To continue my series on Gamedev Roundup I have dug up some more interesting articles from the game development industry, both new and old. They have in some way inspired me or taught me about game development. In this gamedev round-up I have a mix of programming, networking, lighting and gameplay articles and presentations that I hope you will find as interesting as I when I first stumbled upon them.

10 Basic Programming Principles Every Programmer Must Follow

Many programmers may be familiar with the concepts presented in this blog post by MakeUseOf. It’s still nice to refresh your mind by going through these 10 principles and reviewing how your code either fits or neglects these principles, and whether you should care to change your style or behavior after reading. I have found myself neglecting some of these principles, and am trying to improve upon them. They take time to employ effectively, as it’s much more than simply forcing these principles upon yourself, and instead find ways to gradually improve your coding style by continuous self evaluation.

Unreal Engine 4 Lighting Masterclass

During the Unreal Dev Days Montreal, Jerome of Epic Games presented this excellent Masterclass on lighting in Unreal Engine 4. For me the information on Lightmass is especially interesting. It helped me get a better understanding of the available Lightmass settings to get better light bakes in Unreal.

I wrote a summary post about the lighting masterclass to make revisiting the information easier. I recommend watching the full video first.

Unreal Engine 4 Networking

Great slides presentation on Networking in Unreal by Joe Graf, a veteran engineer at Epic Games. It explains the most fundamental concepts about networking within Unreal Engine 4 and is a great piece of insight for anyone looking to build multiplayer games.

Techniques for Building Aim Assist in Console Shooters

This 20 minute talk by Nick Weihs on GDCVault from back in ’13 discusses the inner working of aim assist in Resistance 3 on game consoles. It includes pretty in-depth explanation on the different algorithms uses like Magnetism and Auto Hit to improve aiming for the player including some code snippets. Pretty interesting if you’re working on this type of game, or simply interested in the type of tricks used to make aiming feel good on consoles.

That’s all for this weeks gamedev round-up! Hope you got a few interesting reads or bookmarks out of it. Please leave your own suggestions in the comments below or check out my other entries in the round-up series!