Unity FX ✨, Spline Dungeons 🧱, Spider Mechs 🤖, Multiplayer Shift 👥
🎨 Tools & Tech: Visuals and FX
New 2D Outline Shader & More FX Goodies from Mirza Beig
Shader wizard Mirza Beig is back with a new 2D outline shader, complete with full source code for you to dissect and drop into your projects. The post also spotlights his previous glass and interactive shield shaders, which react to hits, touches, and impacts. You’ll find even more inspiration on his X/Twitter, including hologram, VHS, Kingdom Hearts-style Paopu, and real-time caustics shaders. A quick but juicy stop for any FX or shader-focused dev.
How gbrosgames Built a Modular Spline Dungeon in Minutes
gbrosgames has revealed a Unity dungeon location built on a spline-first pipeline that makes modular level creation incredibly fast. The adjustable asset pack lets developers reshape dungeon elements in seconds, with a simple playable prototype reportedly taking just minutes to build. Under the hood, the setup relies on math libraries like Delaunator, Burst Triangulator, and Clipper2D, plus small, composable components such as SplineBooleanComponent and SplineOffsetComponent. The article also links to other spline-based Unity tools, including a terrain editor from GRUELSCUM.
🕹 Engines & Multiplayer
Godot Dev Builds Terrain-Aware Spider Mech in Just 6 Hours
A Godot developer, known as dacaffee on Reddit, built a fully procedural spider-mech locomotion system in about six hours—before Godot 4.6’s revamped IK even arrived. Instead of moving bones directly, they drive Marker3D IK targets, using raycast “step sensors” and predicted future positions to place feet in smooth arcs. Diagonal leg pairing keeps the mech stable while chassis height and rotation adapt to terrain, topped off with a subtle hover effect. The piece also nudges readers to try the Godot 4.6 beta with its improved Inverse Kinematics.
From Toolkit to Engine: Coherence 2.0 Levels Up Unity Multiplayer
Coherence 2.0 transforms the service into a cohesive multiplayer engine that feels native inside Unity, instead of a loose toolkit. It unifies cloud, client-hosted, and self-hosted options so studios can change their hosting strategy without rewriting core game code. Lessons from launches like Vampire Survivors drove upgrades in stability, logging, load testing, and mobile reconnection flows. With a generous free tier and flat-rate pro licenses, Coherence 2.0 aims to make multiplayer a design choice, not an infrastructure burden.
📊 Industry & Business Shifts
After Runtime Fee Backlash, Unity Plans Revenue-Based ‘Minimum Commitment’
Unity is allegedly shifting its monetization strategy again, this time with a revenue-based “Enterprise Minimum Commitment Program” aimed at its largest customers. Games earning more than $25 million annually could be locked into minimum yearly payments between $250K and $2M, applied toward Unity subscriptions and support. The program applies to studios required to use Unity Enterprise and stacks on top of an upcoming 5% price hike. Coming on the heels of the abandoned Runtime Fee, this move may further strain developer confidence.
Cinematic Camera Power Tips: Subsequencing, Rigs, and Dual Viewports in UE5
Learn how to turn messy UE5 cinematics into a clean, studio-ready pipeline. This video explains subsequences—Level Sequences inside Level Sequences—as a way to isolate animation, shot lighting, FX, and camera data for better control and collaboration. You’ll also master camera control rigs and animation layers to tune framing and camera shake with simple weight sliders instead of wrangling dense keyframes. Plus, you’ll configure split viewports or second monitors so you can edit rigs from one view while watching the final camera feed in another.
🌱 Dev Journeys & Big Ideas
Game AI’s Existential Crisis: How Knowledge Access Is Failing Us
Tommy Thompson takes aim at the broken infrastructure around game AI knowledge: from GDC’s expensive vault and weakened AI Summit, to vanished conferences, out-of-print books, and hobbyist tutorials drowning out production-proven practices. He warns that education and policy are chasing machine learning trends while neglecting the symbolic AI foundations most games still rely on. The result is a field propped up by a handful of individuals and ad-hoc projects like AI and Games. Unless studios collectively invest in open, lasting knowledge-sharing, game AI’s future looks precarious.
Seina: A Tale of Spirits — Inside a Watercolor Solo Dev Journey
In this interview, solo developer Argyro Brotsi shares how Seina: A Tale of Spirits evolved from experiments into her first full-time project. Inspired by a trip to Japan, she’s building a peaceful, hand-painted world where players can explore, relax, and connect with nature. Brotsi talks frankly about the freedom and weight of solo dev—managing art, design, and production alone. Her biggest lessons so far: patience, consistency, and protecting her mental health by keeping the work enjoyable.