Open World Gamedev 2023/003
Hi and welcome to the third issue of this newsletter! It's a charm! Today's date is 2023-04-07.
There are a few mini-themes this time: Fast travel, optimization, interpolation! Next time I think I'm going to try to get a city theme going. I already have a few resources on that in the pipe but more are appreciated. π
Sidenote: There sure are a lot of hot takes on Fast Travel out there. I considered including all of the ones I found but I think that'd be overwhelming, so I'll be sprinkling them throughout future issues instead.
Sidenote 2: I decided to not include any open world game news this time around. Maybe I'll do it again at some point but I think maybe I'll just do it as cool nuggets or as a proper notice up here if it's a big announcement.
πΊ Videos
- [Game Design] I Hate Fast Travel (opens in a new tab) by Gopher.
- [Game Design] The truth about fast travel (opens in a new tab) by Viva La Dirt League.
- [Game Design] What's the Deal with Fast Travel? (opens in a new tab) by Design Doc. β¨
- [Procedural Generation] Painting a Landscape with Maths (opens in a new tab) by Inigo Quilez.
- [Procedural Generation] Procedural Map Generation Techniques (opens in a new tab) by Herbert Wolverson.
- [Procedural Generation] Reinventing Minecraft world generation (opens in a new tab) by Henrik Kniberg.
- [Procedural Generation] Stealing the Ship (opens in a new tab) by Justin Alexander.
- [Programming] Practical Optimizations (opens in a new tab) by Jason Booth. β¨
- [Programming] Rendering 10K Objects on Low-End Mobile Devices (opens in a new tab) by Jason Booth.
- [Programming] Techniques to Profile and Optimize Multithreaded C++ Code (opens in a new tab) by Gedalia Pasternak.
- [Worldbuilding] From Baldur's Gate to Waterdeep: The Geopolitics of Faerun (opens in a new tab) by Dungeon Masterpiece.
- [Worldbuilding] How To Design Realistic Climates 1 (opens in a new tab) by Artifexian.
- [Worldbuilding] TOP Medieval MYTHS (opens in a new tab) by Modern History TV. β¨
- [Worldbuilding] Why 80% of New Zealand is Empty (opens in a new tab) by RealLifeLore. β¨
Sidenote 3: The Geopolitics one is banger! Honestly there are a lot of bangers but this one is definitely up there among the bangiest this time.
π Articles
- [AI] Environment Query System Overview (opens in a new tab) by Unreal Engine.
- [AI] Picking A Good Spot: Naughty Dog's Post System (opens in a new tab) by Ming-Lun "Allen" Chou. β¨
- [Game Design] Travelling in a Megadungeon Game (opens in a new tab) by Silver Bulette.
- [Game Design] When Spreadsheets Aren't Enough: A Framework For Approaching System Visualization (opens in a new tab) by Polaris. β¨
- [Procedural Generation] ProcGen Space (opens in a new tab) by Theobald Beyer.
- [Procedural Generation] Townscaper Grid (opens in a new tab) by Boris The Brave. β¨
- [Procedural Generation] Value Noise Derivatives (opens in a new tab) by Inigo Quilez.
- [Rendering] Half baked: Dynamic Occlusion Culling by Angelo Pesce. β¨
- [Rendering] Procedural 3D mesh generation in a 64kB intro (opens in a new tab) by Ctrl-Alt-Test. β¨
- [Rendering] Stylized Water Shader (opens in a new tab) by Alexander Ameye. β¨
- [Rendering] Waves (opens in a new tab) by Catlike Coding.
π¦ Assets, Code & Tools
- [Art] KayKit - Dungeon Remastered Pack (opens in a new tab) by Kay Lousberg. β¨
- [Audio] 1000 [6GB] Free Sound Effects (opens in a new tab) by PMSFX. β¨
- [Audio] 40GB+ of High Quality Sound Effects (opens in a new tab) by Sonniss. β¨
- [Book] The Nature of Code (opens in a new tab) by Daniel Shiffman.
- [Debugging] PNG file chunk inspector (opens in a new tab) by Nayuki.
- [Engine] State of Unreal GDC 2023 (opens in a new tab) by Unreal Engine. β¨
- [Map Making] The Maps Bonanza Software Bundle (opens in a new tab) by Humble Bundle. β¨
- [Procedural Generation] Aperiodic Monotile (opens in a new tab) by Ricky Reusser. β¨
- [Rendering] Open source volumetric clouds (opens in a new tab) by Dihara Wijetunga. β¨
- [Wiki] Game design wiki (opens in a new tab) by Rosa Carbo-Mascarell. β¨
π Physical Products!
- [Content] Sidequest Decks (opens in a new tab). Mini-review: Decks with hundreds of bite-sized quests. Good stuff!
- [Mechanics] Downtime in Zyan (opens in a new tab). Mini-review: Short but sweet ideas for how to mechanize the player running an institution.
Sidenote 4: TLDR? Here is this week's video review! (Note to self: Remember to switch thumbnail and/or to move the greenscreen from the toilet.)
π Cool Nuggets β¨
- A procedural world's simulated economy with supply & demand heatmaps (opens in a new tab)
- Aperiodic monotiles for caves (opens in a new tab)
- Cliff falls (opens in a new tab)
- Decals to hide tree seams (opens in a new tab)
- Fluid sim on heightmaps (opens in a new tab)
- Generated cavern by forest (opens in a new tab)
- Hex based terrain (opens in a new tab)
- Islands from snow (opens in a new tab)
- Occlusion discussion (opens in a new tab)
- Procedurally placed castle pieces (opens in a new tab)
- Scripts to generate assets (opens in a new tab)
- Tides of Revival: Forest offline generation (opens in a new tab)
- Tides of Revival: World patch debug server (opens in a new tab)
- Tree growth with obstacles (opens in a new tab)
- Voronoi city (opens in a new tab)
- Weather system (opens in a new tab)
Sidenote 5: Wait, aren't three of those mine?! Yes. Deal with it. π
π Bonus Stuff
- [Math] Biarc Interpolation (opens in a new tab) by Ryan Juckett.
- [Math] Easings (opens in a new tab) by Andrey Sitnik and Ivan Solovev.
- [Math] Getting There in Style (opens in a new tab) by Fletcher Dunn.
- [Math] Linear Interpolation (opens in a new tab) by Alan Zucconi.
- [Production] Tool Design Roundtables at GDC 2023 (opens in a new tab) by Robin-Yann Storm. β¨
- [Programming] How not to design a UI library (opens in a new tab) by Nikita Lisitsa. β¨
- [Programming] What a good debugger can do (opens in a new tab) by Andy Hippo. β¨
Endnote: Thanks for reading! π You can follow me on the bird site (opens in a new tab) or on the extinct elephant site (opens in a new tab). You can also come and chat to me and a bunch of other open worlders over at our server at the disagreement between people program (opens in a new tab).