Unity Dep Injection 💉, Darkest Dungeon 2 🌌, devcom 2025 🎤
✨ Cutting-Edge Tools & Techniques
Procedural Water Droplet Simulation for Houdini: Sergey Kharitonov’s Lightweight Setup
Sergey Kharitonov presents a custom Houdini water droplet simulation that animates droplets sliding realistically across surfaces. His approach uses a lightweight POP solver setup enhanced by a clever particle "eating" algorithm written in VEX to mimic merging droplets and trails. Designed for intermediate users, this efficient system simulates around 500 frames in under 30 seconds, offering a practical solution for adding dynamic water effects to close-up renders.
Reflex: Lightweight, High-Performance Dependency Injection for Unity
Discover Reflex, a fast and lightweight dependency injection framework tailored for Unity projects. This tutorial covers setup, working with singleton, scoped, and transient lifetimes, and shows how to inject dependencies seamlessly with fields, properties, and methods. Reflex outperforms Zenject and VContainer, boasting superior speed and lower memory overhead, while supporting AOT platforms like IL2CPP and WebGL—making it a compelling choice for Unity developers aiming for clean and efficient code architecture.
🎨 Blending Art and Technology
Mixing 2D & 3D: Creating Stylized Animations Inspired by TMNT
French 3D artist Emma Siret shares her creative process blending 2D and 3D techniques to craft a stylized laundromat animation inspired by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Using tools like Blender’s Grease Pencil, Substance 3D Painter, and Photoshop, Emma emphasizes artistic focus over complexity, iterating between modeling, texturing, and post-production. Her insights highlight the power of mixing media and thoughtful workflows to achieve unique, vibrant visuals in game art and animation.
Art-Driven Procedural Generation: Behind Darkest Dungeon 2’s World
Red Hook Studios breaks convention by designing Darkest Dungeon 2’s procedural generation system around art direction rather than programmer control. In their GDC 2025 session, artist Marielle Fox and programmer Colin Towle reveal how they crafted a cohesive, crumbling post-apocalyptic world that stays true to the game’s visual identity. This talk offers rare insights into blending artistic vision with procedural technology in game development.
🌟 Industry Insights & Innovations
devcom 2025 Unveils Star-Studded Lineup and Expanded Interactive Formats
With over 210 speakers confirmed, devcom 2025 is set to offer a dynamic program featuring industry icons like Counter-Strike creator Minh Le and EA COO Kate Kellogg. This year triples the number of roundtables to boost interactivity, covering topics from RPG combat innovation to live narrative design. Alongside sessions, an expanded schedule of networking mixers, pitch events, and community meetups promises valuable connections and celebrations leading into gamescom.
Why Stupid Mistakes Are the Best Mistakes in Development
Making mistakes is part of learning, but not all mistakes are equal. This reflection highlights the value of "stupid" mistakes—those quickly noticed and acknowledged—as essential practice that prepares you for bigger challenges. Instead of fearing errors, embrace them, learn fast, and move on. These small slip-ups build resilience and self-forgiveness, shaping better developers and creators in the long run.