Scene Fusion for GGJ 2024

Today we posted Scene Fusion 2 for Unity 2022.3! This is a huge upgrade over Scene Fusion that performs better and is vastly easier to extend. Scene Fusion 2 excels on extremely large and complex maps, but is even useful for small teams to do level design work together.

Our release happens to conicide with Global Game Jam 2024. To celebreate, we’ve uncorked the free version of Scene Fusion so that 4 people can collaborate at a time and removed the maximum scene object limit. This will be in effect until after the jam is over.

All you need to do is install the Scene Fusion plugin from our downloads page, create an account chossing the FREE TIER, and you’re off to the races! If you have any questions, check with us on discord.

To the teams at the GGJ, good luck and have fun!

The Game Development Evolution: From Human-Centric to Prompt-Driven Systems

The game development landscape is undergoing a radical transformation with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). As AI continues to advance, the traditional game development process is shifting towards prompt-driven systems, where games are generated through a series of prompts, significantly reducing the manpower required for coding, artwork, user interface (UI), and sound effects (SFX). While this paradigm shift may raise concerns, it also offers hope by redefining roles and fostering new opportunities for creative collaboration. In this article, we will delve into the changing face of game development, examining the implications of prompt-driven systems while exploring the roles that will remain and adapt in this evolving landscape.

Prompt-Driven Game Development

With Chatbots drawing on a huge models and employing sophisticated networks, they are well-positioned to take on work that is costly and time-consuming. Now that they are here, the landscape of game development will be altered forever. People will focus on generating the appropriate inputs to AI and curating the results. The majority of the process becomes a series of prompts rather than code check-ins and artwork commits.

Prompt-Driven Game Code Generation

Traditional game development involves extensive manual coding. However, with the rise of AI, game code generation is becoming prompt-driven. Developers can interact with AI systems through prompts, expressing their intentions and requirements in natural language. The AI system interprets these prompts and automatically generates the necessary code, significantly reducing the need for human coders.

AI-Driven Artwork and UI Generation

Creating artwork and UI elements traditionally required the skills of talented artists and designers. However, AI-powered tools, driven by techniques like deep learning and generative adversarial networks (GANs), are revolutionizing these areas. By providing prompts, developers can collaborate with AI systems to generate artwork and UI elements automatically, reducing the manpower needed for manual creation.

AI-Powered SFX Generation

Sound effects are crucial for immersive gaming experiences. AI is now being leveraged to generate SFX. By prompting an AI system with desired auditory effects, developers can access extensive sound libraries and automatically generate appropriate SFX, reducing the reliance on human sound designers and engineers.

The Bad: Reducing Manpower

Prompt-driven development will most definitely reduce the number of people needed to get a body of work done. We may see that teams of 100s for the next batch of AAA titles are significantly reduced in size, with many roles that typically needed large teams now only needing a few, or being eliminated altogether.

Diminishing Roles in Coding and Artwork

As prompt-driven systems gain prominence, the demand for traditional coders and artists may decline. The need for manually writing code or creating artwork from scratch diminishes as AI algorithms take over these tasks. This shift could potentially result in fewer job opportunities for individuals specializing in these areas.

Altered Roles and Job Displacement

The increasing reliance on AI-driven systems may lead to job displacement and necessitate the reimagining of existing roles. Traditional game developers, artists, and UI designers may need to upskill and adapt to new positions that involve collaborating with AI systems, curating generated content, and providing creative guidance rather than performing the tasks themselves.

Adapting to The Human/AI Model

Evolving Roles: AI-Assisted Creativity

While AI technologies revolutionize game development, the human touch remains essential. Developers, artists, and designers will assume new roles as facilitators and creative directors. They will collaborate with AI systems, shaping and refining the output to align with the intended vision. This human-AI collaboration will provide opportunities for creative expression and innovation.

Embracing New Opportunities

As manpower requirements decrease in certain areas, the evolution of game development opens doors to new possibilities. Developers can focus more on innovative game design, storytelling, and gameplay mechanics. Artists can transition into art direction and provide creative oversight. UI designers can curate and enhance the generated UI elements. This paradigm shift offers avenues for exploring uncharted territories and pushing the boundaries of creative expression.

Nurturing Skill Sets for Collaboration

To adapt to the changing landscape of prompt-driven game development, professionals must acquire skills that complement AI-powered systems. Understanding AI technologies, data analysis, and creative collaboration will be crucial for individuals seeking to thrive in this evolving field. The ability to work seamlessly with AI algorithms will become an essential asset for future game developers.

To the Future…

Prompt-driven game development, empowered by AI technologies, is reshaping the traditional game development process. While there may be concerns about job displacement and reduced manpower, there is hope in the evolution of roles and the opportunities it presents. Developers, artists, and designers will assume new roles as collaborators, curators, and creative directors. The human-AI collaboration offers the potential to unlock new realms of creativity, innovation, and immersive gameplay experiences. By embracing the changing landscape and nurturing the necessary skill sets, game development professionals can adapt, contribute, and thrive in this exciting new era of prompt-driven game development.

Developers Win if Apple Loses.

This made sense at one time, but now it is too much.

Some weeks ago, Epic launched what seemed at the time to be a real David vs Goliath endeavor: Seeking to force Apple to reduce their 30% cut of all revenues app developers make on their app store ecosystem.

“Good luck”, we thought, then Microsoft Joined the Game. Now things are getting interesting.

We think it’s about damn time.

We’re not alone, and there are even people in Camp Apple don’t agree with the 30% cut - it’s just too high.

When the App Store was new and relatively unpopulated, you could mentally justify giving up 30% of gross revenues as you could spend less on marketing as you get a boost by being in a relatively uncrowded space. However, in the span of 6 months you were already in a noisy environment, with 15,000 apps competing for the same small piece of screen real-estate.

Today, you pay 30% just to exist in the ecosystem. You have no choice, there is no competition. Apple continues their iron grip on their platform, and they place themselves directly on your chart of business risks.

Apple made $260 billion in 2019. 52 billion came from the App Store, of which Apple’s 30% cut is around $15 Billion. This brings up a second point: The revenue generated from these apps is all Apple’s revenue, and they provide 70% to app developers as a cost to earn this revenue. This directly benefits Apple’s valuation and leverage, which is additive to their very generous 30% cut. It’s hard to overstate how important it is that all developers revenue flows through Apple. It simply ads a tremendous amount of potential value to their company, benefiting their shareholders in the form how a higher market cap.

30% is also not justified when you look at other market examples: Epic takes 12% (and throws in Unreal Engine for ‘free’), and Microsoft takes as little as 5%.

Fast forward a few weeks, and a coalition of companies is forming up against Apple. Yes, these are large companies, however they are the ones to take on this fight. If they win, developers large and small will win. For game developers, in particular small game developers, any reasonable reduction in that 30% cut will make a big difference. Wouldn’t Apple want developers on their platform, who work hard to make it better, to succeed more often?

I would think they should.

Hopefully the outcome of this lawsuit will change them in the necessary ways. Hopefully it will garner more than a moment of reflection at Google and at Valve as well.

Time will tell. Give ‘em hell Epic.

Epic’s New Licensing Bombshell (that kinda isn’t)

No doubt you’ve seen the news, Epic has made Unreal Engine extremely attractive for starting studios by increasing the cap developers can earn before having to pay Epic’s 5% royalty. You can read the announcement near the end of the Unreal Engine 5 announcement.

The except from the Unreal Engine Blog regarding the licensing fee change.

An incredible deal for an incredible engine.

But don’t count Unity out. Yes, many studios would opt for a “free” engine while starting up, however there are a number of different business models that studios are using to go to market and Unreal engine may not fit all of them. One example is web-based games, or the use of web-based games to drive mobile or steam sales. This model involves using large web portals like Kongregate and Miniclip to publish a high quality web game that promotes the mobile or PC version. Unity still provides an HTML5 build path, and it works quite well. Epic has long ago relegated their HTML5 build path to “community supported” status.

Arguably Unity has platform support advantages, with great mobile support and a 1-click solution to switching between the supported platforms. Unity also provides monetization via ads and other good value-added capabilities ‘out of the box’. The engine is extremely easy to just pick up and use, especially for people new to game development, and there are advantages to using C#, a programming language that has a JIT option in terms of iteration speed. There are some clear advantages for our projects using Unity in terms of easy platform flexibility. One example is the creation of shared libraries. If you’ve ever worked with DLL hell in C++, especially as you had to work through compiler and linker differences on various platforms, you’re probably already cringing at the thought of it.

From a performance and features standpoint, Unreal often seems to have an edge, and Epic is also a game studio. They eat their own dog food, and the fact that Unity doesn’t follow suit is not lost on almost all the studios I’ve interacted with. Unreal Engine, as a result, is much more polished and complete in many meaningful areas such as landscape tools, geometry brushes, VR, and high performance visual scripting.

Lastly, large studio opt for enterprise licenses. These are different than your typical off-the-shelf licences in that they are negotiated, include guaranteed support, and can contain other perks such as assistance for promotion. It would make sense that the largest studios would simply pay Epic a big bundle of cash rather than 5% of gross revenues. The amount paid would likely have to compete with the large studio’s ability to create and maintain a game engine internally.

It is worth mentioning that the royalty for Unreal engine doesn’t apply to Unreal-based games released on Epic’s Game Store. That’s quite a good deal, though the Epic Game Store still needs to pick up broader acceptance among gamers.

To conclude, this may not be as much of a shakeup as people think. Both Unity and Unreal can be used for free to get started. Once you have some funds, there is an up-front cost associated with Unity, and a back-end cost if you’re quite successful and using Unreal. The companies themselves will continue to have robust enterprise businesses, and they both have strong offerings for their customers. They also have strengths in different market segments: AAA for PC and console trend Unreal, Mobile and web trend Unity. I don’t doubt those gaps will narrow and disappear as time goes on. Finally, though $1M USD sounds like a lot, but in reality it isn’t. A game can easily exceed $1M in revenue, though that isn’t much when you consider that many games take a significant investment of time and effort to bring to market. If you factor in that five cents on the dollar goes to Epic (unless you’re on the Epic Game Store), the engine becomes much more expensive than Unity much more quickly.

Uncertainty and Staying Healthy

The cancelled events due to coronavirus keep piling up. Two of the biggest hits to the games industry were the cancellation of GDC and SXSW. Both provided venues game studios needed to find publisher and promote their games. Funds are so tight for fledgling studios that a GDC Relief Fund was created to help offset some of the non recoup-able costs born by indies to attend GDC this year.

The event cancellations may feel like an overreaction to some, however given how sensitive exponential growth models are to daily rates, it makes complete sense: If the virus is as bad as it could be, just need need to slow the infection rate a little bit to dramatically reduce the number of infections before we have a vaccine.

We all have work to do, and most of us still do it together in the office. Keeping your hands clean, and away from your face is a huge factor in preventing infection from diseases like the flu or COVID-19. A much more effective approach is to work remotely. The more physical isolation people can maintain, the more they can lower the overall infection rate.

The tools to collaborate remotely are everywhere. Google Docs and Office365 provide real-time document sharing. Slack, Discord, and MS Teams provide chat services. Hangouts, Zoom, WeChat, Skype, and many others provide real-time video calls and video conferencing. If you are writing code, Github, Bitbucket, and many other services are options to work remotely. For larger institutions, providing a PC connected to home office via VPN is an easy way to provide internal services much more securely.

Granted, not everyone can work from home effectively. However, whatever the loss of productivity will be, it will likely be much less than having your team get sick. There is a societal benefit as well, as any effort we put in to slow the spread of the virus will help reduce the overall number of people in the future.

Epic Announces $1M in Developer Grants. Scene Fusion Included!

Today, Epic has announced that KinematicSoup is one of the winners of nearly $1M in dev grants!

We have been working on Scene Fusion for Unreal for nearly 8 months now. There is more going on under the hood than many realize. Unreal Engine will debut a faster, more flexible, and more extensible version - Scene Fusion 2. With a new core written in C++, and huge API improvements, this new version of Scene Fusion can be used by any engine.

Our focus is on stability and extensibility first, and work our way to supporting the full gamut of engine features Unreal has to offer.

Currently, Scene Fusion for Unreal is in closed alpha. We have a sign-up list available for those who are interested in announcements, including opportunities to participate in our initial closed testing periods. 

We are very excited to be doing this, and recognition from Epic is... well, Epic!