had to be an old MMO.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

We tried to play with sound and limitation to generate horror. Sound played a huge role, (masterfully provided by louceph) stuff like repeating footsteps and ambient noise really added a lot to the overall experience of wandering alone. Taking inspiration from Iron lung, I really pushed for the on screen navigation system to give a bit more anxiety in the moment, having it be limited, and a bit harder to quickly turn or walk if you catch something in the corner of your eye. We sort of quickly realized that there were a lot of pitfalls in presenting the game in a totally accurate, realistic way without confusing the player, we actually had to patch in a notification sound for the file system just cause a lot of people would never bother actually checking the photos they took during the game. In the games full version we’re going to try and add stuff like working text chat/emotes, and other core staples to really give it that believable feeling, the jam version turned out nice but I’m really excited to go extra hard on hammering down what makes a game feel like a real abandoned mmo. 

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

I think old tech, limitations of old tech and just old design standards or quirks or imperfections are all things that make something feel a bit uncanny and scary. games nowadays are so juicy and smooth and responsive you are constantly at ease because you're being taken care of, there is no friction. all those small things, those small barriers make the game feel like an ominous force, or like a big heavy lid on a tomb that you have to tear off. there's something powerful with horror when you have to make a player do something tedious with the anticipation of the scare. going through that old server list menu really feels like you're undusting something. you also can't jump, you cant look very far ahead. it makes it all feel so evil... then there is also the subversion of it, adding things for authenticity that have no point. you have a gun but there is nothing to shoot, you have a player list but nobody is online, you have a match timer but the match never ends, even delivering the flags doesnt have a point because there is no game because nobody is on the other team. it makes the whole environment feel like you're not welcome, like it's just this graveyard and all you're doing is trampling the flowers. another thing is that everything in the game is "in-story". the game's story is about someone being on this mysterious computer and discovering old and scary things. it's cool because everything from pressing buttons or opening applications, none of it is OOC, it's all supposed to be the experience of discovering this thing that wasn't meant for you, this invasion of privacy and literally uncovering some old skeletons. this is kind of the core design principle for the game, if one of the games in the forum is a bit badly made that's like part of the story cause it's a hobby gamedev. everything is supposed to be authentic and part of the narrative. the full game will have no open ends, every single file and link or application has a point or some subtext.

Has there been any interesting feedback from players that made you think about the empty server/MMO setting in a new way?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

Yeah! It especially makes me smile when I find some cool new dead-mmo game, and it turns out the developer liked Autogeny, and figured they could do the idea better, or in a different way. I wasn't sure if the conceit was too particular, but it seems like it really resonated with people - it's like I got to contribute a little formalism to the tapestry of weirdo indie-game culture, you know?  It's cute and it's probably the main thing that keeps me feeling positive about the game. Now I get to play different games, by different people, with their own ideas about the gothic digital-plaza.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

Well, one thing that I sort of regret for the demo version was implementing the text chat and emotes as fun visual dressing rather then actually functional, a lot of people kept interacting with it like they’d be able to have full conversions in the game, it’s something we’d like to do for the full release but it wasn’t possible on this jam version. A lot of feedback was also related to the overall story and how it was presented. We plan on focusing way more on the actual exploration of the abandoned space, as that seems to be what people were mostly interested in (as am I haha). Of course the actual way in which the story was presented (taking photos to get files) was not realistic to a mmo at all but I think there's a lot of potential towards the connectivity between actions in the game and the desktop itself. Hypnospace comes to mind as a huge inspiration, doing something similar to that but in 3D would be great. It makes me really excited to explore mmo staples like photography, mini games and other realistic features, turning them into puzzles throughout the full game. We also found a lot of people were annoyed by the slow movement, but I felt that element would be super important for the kind of slow burn anxiety that we went for with this jam version, plus you’d move pretty slow in those old games haha.

There's a pretty big amount of interest in dead MMOs/game servers these days! What is it about them that you personally think is intriguing? Is it mainly just nostalgic elements or are there less prominent aspects that you think make them so interesting?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

I don't think it can just be nostalgia, in the empty sense of 'consumer fantasy'. If that was the case, you would expect consumer activity to follow a similar pattern to e.g. console game nostalgia (buying lots of knick knacks and status signifiers, attaching cultural value to a particular major corporation, &c.) Instead, we got this cool thriving scene of DIY horror, and illegal pirate revival servers! Critically, the dead mmo genre is not /just/ pro-forma nostalgic-horror (e.g. afraid of a terrible, romantic past) but also, as Mark Fisher might have said, essentially 'Hauntological' - it's oriented towards a speculative /lost future/. There's a certain longing for a separate digital world, and a new realm of human activity Online - which seemed totally possible, until the real world got digitized, and the digital world died an unceremonious death. From this the dead-mmo form can draw all the drama and emotional weight of a failed revolution, in our deeply repressed cultural milieu, where emerging revolutions fail before they get started.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

Honestly I think it’s just the generation that had been raised on mmos like this having grown up with nostalgia for these spaces. Online chat games have basically come and gone, contained in a specific generation of kids, and I think it’s pretty profound how impactful it still is on us. For me just the idea of an online games player legacy really fascinates me. In a way it's almost like exploring an abandoned home or school, where you get the opportunity to catch glimpses of lives and relationships etched into the environment. Like any abandoned or “liminal space” I think people find it intriguing based on the mystery of discovery, finding something clearly human made, and stopping to think how or why they did it. It's an extremely fresh and untapped market, because it is so relatively new, there’s a lot of potential. We see it a lot in internet horror, stuff that at this point has been around for decades, where we can start collectively referring to it in media.

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

everyone keeps telling me this but i haven't really looked into it! it doesnt surprise me though, i think this fear of being alone in a multiplayer game is a pretty shared experience and everyone who's had it is now old enough to make games about it. i wasn't really inspired by any game in particular, i would say the main inspiration i had was Petscop, which is also about an abandoned unfinished game that has a whole layer under it revealing some ulterior use for the game. this whole idea of a game being a facade hiding some grand conspiracy under it is soo interesting to me. it's like easter eggs or 4th wall breaking stuff, or little out of bounds areas. it makes you think about what's hidden underneath all of this stuff you were meant to see. i've always as a kid thought so much about "what if there is a whole other level behind this wall" or like these creepypastas like Ben Drowned or even the luigi stuff in Super Mario 64. the idea that this thing you know and love has something sinister and it was always there you just never noticed will always play well into people's fears.

A huge thank you to Oleander Garden, Crisppyboat and Adam Pype for taking the time to be interviewed.

Oleander Garden: https://x.com/void_hyacinth

Autogeny: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1165750/PAGAN_Autogeny/

Crisppyboat: https://x.com/CrisppyBoat

NetEscape: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3344890/NetEscape/

Adam Pype: https://x.com/adampi

No Players Online: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2701800/No_Players_Online/

[wauzmons]

We have been Betrayed, Backstabbed, Bamboozled: The Future of Elysian Eclipse

So, if you are active on our Discord, you know that EE is made in the Unity Engine and the CEO just decided to massively fuck over all the devs who are using it...

Callum Upton made a great video explaining the situation:

But it gets even worse!

Unity since defended themselves, saying that these fees are only affecting 10% of their customers, because of the $200k and $1m thresholds, so Indie devs don't have to worry about that.

…which isn't true:

Unity Plus

They aren't only introducing these fees but also changed the regular pricing plans! They just removed "Unity Plus" which is the lowest tier and costs about $50/month per dev with taxes. This is what most indies use. The next higher tier costs QUADROUPLE that amount and is also required to remove the universally loathed "made with Unity" splash screen. Oh! And if you have the personal tier, you won't be able to use Unity offline anymore! It now needs to do a license check every 3 days to function!

Unity's Ad Service

The fees will hit devs that do free-to-play mobile stuff especially hard, since they still have to pay the fees even when the players don't buy anything, meaning they could end up owing Unity more than they make in income. But what's this? If you use Unity's advertising service for your game, you will get a discount on the fees! The majority of mobile games run on Unity, meaning they are trying to monopolize the mobile ad market with this!

Publishers

Elysian Eclipse has caught the interest of a really big studio and publisher, who is considering to handle the marketing and publishing for the game. They are obviously planning to make the game come out big with sales, going beyond Unity's thresholds. But since the game is made in Unity, they probably now have to reconsider that carefully, since that would cause a massive amount of fees with Unity's new pricing model. So any game using Unity is now an instant turn-off for publishers, also massively hurting indie devs who don't reach that income threshold yet.

What will happen now?

So, Unity can't be trusted anymore and should be seen as a major threat to us and the gaming industry. Even if they walk back on some of these decisions, what has been said, has been said. They showed that they don't care about destroying thousands of games, as long as it nets them profit, so who knows what they are going to do next?

I will pause the development of Elysian Eclipse and release the Patreon demo, including all the prototypes like Aquatic Stage for free today. I canceled my subscription and it will run out next year, so Unity isn't getting a single cent from my games anymore.

Unreal Eclipse?

In the meantime I'll focus on improving my C++ skills, so I can work more effectively in Unreal Engine 5. Unreal is the current industry leader, offering much better solutions for graphics and performance for 3D games. It is also partially open source and completely free until you reach $1 million in revenue.

It is unlikely that I will be able to just translate the game from C# to C++ and port it over, since it is using a lot of engine-specific features. This basically means, we will start from scratch... I can't tell yet how much work this will be or in what ways the game will change.

But one thing, you can always be certain of: I will NEVER BETRAY MY DREAM. I will finish this project, no matter who or what stands in my way. I hope you will continue to support me on this journey.

That being said,

FUCK JOHN RICCITIELLO!!

Fucking cunt.

[all-hail-trudos]

Something interesting that's come to light: Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is being developed in Unreal Engine. I can't find which version, but either way this is actually excellent news, since RF5 was made in Unity. I don't know how many people know this, but despite being a go-to engine until recently, Unity is a pain to optimize for the Switch by most accounts. RF5 had a number of development problems, but the choice of game engine definitely did not help. (It's also appropriate that they used a game engine favored by indie studios when it sounds like they had a really small dev team). This might sound like nerdy rambling, but hear me out. The fact that RF:GoA is being made in Unreal Engine 4 or 5 instead says two really encouraging things!

1.) This is an engine favored by larger studios with a bigger budget. Not that we don't see indie games using UE, but primarily this is what AAA studios use if they're not running on their own custom solutions. It's safe to say this is a sign that Marvelous is genuinely investing in the series and wants it to go places.

2.) Unreal Engine is without question a lot more powerful than Unity but needs more tinkering out of the box to get it running right. More importantly, it doesn't have Unity's reputation of needing a lot of finessing to work right on the Switch. Back in 2017, most UE4 games were just not coming out on Switch, because optimizing things enough to run at anything more than 12 fps was impossible. That has since changed enormously, but the key takeaway here is: If Guardians of Azuma is made in UE but is still coming to the Switch, we're 100% going to get better performance than RF5.

Also, this is much wilder speculation, but the release date of Spring 2025 coincides with when we're finally for sure getting details on the Switch 2. There's a very good chance this game is either going to get a re-release on the next gen system, or we're going to see it get a backwards compatibility patch adding DLSS which WILL FOR SURE improve performance like 100x over.

In conclusion, Guardians of Azuma has many signs that point positively to the future of the series, and to running well on the Switch and, since it deserves a place in the conversation, the Steam Deck. Solid performance on the PC is obviously a given. Just buy a GTX4090 and you'll never see less than 60fps ever again. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[foone]

As the person I follow who does reverse engineering, do you have any suggestions for finding resources on reverse engineering Android apps?

Specifically, there's an app I'm playing with, where after seeing the structure of the "export as Markdown" output I want to know what the internal structure and representation of the data is. The end goal of understanding it is to be able to add certain kinds of data dynamically, rather than up front. That's certainly doable typing in raw markdown, but being able to do it "app style" would be more convenient.

The google Play Store entry does not mention any open source licenses, or looking for the source code and hopefully a git repo or something would have been my first step.

(I'll probably need to bang together a crappy app to do what I really want regardless, but maybe this app's data structure would be more convenient than doing so with markdown.)

So, android stuff:

First you need the APK. You can do some trickery with your phone to pull it over the ADB connection if you install the android SDK, but generally I just google "app name APK" and you'll find some greymarket site that'll give you a copy.

Secondly, APKs are just ZIP files (JAR files, technically, but JAR files are also just ZIP files!). Unzip them and you can find lots of interesting stuff, often.

For disassembling/decompiling them, my go-to program is jadx. It's a java decompiler that's been around a while and can natively open APK files and decompile them. There's some weirder new APKs that it can't handle (something to do with a newer bytecode revision, I think?) but I can't recall the details on how you handle those. Those are rare, in my experience. jadx is pretty good, but you'll occasionally find methods or entire classes that it just can't figure out, and it'll give you a bytecode dump. I don't yet have a good solution for those, other than "get good at reading JVM bytecode".

If you're dealing with games, another useful thing can be UABE and dotPeek. These are unity/C# tools, but you would be surprised how many android games (and non-games!) are actually unity under the hood.

Bluestacks can also be useful, because it'll let you run the app on your desktop and that can be handy for things like running WireShark to log all network traffic.

Speaking of logging, the other handy thing I've done is enabling android developer mode on my phone to get to one specific option: Bluetooth HCI snoop log.

Now, actually getting that log is tricky and varies from phone to phone, because for some reason manufacturers like to move it around, but it's one of the best ways to reverse engineer bluetooth communication stuff. You basically turn on the log and everything your phone does to communicate with your Smart Toothbrush or whatever will be logged to a file, then you can yank that file over and stuff it into Wireshark.

So... hopefully some of that is a helpful start? I've not done a huge amount of Android reversing so I'm not super familiar with the tools used, but these are the ones I've got on hand for when I do.

also sorry for all the horny robotgirl posters who saw "android reverse engineering" in the tags and thought this was gonna be about taking them apart with screwdrivers and rooting around in their insides. Not today!

[myfirstgamejam]

My First Game Jam 2024 is on!

The optional theme is: “Light”

Here’s a few tips and links to get the most out of the jam.

Make a dev log on the community!

A development blog is a blog in which a game developer or team talks about the process they’ve made over the course of the game’s creation. Maintaining a devblog keeps your audience in the know and helps facilitate productivity so you’ll have something to blog about. It also serves as a record of problems you encounter as well as the solutions you find for those problems.

Development logs are essentially the same thing, except we’ll be using the jam forums rather than a blog. However, you are free to use both the forums and your own blog as you develop your game.

Doing so is not necessary at all, but check out all the logs from last jam! In order to get the most out of your jam experience, it is vital that you interact with your fellow jammers and the community surrounding it. They’ll provide valuable feedback and support to help you along the way. So please, we encourage you to mingle, post in other logs, and of course post your own!

In addition, you are encouraged to add images and gifs. Here’s some programs to help facilitate that:

ScreenToGif

Licecap

Start your dev log today!

Respect your community!

Take a moment to review our code of conduct. We strive to create a safe, supportive, and productive environment, and we appreciate your efforts to make our community welcoming for everyone!

Post daily updates!

Post screenshots or fun mishaps to your dev log, twitter, tumblr, or your own blog to track your progress and get feedback. Tag your posts as #MyFirstGameJam so other jammers can find your work! To get the most exposure you can also tag #gamedev or #ScreenshotSaturday for Saturdays! Share your work and link back to your devlog to get feedback.

Manage your time and tasks!

We have a list of of useful time and task management tools for staying on top of your project. Set goals early and keep track of how fast it takes you to reach them!

Use our resources!

Still deciding on an engine? No problem. Check out this post to see what fits your project best or try the sortingh.at!

We have also started migrating our resource lists over to a new jam resources wiki! Here's some direct page links:

Unity resources

Godot resources

Gamemaker resources

RPGMaker resources

Ren'py resources

Twine resources

Free assets

Resources tag on blog

If you still have questions about the jam itself, take a look at our rules page!

Join the jam chat!

Want to share your work or ask for help? Or even just take a break from dev? Join discord chat here! (Please note you must be at least 14 years old to join!) Feel free to say hi and share your work! If you need help with a specific skill or engine, you can @/Unity or @/2D Art to notify mentors. If you think you would like to help other people with some part of games–join us as a mentor! You can get notifications when someone has a question about engines or skills you have expertise in!

Here’s a quick guide to how you can become a mentor.

Heed advice from previous jammers

This jam we took the time to write up a quick summary of advice from previous jammers: Know how to scope.

You can read about the number one game jam killer here!

Take care of yourself!

Game-making can be exhausting as well as rewarding! You are more important than your work, and we compiled a list of helpful tools for getting the most out of you!

Aaaand good luck!

Game dev can be exciting, frustrating, and extremely rewarding. We hope to give you the tools to help you succeed in your goals in the next two weeks!

[glugslove]

Pinned post

I'm SlugGlove, a solo game developer

I use #Rhell on this blog for anything of my games

I am currently working on the game Rhell, a magic puzzle game

Development for the game is mostly explained here on my YouTube

I post periodic updates on the games systems here

You can find me on twitter, bluesky, Instagram, and YouTube (all under the user 'slugglove' )

More info about the game under the read more~

Rhell is a single player puzzle game

It is created in Unity with C#

I model in blender and use clip studio for 2D sprites and animations in the game.

It is an adventure game where the player creates unique spells, by combining keywords (runes). And uses these spells to solve puzzles

It is semi open world where players explore and solve environmental puzzles, unlock more keywords, areas and items to progress further (kind of like a metroidvania)

The puzzles and world design are open ended and have multiple solutions, Rhell is designed to encourage players creativity so one puzzle will have many different solutions~

The art style is a super toony mixed media, with the player being 2D hand drawn sprites, while the world is 3D modelled (can you tell I REALLY love paper mario~)

[krisp-xyz]

Found your work. You inspired me to take another shot at technical art and graphics programming. Do you recommend any specific resources for getting started and beyond?

Thanks so much! Really glad I could inspire you to do that bc graphics and tech art things are so much fun :D

(Also sorry for the late response. I've been a bit busy and was also thinking about how I wanted to format this)

I'm mostly self taught with a lot of stuff and have done lots of research on a per-project basis, but Acerola and Freya Holmer are two of my favorite channels for learning graphics or technical art things. Shadertoy is also an amazing resource to not only create and view other's shaders, but learn about algorithms and see how people do things!

While I don't have many general resources. I'll steal these resources for graphics programming that Acerola shared in his discord server:

For getting started with graphics engine development: DX11: https://www.rastertek.com/tutdx11s3.html OpenGL: https://learnopengl.com/ DX12: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct3d12/directx-12-programming-guide Vulkan: https://vulkan-tutorial.com/

For getting started with shaders: catlikecoding: https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/rendering/ the book of shaders: https://thebookofshaders.com/ daniel ilett's image effects series: https://danielilett.com/2019-04-24-tut1-intro-smo/

For getting started with compute shaders: Kyle Halladay: http://kylehalladay.com/blog/tutorial/2014/06/27/Compute-Shaders-Are-Nifty.html Ronja: https://www.ronja-tutorials.com/post/050-compute-shader/ Three Eyed Games (this one teaches ray tracing AND compute shaders, what a bargain!): http://three-eyed-games.com/2018/05/03/gpu-ray-tracing-in-unity-part-1/

I also wanted to talk a little bit about I do research for projects!

A lot of my proficiency in shaders just comes from practice and slowly building a better understanding of how to best utilize the tools at my disposal, almost like each project is solving a puzzle and I want to find the most optimal solution I can come up with.

This is definitely easier said than done and while a lot of my proficiency comes from just doodling around with projects and practicing, I understand that "just practice more lol" is a boring and kinda unhelpful answer. When it comes to projects like my lighting engine, I came up with a lot of the algorithm stuff myself, but there were certainly lots of details that I learned about from past projects and research like ray marching (calculating the ray intersection of a distance function) and I learned about the jump flood algorithm from a tech artist friend (calculating distance functions from textures)

Each new algorithm you learn in various projects ends up being another tool in your toolbox, and each project becomes a combination of researching new tools and applying the tools you've learned in the past.

One last example. I made a Chladni plate simulation in blender (that thing where you put sand on a metal plate and play noises and it makes patterns) and it started with me researching and looking up chladni plates, I watched youtube videos related to why the sand forms the patterns it does, which ended up being due to how the sound waves displaced the plane. I googled some more and found the actual equation that represents it, and used it to simulate particle motion.

Figure out some projects you want to do and just do some googling or ask for help in game dev discord servers or whatever. Lot's of research on a per-project basis is honestly how you'll learn the most imo :3

[vioyume]

Aw man I just remembered that Crowsworn is being made in the unity engine, in fact I feel bad that many of the other games that are still in development in unity will suddenly have to change gears after this devastating news.

I hope those teams will find a solution and recover from the progress they will lose. There is the option to port it to another engine, though that will take time and honestly I don't blame them for having to delay their games.