Open World Gamedev 2023/005
Hi and welcome to the fifth issue of this newsletter! Today's date is 2023-06-14.
Well, from last time I had a bunch of city related resources remaining, so here they are! (Also many other ones!)
Share me: Boosting the newsletter helps more people find it so please do. 🥰 Here are the announcement posts for Twitter (opens in a new tab) and Mastodon (opens in a new tab).
Sidenote 1: I'm quite tempted to make next issue Immersive Sim-focused. Or possibly scalabilty-focused. If you have resources on these topics please send them my way!
📺 Videos
- [Art] The True Scale of Whiterun: Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! (opens in a new tab) by Leo Torres. ✨
- [Game Design] Fast Travel in D&D, and Keep It INTERESTING! (opens in a new tab) by Dungeon Masterpiece. ✨
- [Game Design] How Nintendo Solved Zelda's Open World Problem (opens in a new tab) by Game Maker's Toolkit. ✨
- [Game Design] How To Write Design Docs (opens in a new tab) by Timothy Cain. ✨
- [Game Design] Red Dead Redemption 2: Can Video Games Love Nature? (opens in a new tab) by Adam Srayi. ✨
- [Game Design] Starfield big world fails (opens in a new tab) by Anders Elfgren. ✨
- [Misc] 1999 Game Developers Conference Audio (opens in a new tab) by Jason Scott. ✨
- [Procedural Generation] Advanced Road Generation (opens in a new tab) by Erwin Heyms. ✨
- [Procedural Generation] How Unexplored 2 Generates Entire Fantasy Worlds from Scratch (opens in a new tab) by AI and Games. ✨
- [Procedural Generation] Other L-system Applications (opens in a new tab) by Geoffrey Datema.
- [Procedural Generation] Procedural Generation of a City in Unity (opens in a new tab) by TJGameDev. ✨
- [Procedural Generation] Unity Procedural Town - Theory of L-System (opens in a new tab) by Sunny Valley Studio.
- [Programming] Making a Traffic Simulator game (opens in a new tab) by Nikita Lisitsa. ✨
- [Rendering] Tile-based light culling compute shader (opens in a new tab) by Game Engine Series. ✨
- [Worldbuilding] Phandelver's Geographic Problem, Explained! (opens in a new tab) by Dungeon Masterpiece. ✨
- [Worldbuilding] The 7 Metals Of Fantasy (opens in a new tab) by Worldbuilding Corner. ✨
- [Worldbuilding] The Invisible Barrier Keeping Two Worlds Apart (opens in a new tab) by PBS Eons. ✨
- [Worldbuilding] The STRANGEST Knightly Armor: Unconventional Protection in the Middle Ages (opens in a new tab) by Modern History TV. ✨
- [Worldbuilding] You Probably Don't Know What Fairies Are (opens in a new tab) by Runesmith. ✨
Sidenote 2: My personal top tip this time is the video by Adam Srayi! Also I've been falling in love with Tim Cain's channel, so much good stuff coming at an incredible pace.
📜 Articles
- [Procedural Generation] A peek at L-Systems (opens in a new tab) by Mina Pêcheux.
- [Procedural Generation] Citygen: An Interactive System for Procedural City Generation (opens in a new tab) by George Kelly and Hugh McCabe.
- [Procedural Generation] L-Systems Map Generation Algorithm (opens in a new tab) by Dom.
- [Procedural Generation] Offset grid (opens in a new tab) by Red Blob Games and Chris Cox. ✨
- [Procedural Generation] Ortho-tiles (opens in a new tab) by Boris The Brave. ✨
- [Procedural Generation] Procedural generation of road networks using L-systems (opens in a new tab) by Martin Jormedal.
- [Procedural Generation] Procedural Modeling of Cities (opens in a new tab) by Yoav I H Parish and Pascal Müller.
- [Programming] Why it is time to start thinking of games as databases (opens in a new tab) by Sander Mertens. ✨
- [Rendering] Day Night Cycle using LUT in Fragment Shader of Materials (opens in a new tab) by Shahriar Shahrabi. ✨
- [Rendering] Deus Ex – Alpha Terrain (opens in a new tab) by Simon Trümpler. ✨
- [Worldbuilding] City Blocks: The Spaces In Between (opens in a new tab) by Charlie Gardner.
Sidenote 3: Definitely check out Sander's article. I think he's correct, and as a user of his Flecs library, it's the path I will attempt to take with Tides of Revival.
📦 Assets, Code & Tools
- [2D Art] Era of Fantasy: Village Props - Pixelart Asset Pack (opens in a new tab) by Nauris. ✨
- [Audio] Kenney's Audio (opens in a new tab) by Kenney.
- [Book] Procedural Content Generation via Machine Learning (opens in a new tab) by Matthew Guzdial et al. ✨
- [Book] So You Want to Be a Game Master? (opens in a new tab) by Justin Alexander. ✨
- [Library] jc_voronoi (opens in a new tab) by Mathias Westerdahl.
- [Tool] Hex grid generator (opens in a new tab) by Joel Uckelman.
- [Tool] Interactive Game Maps (opens in a new tab) by MapGenie.
- [Tool] Procedural City Generator (opens in a new tab) by ProbableTrain.
- [Tool] Random Roadside Inn Generator (opens in a new tab) by The Oracular Somnambulist. ✨
- [Tool] Redwyrm's Tavern Menu (opens in a new tab) by Redwyrm. ✨
- [Tool] Wang Tileset Creator (opens in a new tab) by Boris The Brave. ✨
Sidenote 4: Boris's tile tool is awesome! I also can't resist humble-bragging and mention that jc_voronoi, the best C voronoi library out there, is made by my friend Mathias!
📘 Physical Products!
- [Content] Herbalist's Primer (opens in a new tab). Mini-review: Fantasy-focused Florapedia that at first glance looks like a real botanical resource but has fun magical properties and quest hooks.
Check out my video review of Herbalist's Primer here!
😍 Cool Nuggets ✨
- Advanced noise algorithm dream (opens in a new tab)
- An quaint island being procedurally generated (opens in a new tab)
- Animal Size Adaptation (opens in a new tab)
- Blender For Artists (opens in a new tab)
- Blobby bone generation (opens in a new tab)
- Creatures in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (opens in a new tab)
- Diamond-Square alternative (opens in a new tab)
- Elder Scrolls lore (opens in a new tab)
- GPU hardware resources (opens in a new tab)
- GPU-based hydraulic erosion (opens in a new tab)
- Grass as hair (opens in a new tab)
- Hashed alpha testing for terrain vegetation coverage (opens in a new tab)
- How does grass work? (opens in a new tab)
- How Voronoi Noise Became a Game-Changer in Video Games (opens in a new tab)
- Life-sized voxel Mars (opens in a new tab)
- Non-destructive terrain sculpting (opens in a new tab)
- On generated dialogues (opens in a new tab)
- On leading legions or being a peasant (opens in a new tab)
- On texel density (opens in a new tab)
- Orientation along a curve (opens in a new tab)
- Potato Lumen (opens in a new tab)
- River straightness (opens in a new tab)
- Sharing the same material across a game (opens in a new tab)
- Shooting a bow (opens in a new tab)
- Stylized hex world (opens in a new tab)
- Stylized Tree (opens in a new tab)
- Volumetric fog using froxels (opens in a new tab)
- Wilderness travel mechanics (opens in a new tab)
Sidenote 5: Love this section. Hope you find someone new to follow! 🤩
🎁 Bonus Stuff
- [Art] Creating Pixel Environments (opens in a new tab) by Thomas van den Berg. ✨
- [Management] Mentorship Cheat Code: Raising Diverse Talent in the Games Industry (opens in a new tab) by Jim Huntley, Jenn Panattoni, Latoya Peterson, Kahlief Adams, and Meggan Scavio. ✨
- [Marketing] No-Budget DIY Marketing for Indie Games (opens in a new tab) by Michelle Lega. ✨
- [Misc] New Engine Sneak Peek (opens in a new tab) by Yacht Club Games. ✨
- [Production] How To Build A Motivated Team (opens in a new tab) by Timothy Cain. ✨
- [Programming] Streaming containers (opens in a new tab) by Dennis Gustafsson. ✨
- [Rendering] I Tried Recreating Counter Strike 2's Smoke Grenades (opens in a new tab) by Acerola. ✨
- [Rendering] Line Rendering Deep Overview (opens in a new tab) by Panthavma. ✨
- [Rendering] Peeling Back The Varnish: The Graphics Of Diablo IV (opens in a new tab) by Blizzard Entertainment. ✨
Endnote 1: Still amazed how every time each issue becomes huge! Even with a theme. Split into two!
Endnote 2: As always, thanks for reading! 😀 I'm on Twitter (opens in a new tab), Mastodon (opens in a new tab), Youtube (opens in a new tab).
You can also come and chat to me and a bunch of other open worlders over at our Open World Gamedev / Tides of Revival Discord server (opens in a new tab). Many of the resources get posted and discussed there first.