Game Engines reports and market data
333 documents·20 writers·15 charts and tables
Documents
Game Developers Conference58 min
3D Toon Rendering in 'Hi-Fi RUSH'
Hi-Fi RUSH achieves a distinct, 2D-inspired aesthetic within Unreal Engine 4 by utilizing a custom deferred toon renderer that decouples shading from geometry.
- Tango Gameworks achieved a consistent 2D toon aesthetic for both characters and environments in 'Hi-Fi RUSH' by customizing Unreal Engine 4 to decouple toon rendering from standard geometry rendering.
- To maintain a rock-solid 60fps required for rhythm-based gameplay, the team integrated deferred lighting and toon post-processing into a single, performance-optimized deferred toon rendering pass.
- The developers utilized a 'comic shader' that applies half-tone dots and hatching lines to surfaces, using world-space UVs to ensure these textures appear printed on polygonal surfaces rather than floating in screen space.
Game Developers ConferenceJul 2024
Game Developers Conference61 min
Making Connections: Real-Time Path-Traced Light Transport in Game Engines
Real-time path tracing has reached a critical inflection point in modern game development, enabling the rendering of complex, dynamic scenes with thousands of light sources at a consistent 60 frames per second.
- ReSTIR (Reservoir-based Spatio-Temporal Importance Sampling) enables real-time path tracing in Unreal Engine 5 by using statistical resampling to select and reuse the most essential light paths, significantly reducing the computational cost of light transport.
- Implementing a state machine-based control flow for shaders—consolidating random number generation and resampling code into single locations—improves performance by 20% to 40% by optimizing instruction cache usage.
- ReSTIR allows for GPU-driven lighting that replaces traditional N by M complexity occluder-receiver tracking with statistical sampling, eliminating the need for expensive per-light passes and reducing CPU draw call overhead.
Game Developers ConferenceJun 2024
Game Developers Conference66 min
Quaternions to Homogeneous Points, Lines, and Planes
Reflection composition provides a unified mathematical framework for game development by treating points, lines, and planes as reflections.
- The reflection composition framework replaces traditional vector-based cross-products with dual quaternions and 3D Euclidean plane-based geometric algebra to improve computational efficiency and mathematical consistency.
- Geometric objects are represented as compact data structures that treat points, lines, and planes as reflections, allowing them to function as transforms themselves via the sandwich product.
- The system utilizes a zero-value W component to distinguish between standard vertex positions and points at infinity, providing higher precision for spatial relationships.
Game Developers ConferenceJun 2024
Two & a Half Gamers29 min
Unity Special no.3: The reckoning. They are sorry, but the trust is gone!
The recent controversy surrounding Unity’s pricing structure, specifically the introduction of a runtime fee, has resulted in a significant loss of industry trust despite the company’s subsequent rollback and apology.
- Unity’s attempt to introduce a runtime fee based on game installs triggered a massive developer boycott, involving over 1,000 developers representing billions of total game installs.
- During the peak of the protest, bid requests from the Unity Exchange dropped by 30% to 40% as developers removed Unity and IronSource SDKs from their monetization stacks.
- Although Unity rolled back the policy to offer a choice between a 2.5% revenue share or self-reported engagement fees, the developer community remains skeptical of the company's long-term stability and transparency.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers35 min
Unity Special no.2: Boycott - Developers Fight Back in the mediation war
A coalition of mobile game developers, particularly within the hyper-casual sector, has launched a coordinated boycott against Unity in response to the introduction of a controversial runtime fee structure.
- Major hyper-casual publishers, including Voodoo, Homa Games, Century Games, and CrazyLabs, have initiated a boycott by disabling Unity’s ad monetization and User Acquisition (UA) services in response to the company's new runtime fee policy.
- Unity’s business model is heavily reliant on ad revenue rather than engine licensing, meaning a widespread boycott by major publishers could create a 'chicken and egg' problem that severely impacts Unity's ad demand and supply ecosystem.
- Developers considering a migration away from Unity face significant technical hurdles, as alternative engines like Godot, Cocos, or Defold currently lack the feature scale and industry-wide comfort level established by Unity.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers36 min
Unity Special: From $200/month fee to $187k. Death kiss to (small & hypercasual) developers
Unity’s introduction of a runtime fee based on game installs, effective January 1, 2024, represents a fundamental shift in the economic model for developers utilizing the engine.
- Unity is introducing a 'runtime fee' effective January 1, 2024, which charges developers based on a flat fee per install rather than a fixed monthly subscription, significantly impacting unit economics for small and hypercasual developers.
- The new fee structure applies to games that exceed both $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue and 1 million lifetime installs, with costs varying based on the developer's region and the user's install location.
- For developers in hypercasual markets where cost-per-install (CPI) can be as low as 1 to 2 cents, an additional fee of 2 cents per install represents a 100% cost increase that can render previously profitable games unviable.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Two & a Half Gamers44 min
two & a half gamers session #52 - Admon gossip corner, Unity expensive bug, APS, Google 3 placements
Technical stability and strategic ad stack management remain critical pillars for mobile game publishers seeking to optimize revenue.
- AdMob has removed its restriction limiting publishers to three ad placements per waterfall when using third-party mediation, allowing for greater inventory exposure to Google demand.
- A significant reporting error within the Unity platform recently caused widespread data discrepancies, forcing many developers to disable placements to mitigate financial risk.
- Amazon Publisher Services is becoming a high-potential monetization channel, with developers encouraged to pursue direct Transparent Ad Marketplace deals to bypass intermediary margins.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2024
Game Developers Conference60 min
Math in Game Development Summit: A Visual Guide to Quaternions and Dual Quaternions
Quaternions and dual quaternions serve as essential mathematical frameworks for 3D game development, offering superior alternatives to traditional 4x4 matrices for rotation and skeletal animation.
- Dual quaternions unify rotation and translation into a single six-float representation, providing a more efficient and stable alternative to traditional 4x4 matrices for skeletal animation.
- Using dual quaternions for mesh deformation eliminates the 'candy wrapper' effect, a common animation artifact where character joints lose volume during rotation.
- Quaternions enable superior interpolation compared to matrix-based transformations by preserving volume and preventing the squashing artifacts inherent in standard linear blending.
Game Developers ConferenceMay 2024
Naavik69 min
GDC Vibes / data.ai x Sensor Tower / Epic Announcements / US v. Apple
The gaming industry is currently navigating a period of significant structural adjustment, defined by a transition from speculative growth toward an era of efficiency and operational discipline.
- Mobile consumer spending is projected to decline in 2024, with 32% of all users and 41% of high-value spenders planning to reduce their in-app purchases.
- The gaming industry is shifting from speculative growth to operational discipline, characterized by widespread layoffs and a trend of experienced developers launching new studios focused on core quality.
- The U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple and Epic Games’ launch of a mobile store represent a direct challenge to the dominance of closed, vertically integrated mobile ecosystems.
NaavikMar 2024
Thomas Brush7 min
Can You Really Make A 2D Game In Unreal?
Developing 2D games within Unreal Engine is a viable, albeit often overlooked, path for independent developers.
- Unreal Engine is a viable platform for 2D development, evidenced by the success of professional-grade titles such as Octopath Traveler and Ender Lilies.
- The engine's licensing model is highly favorable for independent developers, requiring no royalty payments until a project generates $1 million in gross revenue.
- Performance testing confirms that 2D projects in Unreal can maintain stable frame rates exceeding 300 FPS on hardware like the Steam Deck, debunking concerns that the engine is too resource-heavy for 2D.
Thomas BrushMar 2024
Thomas Brush11 min
Watch THIS Is You're Going To Make A 2D Game
The development of 2D games requires a disciplined, iterative approach to art production that prioritizes character silhouette, personality, and technical adaptability.
- Prioritize character design by ensuring the silhouette remains instantly recognizable as a solid shape, avoiding over-complicated or overlapping elements.
- Adopt bitmap-based software like Photoshop over vector-based workflows to achieve greater textured depth, grit, and a hand-drawn aesthetic.
- Implement a brutal, non-linear iterative process that involves discarding unsuccessful drafts and combining the best elements from multiple iterations to ensure cohesion.
Thomas BrushMar 2024
Thomas Brush10 min
Why Solo Developers Should Use Unreal
This analysis examines the viability of Unreal Engine for solo developers, specifically addressing common misconceptions regarding technical requirements and development workflows.
- Solo developers can build complex, commercially successful games like 'Choo Choo Charles' entirely using Unreal Engine's visual scripting system, Blueprints, without writing a single line of C++ code.
- Common industry claims that specific advanced features—such as spline-based track systems—are impossible to implement in Blueprints are frequently incorrect and often stem from gatekeeping rather than technical limitations.
- Development efficiency and project completion are more important than adhering to 'proper' industry workflows, as evidenced by the creator's unconventional, manual approach to UV mapping and texturing.
Thomas BrushDec 2023