iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 14/07/2026

I am super happy with the new dynamic collider feature - Jobs and Burst have rapidly become my favourite feature of Unity recently, and it's super satisfying to take blocking work off the main thread. No one likes hitching during gameplay. :)

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 09/06/2026

It was nice when search engines just gave you what you searched for instead of... whatever this is.

A screenshot of a google search for "how many days of the week have penis in them".

The AI response is:
"Exactly two days of the week literally contain the word 'penis': September October Wait... that doesn't make any sense. If you were thinking of 'days of the week' like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc., the answer is actually none!"

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Triangular Pixels @triangularpixels.com · 20/05/2026

👏👏👏 Here's a talk we did about #accessibility - www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ5O... And a blog post - blog.triangularpixels.com/development/... Please go vote for us on www.developconference.com/voting

youtube.com

Unseen Diplomacy 2 – Developing Accessible Room-scale VR

YouTube video by IGDA GASIG

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 16/03/2026

It's been a long time coming, but I am *very* happy to get Unseen Diplomacy 2 out of early access and into player's hands. The whole team have been amazing and I'm very proud to get some really unique mechanics out there for everyone to play. :)

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Katie Goode @mrsgame.dev · 28/11/2025

It'll be lovely if you could ;) #SteamAwards

The Steam Awards - with Unseen Diplomacy 2 being nominated for each of them

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 27/11/2025

Looks interesting! I feel there's definitely space for a "p4-like-for-games" for smaller teams where the P4 license is a bit too pricey.

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Can I Play That? @caniplaythat.com · 04/11/2025

Developer @triangularpixels.com highlighted accessibility features of their VR title Unseen Diplomacy 2, currently in early access. It includes features to more comfortably play with limited mobility, or with cognitive, audio, and visual accessibility needs. caniplaythat.com/2025/11/04/t...

caniplaythat.com

Triangular Pixels highlights accessibility features of Unseen Diplomacy 2 - Can I Play That?

Triangular Pixels recently highlighted accessibility features in their VR title Unseen Diplomacy 2, which is currently in early access.

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Triangular Pixels @triangularpixels.com · 22/10/2025

🕵️ Agents, your next update is live. Patch v0.2 brings smoother movement, smarter training, and more edible objects (yes, really). Report to HQ - it’s time to move. 🔗https://unseendiplomacy2.com🔗 #GamingCommunity #IndieGame #IndieDev #NewGame #WishlistWednesday #gamerlife #vrgaming

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 25/09/2025

And... out now! Super happy to get this into Early Access where people can actually play it after being under wraps for so long.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 19/09/2025

This has easily been the longest project I've been working on - I am properly excited to actually get it out into the wild and onto player's faces. :)

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 06/08/2025

XR_EXT_render_model was the one that caught my eye earlier! Looking forward to chucking out a bunch of api-specific code next project. :)

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Vladimir Komarov @vrkomarov.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

I'm working on texture streaming right now, and the first thing I tried was hardware tile streaming with sampler feedback. And yes, the state of hardware streaming is very sad. bsky.app/profile/fabr...

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 15/07/2025

That's a Jerry Mouse run cycle! Maybe the 'Naruto run' should just be called the 'Reverse Jerry' instead...

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 15/07/2025

I had fun times debugging why a computer terminal unit test was failing, and occasionally going to the wrong screen. Turns out an unrelated button was yeeting itself onto the keyboard mid-test about 50% of the time. And due to unit tests running at x100 speed, it's impossible to spot as it happens.

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Triangular Pixels @triangularpixels.com · 08/07/2025

Very full room for @daddygame.dev 's talk about procedural level design in #UnseenDiplomacy2! Standing room only! #developconf

Lots of people in a room ready for a talk

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 30/06/2025

Keyring as uberkey, except for passwords, which are pure knowledge so you can just guess the number if you remember your last playthrough Related - I love how comprehensive the log is; it captures *every* conversation and info screen read so you can always read back to find that password you forgot

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 24/06/2025

The Steam Controller works *so* well for mouse-y things but in pad form. I played through the entirety of Stardew Valley with one before the game had pad support and it was great.

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Triangular Pixels @triangularpixels.com · 07/06/2025

🎉 We’re delighted to be part of the @womenledgames.com Showcase in partnership with #SummerGameFest! 😍 We're showing #UnseenDiplomacy2 — a spy VR game made by a woman-led team. ➡️https://unseendiplomacy2.com⬅️ 🧵(1/5) #WLGS #IndieGames #MadeWithUnity #WomenInGames #VR

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Triangular Pixels @triangularpixels.com · 06/06/2025

#PitchYaGame ! 🕵️‍♀️The Immersive Spy Simulator🎮 #UnseenDiplomacy2 casts YOU at the spy to stop evil-doers 💀 💪Leap into action and keep fit in a real-life #VR obstacle course around your real-world room. Wishlist our #indiegame now! #MetaQuest #SteamVR ➡️https://unseendiplomacy2.com/ ⬅️

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Tadej Gregorcic @tadej.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Love this

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Triangular Pixels @triangularpixels.com · 27/05/2025

Revealed! #UnseenDiplomacy2 ! The INCREDIBLE real-life #VR obstacle course in your living room Wishlist and store links ➡️ unseendiplomacy2.com For #MetaQuest & #SteamVR Follow us for more! #GameDev #IndieDev

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 09/05/2025

I tend to think in terms of depth complexity / overdraw / fillrate, which is not strictly what those three items represent, but useful in terms of what I need to optimise or change. There's also quad overdraw, but for mobile VR I find we're not pushing enough polys for that to be important.

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Develop:Brighton 2026 @developconference.com · 24/04/2025

We'll be joined this year by John Campbell (@daddygame.dev) from @TriangularPixels.com, who will be sharing a data-oriented method for procedural level designs that encourages collaboration, alongside providing insights into dealing with the complexity of a procedural system. #DevelopConf

An image of John Campbell from Triangular Pixels, highlighting their talk at Develop:Brighton titled "Constraints to Creativity: The Art and Science of Procedural Level Design"

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Triangular Pixels @triangularpixels.com · 03/04/2025

Triangular Pixels welcomes @noodlenoiseaudio.bsky.social as our new Sound Designers for Unseen Diplomacy 2! Everyone here at the studio is excited to work with you all. Make sure to give them a follow if you haven't already to see some of the great work they have done. #Sound #GameDev #VR

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 27/03/2025

You can get cat collars with space for a slip of paper, then write a note explaining it's coming around and ask the owner to contact you and leave your phone number. I've done this previously and had an appreciative owner call me back. Plus you get to find out their real name!

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 26/03/2025

And by 'feature complete' I mean the APIs just have big holes in because either someone didn't think about backwards/forwards compatibility, didn't think anyone would ever want to query that thing, or wrapped everything up in a baby-proof-api and hid important details.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 26/03/2025

The entire VR stack has been simultaneously overengineered, under-specified, fragmented and pseudo-consolidated that the early days of OpenVR feel like a breath of fresh air. In our current project I've got an OpenVR, OVR and OpenXR backends, and OpenVR is the only sane, feature complete one.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 13/02/2025

This is one of those cases where I can't tell if the hoop-jumping to avoid branches actually comes out as an overall win, so something to benchmark later. In particular 'ceil' seems like a wildcard that could go either way, although Shader Playground suggests it's quite cheap.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 13/02/2025

An attempt at converting an arbitrary normal into a primary axis (for cubemap-alike operations) without branches. Pretty sure there's better ways of doing this but tricky to find online as I'm not sure what the 'proper' name for this op is.

float3 SelectPrimaryAxis(float3 worldNormal)
{
worldNormal = abs(worldNormal);
float largest = max(max(worldNormal.x, worldNormal.y), worldNormal.z);
float epsilon = 0.00001;
float3 offsetNormal = worldNormal - (largest-epsilon);
return ceil(offsetNormal);
}

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Triangular Pixels @triangularpixels.com · 27/01/2025

Creative Director @mrsgame.dev had the exciting opportunity to chat with #BBC radio #Cornwall Katie shared how she broke into the #Games industry, what it was like setting up a new studio ‘Triangular Pixels’ and the origins of the #BAFTA nominated game Unseen Diplomacy www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Katie standing in the middle of a field near the sea while wearing a VR headset.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 21/01/2025

Come join us and make some noise!

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 10/01/2025

We all have an emotional support dead famous guy and who he is says a lot about you.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 16/12/2024

I had this a few times, and I blame a good portion of it on Meta's insistance on error messages being "Ooops! Something went wrong! Sowwery!" with zero actionable information. Hell even an opaque error code would be better. As-is, it encorages cargo-cult snake oil fixes to spread on the internet.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 10/12/2024

I try to do it myself, but it's a really hard trick to pull off. You've got to be really sure your words stand on their own, and confident enough to just stand in silence without worrying about your audience switching off or thinking you've forgotten what you're saying next.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 10/12/2024

It was refreshing as it took a lot of the unconcious stress of trying to read and listen at the same time, and made the pacing of the whole talk a lot calmer.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 10/12/2024

I attended a talk about giving better talks, and he had a similar point about not making the audience read and listen at the same time. His solution was slides with one or two sentences on, then when he showed a new slide he'd just pause and be quiet for 30 seconds to allow everyone to read it.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 04/12/2024

I appreciate the offer! I've got someone local having a look at it now, fingers crossed it can be fixed...

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 04/12/2024

I really appreciate all the help from everyone, thank you! Armed with this information I've got a local repair shop swapping out the component from a donar board, so fingers crossed...

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 04/12/2024

It was bought new, but then in storage for a while before being in the hands of a small boy for 2+ years so it's not had a sheltered life! The RF shield looks like it only had the lightest of soldering to hold it down, so I'm not suprised it's come loose eventually.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 04/12/2024

Ah, that does seem to line up - I was confused why I couldn't see any labels for this section. Thanks!

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 04/12/2024

Close up of the board with the missing component. Looks like just two contacts?

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 04/12/2024

Can anyone identify this component on the #2DS circuit board? The tiny black cube (pink arrow) has fallen off my son's 2ds and it no longer boots, so trying to fix it. I think the RF shield dislodged and knocked this component off, and possibly left a bit of it still attached. (Image from #ifixit)

Pink arrow showing mystery dislodged/cracked component on a 2ds circuit board

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 03/12/2024

Today's scream is brought to you by shader combinatorial explosion, and how adding one extra shader variant to a common cginc is now making every shader in the project time out when compiling. :( Feels like Unity assumes dynamic branching is fast enough now, but that's not great for mobile VR

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 01/12/2024

This week I've been working on a semi-realtime AO baker as an altenative to situations where build-time lightmapping isn't available. Promising results so far from the prototype, which is a coarse voxalization followed by a bunch of raycasts for each voxel to calculate a AO intensity.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 26/11/2024

It's easy (and fun!) to complain about tech, especially something you use every day. So I like to celebrate the positives too. In that spirit, Unity suprised me yesterday by having a genuinely useful 3d texture preview, with a bunch of visulisation methods. Super useful for proc gen debugging!

3d texture preview in SDF mode inside Unity3d

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 25/11/2024

Interesting write from @aras-p.bsky.social on how Unity changed over the years: aras-p.info/blog/2024/08... Definitely agree that the extendibility is a hidden gem that doesn't get enough credit (and is often lacking in the newer workflows like timeline).

aras-p.info

Random thoughts about Unity · Aras' website

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 20/11/2024

Does it still work? I did social media integration on a console game and Twitter & Facebook's "move fast and break things" mentality is an absolute liability for a traditional console release that gets a couple of patches and then done. I think it worked for about a year until it broke.

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John Campbell @daddygame.dev · 19/11/2024

I love the ingenuity of these analog animation methods. They may not be directly relevant these days I still think there's a lot to be learned from 'obsolete' approaches. Plus the soft fake vector output remains very compelling. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cbb...

youtube.com

HAND DRAWN CGI: Animating the Terrahawks Title Sequence (Kevin Davies & Gerry Anderson Documentary)

YouTube video by Century 21 Films

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