Unity RTS Culling 🎮, s&box Open Source 🧩, GodotARKit 🎭
⚙️ Tech & Engine Breakthroughs
Optimizing Huge RTS Maps: Sector-Based Culling in Unity
Amine Rehioui shares how he optimized a large isometric RTS map by dividing it into sectors and applying frustum culling, going beyond Unity’s default systems. He stresses that rendering and gameplay logic must be fully decoupled, since off-screen entities still need to think and act. Rehioui also highlights a common trap: if you keep culling enabled for the minimap camera, entire sectors can vanish. His technique is currently powering his strategy title Powerplay.
Facepunch Open Sources s&box Game Engine Under MIT License
Facepunch Studios has open sourced its s&box game engine under the MIT license, putting its entire C#-based high-level stack — editor, networking, scene system, UI, and more — on GitHub. While Valve’s Source 2 layer remains closed, developers are free to view, modify, and fork s&box for standalone games or even their own engines. Facepunch frames the move as a win for the broader gamedev ecosystem, embracing open source alongside engines like Godot.
🎮 Design Systems & Skill Trees
Enginuity Releases 20-Part Blueprint Series on Procedural Skill Trees
Enginuity, creator of the Skill Tree Pro asset, is launching a free 20-part tutorial series that rebuilds the single-player version of the system entirely in Unreal Engine Blueprints—no C++ required. The first episode covers a fully modular setup that can drop into any game. Across the series you’ll create a procedurally generated yet customizable skill tree, complete with advanced UI materials, animations, and smooth panning/zooming. You’ll also learn scalability techniques like soft object batch loading, SDF-based optimization, and clean dependency management.
Intuition, Remixing, and Tiny Scopes: Friedemann Allmenröder on Successful Indies
Indie veteran Friedemann Allmenröder (ISLANDERS, Summer House, Slots & Daggers) breaks down how he actually thinks about making hit games today—and why his advice has gotten fuzzier with experience. He explains appeal × retention as a guiding model, why creativity is really about remixing, and how to validate ideas with small, “too simple” scopes. Along the way he shares concrete tricks behind Slots & Daggers’ striking art and polish, and reflects on marketing, publishers, and the so-called indie apocalypse.
🤖 AI, Tools & Industry Debate
Epic CEO: AI Labels on Games ‘Make No Sense’ for Stores
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney argues that storefronts like Steam shouldn’t tag games for AI usage, saying it “makes no sense” when AI will soon be involved in nearly all game production. His stance clashes with current Steam and Itch.io policies that require developers to disclose generative AI use. With Steam data showing a sharp rise in AI-assisted titles and high-profile controversies like Arc Raiders’ AI voices, Sweeney frames AI as an inevitable productivity multiplier and a growing political flashpoint.
From Text to Game-Ready Worlds: Tencent’s Hunyuan 3D Goes Global
Tencent’s new Hunyuan 3D engine aims to radically speed up 3D production with AI-driven generation from text, images, and sketches. Through Tencent Cloud’s Hunyuan 3D Model API, studios can create both high-quality object assets (Hunyuan 3D 3.0) and large interactive environments (Hunyuan3D World) suitable for games and VR. Creators get daily free generations, and enterprises receive API credits to trial integration. More than 150 Chinese companies, including Unity China, have already integrated the system.
📱 Engines on the Move: Godot & AR
GodotARKit Brings Live iPhone Face Mocap to Godot 4
GodotARKit is a new open-source plugin that streams real-time ARKit facial motion-capture data into Godot 4 over UDP. It plugs directly into Unreal’s Live Link Face mobile app, giving you access to a full set of facial blendshapes inside your game via a simple interface. Because it runs entirely in-game, it’s ideal for live facial animation and performance-capture pipelines. The MIT-licensed project includes a complete example script and welcomes community contributions.