Really cool roundup! My top tip for world building is make entities aware of their distance from the camera and then ensure your despawn anything too far away.
another banger video dax. big mood at the end. i was working on a 3d voxel game project where i wanted jumping _and_ a fixed iso camera angle _and_ no subpixel misalignments, so the player would need 3d shadows to distinguish depth from altitude. so i set all sprites to 1ppu with the asset importer, wrote another script that scales a cube primitive and adjusts its UVs based on the dimensions of the fold-up texture applied to it, and an editor script that rounded the currently selected object's coordinates to the nearest integer when it was being moved. works great for rectilinear levels. unfortunately my current project is low poly and set entirely outdoors! and so far i haven't found a good guide on best practices for outdoor env design that doesn't use the default terrain tools. even using a shader to make the horizon curve away is a headache.
Thanks mate! Genuinely sounds like some Doctor Strange stuff, very impressed you managed to find a way around it! Yeah there's a lot of environment design resources out there that are more directed things like guiding players through the level rather than the differences between interior and exterior design. Hope you find what you're looking for soon!
@@DarkDax custom editor tools save so much time it's crazy. mine basically amounted to texture origami but once it was written i felt like i had forged a sword. i encourage everyone to make them. for now i guess i can start by downloading resource packs for desert islands and seeing how _they_ do it. like is it okay to make the whole island one mesh? how should it be subdivided? do i hide the edge between the beach and the forest underneath shrubs? that's the kind of thing i'm talking about. the boundary break episodes on animal crossing were great for seeing world curvature in action, but man i hope shesez does an episode on the witness.
@@PeterDanielBerg I was literally about to bring up the Animal Crossing episode from Boundary Break! Great insight into how the industry and massive studios handle these sorts of situations. It's also interesting seeing how much time and effort devs give to such minor issues that we'd otherwise fret over for hours.
I'm finding your videos very well put together, funny, entertaining, and something I will keep close to my heart for years to come! You got yourself another bell!
You forgot about trim sheets. You can get so many fully textured assets out of a trim sheet without having to make a unique texture. As a side benefit trim sheets also reduce the amount of render state changes since many of your meshes will share the same material.
It is easier to make simple elements look good or realistic compared to complex one, this is why Mirrors Edge looks so good, there is barely any vegetation and one of the few naturalistic elements are humans and some effects like fire. When texture try to be more than they actually are, they end up not looking realistic, but a mere representation of what they are trying to be, which can be jarring to look at unless it is trying to be a painting or a display.
This is definitely true. Also on a similar note, I think it’s almost always a better idea to go with a more stylists art style because it’s easier for a small developer to pull off. Leave the realism to the big studios unless you have some experience with prior games and know what you’re doing. Because one thing A LOT of beginner devs mess up is not realizing that even if you download fantastic realistic models from an asset store, they will stick out like a sore thumb if the rest of the game doesn’t match.
Good stuff, I am very close to making levels for my game and this is a good starting point for optimizing what I already have in store. First things first tho I have to find out a way to render more than 2 enemies in sight at more than 30 FPS.. 3k verts on a an enemy model thats supposed to be complex shouldn't be this resource heavy Unity! Please let me have fun!!
Glad I could help! It's also a reminder for future me when I'm wondering why my game's performance sucks haha. Game Engines can never let you have fun without first having a moment to complain!
i love everything except how he says "eligible " like illegible", like you can't read it, not like it qualifies for something. "static batching allows all illegible meshes (meshes you can't read because they are written poorly) to be combined into the same buffer."
ana haha yeah the avatar looks like a bulborb, totally unintiontional, a character from my game i'm developing. now I guess i gotta go delete all my 3d models haha
Utilizing nanite is something that should be mentioned here. You don't need to optimize the poly counts at all and you don't need LoDs, also you can represent details with far less hard drive space since textures take up way more than nanite high poly meshes. With such high density meshes you also don't need to UV them at all and you can simply use seamless tileable textures on them using substance or other unreal plugins through techniques like vertex painting which such textures also take up far less space since you can utilize tiling of a 500x500 texture for example. Games like cyberpunk used this technique to detail objects infinitely scalable using what are called detail maps. Video should mention all this stuff.
Great shout! Genuinely in awe of Nanite and how it works. I plan on trying Unreal Engine for my next project just to see what it’s about so I’ll keep this in mind!
@@DarkDax If you go to Unreal, make sure you take advantage of USD file format and data smith as well if you're like me and you prefer to build your environments outside of unreal engine and you want to be able to see the level as you create it in unreal in real time as you work on it in max, maya or blender.
despite not knowing any game development, I'm just gonna sit here and watch entire 17 mins of video and commeting so you can reach into algorithm.
You dropped this 👑
Biggest game changer for me personally was buying and reading through real time rendering fourth edition.
I swear to god I thought you said “real estate rendering” and was so confused 😂
Really cool roundup! My top tip for world building is make entities aware of their distance from the camera and then ensure your despawn anything too far away.
Good tip thanks Rob! Hope development on Clomper is going well!
Hello there Rob! Glad to see you here :)
@@DarkDax it is, thanks! Doing menus right now. 👍
@@jacques-dev great to see you too! 👋
another banger video dax. big mood at the end.
i was working on a 3d voxel game project where i wanted jumping _and_ a fixed iso camera angle _and_ no subpixel misalignments, so the player would need 3d shadows to distinguish depth from altitude. so i set all sprites to 1ppu with the asset importer, wrote another script that scales a cube primitive and adjusts its UVs based on the dimensions of the fold-up texture applied to it, and an editor script that rounded the currently selected object's coordinates to the nearest integer when it was being moved. works great for rectilinear levels.
unfortunately my current project is low poly and set entirely outdoors! and so far i haven't found a good guide on best practices for outdoor env design that doesn't use the default terrain tools. even using a shader to make the horizon curve away is a headache.
Thanks mate!
Genuinely sounds like some Doctor Strange stuff, very impressed you managed to find a way around it! Yeah there's a lot of environment design resources out there that are more directed things like guiding players through the level rather than the differences between interior and exterior design.
Hope you find what you're looking for soon!
@@DarkDax custom editor tools save so much time it's crazy. mine basically amounted to texture origami but once it was written i felt like i had forged a sword. i encourage everyone to make them.
for now i guess i can start by downloading resource packs for desert islands and seeing how _they_ do it. like is it okay to make the whole island one mesh? how should it be subdivided? do i hide the edge between the beach and the forest underneath shrubs? that's the kind of thing i'm talking about. the boundary break episodes on animal crossing were great for seeing world curvature in action, but man i hope shesez does an episode on the witness.
@@PeterDanielBerg I was literally about to bring up the Animal Crossing episode from Boundary Break! Great insight into how the industry and massive studios handle these sorts of situations. It's also interesting seeing how much time and effort devs give to such minor issues that we'd otherwise fret over for hours.
I'm finding your videos very well put together, funny, entertaining, and something I will keep close to my heart for years to come!
You got yourself another bell!
Here I am watching Unity tutorial while making a game on Godot. Perfection
P.s. Okay, making is a strong word but I am learning how to!
It’s all the same mate! Take it one step further, you’re crafting experiences!
Hope your project is going well!
me to fr
me to fr
This is a great video with the exact tips I've been looking for for a couple of months! Got yourself a sub
Thanks so much, I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Talks about LODs: Meanwhile UE devs: *laughs in nanite*
Literally hahaha
You forgot about trim sheets. You can get so many fully textured assets out of a trim sheet without having to make a unique texture. As a side benefit trim sheets also reduce the amount of render state changes since many of your meshes will share the same material.
Amazing point! Thank you for sharing that completely evaded me!
It is easier to make simple elements look good or realistic compared to complex one, this is why Mirrors Edge looks so good, there is barely any vegetation and one of the few naturalistic elements are humans and some effects like fire. When texture try to be more than they actually are, they end up not looking realistic, but a mere representation of what they are trying to be, which can be jarring to look at unless it is trying to be a painting or a display.
This is definitely true. Also on a similar note, I think it’s almost always a better idea to go with a more stylists art style because it’s easier for a small developer to pull off. Leave the realism to the big studios unless you have some experience with prior games and know what you’re doing. Because one thing A LOT of beginner devs mess up is not realizing that even if you download fantastic realistic models from an asset store, they will stick out like a sore thumb if the rest of the game doesn’t match.
Good stuff, I am very close to making levels for my game and this is a good starting point for optimizing what I already have in store. First things first tho I have to find out a way to render more than 2 enemies in sight at more than 30 FPS.. 3k verts on a an enemy model thats supposed to be complex shouldn't be this resource heavy Unity! Please let me have fun!!
Glad I could help! It's also a reminder for future me when I'm wondering why my game's performance sucks haha. Game Engines can never let you have fun without first having a moment to complain!
Extremely underrated channel and video! I was able to be entertained and learn at the same time. Fantastic stuff!
Thank you so much and I’m glad you enjoyed it! Super happy that’s how it came across - exactly what I was going for!
Thanks for these tips!!
No problem mate! Thanks for watching!
love it ❤
great video
Thanks mate!
i love everything except how he says "eligible " like illegible", like you can't read it, not like it qualifies for something. "static batching allows all illegible meshes (meshes you can't read because they are written poorly) to be combined into the same buffer."
Damn didn't think I'd be called out by a Bulborb today lol
ha true. but seriously I'm loving the vids. keep up the awesome work. @@DarkDax
ana haha yeah the avatar looks like a bulborb, totally unintiontional, a character from my game i'm developing. now I guess i gotta go delete all my 3d models haha
Best map making tip that I know of is to ask chat gpt to do it all for you
It's only logical
not enough ppl are talking bout this in a fun way
Wouldn’t it be funny if I just didn’t use Tiled and did EVERYTHING in Aseprite
Utilizing nanite is something that should be mentioned here. You don't need to optimize the poly counts at all and you don't need LoDs, also you can represent details with far less hard drive space since textures take up way more than nanite high poly meshes. With such high density meshes you also don't need to UV them at all and you can simply use seamless tileable textures on them using substance or other unreal plugins through techniques like vertex painting which such textures also take up far less space since you can utilize tiling of a 500x500 texture for example. Games like cyberpunk used this technique to detail objects infinitely scalable using what are called detail maps. Video should mention all this stuff.
Great shout! Genuinely in awe of Nanite and how it works. I plan on trying Unreal Engine for my next project just to see what it’s about so I’ll keep this in mind!
@@DarkDax If you go to Unreal, make sure you take advantage of USD file format and data smith as well if you're like me and you prefer to build your environments outside of unreal engine and you want to be able to see the level as you create it in unreal in real time as you work on it in max, maya or blender.
You aren't funny...