Juan Antonio Munoz

Game tutorials can make or break the player experience. Based on the Playliner (by SensorTower) research, here’s how to craft a great tutorial: 1️⃣ Keep it short • Players want to play, not sit through walls of text. • Focus only on essential actions or controls. 2️⃣ Make it interactive • Let players learn by doing, not just watching. • Use simple tasks to build muscle memory. 3️⃣ Show, don’t tell • Demonstrate mechanics visually. • Use minimal text or voiceover. • Let players experiment safely. 4️⃣ Offer quick feedback • Reward success with sound effects, visual cues, or in-game rewards. • Correct mistakes gently and immediately. 5️⃣ Integrate into real gameplay • Merge tutorials with actual levels or scenarios. • Avoid jarring transitions from “learning mode” to the real game. And avoid these common pitfalls: ❌ Over-explaining ✅ Use visual cues like arrows or lighting instead of long text. ❌ Too many controls at once ✅ Introduce mechanics one by one. ❌ Restrictive handholding ✅ Let players try, fail, and learn on their own. ❌ Punishing mistakes ✅ Tutorials should allow players to recover and fix errors. A good tutorial should feel like part of the game, not a separate chore. What’s the best (or worst) game tutorial you’ve ever played? ---- More mobile game references at: https://playliner.com

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If you don't know these Unity Component Communication hacks then what are you doing?! Here are 5 Component Communication hacks that separate professional Unity developers from beginners: 📸 MH 1: Replace SendMessage with Interface-Based Communication ❌ Common Mistake: Using SendMessage() for inter-component communication. This reflection-based approach is slower than direct calls and fails silently on typos. Every SendMessage call searches through all components using string comparison, causing frame drops in complex scenes. ✅ Best Practice: Define interfaces as contracts between components. Use TryGetComponent() for type-safe, direct method calls that the compiler can optimize and validate. 📸 MH 2: Use ScriptableObject Events Instead of Singleton Managers ❌ Common Mistake: Creating a GameManager singleton that handles all events. This creates tight coupling where every system depends on the manager, making unit testing impossible and causing null reference exceptions during scene transitions. ✅ Best Practice: Create ScriptableObject Event Channels that decouple publishers from subscribers. UI systems, audio managers, and gameplay mechanics can communicate without knowing about each other. 📸 MH 3: Use Generic GetComponent Over String-Based Lookups ❌ Common Mistake: Using GetComponent("Rigidbody") with explicit casting. This legacy approach uses string hash lookups and boxing allocations, causing garbage collection spikes during physics-heavy gameplay. ✅ Best Practice: Always use GetComponent() for direct type resolution. The compiler pre-calculates type information, eliminating runtime string comparisons and casting overhead. 📸 MH 4: Implement Child Registration Instead of Hierarchical Searches ❌ Common Mistake: Using GetComponentsInChildren() to collect enemy references. This traverses the entire hierarchy every time, causing frame stutters when spawning enemy waves or activating UI panels with many children. ✅ Best Practice: Implement self-registration patterns where children register with parent managers during Awake(). This inverts control and creates explicit, trackable relationships. 📸 MH 5: Use TryGetComponent for Conditional Component Logic ❌ Common Mistake: Calling GetComponent() followed by null checks. This creates unnecessary temporary variables and managed allocations when components don't exist, impacting garbage collection during gameplay. ✅ Best Practice: Use TryGetComponent(out var component) to combine existence checking and retrieval in a single, optimized operation that avoids allocations on failure. These patterns will eliminate performance bottlenecks, reduce coupling, and make your Unity projects maintainable at scale. Senior developers who implement these architectures ship games with stable performance and bug-free component interactions. What other component communication hacks do you use in your projects? 🔗 Get the complete breakdown of each hack: lnkd.in/gQ3Kwjc9 *** #gamedev #Unity

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Sometimes, game designers hesitate when creating their Game Design Document (GDD), worried that it must be perfect from the beginning. But the truth is that a GDD is not a final manuscript. It’s a living, evolving blueprint for your game. A GDD is a structured document that outlines every aspect of a game, including its mechanics, gameplay systems, user interface, story and more. Its purpose is to help align everyone on the development team around a shared vision. If you’re struggling to write one, remember: 🔸 It doesn’t have to be complete at the start. 🔸 It will change over time. 🔸 You can cut features. Add ideas. Refine the flow. Iterate. 🔸 It only needs to be clear enough to guide the team. You don't need any complicated equipment to write a GDD. A pen and paper will be your best friends. Of course, using a tool like Google Docs will also make your work easier, as you can collaborate with your team on it. Furthermore, a GDD does not have to be long. Sometimes, a one page document, known as a "one-pager", is sufficient. The real power of a good GDD lies in its clarity. While verbal discussions are helpful, they often lead to different interpretations. Writing things down with diagrams, flowcharts and references prevents ambiguity and ensures everyone is on the same page. Don't strive for perfection. Strive for direction. Let the GDD evolve alongside your game. You can download the GDD template that helped me with the most basic points here. I hope you find it useful: https://lnkd.in/gzkzFvVX #GameDesign #GDD #GameDesignDocument #VideoGames #GameProduction 

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The Original Games Jobs Workbook, the resource that started ASGC, has now been updated to Version 22.0. We have also integrated all community additions - thank you for submitting them! Here is the link to the workbook: https://asgc.gg/category2 Resource #3, Original Workbook Tab A few key takeaways from this update.: The last time I published the workbook, we were tracking 13,369 open games roles. Today, that number stands at 13,342. This is a modest decline. The concentration across the top 5, top 10, top 25, and top 50 hiring companies continues to look healthy and broadly consistent with what we have seen over the last several years. What is more concerning is not the small change in total open roles, which naturally fluctuates over time and with seasonality, but the decline in the number of companies actively hiring. In the previous update, we had 956 companies with at least one open role. In this update, that number has dropped to 884. Historically, this figure has typically been above 1,000, which I view as a healthy baseline for diversity and resilience in hiring. Because overall role velocity still looks reasonably stable, I am not making any changes to my existing forecasts or job odds models at this time. That said, the drop to 884 hiring companies gives me a little concern and is under watch. This is the lowest figure we have seen in three years. This is particularly concerning when roles are highly concentrated, with roughly 30 percent in the top 5 companies, 40 percent in the top 10, and 54 percent in the top 25. In those conditions, financial challenges at just a handful of companies can cause a large number of open roles to disappear very quickly. I have also reserved the functional detail behind all this data for further analysis. Part two of our major biannual update will be a full geographic breakdown of where every open games role currently sits. That analysis will help us understand whether meaningful location shifts are underway. More to come soon.

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With the release of UE5.6, the Color Ramp node is now available. After reviewing the HLSL code, I noticed that the input values are not normalized — meaning values below 0 or above 1 can be passed through. For practical use, it’s safer to apply a Clamp before using it. The addition of the Convert node is also very convenient, making type conversions much more straightforward. On top of that, swizzling is now supported, which greatly improves flexibility when implementing shaders. #UE5 #UE5Study

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The old way of making games is breaking. A new era has begun. Over 4 decades, we’ve moved through 3 eras: 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 ⁽¹⁹⁸⁵⁻²⁰⁰⁰⁾ In the mid-1980s, home computers challenged consoles. They offered more power, more creativity, and for the first time the chance for players to tinker with content. The model was simple: ship media. Cartridges. Discs. Boxes in retail. Players bought once, played and shelved it. 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 ⁽²⁰⁰⁰⁻²⁰²⁰⁾ The early 2000s flipped the script. Broadband internet spread. Digital distribution arrived. In 2003, Valve launched Steam. Xbox/PlayStation followed. Suddenly, games weren’t one-and-done. They were services. You didn’t just buy a disc, you bought a pipeline. Updates, DLCs, Mods. BUT IT CAME WITH A PRICE. 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝘃 𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗲𝘀. Back in 2008, a AAA game cost maybe $50M. Today, budgets cross $300M before marketing. Cyberpunk 2077 hit $441M. Call of Duty: Black Ops $700M. Genshin Impact? Nearly $900M. The real cost isn’t tech. It’s people. Thousands of developers, artists, engineers, designers working nonstop. Game dev became a billionaires’ club. Once, shipping a hit meant you could buy a car. Now, it’s like building the Burj Khalifa ($1.9B). THE NEXT SHIFT WAS INEVITABLE. 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 ⁽²⁰²⁰⁻ᵖʳᵉˢᵉⁿᵗ⁾ In-house production is terrifyingly expensive. Studios can’t move fast or make enough variety to keep players engaged. But players can. Roblox & Minecraft were the first cracks. Yes, I hear you – these are different games. Okay, agreed. Then Epic came with Unreal Editor for Fortnite. Tim Sweeney called Fortnite’s future “a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators,” and admitted it meant a structural change to the company. Yes, I hear you again – Epic owns Unreal Engine. This is their bread and butter. They know how to cook with their engine. Okay, fair enough. But when EA said Battlefield 6 would use the open-source Godot Engine? That’s a new level. They’re betting on one thing: players becoming creators. At that point, you can’t argue this can’t be done inside your own studio, inside your own game ➜ with Godot, Overwolf, Playmakers(.)co, Mod(.)io, etc. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗨𝗚𝗖. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗚𝗗𝗣. In 2024, Roblox creators earned $803M, Fortnite creators $479M, Overwolf modders $240M. Entire livelihoods are being built inside games. And it aligns with how new gens see themselves. 53% of Gen Z see game creation as a career. They don’t just want to play. They want to live it. Shape it. Profit from it. 𝗦𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼𝘀 𝗱𝗼? Stop chasing endless content. Start building platforms. Give players tools, space and money, because their creativity is real work. And the question every studio has to answer: are you still asking how to make more content, or are you building a platform where players make it for you, better, faster and at scale? Thoughts?

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2,000+ VFX jobs. One painful problem. I didn’t create another job board. I fixed how people find jobs. For years, Chris Mayne has maintained a legendary Google Sheet with VFX, animation, and gaming jobs. It’s gold. But scrolling through thousands of rows isn’t. So my team and I asked a simple question: 👉 What if this data was actually easy to explore? So we built : https://jobs.akashcg.com/ Here’s what we built: • A clean web UI on top of the same Google Sheet • Smart filters by role, country, studio, and location • Interactive world map to explore jobs geographically • Full job details on click — company, site, apply link • Hiring stats so patterns become visible, not hidden No data scraping. No ownership claims. No monetization tricks. The data stays Chris’s. The value goes to the community. Great community resources don’t always need more data. They need better interfaces. Tools don’t replace people. They amplify the work of people already doing great things. This project exists for one reason: To make job hunting in VFX, animation, and games less exhausting. If you’re job hunting right now — I hope this saves you time. If you maintain community resources — thank you, seriously. Question for you: What’s one community tool you love… but wish had a better UI? 👇 Comment below. #VFX #Jobs #Animation #Gaming

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For those of you guys using Locomotor in control rig for UE 5.6, the Control Rig node is implemented as a plugin and can be recompiled in 5.4 and 5.5. If you're not ready to upgrade yet and need to use the locomotor features, you can just migrate the plugin from 5.6 to a C++ project in 5.4 and 5.5 to recompile the binaries and hotload it into any existing projects. #controlrig #ue5 #rigging

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Supercharge Your Dedicated Server Performance in UE5 with this super simple tip!! One of the first things I did when joining BULKHEAD was enable multithreaded physics for our servers. By default, Unreal does NOT take full advantage of parallelisation when running as a dedicated server — but it’s very easy to fix. All it takes is one new function in FApp and for you to call this in place of ShouldUseThreadingForPerformance() on the following lines: WorldCollisionAsync.cpp - Line 47 PhysAnim.cpp - Line 414 IslandGroupManager.cpp - Line 69 PBDRigidsEvolutionGBF.cpp - Line 174 ChaosScene.cpp - Line 71 This one tweak can make a big difference in large-scale or physics-heavy simulations. Drop it in your code base and thank yourself later. 👷‍♂️ Curious to hear if others are parallelizing their server-side workloads — what wins have you seen? #UnrealEngine #GameDev #UE5 #DedicatedServers #Networking #Physics #Optimization #Multiplayer #ChaosPhysics #TechTips

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HOW TO WRITE A SCRIPT FOR A VIDEO GAME I published another article for Game Design Skills and this time I focus on the various factors and stages of writing a script for (a variety of) video games: A video game script is a written document containing all the spoken lines of a video game. Dialogue, audio recordings, player character narration, cutscenes, and contextual information to help actors and directors are included. Write a video game script by combining classical elements of storytelling such as character, drama, tension, and narrative payoff, with the interactivity and player agency that games require. Video games differ from other media in that the player determines the outcome. This determination boils down to binary play-or-fail choice in bullet hell shooters to complex, branching narrative choices in story-heavy RPGs. Game scripts aren’t always produced before the gameplay. The role of the game writer is to create narrative reasons for set pieces and gameplay events already created by the team. Effective game scripts involve understanding the game’s core loop, researching its theme, building its game world, and more. Read on to learn how to write a script for a video game and how the practice differs from other media. Game Writers have to consider the following when it comes to writing for video games: 1. Understand the core gameplay loop 2. Research the theme to determine the story 3. Build the game world to connect the story to its features 4. Design character profiles to create new characters 5. Develop the main plot 6. Design the narrative system 7. Draft dialogues 8. Write cutscenes 9. Design localization document 10. Design voiceover actor document Read the Whole Article Here: https://lnkd.in/eETcnB5u If you want to learn how to do these things in a safe, constructive, and communicative environment from people who have worked in games, and using game industry templates, tips, and insights... Then Sign Up for my 17-Week Game Writing Bootcamp Here: https://lnkd.in/dejgXpSK #NarrativeDesignTip

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When you’re building a shooter without physical bullets, visual feedback becomes essential. Players still need to clearly understand direction, impact, and responsiveness. https://lnkd.in/gtqEidi8 In this new video, I show how to create a bullet tracer ribbon trail using Niagara in Unreal Engine 5.7, and how to connect it in C++ so the effect is triggered instantly when shooting. Under the hood, we still rely on a hitscan line trace, but the visual beam gives the player immediate and intuitive feedback. This is a practical workflow you can reuse in any shooter project, and a great example of how visuals, gameplay logic, and performance-friendly systems come together in Unreal Engine. Watch the full tutorial here: https://lnkd.in/gtqEidi8 If you’re learning Unreal Engine, working on a shooter, or building your skills after office hours, this might be a useful piece for your toolbox. #gamedev #indiedev #unrealengine5 #niagara #gamecreatoraccelerator #sologamedev #careerchange #gamedevtips #mentorship #mentorshipprogram #Mentoring #mentor #indiegame #indiegamedev #careercoach

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