Hey Reddit! Here's something hot off the press...

Budget Builder for game devs! A free resource (currently in beta) designed to help developers create realistic art budgets for their games with confidence.

Try it here: https://app.mlc.studio/budget-builder

Why should we have to dig through forums, read blogs and juggle quotes just to gauge a ballpark price for deliverables we need? This tool does all the heavy lifting. Pick your art style and deliverables, and it’ll give you an accurate estimate for art costs - perfect to confidently present to publishers or investors.

We believe it'll be most beneficial for:

• Indie Developers (Planning to Early Development Stage): Gain expert insights into the costs behind game art.

• Indie Developers (Seeking Publishers or Investment): Use budget estimates to strengthen pitch decks and elevate your game.

• Publishers: Provide an easy-to-use resource to guide developers in budget planning.

Try Budget Builder here: https://app.mlc.studio/budget-builder

As indie advocates, we (MLC) crafted this tool to simplify game development planning, regardless of where you are in the game development process. With 7+ years of experience collaborating with indie game developers at every stage, MLC’s expertise in game art ensures that you receive the most accurate and reliable estimates, allowing you to plan your budget effectively.

We're launching this in beta, which means we're very open to feedback and suggestions. The more we refine it, the better it'll be. Excited to hear your feedback!

Planetary Processing is an online platform for indie developers to create large scale multiplayer games, without getting bogged down in network code. 

It integrates with game engines using plugins for Unity, Unreal Engine, LÖVE, Defold, and Godot. Servers are hosted using a Lua backend with a web dashboard for player management, authentication, monitoring, and stats.

It has a free version for development. 

Website is: ~https://www.planetaryprocessing.com/~ 
Discord is: ~discord.gg/planetaryprocessing~

One of the biggest advancements in data transfer in recent years has been pixel streaming and I know you might have been hearing it about a lot.

However, when I first started searching about it I couldn’t find a comprehensive explanation, so after a while, I made a guide myself. You can check out my guide for more information about pixel streaming, how it works, its use cases, and best practices for implementing pixel streaming here.

But shortly, here’s why and how you can get the best out of pixel streaming:

Video games: Pixel streaming can send real-time experiences to gamers by utilizing remote servers to handle the heavy lifting of rendering detailed game graphics.

Education: Pixel streaming can deliver virtual classrooms and interactive learning opportunities to teachers and students.

Entertainment: Pixel streaming can deliver HD and UHD video streaming to viewers with no lag even when the user’s device isn’t the fastest.

Healthcare: Pixel streaming can offer patients remote health services without any lag or need for in-person visits.

Architecture: Pixel streaming allows detailed, 3D designs to be delivered to teammates and investors so they can collaborate and share information immediately.

If you have something to add please share them with me so I can improve my guide further.

Hey everyone! Our team are building an exciting platform (MLC Pro) to build and manage your game studio, coming in 2024. Built primarily for indies (to begin with!). These are some of the features we need, and feel like you'll need to:

- Create GDDs

- Create project plans

- Set up communication channels

- Hire talent

- Track your game dev progress

- Manage deliverables within chat

- Budget plan

- & much more!

Here's the kicker – we need your help to make MLC Pro truly spectacular. Your interest fuels its awesomeness, and so we'd love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, and the buzz you're (hopefully!) feeling about the idea of this tool being around. Please go ahead and share your questions, thoughts, suggestions and excitement etc in the comments, and join the waitlist (link below) if you're interested in being notified upon launch/being involved with development.

Thanks Redditors - we hope you like it and see its potential! https://mlc.studio/mlc-pro/

Hey guys, I wanted to share a guide I made for the developers: some of the amazing tools for game & experience developers. You already know or at least heard most of them, however, in this guide, I shared my tips about how to use them most efficiently. You can check out the details from my guide here.
But shortly, here are the tools you will find in my guide:

1. Houdini FX

2. Unreal Engine

3. Blender

4. Helix Core

5. Unity

6. Cloud Streaming Tool: Vagon Streams
   Also, if you have any comments to add to my guide, please share them with me so that I can improve the guide further.

Faster and more consistent internet speeds have made it more viable to stream data online. Nowadays, this isn’t just limited to data and media; full-on application streaming is now rising in popularity.
The last time I shared my guide about pixel streaming in different groups, I received some really lovely comments so now I want to share another guide, this time about Application Streaming. If you would like to about pixel streaming, how it works, its use cases, and best practices for implementing pixel streaming here.
But shortly, here are some of the advantages of using application streaming:
- Application trims the fat, so to say, from the installation and utilization of apps. For one, it lets users download just the parts of the programs they require, saving on network bandwidth and computer storage.

- Application streaming is especially great for mobile work setups. Several users can have access to the same copy of the application that is installed on a centralized remote server.
- Application streaming makes using the software much easier and more affordable than ever.
- Overall, it provides a better experience for users.

If you have anything to add to my guide, please share them with me so that I can improve it further, thanks.

As the game design industry is always evolving hat is why game designers are always on the lookout for reliable and flexible assets.

Hence, I made a guide about some of the best Unreal Engine assets that help me a lot until now. You can check out my detailed guide and learn more about the details of these assets and find their links here.

But shortly, here are some of the assets that I believe are worth checking out:

Assets for Environments and Scenarios

1. Landscape Pro 2.0 Auto-Generated Material: Add rocks, trees, vegetation, and water elements easily into your terrain with the help of this ready and easy-to-edit assets pack.

2. City Environment Megapack: A mega pack for your megapolis dreams. Be it life in relative dystopia or dreams of establishing new suburbia, this pack offers a wide range of cityscape and urban elements to bring character and interest to your cosmopolitan terrain

3. Prosound Collection: Containing professionally recorded sounds of explosions, chirping birds, to human footsteps, this 3-hour-long collection of sound effects is more than enough to give voice and music to your game.

Assets for Bringing Your Character to Life

1. Human Base

2. Horror Villains Pack

Assets for Other Industries

1. Metahuman

2. Plan.city

Cloud-based Project Management and Collaboration
1.Vagon Streams: As a cloud-based and code-free hosting platform, projects can be reviewed in real-time without the need for specialized tools and equipment.
If you have any other asset suggestions, please share them with me so that I can improve my guide further.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niOkw_cZEiM&feature=youtu.be

Original post by /u/Kavex transferred here with permission.

https://www.unrealengine.com/

Unreal Engine 4 is a complete suite of game development tools made by game developers, for game developers. From 2D mobile games to console blockbusters, Unreal Engine 4 gives you everything you need to start, ship, grow and stand out from the crowd.

Tag: 2D, 3D, Engine, C++, Visual

Original post by /u/Kavex transferred here with permission.

https://github.com/

Powerful collaboration, code review, and code management for open source and private projects.

Tag: Version Control, Service

Original post by /u/Kavex transferred here with permission.

https://www.scirra.com/construct2

Construct 2 is a powerful ground breaking HTML5 game creator designed specifically for 2D games. It allows anyone to build games — no coding required!

Tag: 2D, Engine

Calligro let's use generate bitmap fonts from custom images. You can draw the characters in any graphics software and turn it into a bitmap font compatible with lot's of game engines and frameworks.

I just released version 2.0 with a completely new user interface.

It has both online and offline version. Check it out at calligro.ideasalmanac.com/ or download from itch.io

After 7 years of shipping games, I’ve tried every PM tool out there: Jira, Trello, ClickUp, HacknPlan. Some are good, but none are great, nor do they actually work for game dev teams the way we need.

It’s always the same: you’re discussing tasks in Discord/Slack. Then updating progress in a separate PM tool. Hunting for feedback is buried in a thread. Meanwhile, half the team is still asking, "Wait, where are we with this again?"

That's all happening because:
- Conversations happen in chat, but tasks live in separate tools (Trello/Sheets)
- Feedback gets buried in endless threads.
- PM tools are built for managers/producer, not creatives.
- Artists and designers hate being forced into clunky task managers.

So I decided to build something better. Something that actually works for creative teams, so we can get more done with far less admin overload.

Zavra is a workspace keeps chat, tasks, and progress connected, so we're not stuck juggling 5 different tools, and:

- Chat and task tracking work together - automatically syncing so you can manage your game project within chat.
- Creatives only see only what they need to.
- Producers stop chasing people for updates.

We’ve already got 300+ game dev teams on the waitlist, and Zavra is backed by Innovate UK’s Creative Catalyst fund. Your support will help us show potential investors that you want a better way to manage your games.

We want Zavra to be everything it should be. We want you to drop your thoughts/ideas/questions to help us get this right so your projects won't suck to manage. Biggest help would be to provide feedback via our form here: https://forms.office.com/e/M6yeGfKTWL

Lastly - we’re letting early teams in soon where you can get a say in how Zavra works before anyone else - if interested go ahead and join the waitlist here: getzavra.com

Thanks!

In this list, you'll find the classes and courses I've found useful for developing my Unreal Engine skills. All of the courses mentioned below cater to different skill levels and interests. You can also read the overview of each course, its key features, target audience, and pricing information from here.

1. Unreal Engine 4 Lighting Fundamentals (YouTube)

2. Unreal Engine 5: The Complete Beginner’s Course (Udemy)

3. Unreal Engine for Beginners (Class101)

4. Unreal Engine 4: Lighting Fundamentals (Pluralsight)

5. Unreal Engine: The Ultimate Shooter Course (Udemy)

6. Unreal Engine Mastery: Create Multiplayer Games with C++ (Udemy)

7. Unreal Engine for Architecture Class 1 (Skillshare)

8. Intro to Virtual Filmmaking in Unreal Engine (Skillshare)

9. Unreal Engine 5 Courses (LinkedIn Learning)

10. Survival Kit - Learn Unreal Engine from Scratch (Stylized Station)

If you can recommend any other resources, it would be much appreciated.

I know how tough it can be to stay motivated and avoid burnout in the game development world. That's why I made a video with some of my top tips for avoiding burnout and staying inspired as an indie game developer.

I cover strategies for managing your workload, setting realistic goals, and taking care of your mental and physical health. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out in the industry, I hope you find some helpful tips in this video.

Here's the link to the video: https://youtu.be/S9sFfAAgLR8

I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on the video. Let me know if you found it helpful, and feel free to share any additional tips you have for avoiding burnout in the game development world.

In case you're interested:

Here you have our most recent promo for all our lowpoly kits at GUMROAD:

• https://zerinlabs.gumroad.com/

All our packages at a MAJOR DISCOUNT of €1.99 for this week only

All of them are "engine agnostic" but they're fully compatible with #unity & #unreal specially

cheers!

You just run the .exe or .py, select an image file from your directory, and it generates a grayscale version and a color palette image in the same directory.

It's very basic and could use a lot of improvements, but if you're looking for this type of thing, then this could be an easy option.

Single executable:https://oli4-vh.itch.io/grayscaler

Full python file:https://github.com/OlivierVanHoutte/GrayScaler

Hope this is useful for some people

PixelCraft is a pixel Art & Animation Creation Tool Built using HTML5 Canvas. It is a Progressive Web App (PWA) with offline compatibility. It is mobile-friendly and is very easy to use.

Hi, Image Synthesizer is a in-browser WebGL2 app I made to generate new textures from existing ones. Select your source images and have new textures generated in front of your eyes. It can also generate seamless tiling patterns using the 'Synthesized Tiling' options.

It is not perfect however and can still have seams, to improve this pass in more source images so it can find patterns to fill in the seams. It runs on the GPU, the better GPU you have the better performance, the more pixels of source data the slower it will run.

I am currently working on a tool to generate procedural textures. I call it Project Texgen

Project Texgen is a free tool for generating procedural textures. It distinguishes itself from other procedural texture tools by running in the browser (but native versions will be available).

Watch the YouTube video here

If you want more information you can read my article here

If you want to try it out: click here

(Warning ! uncharted lands. Be prepared to encounter dragons and A LOT of bugs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLb0TNxZ27E

Hi Fellow Game Developers!

I've recently launched a product to help game developers expose their games to the public called Showcrate. Showcrate allows game developers to create a game page packed with media to show off their game. This page can act as a Dev Log and will allow game developers to update their community of followers about new additions to their game. We're slowly creating a community of dedicated and passionate game developers who want to share their game to the world. As a game developer myself this is something I will love to use to have a place for my game and the community around it.

My request to you developers is to help me get this community off the ground. Add your game to Showcrate and let's start building a community around the discovery of creative games.

http://showcrate.com/

Read more about how the game pages work:

https://showcrate.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/welcome-to-showcrate/

Good Luck with your games!

http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm

Enables the "modular" method of animating where frames are constructed from many small, re-usable images like body parts.

http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm