[Hololens Development Edition] starts shipping March 30th, 2016 for a mere $3000.
Author: tim
History of Impact Craters
Every few months there is a news story about a meteor flash. Here’s a link to see the recorded [world timeline of impact craters].
Raspberry PI 3
The [Raspberry PI 3] is now on sale for $35. This increases the RAM to 1GB. The 64-bit quad processor is 10 times faster than the original Raspberry PI. And now RPI3 comes with built-in wifi.
Top Down Medieval City
[Top Down Medieval City] is available in the Unity Asset Store. The asset store has a new integrated 3d viewer for art assets.
The Creation of ProtoStar, the First Unreal Engine Demonstration of Vulkan API
Apple TV Tech Talks Videos
Over the past few months, developers around the world learned how to design and develop apps and games for Apple TV directly from Apple experts. Now you can share in the experience by watching all of the session videos from the Apple TV Tech Talks. Related documentation, sample code, and other resources are also available.
Microsoft Plans To Acquire Xamarin
On the Microsoft Blog, [Microsoft to acquire Xamarin and empower more developers to build apps on any device]. I use Xamarin frequently to build games in [MonoGame] to run on Android. Potentially this could be good news for developers if Microsoft either makes Xamarin free for all users or incorporates features into Visual Studio.
Vimeo Developer Portal
The [Vimeo Developer Portal] has information on how to embed Vimeo videos into your applications.
Docs: [JavaScript API]
Docs: [config.xml specifications]
[API Example Repository]
[API Playground]
The [ADB Chrome Add-On] lets you debug [Cordova] in the browser while the app is running on Android.
Unfortunately because of the [same origin policy], the Vimeo API can’t be invoked from HTML5 invoked from `file:///`. Chromium has a [Command-Line] to specify `–disable-web-security` when doing local development. Web security should be enabled for the final application.
GIT Command-Line Tools
GIT is a popular version control system for tracking and storing application source code. [SourceTreeApp] works as a GIT client with a GUI and command-line. Some tools also need a [GIT] command-line client.
AWS Source Control
[AWS CodeCommit] from Amazon is a cheap source control competitor. $1 per month gives you 10GB of remote storage per user. The free tier starts at 5 users. Check out [Pricing] for details.
UE4 Plugin Docs
Here’s the UE4 reference section on [Plugins]. The [PlayFab UnrealBlueprintSDK] is a great example of how to do a UE4 plugin.
I’ll need to incorporate similar design into the `OuyaSDK` [h] and [cpp].
[Automation] has a great built-in way to write and execute unit tests to verify plugin features behave as expected in UE4.
Gaia – Terrain Creation, Texturing, Population!
[Gaia] has a sales discount in this week’s “Unity Madness Sale”. Gaia makes it easy to use stamps and detail generate to quickly make nice looking terrain.
The Foundary Game Jam Webinar Series
Starting January, The Foundary is producing the [Game Jam Webinar Series] which showcases MODO and MARI in the game content creation pipeline.
See the link above to get access to the 7 videos from the series.
“Webinar 3: UVs and the Shader Tree” has a ton of career advice for aspiring artists who will need to learn how to code to stand out in a saturated market.
MARI Sci-Tech Award
[MARI] won a Sci-tech award; see the acceptance speech below. MARI is now the top 3D texture painting tool after 10 years.
Generic In-Game Level Editing System
The creator of [ProBuilder] and [PolyBrush] has a work-in-progress update on “GILES”.
Cloud Vision API Beta
Google has a free tier to try the [Google Cloud Vision Beta] that can do OCR, detect objects, and detect facial expressions.
XPrize AI Prize
Compete for $5M in the [IBM Watson AI XPrize] to solve a world problem with AI.
Human Interface Guidelines
The [IOS Human Interface Guidelines] can be followed to really make your application shine. There’s no reason why you can’t follow the same guidelines for Android an iOS. Google has similar design guidelines called [Material Design]. [Pixate] is a useful tool for prototyping designs on Android and iOS. The Adobe [Color Wheel] helps pick colors that are constrained by design rules. You can also check your material design with the [Resizer].
Unity Asset Bundles 2.0
Unity 5.X introduced a whole new asset bundle system. [ASSETBUNDLES AND THE ASSETBUNDLE MANAGER]
Samsung Gear VR
[Samsung Gear VR] uses my Note 5 and turns it into a VR device. It runs super snappy too! [Creating a Unity Project]
[Oculus Utilities for Unity 5]
Be sure to put the [Oculus Signature File] into `Assets\Plugins\Android\assets`.
“Reaction” Video TradeMark
This Week In Law episode [335: LAWYERS IN LATEX (LAW-TECH)] talks about how the fans successfully horded against exclusively branding “Reaction” videos.
Nature Starter Pack
The [Nature Starter Pack] is free in the Unity Asset Store.
Amazon Lumberyard
Amazon has a new open-source, free, and royalty free game engine called [Amazon Lumberyard]. Lumberyard licensed and extends the [Crytek Engine]. Udemy offers [CryENGINE SDK Game Programming Essentials] to quickly ramp up and get started. Amazon has a [MarketPlace] but it’s still early to expect an asset store to sell game content[?] The [download page] has several game assets available.
PlayFab Custom Game Server
Marco created a [Custom Game Server] that works in Unity and connects to the PlayFab API. The service allows multiple servers to spin up as needed. Game clients can connect with the server and run cloud script.
Unreal Delegates with 8+ Parameters
Normally Unreal only defines the macros to generate delegates for up to 8 parameters. I wrote a [console app] to generate support for up to 62 delegate parameters. I submitted a [Pull Request] to have my changes added to Unreal. Unfortunately, coding standards block this change. The staff were also worried the extra macros would negatively impact compile times.