Janky Gamesmiths
Emerging out of my own indie game development journey, Janky Gamesmiths is the business I created for turning the tools I create into products available to other developers.
Overview
While building my own games I often invest time into creating solutions for myself that not only fit the purpose of the game I am in the process of developing but also are modular and generalised enough to be used in future products.
After some time I felt so good about the tools I was creating that I decided to make them available to others… and so Janky Gamesmiths began.
Why "Janky"?
I have a deep love for the 1990's and 2000's era of video games and like a large chuck of the modern indie game space, enjoy trying to capture the nostalgia and vibe of that time.
One thing that is prevalent when reflecting on those old games is an amount of… jank. I personally don't view jank as a negative but instead an artifact of creative exploration and risk within the medium. Now days publisher fill games with increasingly standardised and repetitive experiences that incentivise engagement but also make modern gaming stale.
Limitations of the time didn't detract from games but instead created something that is often missed in modern titles - a joyful discovery that can only be created through naivety.
I chose "Janky" because to me it feels creativity at play.
My products
While I have created more tools than made available to the public, those I have released are:
Janky Spline Tiler
A customisable system design for tiling 3d meshes along spline paths.Janky Recycler
A system, workflow, and shader designed for remastering 3d assets and textures.Janky Array Maker
A tool for creating multiple 2d texture arrays with individual texture editing options.Janky Render Stack
A light weight reorderable rendering system designed for working with screenspace rendering shader.Janky Audio
An adaptive audio system designer for the creation of spatial audio profiles and increased spatial fidelity within 3d world.
Janky Spline Tiler
Overview
Janky Spline Tiler is a level design and spline based mesh generation system that uses splines to speed up level construction.
Core Features:
Tile meshes along Unity Splines.
Use multiple mesh tiles to add variation.
Fixed Seed and Random Seed based tile randomisation.
The ability to specify tiles at points along spline.
Use the Snapper component to create junctions by snapping splines to attachment points.
Accumulative tiles (recursively include all child meshes and materials of the spline tile in mesh creation).
Uses the Unity Spline Package as a foundation for easier integration with other existing toolsets.
Janky Recycler
Overview
Janky Recycler gives developers tools to help remaster their 3D Models while providing shader based solutions to introduce greater detail and cohesion across props within their scenes.
Features:
A robust resurfacing shader.
The Janky Surface Mapper tool window.
The SMAD texture creator (Smoothness, Metallic, AO, Displacement).
Constructed in Amplify Shader Editor.
Janky Array Maker
Overview
Janky Array Maker lets developers create, export, and remember multiple texture arrays using one convenient scriptable object.
Features:
The Array Maker scriptable object remembers developers textures and file paths to help quickly edit and export 2d texture arrays.
Simple texture modification functions from directly inside the Array Maker scriptable object.
The array slicer tool lets developers disassemble 2d arrays into individual textures.
Janky Render Stack
Overview
Janky Render Stack is a system created to provide developers more creative control with how they render cameras using reorderable screenspace shaders.
Features:
Easily stack and reorder rendering using a staged rendering process
Examples built using the Amplify Shader Editor
Designed to be used with developers own custom shaders
Control materials properties at runtime
Designed for creative control
Janky Audio
Overview
Janky Audio is a system created to help developers get more out of the inbuilt unity audio system. It is designed to work with minimal setup while producing a more realistic audio experience.
Janky Audio changes the way developers work with reverb zones to allow for the space within their game to be represented more intentionally.
Features
Easy setup using the Janky Audio Toolbar
Non-spherical reverb using primitive colliders and convex mesh colliders
Reverb occlusion
Audio occlusion
Influence based reverb mixing
Distance based attenuation and audio randomisation
Occlusion based attenuation and audio randomisation
How its going so far…
Over the space of a year I have sold 669 copies of my products with a conversion rate of 25% which has far exceeded what I ever though I would achieve.
I have many more tools up my sleeve and with such a positive response I will hopefully be adding more to my list of releases within the near future.