Tag: Resources

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Humble Be A Creative Superhero Bundle on Now

There is a new Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, specifically the artists among us, in the form of the Be A Creative Superhero Bundle. The primary stars of this bundle are the suite of Corel graphics applications, specifically Painter 2020, Particle Shop and PaintShop, as well as Corel Draw Suite, which unfortunately is only a 6-month subscription. As with all Humble Bundles, this one is organized into tiers, and the tiers in this bundle are:

1$ Tier

  • AfterShot Standard

25$ Tier

  • PaintShop Pro 2020
  • ParticleShop + 11 Brushes
  • 6 extensions for PaintShop Pro

30$ Tier

  • Corel CAD 2019
  • Painter 2020
  • CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2020 6-month sub
  • 10 Brush packs
  • Light Leak Scripts for PaintShop Pro 2020

It should be noted earlier versions of Painter have been featured in prior bundles, but never 2020. PaintShop 2020 was also featured in a prior bundle so be sure to check your Humble inventory before purchasing. As with all Humbles you get to decide how your money is allocated between Humble, charity, the publisher and if you so choose (and thanks so much if you do) to support GFS by using this link. You can learn more about this bundle in the video below.

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Miniaudio — Open Source Single File C Audio Library

Miniaudio is a cross platform open source C library for implementing low level audio functionality including playback and capture. MiniAudio is released under either public domain or MIT No Attribution licenses and amazingly enough is implemented as a single .H file with no external dependencies (except optionally stb_orbis if Ogg Vorbis format support is desired).

Miniaudio features include:

  • Your choice of either public domain or MIT No Attribution.
  • Entirely contained within a single file for easy integration into your source tree.
  • No external dependencies except for the C standard library and backend libraries.
  • Written in C and compilable as C++, enabling miniaudio to work on almost all compilers.
  • Supports all major desktop and mobile platforms, with multiple backends for maximum compatibility.
  • Supports playback, capture, full-duplex and loopback (WASAPI only).
  • Device enumeration for connecting to specific devices, not just defaults.
  • Connect to multiple devices at once.
  • Shared and exclusive mode on supported backends.
  • Backend-specific configuration options.
  • Device capability querying.
  • Automatic data conversion between your application and the internal device.
  • Sample format conversion with optional dithering.
  • Channel conversion and channel mapping.
  • Resampling with support for multiple algorithms.
    • Simple linear resampling with anti-aliasing.
    • Optional Speex resampling (must opt-in).
  • Filters.
    • Biquad
    • Low-pass (first, second and high order)
    • High-pass (first, second and high order)
    • Second order band-pass
    • Second order notch
    • Second order peaking
    • Second order low shelf
    • Second order high shelf
  • Waveform generation.
    • Sine
    • Square
    • Triangle
    • Sawtooth
  • Noise generation.
    • White
    • Pink
    • Brownian
  • Decoding
    • WAV
    • FLAC
    • MP3
    • Vorbis via stb_vorbis (not built in – must be included separately).
  • Encoding
  • Lock free ring buffer (single producer, single consumer).

Miniaudio is available on GitHub and has solid documentation available here and several examples available here. Installation consists of downloading and #include’ing the header and that is it, making this a remarkably simple library to get started using. There are also unofficial language bindings for Go, Rust and Python available as well. You can learn more about the Miniaudio library in the video below (or view here on Odysee).

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MagicaVoxel 0.99.6.2 Released

The popular free Voxel application MagicaVoxel just got a new release, 0.99.6.2. This release isn’t just significant for adding a large number of features added, but also because it may be the last release we see for quite some time.

A tweet sequence from @ephtracy, MagicaVoxel’s creator:

Now back to the release, details from the release notes:

New Unified Material System[06/30/2020]

  • Blend Material: weighted blending Metal/Plastic/Glass/Cloud materials (similar to Disney Principled BRDF).
  • SSS Material: sub-surface scattering. transparency tp control light transmission. density to control light scattering.
  • Aborb/Scatter/Emissive Media Material: emissive cloud. can be contained in the glass with ior > 1.
  • Improved Alpha Blending: glass material, absorb media type, density = 0, ior = 0, transparency > 0

New Transform and Voxel Shader Brushes[09/26/2020]

  • Refactored the brush menu and add icons.
  • Voxel Shader Brush to use Voxel Shaders interactively and directly.
  • Transform->Scale Brush : live scale models, point sampled, low quality but fast.
  • Transform->Wrap Brush : live wrap/crop models with mirroring and spacing modes.
  • Geometry Mode->Line/Square/Circle: the old center mode is combined with the old line mode
  • World Editor->Pattern and Wrap Brush: can create patterns from selected object (check the pattern model menu on the right panel).

Rotate Transform Brush [09/26/2020]

  • Axis rotate : press any inner circle.
  • Screen rotate : press the outer circle.
  • Sphere rotate : press any point inside the outer circle.
  • Snap rotate : press SHIFT or SHIFT+ALT to snap angle to multiple of 5 or 15.

Voxel Shader[09/13/2020]

  • no need to define id for arguments.
  • use var to define alias of arguments. same as float var = i_args[id];.
  • can import and export arguments values.
  • can display compile errors in the console window.
  • can get color selections via: color_sel().
  • can get palette color via: palette().
  • increase number of arguments to 16.
  • add interation number to the interface.

Editing[09/26/2020]

  • Boolean operations for groups and objects.
  • Modify->Mask/Texture: mask and texture models with pattern models.
  • Sort: only sorts selected colors if number of selection is greater than one.
  • command log: display count of models, scene size, count of voxels for each color, etc.
  • command shear [axis] [scale] [scale] shear model, e.g. shear z 0.2 0.2 .

Camera Control Panel[09/26/2020]

  • click the arrow on the bottom bar to show the camera control panel.
  • can change camera global/local position, pitch/yaw/roll angles, save/load camera slots, etc.
  • press SHIFT to change values in smaller steps.
  • the nine values can also be modified by cmds cam x/y/z tx/ty/tz rx/ry/rz

Pattern Pack[09/26/2020]

  • can load all the models in a project as a pattern pack.
  • can create pattern pack from multiple selected objects.
  • use left/right mouse button to rotate the preview model; use mouse wheel to zoom in/out.
  • use 1/2 to select previous/next color in the palette.
  • use 3/4
  • use ctrl+alt to switch to pattern tool.
  • use ctrl to switch to free move tool.
  • use ESC to switch between pattern/move brush and select brush in the world editor.

You can learn more about the release in the video below. Hopefully this doesn’t mark the final release and after a long well earned pause, MagicaVoxel development will resume!

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LEd — Awesome New Level Editor From Dead Cells Creator

LEd is a new open source level editor written in the Haxe language by a developer at Motion Twin, using lessons learned creating games such as Dead Cells. LEd is designed to be user friendly and from my experiences it succeeds.

Key details of LEd:

  • Easy to use: modern UI with a strong focus on ease-of-use and quality-of-life features.
  • Universal and agnostic: compatible with all languages (not only Haxe) and game frameworks in the world
  • JSON: easy to parse file format for any game-engine out there (I promise it’s actually really easy). Haxe isn’t required.
  • Customizable layers: Integer grid layers, Tile layers and Entity layers support
  • Auto-layers: paint your collision map and see the grass, textures and all the small details being drawn automatically!
  • Entities: fully customizable Entity with custom properties (ex: you can have a “Mob” entity, with a “hitPoints” field, which is an Integer limited to [0,10] bounds).
  • Enums: you can define an enumeration (ex: an “ItemType” enum with “Money”, “Ammo”, “Gun” values) and use this enum in your entity custom fields.
  • External enums: enums can be imported and synced directly from Haxe source code files (HX file)!
  • HTML5: LEd is built around modern web standards.
  • Auto update: you get notified as soon as a stable update is released and it’s up to you to install it when you’re ready, with a single click.
  • LEd loves Haxe: a powerful Haxe API which gives you access to fully typed values from your levels. It avoids mistakes like mistyping, renaming or removals: you see errors during compilation, not at runtime.

You can see LEd in action in the video below. The project is open source under the MIT license and hosted on GitHub.

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Unity Humble Bundle Improved With 6 New Assets

The ongoing  Unity Game Dev Humble Bundle got even better today with the addition of 6 new assets. Don’t worry if you already purchased the bundle, you will receive all of the added assets up to the tier you purchased.

The new assets added to the pack include:

  • SNAPS Prototype Asian Garden
  • SNAPS Prototype Car Park
  • SNAPS Prototype SciFi Urban
  • SNAPS HD Asian Garden
  • SNAPS HD SciFi Urban
  • SNAPS HD Car Park

The prototype assets are low polygon models ideal for lower end hardware or as the name implies level prototyping. The HD kits on the other hand contain high quality HDRP pipeline assets for use in a commercial grade game. It should be noted that the HD packs are not currently updated to the most current HDRP and some breakage may occur. Unity have stated they intend to update the assets to the most current Unity version soon. You can learn more about the additions and see the SciFi Urban HD asset in action in the video below.

In addition to the new assets, we have already covered several of the assets included in this bundling including UModeler, Clayxels and the highly recommended Peek.

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VPainter For Godot

VPainter is an open source free add-on for the Godot game engine that enables you to paint directly on 3D models. There are two modes of operation, one is to paint on the vertices of the mesh, while the second involves blending up to 4 different textures into one seamless material.

VPainter is open source MIT licensed and hosted on GitHub. To get started, merely clone (git clone _____) the repository https://github.com/tomankirilov/VPainter.git.

Next, copy the addons folder into your Godot project, merging it if you already have an addons directory.

Next, fire up the Godot Engine, go to Project->Project Settings, then select the Plugins tab and click enable:

Enabling an Add-on in Godot.

VPainter is now enabled and will appear in the editor window when a MeshInstance is selected. For further details on how to use VPainter or to simply see it in action, check out the video below.

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Free Books From Fanatical Celebrating the Day of the Programmer

I didn’t even realize this was a thing, but as a programmer, I’m not going to complain. Apparently September the 12th, the 28 th day, or 0x100 in Hexadecimal is the Day of the Programmer, at least in Russia where it is formally recognized.

To celebrate this someone… arbitrary day, Fanatical are giving away a couple of ebooks of interest to developers, Learn Java 12 Programming, Expert Python Programming and Beginning C++ Programming. Additionally they are giving a 20% off discount code for their long running Packt Book Bundles, that we previously covered in more depth here and here. Simply log into (or create) a Fanatical account and “buy” the three books for free. Be sure to get them before this expires Sept 18th!

You can learn more about the bundle in the video below.