GrafX2 is a bitmap paint program

GrafX2 is a bitmap paint program inspired by the Amiga programs ​Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. Specialized in 256-color drawing, it includes a very large number of tools and effects that make it particularly suitable for pixel art, game graphics, and generally any detailed graphics painted with a mouse. The program is mostly developed on Haiku, Linux and Windows, but is also portable on many other platforms.
Main supported platforms are:

• Windows: 2.6 Installer / 2.6 Portable / Nightly build (latest changes, may be unstable) 
• Haiku: pkgman install grafx2 
• Mac OS: 2.6 for amd64 or PowerPC 
• Linux: Nightly builds

You can download it from the official website.
One good tutorial about how to create Blending and Transparency with this tool can be found here:
If you want to use for your game development then this is a good video tutorial about Tile Editing
issue:

The new Unity 3D version 2019.1 .

The new Unity version comes with many features, see the official website.
System Requirements for Unity version Unity 2019.1 are:
Released: 16 April 2019 
OS: Windows 7 SP1+, 8, 10, 64-bit versions only; macOS 10.12+ 
GPU: Graphics card with DX10 (shader model 4.0) capabilities. 
The official blog can be found here.

News: Release Trailer for Godot Engine 3.1

The official youtube channel come with a release trailer for Godot Engine:

Godot : water shader example.

This is an example created by user named Gonkee in this video tutorial.
The result of this shader tutorial I tested is this:

The source code of this shader is this:

shader_type canvas_item;

// Gonkee's water shader for Godot 3 - full tutorial https://youtu.be/uhMAHpV_cDg
// If you use this shader, I would prefer if you gave credit to me and my channel

uniform vec4 blue_tint : hint_color;

uniform vec2 sprite_scale;
uniform float scale_x = 0.67;

float rand(vec2 coord){
 return fract(sin(dot(coord, vec2(12.9898, 78.233)))* 43758.5453123);
}

float noise(vec2 coord){
 vec2 i = floor(coord);
 vec2 f = fract(coord);

 // 4 corners of a rectangle surrounding our point
 float a = rand(i);
 float b = rand(i + vec2(1.0, 0.0));
 float c = rand(i + vec2(0.0, 1.0));
 float d = rand(i + vec2(1.0, 1.0));

 vec2 cubic = f * f * (3.0 - 2.0 * f);

 return mix(a, b, cubic.x) + (c - a) * cubic.y * (1.0 - cubic.x) + (d - b) * cubic.x * cubic.y;
}

void fragment(){
 
 vec2 noisecoord1 = UV * sprite_scale * scale_x;
 vec2 noisecoord2 = UV * sprite_scale * scale_x + 4.0;
 
 vec2 motion1 = vec2(TIME * 0.3, TIME * -0.4);
 vec2 motion2 = vec2(TIME * 0.1, TIME * 0.5);
 
 vec2 distort1 = vec2(noise(noisecoord1 + motion1), noise(noisecoord2 + motion1)) - vec2(0.5);
 vec2 distort2 = vec2(noise(noisecoord1 + motion2), noise(noisecoord2 + motion2)) - vec2(0.5);
 
 vec2 distort_sum = (distort1 + distort2) / 60.0;
 
 vec4 color = textureLod(SCREEN_TEXTURE, SCREEN_UV + distort_sum, 0.0);
 
 color = mix(color, blue_tint, 0.3);
 color.rgb = mix(vec3(0.5), color.rgb, 1.4);
 
 float near_top = (UV.y + distort_sum.y) / (0.2 / sprite_scale.y);
 near_top = clamp(near_top, 0.0, 1.0);
 near_top = 1.0 - near_top;
 
 color = mix(color, vec4(1.0), near_top);
 
 float edge_lower = 0.6;
 float edge_upper = edge_lower + 0.1;
 
 if(near_top > edge_lower){
  color.a = 0.0;
  
  if(near_top < edge_upper){
   color.a = (edge_upper - near_top) / (edge_upper - edge_lower);
  }
 }
 
 COLOR = color;
}

Shadertoy: Shader objects with raymarching technique.

Another article about shader raymarching technique for today.
It's like the previous article created from the official video channel named The Art of Code.
The source code show how to create the basics objects like: capsule, torus, cube and cylinder.
The result of the source code of raymarching objects can be found on my account of ShaderToy website named catafest.

Shadertoy: About raymarching technique with source code.

The raymarching technique is a fairly new technique used to render realtime scenes and it is entirely computed in a screen-space shader.
The raymarching is similar to traditional raytracing (in that a ray is cast into the scene for each pixel) but is not the same technique.
How this works:
We have in a fragment shader is the position of the point we are rendering in world 3D coordinates and the view direction from the camera.
For each ray is extended by step in the view direction, until it hits something and creates a point.
This is the simple raymarching used a constant step.
The next step is the optimization calls for the use of signed distance fields.
A distance field is a function that takes in a point as input and returns the shortest distance from that point to the surface any object in the scene similar with a sphere around the hit point.
Distance fields allow us to limit how often we need to sample when marching along the ray, this is the reason of the named raymarching.
You can follow this technique on the official video channel named The Art of Code.
The result of the source code of raymarching example from this video tutorial can be found on my account of ShaderToy website.

Create textures with Materialize.

The development team comes with this great tool named Materialize:
Materialize is a stand alone tool for creating materials for use in games from images. You can create an entire material from a single image or import the textures you have and generate the textures you need.
You can use this tool for:
What can this tool do?

• Diffuse -> Height 
• Diffuse -> Metallic
• Diffuse -> Smoothness
• Height -> Normal
• Height + Diffuse -> Normal 
• Normal -> Edge 
• Normal -> Occlusion 
• Normal + Height -> Occlusion 
• Normal -> Height 
• Seamlessly tile your textures. 
• Save and load in a variety of formats. 
• Automate many processes with clipboard commands in XML format.

You can find video tutorials created by Michael Voeller:

Unity 3D : Unity 2D Challenge.

Here's an unexpected opportunity for Unity 3D game developers to develop 2D games.
About this challenge the Unity team come with this info:
The prizes:
1st - $2000
2nd - $1000
3rd - $500
Special Mention - $500
Join the Unity 2D Challenge to become part of an exciting community journey exploring the possibilities of our new 2D tools.
How to participate 
Create a small piece of content using Unity’s 2D tools. It can be anything from pixel-perfect retro-style art to a snippet of hand-drawn platforming gameplay or a thin vertical slice of a 2D competitive brawler. Anything goes, as long as it’s 2D. See the FAQ at the bottom for more info.
See this video intro:

The Magicavoxel tool for your game development.

The development team tells us:
"A free lightweight 8-bit voxel editor and interactive path tracing renderer, made with love by @ephtracy. Available for PC and MAC. This is where it all begins.

This tiny light-weighted software is the core of voxelart, since it is capable of many things : just edit, paint and move your voxels in a cubic grid, then animated them and render them with the powerful integrated renderer.

License : feel free to use it for any project, no commercial licences required, credits are appreciated"
Let's see this video tutorial from youtube channel:

Testing CopperCube with my android emulator.

Today , I tested the example make by CopperCube - version 6 named  with android installation.
This example can be found when you start the CopperCube at Open Example App - First Person Shooter.
If you want to try another example, you may be asked to buy the license if you try post effects.
You can find my complete tutorial with the settings here.
The result works great and is a little slow for my android emulator.
See the result of this test can be see in the next screenshot:

Using Coppercube game engine with android.

Today I will start this tutorial about Coppercube and android.
First you need to know the CopperCube is free but can also buy it, see this link.
For CopperCube, you need the Android 2.2 (Froyo / API Level 8) and Android 8.0 (O) SDK packages.
You need to install all of this SDK packages with the Android Studio - using SDK Manager.
You need to have install the JDK (Java SE Development Kit) - most users already have it in the operating system.
NOTE: The Android Studio SDK can be found at : c:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk and you need to create a keystore. Follow the next images to see the steps how to make all settings to test your android output:

The gamefroot online HTML5 game engine.

This game engine use HTML5 and come with default templates , default sprites to test it.
You can follow the tutorials online and you can try a search on web for video tutorials.
This HTML5 engine use blocks for scripting area. Start with a account and test the tutorials.
You can used free with this option:

• Publish to Gamefroot.com

You can also use two prices (from $15.00 and $49.00) to unlock the next features:

• Educational Resources
• Export to IOS and Android
• Customer Support
• Classroom Management

You can test it at official webpage .
The official youtube channel come with many video tutorials, just take a look:

The Xenko game engine .

The Xenko Beta version is available for free .
This is old news from Xenko game engine team:

Long time no see!

The Xenko promotion period has ended, and we’ve made some changes to the license plans.

As of 1 April 2018, Xenko Pro and Xenko Pro Plus are no longer available.

Xenko Personal is still free for personal use and for businesses of less than $200,000 US in annual revenue. If you don’t meet the Xenko Personal criteria, contact us for a custom plan.

If your business makes over $200,000 US in annual revenue, and you downloaded Xenko before 1 April 2018, you can continue to use Xenko until 1 April 2019. If you want to use Xenko after that, you need to contact us to create a custom plan before 1 April 2019.

News: Construct 2 Release r259.

The development team come with this new release for Construct 2 game engine.
This is a stable update to incorporate fixes from r256, r257 and r258. As noted previously, we are only maintaining Construct 2 with bug fixes at this point. New features will only be added to Construct 3.

Since r255 the main improvements are:

• Better handling of video and audio autoplay. This includes updates to work around Chrome 66's changes to autoplay policy which can prevent audio playback in old content. If you find your old games are muted in Chrome, export them again with this update and they should play audio correctly once the user has interacted with the page (i.e. a click, touch or key press). 
• Support for Xbox Live Achievements. This should allow games on the ID@Xbox programme to meet the publishing requirements. In addition to that there are also a range of bug fixes, notably for a crash using savegames with Physics, and ensuring long-press on Android no longer triggers vibration.

Prices for Construct 2 licenses vary and are not very cheap (monthly or start from €159.99) .
The types of licenses used and sold for Construct 2 are:

• Personal License 
• Business License 
• License Upgrade 
• Educational Licenses

They also let you to test a free edition:
Download the free version today and give it a go! You're just about to discover a new, exciting way to teach.

News : The WAVE ENGINE 2.0 .

This is a old news.

The development team of game engine come this text about the old game WAVE ENGINE :

WAVE ENGINE 2.0 HAS ARRIVED! NOW WITH A NEW VISUAL EDITOR AND AVAILABLE IN WINDOWS, MAC OSX AND LINUX. YOU CAN ALSO VISIT OUR GITHUB PAGE WHERE YOU CAN FIND TONS OF SAMPLES, QUICKSTARTERS AND COMPONENTS SOURCE CODE. ENJOY!

You can read more about WAVE ENGINE at official page.
You can see all about WAVE ENGINE on youtube official channel

The Construct game engine.

The Construct game engine is an HTML5-based 2D game editor features and improvements like: multi platform, event sheets, layout wiew, multi language, steamlined interface and more.
Is simple to use and has a good learning area.
You can try new Construct 3 or old Construct 2 version .
You can read more about this game engine at official webpage .
Here is a video tutorial from official youtube channel.

News : Unreal Engine come with new youtube videos.

The development team tell us:
Unreal Engine 4 is a complete suite of real-time 3D tools made by developers, for developers.
The new videos from official youtube channel shouw us the last presentation from GDC 2018.
I like the 3Lateral, Cubic Motion, Tencent and Vicon features to take live captured digital humans and create new real-time digital character.
Take a look at Siren a high-fidelity, real-time digital character based on the likeness of Chinese actress Bingjie Jiang.

The Ren'Py visual novel engine .

Today I tested the Ren'Py visual novel engine.
The development team tell us:
  Ren'Py is a visual novel engine – used by thousands of creators from around the world – that helps you use words, images, and sounds to tell interactive stories that run on computers and mobile devices. These can be both visual novels and life simulation games. The easy to learn script language allows anyone to efficiently write large visual novels, while its Python scripting is enough for complex simulation games. Ren'Py is open source and free for commercial use.
For android development and emulation you need to install Java SE Development Kit.
The base of engine is a application named renpy.
This allow us to update , build and make emulation ( phone, tablet and television) for your game.
You can test all of this by starting one default game.
I don't make a tutorial about how to create a new game, just how to deal with this engine.
You can create a new game by using: + Create New Project.
This will create a new project to start you 2D game novel with your questions and answers , GUI and images.
This can be see on the next screenshot work with this engine:

Christmas - Unity 3D with WebGL and old carol .

This is a test with particles using Unity 3D and WebGL output.
The next step will be a android application.
The project use three particle generators to create a Christmas tree, a snow particle generator, a game object for sound, and a text object game.
The project has also a C# script to set the particles.
The font used is the Kremlin Orthodox Church and is under the GNU General Public License.
This old carol is singed by Balada Group from Fălticeni, Romania and coordinated by Maria Tanase.

Merry Christmas! - Crăciun fericit!

News: The new released Unity 2017.3 .

The development team tell us:
We’re excited to share all the great new and improved features available today with Unity 2017.3.
Read more from on this article.