Everything game-dev related is better now. Engines are free and amazing. Tools like Blender are free. IDEs are free or cheap. There are free tutorials with easy access and instant translation. Indie games keep getting better. We are in a golden age for game-dev, and it will only get better. 🙏

I highly recommend HOLE on Steam. There are very tense fights. Moving and shooting attract enemies. Your gun can jam and overheat. It's low-priced, and I've put 14 hours into it. store.steampowered.com/app/2971610/...

Stasis field effect for a Quest game made in Unreal.

Hand scanner for VR game on Quest in Unreal Engine. #VR #vfx #techart #Unreal

Projectile for a mobile AR game in Unity. #vfx #techart #Unity

Plasma beam fx made for a Quest VR game in Unreal. The beam is a cylinder with a material manipulating the WPO values to make it move. Vertex colours masks the start and end to keep the ends in position. #vfx #Unreal #techart #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Lerping textures while moving through frames of a vertex animation texture. #unreal #vfx #techart #gamedev

Lighting in a material by passing in a position vector and linear colour in Unreal. I use a dot product and a bit of extra math to figure out how much to add. This is relatively cheap vertex lighting. This was for a Quest VR game. #Unreal #lighting #vfx #techart #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Beam weapon attack fx for an AR game. #vfx #unity #techart #gamedev #AR #gamedevelopment

Spherified UVs give the illusion of a spherical shape to a texture on a plane. I added multiple animatable UVs for a packed texture, shadowing, and UV distortion using a normal map. #VFX #techart #Unreal #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Prototype for a sci-fi shield in a Quest VR game. Dithered for performance on the tiled renderer. #VR #Quest #VFX #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Dash effect made in Unity for an AR game. #XR #Unity #vfx #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Small trails and sparkles for a trophy in an AR game. Animated UVs driving a packed texture does most of the work. Unity engine. #vfx #gamedev #gamedevelopment #unity

Mesh-based water fx for a Quest VR game. Static meshes animated using world offset position in material. A lot of UV animation of packed textures. #Quest #VR #VFX #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Rocket launcher fx made in Idtech4 engine. I wrote a bunch of custom shaders to use channel packing, colour lerps, multiple UV animations, and randomization of the parameters. #VFX #Idtech #gamedev #gamedevelopment

I made the big final explosion for BG2:ToB using 3DS Max. The pieces were animated using physics simulation. The arcing of electricity was done in After Effects. The green stuff in the explosion was a glitch from the Blur studio plugin I used, but I just left it in. #vfx #gamedev #bg2

I use a lot of packed textures and use gradient mapping to recolour each channel. I prefer to use three colour lerps but in this case I used a colour curve. Colour curves have more control but require a texture sample which isn't optimal. #VFX #Unreal #gamedev #gamedevelopment #techart

Anotha one #NWN #rpg #vfx #gamedev #gamedevelopment

I made a bunch of fx for NWN that weren't used in the final game. It was the first time I had used fx systems inside a game engine. #NWN #vfx #rpg #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Something I made for a prototype using a VAT. Lerping between frames in a VAT. I wanted to get the player's hands on the ends so they could feel like they were manipulating it. #Unreal #VFX #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Sword from BG2:ToB that I modeled, textured, and animated. #BG2 #animation #rpg #vfx #gamedev #gamedevelopment

FX I made for a mobile game prototype about seven years ago. #Unity #VFX #mobile #gamedev #gamedevelopment

I converted something from Shadertoy into an Unreal material. It uses no image textures; everything is math. Originally made for a #VR game. #Unreal #shader #material #gamedev #gamedevelopment #realtime #vfx

I made a Burger King restaurant for NFSU2. I based it off some photos I found of a real BK restaurant. I wrote something funny on the sign, but they had me change it. #NFS #PS2 #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Aura of Flaming Death spell fx from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. Rendered in 3DS Max, and some work was done in After Effects. Split horizontally in engine so the back half could be put on a layer behind the character. #isometric #rpg #vfx #3DSMax #techart #gamedev #gamedevelopment

If working on low-precision hardware, you want to avoid using "time" to drive your animated materials. The hardware will rapidly lose precision, and things like UV animation driven by time will start jumping around. Instead, use a counter that rolls over before reaching the limits of precision.

Buildup for the explosion in previous post. #AR #Unity #VFX #gamedev #gamedevelopment #shaders #materials

Explosion made for an AR game in Unity. #Unity #VFX #gamedev #gamedevelopment #techart #shaders #materials

Another example of an opaque material that uses a cubemap to fake transparency. #UE5 #material #shader #techart #VFX #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Faked transparency using a captured cubemap. The surface is opaque. Useful if you can't afford transparency or don't want to deal with sorting problems. #material #shader #UE5 #techart #gamedev #gamedevelopment

Muzzle flash made for VR/AR in Unity. Muzzle flashes in VR are more challenging because you can view them from any angle. #VR #Unity #gamedev #gamedevelopment #techart #VFX

Body scanner material I made for a VR game. #VR #material #Unreal #shader #gamedev #gamedevelopment #techart #technicalart

Plexus material for Unreal. Made with nodes instead of using custom code. #material #UE5 #unreal #shader #gamedev #gamedevelopment