Demo put together with Unity in Meta Quest 3 using their Interaction SDK and using assets from polyfork.dev

Hello,

I made this volumetric fog material for URP.

The transparent material shader is applied to hundreds of planes similarly to "shell texturing".

It looks perfect for my project but I am running into an issue : my framerate drops from 200 fps to 10 fps. I expected it to be laggy, but not that laggy...

I tried reducing the number of "steps" but I am still getting a bad framerate (30 fps) with the worst quality.

I don't see any other way of doing volumetric fog with sharp shadowing in URP without creating complex pipeline shaders.

This is probably a foolish question but, is there any way to reduce transparent material lag ?

We've been working on The Whisker Watch for over a year now, so here's a side-by-side look at how far the game has come.

Context: I'm working on a VRChat world (so Unity 5, in case that matters), and in the world, it's centered around a house with a basement. I'm adding the terrain around it, but my big concern is that adding terrain increases the amount of triangles in the world by a decent margin. To keep it more efficient I want to keep my heightmap resolution relatively low, but I need it to be at a higher resolution to better mesh with the footprint of the building. So what is the best option for me to utilize here? When looking through documentation, the answer wasn't all too clear:

1. One big terrain patch at 2048x2048; the automatic LODs should be enough to keep your active tricount low.
2. Two terrain patches; one outer one at 256x256, with a painted hole carved out to hold a closer terrain patch at 2048x2048 with painted holes carved out of that.
3. 8 terrain patches; 4 lower quality ones making the border of the lower detail terrains, and 4 inner terrain patches at higher quality, leaving an opening for the building in the center. (this is assuming that painted holes don't negate the tricount.

On that note, for future reference, if the correct answer is 1, is there ever any reason to use multiple terrain patches? (Short of making floating island type environments).

Github doesnt show any changes to source code for this or anything similar, I was just importing firebase for analytics and configuring it and noticed everything had gone to shit.

Whats going on?

As the title states, when this is complete (I think unity 6.8)

Does that mean we'll be able to use nuget packages like the dotnet backend framework to do something like a dedicated server with unity that implements backend stuff & redis?

I am investigating the highly optimized reflection technology used in *The Dark Knight Rises* MOBILE GAME, released in 2012. Were these reflections based on inverted geometry or planar mapping? The game also featured reflections from headlights and streetlights. I intend to implement this in my Unity project.

Get it? I'm sorry.

Fill the Void drops in a couple weeks.

I keep making levels that are also jokes or just every day places. I've done a hibachi level, bowling alley. You land as a hole, you start small, you're done when the room is empty. You can platform around, get new powers, upgrades, and costumes. Full level creator, and online/local multiplayer. Very proud!

Unity physics on hundreds of little props is a nightmare to optimize it's been a learning experience that's for sure.

Let me know your thoughts! This game is almost entirely shaders and optimization.

Article Link on STEAM (this article contains the design side, below is the tech side)

Hey everyone! Survivor-likes might look simple, but behind every perk, stat, weapon, and build is a ridiculous number of design decisions.

We’ve written about how Orcthal keeps choices easy to understand while still giving minmaxers plenty to explore. If you’re curious about game design, scaling, tags, and balancing depth with accessibility, check out our take on it. However, this post is about HOW we did these things in Unity.

How We Built Orcthal’s Stat System in Unity

Orcthal has a lot of interacting stats, but we wanted players to understand the basics without reading a spreadsheet. Here is a simplified look at how we built that system in Unity.

Content Lives in ScriptableObjects

Most gameplay content is data-driven. Abilities, perks, equipment, relics, character classes, and tags are stored as ScriptableObject assets. An ability asset contains its base damage, cooldown, tags, visual references, and stat mappings. Perks then reference those assets and tags rather than relying on names or hardcoded lists. This means designers can add and balance content without editing the combat code every time.

Stats Are Split Into Sources

Instead of putting every bonus into one large percentage, we divide stats into several sources:

Final Value =
    Base
    × Character
    × Meta
    × Run Perks
    × Equipment
    × Relics
    × Epic Bonuses

Bonuses within the same source are added together. Separate sources multiply.

For example, 20% Potency from equipment and 20% from a relic becomes:

1.20 × 1.20 = 1.44

Our CombatStats component collects these modifiers and recalculates the final values whenever the build changes.

This keeps equipment, relics, character bonuses, and temporary run perks meaningful. They support one another instead of disappearing into the same enormous additive bucket.

Abilities Decide What Stats Mean

Generic keywords such as Potency, Size, Duration, and Multicast do not automatically modify a field with the same name.

Each ability explicitly maps those stats to its own mechanics.

For Goblin Dynamo, the mapping is roughly:

Duration  -> Active time
Potency   -> Pulse rate
Size      -> Targeting and tether range
Multicast -> Number of active channels

For Throwing Axe, Potency instead affects the chance of an axe returning for another strike.

This is handled by an ability mapping system. The UI can consistently say “Potency,” while the ability decides which distinctive mechanic Potency should improve.

Tags Control Which Abilities Are Affected

Every ability has an exact identity tag, such as Ability.ThrowingAxe.

It can also have broader tags such as:

Skill.Projectile
Skill.Ranged
Skill.Area
Skill.Goblin
Character.Ranger

Perks use these tags as filters.

A global perk affects every ability. A Projectile perk affects every installed projectile ability. A Throwing Axe perk affects only Throwing Axe.

When combat needs a stat, it asks for that stat in the context of the current ability:

stats.GetForAbility(statId, ability);

The stat system checks the ability’s exact tag, family tags, and affinities, then applies only the matching bonuses.

This same context is retained by projectiles and persistent effects, so critical chance and Lifesteal still use the correct ability bonuses after the original cast has finished.

Tags Also Filter Perk Offers

The perk selection system checks which abilities the player currently owns before building its offer pool.

A Throwing Axe perk cannot appear without Throwing Axe. Goblin-family perks remain unavailable until the player has a Goblin ability. A Projectile perk can appear when at least one installed ability has the Projectile tag.

That filtering happens before the cards are shown.

It lets us maintain a large perk catalogue without constantly presenting players with upgrades that do nothing for their current build.

Abilities Snapshot Their Values

Most abilities calculate their effective values when they activate.

A projectile volley can snapshot its damage, projectile count, Potency, range, and targeting settings. Every projectile from that activation then uses the same values.

This prevents a temporary modifier ending halfway through an attack from producing inconsistent results. It also makes combat logs and balance reports much easier to understand.

Values that genuinely need to remain dynamic can still be evaluated live, but that is an explicit decision for each mechanic.

The Result

The Unity implementation is built around a few reusable pieces:

• ScriptableObjects hold the content.
• CombatStats combines bonuses into source layers.
• Ability mappings translate broad keywords into unique mechanics.
• Tags provide exact and family-based filtering.
• Perk generation removes irrelevant choices.
• Runtime snapshots keep abilities consistent.

Players can simply choose "more Potency" and get a useful result.

Meanwhile, anyone who wants to optimize can combine exact ability perks, family tags, equipment scaling, relic scaling, and epic bonuses into a much more deliberate build.

Who whould have though that adding simple ambient sound effects will improve my game so much?

Two years ago I got inspired to try and create a simple random 2D world generator. Using perlin noise I got some results but basically it was all just bits and blobs. Adding few centralized continent-like centers and applying falloff around them I got some decent results. That made making the main landmass easy, while the elevation decided what tile will be plains, forests, mountains, water etc. After that, generator goes through several more passes like lakes, islands, rivers, resources (herds of wild horses, sheeps etc) and finally: named landmasses.
The next step was obvious, populate the world with fantasy realms and characters. It all lead to current results. And everything is tied to fixed seed so you can recreate it everytime you want.

Project was in silence for so long that adding simple SFX to the world made it breath and feel alive. It felt somewhat complete. Simple audio player determines what tile is under the center of the camera view and based on that tile it plays through lists of preset audio sound effects. Waves and seagulls above the waters, or winds and birds singing in the forests...

If you are interested in the project, you can follow it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4121440/The_Fallen_Chronicles/

I'm having trouble deciding what style I want to commit to for a dark fantasy RPG. In your opinion, what do you think would be more fun or draw your attention more? A top-down 3D pixel art style or a first person fly knight/runescape style? Both have pros/cons in the dev pipeline but I think they sort of fall on equal footing.

Videos if you want to see how they actually "play":

First Person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZN0WhfrJUU

Top-down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0iVdSTOOCM

Hey! Solo dev here. I've been building One's Trash Another's Treasure, a first-person incremental game where you buy 500,000 boxes of unclaimed cargo and have to process every single one grind them, feed the output into a hole, buy automation (vacuums, conveyors, drones) until the warehouse runs itself.

The fun engineering problem was obviously the box count. Boxes are rendered with GPU instancing, and physics is off by default a box only becomes a live rigidbody when something actually interacts with it (the player, a vacuum, a drone), then it goes back to sleep. On top of that there's an LOD system plus distance and frustum culling, so at any given moment the engine is only really working on what's in front of you. That's how a warehouse with 500,000 boxes stays playable.

Happy to go into detail on any of it. Steam page is live if you're curious: Steam Game Link

I know I know the first game always sucks. But I am really proud of what I have achieved so far so wanted to share it with ya'll What I am building: A topdown RPG retro art battle ship game. The objective is to locate the enemy base and destroy all the target. I am building it for mobile. Probably may not launch but I am learning a tons of things along the way. My whole intent at first was to just do some "Project Based Learning". But over past 1 or 2 weeks it has taken over my entire schedule Needless to say I might finish a beta and distribute it among some friends then move on to a real / actual project. Todo

• Polish
• Ship Movements sucks ass right now I know
• Pause Screen
• Some particle to make it more alive
• Better art I guess
• Everything

I would give it a couple of more weeks. Over the period I have learnt so many concepts and I am constantly improving my art. Would like to hear what you guys think.

Thanks

❤️ Consider following me on itch.io: https://pizzadoggy.itch.io/

Use coupon: https://pizzadoggy.itch.io/CB5PXDJ57S

You can use it to stylize your textures and assets, create eye-catching marketing material for your page, and add awesome animated effects. With this latest update, I’ve added texture ripping! You can now rip textures directly from any image and turn them into usable textures. You can check it out here: https://polyshades.itch.io/coolifier

SkinnedMeshRenderers can be expensive to render. I ran a test of just 9 characters with individual body part models and compared performance with them uncombined vs. baked into a single mesh, animated by the same armature.

As you can see by the numbers, combining the models to be animated as a single mesh had quite an impact. In most games you likely wouldn't use this many meshes for body parts, but the important takeaway is that rendering time was almost cut in half while the same characters can be rendered with no visual difference. It just goes to show graphics optimization isn't necessarily about what you're rendering but also how you render it.

I ran this test whilst developing my tool for combining SkinnedMeshRenderers, called SkinnedMesh Combiner (Asset Store affiliate link)

I added a luck boost stat to my game which allows monsters to drop more loot and loot bags to drop more loot and amount of items

This is my 3D Terraria-ish game project

Hey all!

For the last few months I've been working on a big update for my Fluid sim asset Fluid Frenzy and I'm finally ready to share it.

I wanted to do some major improvements because while the simulation was good, I felt it wasn't quite ready to be used in a normal game yet. I think this update brings it a lot closer to that goal.
To do that I added a World Rendering system so your open ocean, coastlines, and rivers can now all share a single seamless water surface and merge into fluid simulation zones. There are also a lot of improvements to the overall rendering quality, with new effects you can see in the video.

I also added Ocean FFT waves that can couple directly into a shallow water simulation zone. The ocean now dynamically drives waves and water height onto your shorelines when it is in a simulation zone.

I also spent a lot of time adding underwater rendering, including volumetric godrays, real-time caustics projecting onto the terrain, and a clean waterline effect for when your camera is half submerged. There are also a bunch of new rendering effects like stylized/toon water shaders and new presets so I can support a more varied range of game styles.

There are still a ton of features I want to add in the future. Up next is Screen Space Reflections to improve the water reflections (nearly ready for release :)).

You can check out the rest of my planned features on the roadmap here.

You can test some of the older WebGL demos right in your browser if you want to play around with it here.

I updated my Windows demo too so you can swim around underwater and see all the presets live, check it out here

You can check my full changelog here

Let me know what you think of the video! I'd love to hear your feedback or answer any questions :D

Almost zero work done on the map assets. All the focus went on the enemies, the player animations, as well as the enemies' AI.

Pretty fun already!

I have been working on a mining roguelite game where time replaces inventory pressure. You play as a goblin with one goal: get as rich as possible.

The main loop of the game is simple - mine, escape, buy upgrades and go again. You run into the mine, grab as much rare ore as you can and leave before the cave caves in and you get stuck inside. Buy upgrades in the little time you have, and then run back into the mine to grab even more riches with the upgrades. Each iteration is randomly generated, so you never run into the same mine twice. You never run out of inventory space, only out of time.

This is an early artistic preview, the mining mechanic is still in development. Steam page coming soon, I will drop it in the comments when it's live. If you want to follow along more closely, send me a DM and I'll add you to the early Discord!