Now Editing: Bolt & Custom Units

Hello everyone! Just wanted to let you know that the next Game Dev Guide video is currently in editing stage!

The video is sponsored by Unity, and focuses on extending their visual scripting tool Bolt to  be used to build different gameplay sequences such as tutorials, missions or cutscenes.

A lot of their marketing focuses on beginners using the tool to replace the need for programming and so I think a lot of the more experienced developers using Unity won't really consider giving it the time of day. However, I was curious if there were advantages to be had, even for those of us who are more code-oriented, and so I wanted to see if it was possible to customize Bolt to be usable in a more traditional workflow, with a lot of the architecture being driven by code -- but gameplay/state logic designed in the editor.    

As you probably know, I'm always excited about building tools that make our lives easier as developers/designers and so I'm pleased to have Unity support me in framing the tool in this way.  I'm pleased with the outcome, and I'm sure it'll give many of you some inspiration...

The last episode was the first time I had edited using Davinci Resolve, and came with quite a steep learning curve as I tried to figure out how to do things in Resolve that I could do in a couple of clicks in Premiere. I'm pleased with how that video came out, but it took about three times as long to edit due to this initial onboarding overhead...

Anyway, over the course of editing this new episode I've definitely found myself getting more familiar with the software, and even managed to discover how to do some more complex things that I gave up on last edit such as crash zooms with motion blur (turns out, it's just a special effect preset that you have to use!) and how to get it to playback footage smoothly. 

So, hopefully, this will result in the next episode being even better in presentation as it is informative!

I should have it done within the next couple of days and I'm planning to launch it either this week or the next, but as it's sponsored there may be a delay in release timing. So, watch this space!

- Matt