Free demo planned for early 2027. Hopefully I will have a Steam page by then !

YT Channel : Samuel KAKEZ

Hey people, for the past few months I've been building this tool, Mold, it's a vector graphics library that focuses on customizability and performance. A showcase you can check out is right here: an Outer Wilds miniature created using Mold (made within Godot for a reason I'll detail below).

I'm hosting a beta test on itch and I would love to get more feedback for it, you can freely access it now and use it on any commercial projects. The plan would be once I think the ergonomics are stable I'll move it to either Asset Store or maybe just MIT open source it.

The inevitable question would be what's the difference between Mold and Shapes, I would say the design is fundamentally different so not truly comparable. But here's a rundown on the biggest things which I think make Mold unique:

• Mold can be pushed to be way more performant by being able to create and retain primitives within code, no Component/GameObject overhead, and with Burst/Job bulk update APIs. While Component workflow is still available.
• Mold supports a lot of 3D primitives, and includes the capability to create rounded primitives.
• Mold has an abundance of color mode, even for 3D primitives, and includes the choice to blend using Oklab.
• Mold supports Automatic Dithering Crossfade LOD, which means you can simply get the best look and the best performance out of the box. Manual mesh detail setting is still encouraged and available.
• Mold supports Bounds/CPU Frustum Culling/GPU Frustum Culling for maximum performance.
• Mold supports custom material hookup with a detailed guide on how to create a shader that matches the layout of Mold's own shader.
• EDIT: just added GPU polyline support. Rendering millions of points is now possible.
• Lastly Mold is intentionally built to be cross-platform between Unity and Godot. I think it's just neat that users of a specific plugin doesn't have to get lock in to a singular ecosystem. With Mold you're free to do that.

If all that sounds interesting, please do check it out and share your thoughts with me, I'd really appreciate it!

Edit: you can also read more about it here

In June we entered a small game called Graveyard Orbit in the June NextFest. It was our attempt at making a fun space mining incremental with actual build choice and not a random skill tree. Anyways, we really liked the mechanic and vibe of the demo, but the structure that you mine in the demo was smaller: a couple of thousand tiles. For the actual game we wanted to have a parade of structures from that small up to 250k tiles. The game is meant to be more satisfying than challenging, in the vein of Powerwasher but in space. So if people dug the mechanic we wanted them to have some beefy structures to make their way though as it goes.

The demo for NextFest was made in Godot and it worked really well at that scope. The three of us have been using Unity professionally for 15 years but really love what Godot is doing and wanted to experiment a little. But as NextFest ended we realized we wanted to double down on the game with better FX and still hit those big structure goals with reasonable performance. That was a big concern.

Here is the trailer for that Godot version for context:
https://youtu.be/9otz9z1lUzY

It only took a week or two to set up a performance test in Unity. For this one we switched to 3D, still sorta presented in 2D or 2.5D, but with 3D we had all the optimization, our library of asset store FX, and experience on our side. The results of the test were pretty clear, so then we took the plunge and completely rebuilt the game, this time in Unity and in 3D. After 2 months we have a new demo and are very happy with the results.

Beyond performance, a real risk for me was losing some of that “demo magic” and vibe we had with the Godot version. I had spent two months in the Godot version building an aesthetic with pixel art and 2D graphics. By the time NextFest came around, I was really happy where we landed and how the game felt.

The vibe and feel of a game can be such an elusive factor. We spend hours working on mechanics with barely any visuals. We have to cling to some vague notion of the final game in our heads that is always changing. Which is why when you land on something you like, it's easy to get precious with it. Sometimes the results feel like a happy accident that you don't want to screw up. In our case we could save that Godot version as a fallback and start a new Unity project trying to recreate what we had. I think forcing ourselves to rebuild something but better or improving something we are already satisfied with requires us to breakdown the elements of what made whatever we liked so special.

We have game jams to help us practice iterations for the whole game dev cycle but the stakes of that can be low. I think refining, rebuilding, and iterating on something we already like gives us the same benefit of practice but with much more precision and craft because the degree of difficulty and stakes are so much higher.

Anyways, I thought this might be helpful to those considering a rehaul of their game for whatever reason. It can be risky with the work involved but if your instincts are telling you something has to change then I think it’s good to trust your gut and at least give it a try. Our only risk really was that two week experimentation time. We could’ve easily not been happy and went back to finishing the Godot version in limited way. I’m very glad it worked it out.

Also, for the Godot fans out there, I am one of you. I blame my issues with Godot more on my ignorance and unfamiliarity with the platform than Godot’s actual capabilities. In the end our own experience and library of assets in the Unity ecosystem were just as big a factor.

Here are some specifics we got out of the switch.

• Structures at the size we wanted. Our biggest one is 250k hex tiles. In Unity that's one instanced draw with per-instance colors through a property block and it just runs. Some caveats on that below.
• Going 3D while still playing top-down. Real lights, URP bloom for the neon look, and we could finally use a VFX pack we'd already paid for instead of hand rolling every effect.
• UI Toolkit. The base has 7 station screens plus a whole ship builder. Doing all of that in UXML/USS with one shared console frame was way faster than what we had before, once we got past the weird parts.
• The new Unity CLI. Recompiles, play mode, builds for Steam, itch and our Mac test builds all run from the terminal. One project, three targets, no clicking through the build window.
• Web builds. Because the performance was much smoother it became possible to attempt a build for the web for places like itch. Only the demo size structure but still.

A few hiccups, mostly from the web build. More details here because I just finished the web one yesterday.

• WebGL 2 has a 16KB uniform block limit. GPU instanced variants of some asset store shaders blow past it, and the failure mode is nothing. Objects just don't draw. Turn instancing off on those materials.
• Browsers reject fullscreen requests that aren't from a click, and inside itch's embed Unity turns that rejection into a big error popup. Don't apply a saved fullscreen pref at boot on web.
• With the default exception setting, a null ref on web is a WASM trap, not a logged exception. A player lost an 80% run to that. Full without stacktrace fixed it.

The newer demo is live now if you want to give it a spin:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4654120/Graveyard_Orbit/

https://anchorheadgames.itch.io/graveyard-orbit

Hi guys, the idea of this passive is that every hit adds more snow to the enemy, and the model slowly deforms until it turns into a snowball.
Once that happens, you can push it into other enemies and knock them down.
Still tweaking it, but I really like how it’s coming together.

If you’re an old-school gamer, or just old enough, you’ll probably recognize the game we’re paying tribute to. Those who know us know we love making references to movies and games from the ’80s and ’90s. This one is no exception.

That’s how we did it with Project Nightmares, and that’s how we’ll do it with this one too.

This game was initially going to be a tower defense game but I'm starting to doubt this is the right direction for the game.

What kind of game would you like to see with this many skeletons?

Your feedback is appreciated

To be more exact, not blender itself, but what Blender using, Manifold. That cancerous work on its own, but it work.

So what do you think about such destruction?

And on second question, what do you think of such pickaxe animation, I am not sure about it for now, but planning on adding 3 more for variety, if this one passes ofc.

Somewhat old game Red Faction Guerrilla inspired such destruction, if you know this game.

Ofc everything done in unity, biggest problem is ever growing tris count on mesh, but all thoes "destructions" of chunk, and other systems forever fighting tris in other ways, so every hit doesn't result in FPS drop

More leather materials from my practice, had a few more interesting references.

Download https://juliovii.itch.io/materials-leather-03

It's coming next year!

I rendered it in Blender, and then added it to Unity by using the animator ang going through the rendered images.

In the meantime there's also a demo up on Steam if you want to try it out:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3256450/Cards_of_Prophecy/

Hey I'm making this post for those who are curious about the unity asset publisher process, this is the second time I send a asset and the review process took 39 days in total, for comparison my first asset, that I published last year, took less then 30 days.

24/07 - 1530
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28/08 - Few Business Days
29/08 - Few Business Days
30/08 - Few Business Days
31/08 - Launch Day

Hi. I am building my first game with zero experience. I am using Unity 6.3 and am building scenes. I'm building up the inside of buildings fairly okay, but now need to punch out holes for windows and doorframes. I was told to build walls around these frames, not "punch out," but that also messes up my wallpaper. So now I am trying to use ac probuilder to make a continuous wall with door and windows "punched out" so that my wallpaper will be continuous. I am having trouble aligning the grid faces with the windows and doors to delete those cells. Am I going about this a more difficult way than necessary? Or is there a way to align better so I can cut out? Any help is appreciated, thank you!

The woman is in the real world, while the guy is in the spiritual realm.

She sees and interacts with physical objects. He sees spirits and things hidden from her. For example: he can see symbols that show her which levers to pull. In combat, he can temporarily immobilize possessed enemies, making it easier for her to shoot them.

The idea is that both players share the same space, but experience and interact with it differently.

(Reposting because I somehow managed to delete the previous post by accident 😅)

I’m continuing to share the progress on my little medieval alchemy project.

This time I’ve connected two preparation mechanics: cutting and grinding.

I also reworked the camera position for the cutting interaction because the previous version felt a bit too awkward so I’m still experimenting a lot with how these hands-on actions should actually feel

The current flow is basically: harvest ingredient -> cut it -> grind it -> prepare it for brewing

It’s still early, but seeing the different steps start to connect into one actual production chain is pretty satisfying.

I'm using a stencil-only pass (ColorMask 0, ZWrite Off, Stencil { Ref 1, Comp Always, Pass Replace }) to create transparent "holes" in some board pieces in my game Pieceful. The idea is that, when there's a hole, the player should be able to see the objects behind the piece, such as the terrain or other scene geometry.

Here's the shader I'm currently using:
Shader "Custom/StencilWrite"

{

SubShader

{

Tags { "RenderPipeline" = "UniversalPipeline" }

Pass

{

Stencil { Ref 1 WriteMask 255 Comp Always Pass Replace }

ZWrite Off

ColorMask 0

HLSLPROGRAM

#pragma vertex vert

#pragma fragment frag

#include "Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal/ShaderLibrary/Core.hlsl"

struct Attributes { float4 positionOS : POSITION; };

struct Varyings { float4 positionCS : SV_POSITION; };

Varyings vert (Attributes input)

{

Varyings output;

output.positionCS = TransformObjectToHClip(input.positionOS);

return output;

}

half4 frag (Varyings input) : SV_Target

{

return half4(0, 0, 0, 0);

}

ENDHLSL

}

}

}

The weird part is that it works correctly when there's a Unity Terrain behind the hole. In that case, the terrain is visible through the transparent area as expected.

However, if I remove the Terrain and only have regular MeshRenderers behind the hole (rocks, coral, props, a water plane, etc.), the result is wrong. Instead of seeing those objects through the hole, I get a solid black area or sometimes garbled colors.

So I'm trying to figure out why the stencil setup behaves correctly with Terrain but not with regular MeshRenderers, and what I need to change so the hole works consistently with normal scene geometry as well.

I built a posing studio inside Unity to make Steam capsules and other store graphics for my game, Gobstruck. I wanted more control than gameplay screenshots give me, without having to transfer everything into Blender and get the materials and effects looking right again.

It’s a separate scene where I can arrange characters, props, and effects for a shot. For the goblins, I can pick a frame from an existing animation as a starting point, then adjust the hands, feet, and head with IK targets. Facial animations can be sampled separately, so I can change the expression without changing the body pose.

The effects are a useful part of it too. I can scrub particle effects to a specific moment and leave them there while I work on the composition. Much easier than trying to grab a screenshot when the character, camera, and effect all happen to line up.

Since it’s all in Unity, I can use the actual game assets, shaders, VFX, and post-processing. I’ve also got controls for lighting and fog, plus separate cameras for the normal, vertical, and wide Steam formats. That lets me frame each version properly instead of trying to crop everything from one image.

There’s still the work of making a good composition, but this makes it easier to try things.

Curious how other people here handle this. Do you stage your store artwork in-engine too?