Here’s an odd little tidbit I ran into while trying to run a Unity build I got from a student. When I tried to run a Windows build of their Unity project, the game would almost immediately end. I would see the executable show up briefly in the Task Manager but it would quickly disappear […]
Author Archives: Robert Dieterich
This Week in the Games Industry: 2/11/2019 – 2/17/2019
E3 has lost its impact in a changing industry, says Sony’s Shawn Layden http://gamasutra.com/view/news/336389/E3_has_lost_its_impact_in_a_changing_industry_says_Sonys_Shawn_Layden.php “War has changed,” says Solid Snake; “The games industry has changed,” says Sony. Activision Blizzard Lays Off Hundreds Of Employees https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-begins-massive-layoffs-1832571288 From rumor to reality. Ick. King’s San Francisco studio closed in wake of Activision Blizzard layoffs http://gamasutra.com/view/news/336589/Kings_San_Francisco_studio_closed_in_wake_of_Activision_Blizzard_layoffs.php Not sweet. Apex […]
This Week in the Games Industry: 2/4/2019 – 2/10/2019
Tomb Raider and Just Cause fail to offset wider declines at Square Enix https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-02-06-tomb-raider-and-just-cause-fail-to-offset-wider-declines-at-square-enix Slim year at Square-Enix. Let’s hope Kingdom Hearts III pulls the numbers they need. Zynga “turnaround now complete” as dev posts record mobile performance for 2018 https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-02-07-zynga-turnaround-now-complete-as-dev-posts-record-mobile-revenue Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational mobile game developer. Microsoft […]
How to Increase UE4 ShaderCompileWorker Priority from the Command-Line
While waiting for shaders to compile while I was packaging a build for an Unreal Engine 4 project, I started poking around in Task Manager and noticed that ShaderCompileWorker.exe, the helper program UE4 spawns to compile shaders, had low processor priority. A bit frustrated with how long the shader compilation was taking, I right-clicked on […]
This Week in the Games Industry: 1/28/2019 – 2/3/2019
Tencent uses model’s likeness for Ring of Elysium without permissionhttp://gamasutra.com/view/news/335223/Tencent_uses_models_likeness_for_Ring_of_Elysium_without_permission.phpThis one is pretty blatant. If they led with the in-game 3D model maybe they’d have a counter argument, but the character portrait is a straight-up photoshop job on one of the model’s images. Metro Exodus for PC skipping Steam for Epic Games storehttps://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-01-28-metro-exodus-for-pc-launching-exclusively-on-epic-games-storeEpic continues to […]
This Week in the Games Industry: 1/21/2019 – 1/27/2019
Adobe acquires Substance toolkit creator Allegorithmic http://gamasutra.com/view/news/334987/Adobe_acquires_Substance_toolkit_creator_Allegorithmic.php The big question is: does this mean I will be paying more or less for my suite of game dev tools? Square Enix trademarks terms for Octopath Traveler’s visual style https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-01-22-square-enix-trademarks-terms-for-octopath-travelers-visual-style At least it’s not a trademark on “Edge” for characterization of RPG protagonists. So You Want To […]
Continental Drift: Are American and Japanese Gamers’ Tastes Growing Apart?
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a piece I wrote for one of my classes at graduate school. In the interest of sharing knowledge, I’ve posted it here on the Skyboy Games Dev Blog. Many years ago while reminiscing with a friend, I happened to mention that, as a child, I had been so struck by the […]
Lessons Learned from It’s Raining Bombs
Participating in One Game a Month (#1GAM) is possibly the best and worst idea I’ve ever had. On one hand, quickly producing games prototypes is a great way to learn and try out ideas. On the other hand, launching a game every month is HARD. Still, I’m glad Skyboy Games is doing it. (Ask me […]
A Cheapskate’s Guide to Twitter Ads
When running an internet-based business, you can’t throw a rock without hitting an article telling you how important it is to have a presence on social media like Facebook and Twitter. (P.S. Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook!) Meanwhile, said services will bombard you with offers to run ads to get more likes/followers. So, […]
Crushing Every PNG in a Folder Hierarchy with a Batch File
While writing a batch file to remove stray Thumb.db files from my Ookibloks data, I figured it would be a good time to do a little extra content optimization. If, like Ookibloks, you happen to use PNG for your game’s textures, you may have a lot to gain by way of the PNG compression strategy […]