Useful Links for the 2013 7dfps

Just gathering links here as I find them or remember them … useful things on FPS design, FPS coding, FPS art, etc.

(I’ve never written an FPS before, so … everything/anything in the way of research is useful!)

Tools

• http://7dfps.com/?action=post&id=72 – (from 7DFPS homepage) … license keys / discounts you can use during 7DFPS
• Unity 3 (older, maybe more compatibility)
  • http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/UnitySetup-3.5.7.exe (windows)
  • http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/unity-3.5.7.dmg (mac)
• Unity 4 (newer features, better Editor)
  • http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/UnitySetup-4.2.0.exe (windows)
  • http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/unity-4.2.0.dmg (mac)
• 3D Editors
  • http://www.blender.org/download – Blender, for the skilled
  • http://www.wings3d.com/?page_id=84 – Wings3D, for the non-artists who want something simple

Shaders

• https://www.shadertoy.com/ – many awesome Shaders with full (real-time editable!) source
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GLSL_Programming/Unity – some great walkthroughs of advanced shader techniques
• Triplanar shaders (never heard of them before, but great in theory for multi-sided cubes with unique textures, i.e. skyscrapers):
  • http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/86022-Triplanar-Projection-Shaders-on-the-Asset-Store – expensive but powerful set of Unity shaders

Level design

• https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dimensions – Valve’s notes on dimensions for an FPS
• http://blog.joelburgess.com/2013/04/skyrims-modular-level-design-gdc-2013.html – Skyrim’s modular design tool/approach for FPS dungeons

Assets / Art

• http://dafont.com – Free, high-quality fonts that (unlike most free fonts sites) aren’t “mostly stolen from somewhere else”, nor “not free, but advertised as free, so they can charge you later”
• http://cgtextures.com – Marcel’s excellent resource site for textures so you can DIY your models and texturing…

FPS Controller design

• http://artsygamer.com/fov-in-games/ – choosing your FOV
• http://hugin.sourceforge.net/docs/manual/Projections.html – funky non-standard projections (why should your FPS have a flat projection?)
• http://cie.acm.org/articles/improving-gameplay-first-person-3-d-games-using-multiple-displays/ – FPSs on multi monitors (9 or more)
• Four articles on the history of FPS design:
  1. Part 1
  2. Part 2
  3. Part 3
  4. Part 4

Specific to my game:

Assets for city-building in Unity

• http://qt-ent.com/UCP/Documentation/pre-made-architecture/ – low-rise city plug-n-play, for a $100 or so
• http://u3d.as/content/sev-n-interactive/atlas-buildings-00/3D9 – high-rise city skyscrapers (low-poly) with plants and walls, for $15 – but NO PREVIEW so no way to decide to buy or not

Unity bugfixes

Things I had to do to fix Unity long-standing bugs (that Unity has declared they’ll never fix). Most of these copy/pasted from my “Fix Unity Bugs” folders in other Unity projects ;)…

• Customize GameObject to add: Find a specific Component on “the nearest ancestor that has one”
• Customize GameObject to add: When creating a game object, always place it at 0,0,0, instead of “in the middle of nowhere, randomly”
• Fix fonts so that they DO NOT render through walls (Unity makes everything in your scene transparent-to-text)
• Auto-rescale all textures on scaled objects (Unity’s editor won’t allow you to scale a single object without scaling its fixed-size, tiling texture (and without breaking all your other objects) – but Unity source code strangely does allow it)
• …