Engines Database Newsletter #41

Welcome to Engines Database Newsletter! This is a newsletter in which I talk gamedev tech, news and articles from the week before.

This week we have Unity 6.6 update, the highest scores you can have in SimCity, literally my leg in high resolution, decompiling Snowboard Kids using coding agents, and more!

Gamedevs and their tools

Since my last Gamedev Layoff ™️, I've had some time to get my creativity juices running again on gamejams. That's what I'd like to say, but the first gamejam I participated in a while was last weekend. And I created this fellow here.

Great use of my creativity juices if I say so myself.

It's a frog that was bitten by a radioactive man, and thus became Manfrog. (I know this looks like it's going off a tangent, but bear with me here)

The thing I'm most interested about in Engines Database is discussing gamedev tech, specially the weird ways to make games. The raison d'être of this website is to be a collection of tools to create games, because different tools inspire games to be created in different ways, and they play with different limitations to create a game with (artificial limitations or not, such the cases of fantasy consoles and retro game engines). I want to test many different tools to talk about them here, and one I could test last gamejam involves AI - a little bit.

3D modeling and faux-photogrammetry

I have some experience with photogrammetry. Quite random, it was something I was curious about some time ago, and I managed to make some cool experiments on trying to use a 3D model of my own in a fighting game (more about that in a later newsletter). The thing is: quality photogrammetry requires some setup to take pictures from multiple angles of a static object. That is true even with when using RealityScan, today what I believe is the most friendly way to create 3D models from photos (if you are OK not doing so locally, as the 3D model is created in the Cloud).

My idea of Manfrog was to create a low-poly body of a frog (check, at least as far as my low-poly skills go) with hyperrealistic human legs. My human legs, to be exact, because of-course I thought it would be very funny to do so. But doing the jam solo meant:

• Doing it fast.
• Doing it locally (ain't giving a photo of my leg to a third-party service).
• Doing it solo.

I'd only barely be able to take a single photo of my own leg, but I couldn't do different shots from other angles without the leg moving. So this was a case where using generative AI to extrapolate the leg model and texture worked - I used a local workflow with a lightweight model, the input the leg photo with some processing to cut out the background (and myself), and some processing on Blender to fix the mesh, recreate topology, and reapply the texture.

Slightly NSFW I guess, but I haven't made the "click to show" image filter yet 🙏

To be fair, the end result is not good, but it is definitely good enough (specially for a gamejam). I'm still writing a post describing the process a bit more, so stay tuned! And of course, you can play Go Go Manfrog in the browser right now.

Engine Updates

Unity 6.6 Update

Unity 6.6 is just out of the oven without much of a fanfare, but ending the 6.3 lifecycle before the next LTS and, more excitingly, Unity 7.0.

(source: Unity Unite event slide)

There are still plenty of new features as you can check on the changelogs, though. Notable updates include the addition of a search bar to the Animation window, the inclusion of Animation Rigging and Timeline as core packages, and the introduction of a content directory system for content builds. The release also brings many improvements to Unity Entities system, so if you want to check on Unity ECS, now might be a good time.

GameFromScratch never fails and made good content about Unity 6.6 update you can check here.

RPG Architect now exports to the browser

Another Engine you might want to take a look at your next gamejam, RPG Architect now exports to the browser, announced at their August Wrap-Up post.

(source: RPG Architect)

Some call-to-action to test it, so if you are interested in making RPG's, go test it. Also, documentation has been improved with screenshots and annotations, minimaps now include clipping, masking, and rotation features, and many more post-processing effects and bug fixes.

S&Box is addressing Game Discoverability

S&Box is GMod spiritual successor, and on their newest engine update post, one of the biggest points standing out is the fact that S&Box is trying to fix game discoverability, a problem that any platform that mostly depends on User Generated content has. The interesting bit is that now the discoverability algorithm has a lot of coverage (around 70% according to the post; 30% are games that have incomplete information, such as games with no thumbnails) - that means that, as long as you finish your game, complete its profile, and test it with a couple of friends, the algorithm is gonna make sure its gonna appear to at least some of the players.

Ceramic reaches v2.2.0 with loads of features

Ceramic is a 2D Game Engine that uses the Haxe programming language to export to pretty much everywhere you can imagine, including all platforms that Unity supports. v2.2.0 introduces a reworked Dear ImGui integration, audio filters as standalone worklets, concurrent garbage collection, and SIMD-optimized rendering. It also includes CPPIA support, iOS fixes, and various improvements and bug fixes across runtime, tools, and other areas.

Also from Engines Database Aggregator

• A Perfect SimCity. Using a FOSS port of SimCity, this is an amazing article analyzing the different strategies to get the highest score possible in SimCity (I didn't know SimCity had a score in the first place and now I'm glad The Sims don't have one).
• An absolute bare minimum of interactivity. Short and sweet post on Pong influence in the Odyssey era.
• ⭐️Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days. The tales of a retro-game hacker trying to decompile Snowboard Kids for Nintendo 64. Really nice read, most of it was about the coding agents strategy used (coding agents are really good at decompiling stuff, most because of their brute-force nature). Also, it just happens that Snowboard Kids was one of my favorite Nintendo 64 games.
• Yoshitaka Amano on Creating Art That Transcends Games, Anime, and Generations. An amazing interview with Yoshitaka Amano, the legendary artist mostly known in the gaming world for his Final Fantasy concepts and illustrations.

Remember to comment and vote on new entries for the next Newsletter! And if you want to submit a link so I can talk about it here, consider becoming a supporter!

Human in the Loop

Henrique here! I changed the Newsletter name.

It's a simple change but it reflects some of the things I'm trying to convey here. The previous name ("This Week in Game Engines") was quite good, but I called it like this because initially, my only intention was to post links and be a curator for Game Engine related content, similarly to what This Week in Rust does (hence the name). Now, I feel like I'm comfortable enough with my own writing to explore a bit more some gamedev tech ideas (specially when I have first hand experience at something, I'd love to write a little bit about it here).

Of course, the newsletter will still have Game Engine news. But I'd like to give some spotlight to the many amazing indie game engines I'm listing on the website, stuff that game developers can use to make games in weird, new and inspiring ways. Tools only go so far, but in the end, what I'm really interested in exploring is the craft of making games. It just happens that the tools are really fun to play with too.

That's it from me. Here, have some frog.

See you next week!

Missed something?

If you have any suggestions, send me feedback on Mastodon, drop an email at henriquelalves@enginesdatabase.com, or just comment below! And if you want to add a new game engine to the website, consider suggesting a new Game Engine.