meshoptimizer 1.0 🧱, In-game Dev Consoles 👨‍💻, Godot 4.6 🚀

🎮 Solo Dev Stories & Shooter Design

Building a Modern 2D Multiplayer Shooter as a Solo Dev

Solo Canadian dev Justin Wilkin walks through the evolution of Deadswitch from Newgrounds-era Flash to Deadswitch Combat, a fully fledged cross-platform multiplayer shooter. He explains how he translated modern FPS sensibilities—realistic movement, meaningful weapon handling, and fine-tuned loadouts—into a 2D format. Built-in mod tools and a workshop give the community power to extend the game with their own content. Justin closes with candid thoughts on discoverability, community-driven growth, and why longevity and modding matter for indies.

Why Every Game Needs a Dev Console (And How I Built Mine)

The developer of Atlanta TD walks through how an in-game dev console can radically speed up testing and content capture. Instead of editing game files or grinding through early waves, they use a CLI to spawn resources, jump to specific waves, and set up scenarios on demand. Under the hood, a `GameCommands` router and a shared command interface handle input, context checks, and execution. They demo a new “set wave” command and offer to create a free, beginner-friendly tutorial.

🛠️ Engines, Tools & Optimization

Godot 4.6 Final Dev Builds: D3D12 Default, XR & Mobile Upgrades

Godot 4.6 Dev5 and Dev6 land back-to-back, marking the final feature drops before the 4.6 beta and feature freeze. Dev5 introduces D3D12 as the default Windows renderer, PCK file patching for leaner updates, Android Gradle builds, OpenXR 1.1 support, and 2D batching optimizations. Dev6 follows up with Tracy profiling for GDScript and Android’s Storage Access Framework to reduce heavy storage permissions. Together, they sharpen Godot’s desktop, mobile, and XR capabilities ahead of beta.

meshoptimizer 1.0: Nanite-Style LOD and Faster Mesh Compression

meshoptimizer has reached version 1.0, bringing stable APIs and big upgrades across simplification, clusterization, and compression for game engines. The release adds clusterlod.h, a Nanite-style continuous LOD single-header library that builds hierarchical clusters using meshoptimizer’s algorithms. A new vertex codec (v1) delivers ~10% smaller data and up to 30% faster decoding, while gltfpack gains support for KHR_meshopt_compression, better simplification defaults, and improved texture handling. The project emphasizes backward compatibility, making it safer than ever to adopt in production.