Open World Gamedev 2023/001

Hi and welcome to the inaugural issue of this newsletter! Today's date is 2023-02-08.

The aim is twofold:

• Every issue (monthly-ish?) will have lots of cool resources relating to open world game development. (I'm particularly interested in single-player, procedural generation, and systematic game design!)
• The web site will, as a result, in and of itself, in time, be a fantastic resource for anyone interested in open world game development.

You can read more here! If you like what you see, like and subscribe, yadayada, and also, please let us know what you think😀 Since this is the first one I am particularly interested in if you think it's diverse enough - are there are any categories I have totally missed? Any authors or creators I should be aware of? I really want this to be a newsletter for anyone interested in the subject!

Let's get started!

📺 Videos

• [Algorithms] The Absurd Usefulness of Noise in Game Development (opens in a new tab) by SimonDev.
• [Game Design] Dungeon Design: Part 1 (opens in a new tab) by Seth Skorskowsky. ✨📕
• [Game Design] Sandboxing! (opens in a new tab) by Matthew Colville. ✨📕
• [Game Design] Sunset Overdrive: Transitioning from Linear to Open World Design (opens in a new tab) by Liz England.
• [Interview] The Creator Of The Elder Scrolls, Sheogorath Himself - Ted Peterson Interview (opens in a new tab) by Camelworks. ✨
• [Rendering] Terrain Rendering in 'Far Cry 5' (opens in a new tab) by Jeremy Moore.
• [Technical Art] Dynamic Seasons and Weather Developer Chat (opens in a new tab) by Ashes of Creation.
• [Worldbuilding] Did medieval peasants travel? (opens in a new tab) by Modern History TV.
• [Worldbuilding] Medieval transport - the beginners' guide (opens in a new tab) by Lindybeige.
• [Worldbuilding] The most VITAL Part of Fantasy World Building - Forests (opens in a new tab) by Stoneworks. ✨

📜 Articles

• [AI] RTS devlog #9: Extreme pathfinding (opens in a new tab) by Ashley Gullen. ✨
• [Algorithms] Infinite Quadtrees - Fractal Coordinates (opens in a new tab) by Boris The Brave / Peter Mawhorter. ✨
• [Game Design] "Fun" in game design, exemplified with Fast Travel (opens in a new tab) by yours truly.
• [Game Design] Hexcrawl Article Series (opens in a new tab) by Justin Alexander. ✨📕
• [Procedural Generation] Dice Based Biome Generator (opens in a new tab) by wangleyeye. ✨
• [Procedural Generation] Overworld map generation (opens in a new tab) by Babis Koniaris. ✨
• [Procedural Generation] Procedural Generation And Rendering Of Large-Scale Open-World Environments (opens in a new tab) by Ian Dunn.
• [Procedural Generation] So you want to build a generator… (opens in a new tab) by Kate Compton.
• [Programming] How Dwarf Fortress is Built (opens in a new tab) by Ryan Donovan.
• [Rendering] Creating Vast Game Worlds (opens in a new tab) by Emil Persson.
• [Worldbuilding] Why Morrowind Is Still The Best Fantasy World in Gaming (opens in a new tab) by Patrick Arthur O'Driscoll. ✨

📦 Assets, Code & Tools

• [3D Art] Ultimate Stylized Nature Pack (opens in a new tab) by Quaternius.
• [Animation] AccuRig -- Finally A Mixamo Killer? (opens in a new tab). Auto-rigging tool overview by GameFromScratch. ✨
• [Audio] Wwise Now Free for Indie Developers (opens in a new tab) by GameFromScratch. ✨
• [Music] Winter's Flame (opens in a new tab) by Robo Music Studios.
• [Procedural Generation] Octavia noise (opens in a new tab): A new fractal noise algorithm by Loren Schmidt. ✨
• [Rendering] Precomputed Atmospheric Scattering (opens in a new tab) by Eric Bruneton.
• [Writing] Obsidian (opens in a new tab): A wiki-like offline editor with plugin and graph support

📘 Books!

• [Procedural Generation] Filling in the Blanks (opens in a new tab). Mini-review: Great ruleset & content for how to populate a fantasy world.
• [Worldbuilding] City Builder: A Guide to Designing Communities (opens in a new tab). Mini-review: Love this book, has a hundred plus locations you might find in an medieval/fantasy town with descriptions of how they operate.

😍 Cool Nuggets

• Minecraft map (opens in a new tab): Handmade map. Discussion here (opens in a new tab). ✨
• Tiny Glade (opens in a new tab): Drawing roads and manipulating terrain heights in an intuitive and pretty way. ✨
• Perilous Shores (opens in a new tab): Update 1.5.0: area labels and conlang toponyms. ✨

🎁 Bonus Stuff

• [Animation] A Beginners Guide to Dual-Quaternions (opens in a new tab) by Ben Kenwright.
• [Community Management] Communicating Major Changes to Players (opens in a new tab) by Victoria Tran.
• [Community Management] How to Record Webcam and Gameplay Separately (opens in a new tab) by Nathan Rizzuti.
• [Programming] Bit Twiddling Hacks (opens in a new tab). by Sean Eron Anderson.
• [Programming] Bitfiddling tricks & discussion (opens in a new tab). ✨
• [Rendering] Teardown Frame Teardown (opens in a new tab) by Steven Wittens. ✨

🕹 Open World Game News

• Ardenfall (opens in a new tab): Indie open world RPG with a demo! Inspired by the Elder Scrolls and Fallout New Vegas. Follow Joshua Steinhauer here (opens in a new tab). ✨
• Caves of Qud (opens in a new tab): PC Gamer article on this amazing huge open world roguelike. Follow Brian Bucklew here (opens in a new tab).
• Daggerfall Unity (opens in a new tab): Remake of the old classic. Follow Gavin Clayton here (opens in a new tab).
• Dwarf Fortress (opens in a new tab): DF is a major inspiration! Follow Zach Adams here (opens in a new tab).
• Gedonia (opens in a new tab): Open world fantasy RPG just recently released Update 1.2. Follow Oleg Kazakov here (opens in a new tab).
• HelloWorlds (opens in a new tab): Cool online planet generator. Follow Kenneth Pirman here (opens in a new tab).
• Sigil of Kings (opens in a new tab): Announcement trailer for this huge open world top-down RPG. Follow Babis Koniaris here (opens in a new tab).
• The Wayward Realms (opens in a new tab): The spiritual successor to Daggerfall. Really looking forward to this! Follow Ted Peterson here (opens in a new tab).
• Tides of Revival (opens in a new tab): Update video for 2022 and looking forward into 2023 and 2024. (Yes, this is my project! 😀) ✨
• Wilderless (opens in a new tab): Released recently into Early Access. Cozy game that is just lovely to stroll around in. You can find it. Follow Robert Kabwe here (opens in a new tab). ✨
• Wildlander (opens in a new tab): One Year Anniversary Stream. A huge handcrafted modpack for Skyrim with a focus on simulation and survival. Follow Dylan Perry here (opens in a new tab). ✨