Soulmask, a survival sandbox game developed by CampFire Studio and published by Qooland Games, has announced its first major cultural expansion, the free Golden Legend (Sanxingdui) DLC, coming on June 5. Inspired by ancient Sanxingdui Chinese civilization, the new DLC marks a turning point in Soulmask’s journey. What began in the primal chaos of rainforest survival pushes into uncharted territory, fusing ancient mythical symbolism with sandbox survival exploration systems. This DLC introduces new masks, exploration zones, and a collection of ornate bronze furnishings that allow players to shape their interpretations of a long-lost ritual civilization. The free Golden Legend DLC introduces The Golden Mask, an ornate ritual artifact adorned with copper eye protrusions and engraved Kui dragon patterns. Its powers include Divine Sight, where it detects threats and terrain changes from a distance; Heaven’s Watch, which can analyse enemy stats, specialities, and potential; Sunbird Blessing, which yields passive buffs that enhance movement and perception; and The Sunken Altar, where deep in the ocean lies you find a lost branch of Eastern civilization. It’s a new submerged zone that welcomes exploration, featuring shipwreck ruins, ritual relics, and ceremonial architecture wrapped in mythological symbolism. The DLC also features The Golden Legend Set, a new line of Bronze Age–themed furniture, mask displays, and ornamental props that let players transform their homesteads into stylized ancestral sanctuaries. Smarter survival through automation Soulmask players can explore The Golden Legend in free DLC. Coinciding with the DLC, Soulmask is rolling out core gameplay upgrades to the base game, focused on advancing automation in construction and logistics. This includes a building planning mode, where players can now record any custom-built structure plans. Tribesmen will automatically collect resources and rebuild them in other locations, dramatically improving the speed and efficiency of base expansion.It also has an automated logistics system where powered ziplines can be set up between homesteads and resource points, creating a flexible transport network for streamlined material delivery across the map. These features allow for faster, more organized tribe management and base development, especially for players aiming to build on a larger scale. Looking forward: 1.0, Egypt, and the future of civilization Soulmask’s update will offer a lot. The Golden Legend DLC arrives as a special gift to mark Soulmask’s first anniversary in Early Access – a thank-you to players who have shaped the world through feedback, exploration, and creativity. Soulmask will exit Early Access with its 1.0 release later this year, alongside a new Egypt-themed DLC. These milestones will continue to broaden the game’s cultural inspirations and deepen its automation systems, offering players new ways to build, govern, and survive across richly imagined ancient worlds. Producer Zima has described his long-term vision for Soulmask as “the intelligent multi-civilization survival sandbox,” where automation and cultural diversity form the foundation of a dynamic, player-driven experience. Daily insights on business use cases with VB Daily If you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI. Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

By TREVOR HOGG Images courtesy of Netflix. Unlike North America where episodes tend to be no longer than an hour, it is not uncommon in Britain to have feature-length episodes, which explains why the seasons are shorter. Season 7 of Black Mirror has six episodes with the first sequel for the Netflix anthology series that explores the dark side of technology having a run time of 90 minutes. “USS Callister: Into Infinity” comes eight years after “USS Callister” went on to win four Emmys as part of Season 4 and expands the tale where illegally constructed digital clones from human DNA struggle to survive in a multiplayer online video game environment. Returning creative talent includes filmmaker Toby Hayness, writers Charlie Brooker and William Bridges, and cast members Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson, Osy Ikhile, Milanka Brooks, Paul Raymond and Jesse Plemons. Stepping into the Star Trek-meets-The Twilight Zone proceedings for the first time is VFX Supervisor James MacLachlan, who previously handled the digital augmentation for Ted Lasso. “[For the planet where the digital clone of James Walton is found]… We got on a train and went to the middle of Anglesey [island in Wales] to a copper mine. The copper mine was absolutely stunning. … You’re a good 50 meters down, and there were little tunnels and caves where over the years things have been mined and stopped. … It was shot there, and we augmented some of it to help sell the fact that it wasn’t Earth. We put in these big beautiful arches of rock, Saturn-like planets up in the sky, a couple of moons, and clean-up of giveaways.” —James MacLachlan, Visual Effects Supervisor Taking advantage of the reflective quality of the bridge set was the LED wall utilized for the main viewscreen. Dealing with a sequel to a critically-acclaimed episode was not a daunting task. “It’s almost like I have a cheat code for what we need to do, which I quite like because there’s a language from the previous show, so we have a certain number of outlines and guidelines,” MacLachlan states. “But because this was set beyond where the previous one was. it’s a different kind of aesthetic. I didn’t feel the pressure.” No assets were reused. “We were lucky that the company that previously did the USS Callister ship packaged it out neatly for us, and we were able to take that model; however, it doesn’t fit in pipelines anymore in the same way with the layering and materials. It was different visual effects vendors as well. Union VFX was smashing out all our new ships, planets and the Heart of Infinity. There was a significant number of resources put into new content.” Old props were helpful. “The Metallica ship that shows up in this episode is actually the Valdack ship turned backwards, upside down, re-textured and re-modeled off a prop I happened to wander past and saw in Charlie Brooker’s and Jessica Rhoades’ office.” MacLachlan notes. Greenscreens were placed outside of the set windows for the USS Callister. “USS Callister: Into Infinity” required 669 visual effects shots while the other five episodes totaled 912. “Josie Henwood, the Visual Effects Producer, sat down with a calculator and did an amazing job of making sure that the budget distribution was well-weighted for each of the scripts,’ MacLachlan remarks. “We shot this one third and posted it all the way to the end, so it overlapped a lot with some of the others. It was almost an advantage because we could work out where we were at with the major numbers and balance things out. It was a huge benefit that Toby had directed ‘USS Callister’. We had conversations about how we could approach the visual effects and make sure they sat within the budget and timeframe.” Working across the series were Crafty Apes, Jam VFX, Jellyfish Pictures, Magic Lab, One of Us, Stargate Studios, Terraform Studios, Union VFX, and Bigtooth Studios.  “We had a spectrum of vendors that were brilliant and weighted so Union VFX took the heavy load on ‘USS Callister: Into Infinity,’ One of Us on ‘Eulogy’ and Jam VFX on ‘Hotel Riverie’ while the other vendors were used for all the shows.” “[W]e had a matte painter at Territory Studio create some generic space looks like exteriors of planets in pre-production. We gave those to Union VFX who animated them so the stars gently drifted and the planets would slowly rotate. Everything in that set was chrome, so no matter where the camera was pointing, when we went to hyperspace, outside planets or in space, there were all of these beautiful reflections all over the surfaces of the USS Callister. What I did not anticipate is when the actors came onto the set not knowing it was going to be a LED wall. Their reaction was enough to say that we had made the right choice.” —James MacLachlan, Visual Effects Supervisor Miranda Jones looked after the production design and constructed a number of practical sets for the different sections of the USS Callister. A clever visual effect was deployed when a digital clone of Robert Daly (Jesse Plemmons) is in his garage crafting a new world for Infinity, which transforms from a horizontal landscape into a spherical planetary form. “A lot of it was based off current UI when you use your phone and scroll,” MacLachlan remarks. “It is weighted and slows down through an exponential curve, so we tried to do that with the rotational values. We also looked at people using HoloLenses and Minority Report with those gestural moments. It has a language that a number of people are comfortable with, and we have gotten there with AR.” Union VFX spent a lot of time working on the transition. “They had three levels of detail for each of the moments. We had the mountain range and talked about the Himalayas. Union VFX had these moments where they animated between the different sizes and scales of each of these models. The final one is a wrap and reveal to the sphere, so it’s like you’re scaling down and out of the moment, then it folds out from itself. It was really nice.” For safety reasons, weapons were digitally thrown. “We had a 3D prop printed for the shuriken and were able to get that out in front of the camera onstage,” MacLachlan explains. “Then we decided to have it stand out more, so as [the Infinity Player] throws it, it intentionally lights up. On set we couldn’t throw anything at Cristin, so some tracking markers were put on her top where it needed to land. Then we did that in CGI. When she is pulling it off her chest with her hand, the shuriken is all CGI. Because of the shape of the shuriken, we were able to have it poke through the fingers and was visible, so it worked well. Cristin did a convincing job of yanking the shuriken out. We added some blood and increased the size of the wound on her top, which we had to do for a couple of other scenes because blood goes dark when its dry, so it needed to be made redder.” Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) throws a ceremonial knife that hits Robert Daly directly in the head. “That was a crazy one. We had the full prop on the shelf in the beginning that she picks up and throws. The art department made a second one with a cutout section that was mounted to his head. Lucy Cain [Makeup & Hair Designer] and I constructed a cage of hair clips and wire to hold it onto his head. Beyond that, we put tracking markers on his forehead, and we were able to add all of the blood. What we didn’t want to do was have too much blood and then have to remove it later. The decision was made to do the blood in post because you don’t want to be redressing it if you’re doing two or three takes; that can take a lot of time out of production.” “USS Callister: Into Infinity” required 669 visual effects shots. A digital clone of Robert Daly placed inside the game engine is responsible for creating the vast worlds found inside of Infinity. “We had a 3D prop printed for the shuriken [hidden hand weapon]… Then we decided to have it stand out more, so as [the Infinity Player] throws it, it intentionally lights up. On set we couldn’t throw anything at Cristin, so some tracking markers were put on her top where it needed to land. Then we did that in CGI. When she is pulling it off her chest with her hand, the shuriken is all CGI. Because of the shape of the shuriken, we were able to have it poke through the fingers and was visible… Cristin did a convincing job of yanking the shuriken out.” —James MacLachlan, Visual Effects Supervisor A cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Cast Away is the otherworldly planet where the digital clone of James Walton (Jimmi Simpson) is found. “We got on a train and went to the middle of Anglesey [island in Wales] to a copper mine,” MacLachlan recounts. “The copper mine was absolutely stunning. It’s not as saturated. You’re a good 50 meters down, and there were little tunnels and caves where over the years things have been mined and stopped. We found moments that worked for the different areas. It was shot there, and we augmented some of it to help sell the fact that it wasn’t Earth. We put in these big beautiful arches of rock, Saturn-like planets up in the sky, a couple of moons, and clean-up of giveaways.” The blue teleportation ring was practically built and digitally enhanced. Set pieces were LiDAR scanned. “What was interesting about the ice planet [was that] the art department built these amazing structures in the foreground and beyond that we had white drapes the whole way around, which fell off into darkness beautifully and naturally because of where the light was pulled by Stephan Pehrsson [Cinematographer],” MacLachlan states. “On top of that, there was the special effects department, which was wafting in a lot of atmospherics. Some of the atmospherics were in-camera and others were augmented to even it out and boost it in places to help the situation. We did add foreground snow. There is a big crane shot in the beginning where Unreal Engine assisted in generating some material. Then we did matte painting and set extensions beyond that to create a larger scale and cool rock shapes that were on an angle.” The jungle setting was an actual location. “That’s Black Park [in England], and because of the time of year, there are a lot of protected plants. We had a couple of moments where we weren’t allowed to walk in certain places. There is one big stunt where Nanette steps on a mine, and it explodes her back against a tree. That was a protected tree, so the whole thing was wrapped in this giant stunt mat while the stunt woman got thrown across it. Areas would be filled in with dressed plants to help the foreground, but we got most of the background in-camera. There were bits of clean-up where we spotted crew or trucks.” Large-scale and distinct rock shapes were placed at an angle to give the ice planet more of an alien quality. An exterior space shot of the USS Callister that is entirely CG. Twin versions of Nanette Cole and James Walton appear within the same frame. “Literally, we used every trick in the book the whole way through. Stephan and I went to see a motion control company that had a motion control camera on a TechnoDolly. Stephan could put it on his shoulder and record a move on a 20-foot crane. Once Stephan had done that first take, he would step away, then the motion control guys would do the same move again. You get this handheld feel through motion control rather than plotting two points and having it mechanical. You get a wide of a scene of clone Nanette in a chair and real Nanette standing in white, and you’ll notice the two Waltons in the background interacting with one another. Those shots were done on this motion control rig. We had motion control where we could plot points to make it feel like a tracking dolly. Then we also had our cameraman doing handheld moves pushing in and repeating himself. We had a wonderful double for Cristin who was excellent at mirroring what she was achieving, and they would switch and swap. You would have a shoulder or hair in the foreground in front of you, but then we would also stitch plates together that were handheld.” The USS Callister approaches the game engine situated at the Heart of Infinity. A homage to the fighter cockpit shots featured in the Star Wars franchise. USS Callister flies into the game engine while pursued by other Infinity players. A major story point is that the game engine is made to look complex but is in fact a façade. A copper mine served as the location for the planet where the digital clone of James Walton (Jimmi Simpson) is found. Principal photography for the jungle planet took place at Black Park in England. The blue skin of Elena Tulaska (Milanka Brooks) was achieved with practical makeup. Assisting the lighting were some cool tools such as the teleportation ring. “We had this beautiful two-meter blue ring that we were able to put on the ground and light up as people step into it,” MacLachlan remarks. “You get these lovely reflections on their visors, helmets and kits. Then we augmented the blue ring in visual effects where it was replaced with more refined edging and lighting effects that stream up from it, which assisted with the integration with the teleportation effect because of their blue cyan tones.” Virtual production was utilized for the main viewscreen located on the bridge of the USS Callister. “In terms of reflections, the biggest boon for us in visual effects was the LED wall. The last time they did the big screen in the USS Callister was a greenscreen. We got a small version of a LED screen when the set was being built and did some tests. Then we had a matte painter at Territory Studio create some generic space looks like exteriors of planets in pre-production. We gave those to Union VFX who animated them so the stars gently drifted and the planets would slowly rotate. Everything in that set was chrome, so no matter where the camera was pointing, when we went to hyperspace or outside planets or in space, there were all of these beautiful reflections all over the surfaces of the USS Callister. What I did not anticipate is when the actors came onto the set not knowing it was going to be a LED wall. Their reaction was enough to say that we had made the right choice.”

I recently developed a guide to Progressive Lightmapper troubleshooting in order to help developers get the most out of Baked Global Illumination (GI) in the Unity Editor. Here, I unpack five of the most common lightmapping problems and their solutions, supported by images and links to pages in the Unity Manual. For the full guide, visit the forums.If certain prerequisites are not met, the Progressive Lightmapper might fail to generate lighting in your scene. These conditions include, but are not limited to:No objects marked as GI ContributorsNo baked lights in the sceneShader issuesTo correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.Mark objects you want to lightmap as GI Contributors by following these steps:Select your GameObject.Navigate to the Mesh Renderer component.Unfold the Lighting header.Check the Contribute to Global Illumination checkbox.Doing so will enable the Receive Global Illumination parameter underneath. It contains two options:Lightmaps: Meant for static lightmapped objects – GameObject will receive and contribute GI to lightmaps.Light Probes: Meant for small props and objects not fit for lightmapping – GameObject will receive GI from Light Probes and will contribute GI to the surrounding lightmaps.Only Mixed and Baked lights can contribute to Baked GI. Select lights in your scene, then set the Mode to either Mixed or Baked in the Light component. Other properties that are worth checking include:Color: Dark colors will have low or no GI contribution. Choose bright colors for lights and use the Intensity property to boost or dim them.Intensity: The higher the intensity, the brighter the light. Ensure that your lights are bright enough for meaningful GI contribution.Indirect Multiplier: This property controls the intensity of the indirect bounce. Make sure that it is not set to zero. Otherwise, the light will have no contribution to GI at all. Note that setting this value above one will make the lighting in your scene non-compliant to the physically based rendering (PBR) standard.Visit No Baked Global Illumination in the scene forum In the Lighting window (accessible via Window > Rendering > Lighting), make sure that the Lighting Settings Asset field is not left blank. If there is no asset assigned, click on the New Lighting Settings button. This will create and assign an asset, unlocking the properties in the window for editing.Once this is complete, verify that:You have ticked the Baked Global Illumination checkbox, which enables Baked GI computations. This checkbox will also expose the Lighting Mode drop-down list.The Max Bounces value is not set to zero. The higher this value, the more the light will bounce around the environment.The Indirect Intensity slider is not set to zero. Setting this slider to zero will diminish all indirect lighting in the scene.Custom shaders could be the reason why GI computation has failed. For debug purposes, use the built-in shaders that come with the Unity Editor. Those are:Standard Shader: Available in the Built-in Render PipelineLit Shader: Available in the Universal Render Pipeline (URP)Lit Shader: Available in the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP)If Unity generates lighting after switching to one of the shaders outlined above, the problem might be with the custom shaders. In this case, make sure that the surface shaders contain the LIGHTMAP_ON shader keyword.Check out the Meta Pass page for details on how to further customize the Baked GI output using shaders.Other potential fixesIf the above steps have not solved your problem, consider trying these potential fixes:Select a different lightmapping backend in the Lighting window. If lighting fails to bake when using the Progressive GPU, but succeeds when baking with the Progressive CPU, this might be the result of a hardware or driver problem.Update the GPU drivers. Please refer to the GPU manufacturer’s page for the correct drivers for your system. (For Linux machines, check the Linux driver setup section in this forum thread).Ensure that your GPU meets the minimum requirements. Please refer to this forum thread.Clear the GI Cache. To clear it, navigate to Preferences > GI Cache and click on the Clean Cache button. Keep in mind that this will delete all lighting data present in the scene, requiring you to regenerate lighting.Certain objects that appear unlit or out of place might indicate a problem with the scene setup, which often reproduces when dynamic objects have no Light Probes to sample the lighting from. Furthermore, any glossy metallic material in the scene might appear as black if no local Reflection Probes are present.To correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.Dynamic objects – or GI Contributors receiving GI from Light Probes – need Light Probes to sample indirect lighting data. If none are present, objects will fall back to sampling the Ambient Probe (i.e., the Light and Reflection Probe that is always present in the scene).To mitigate this, set up a Light Probe network in the scene, adding more probes in areas of high importance. Make sure that there are enough Light Probes to encompass all affected objects, and generate lighting again to see the effect.Reflective metallic objects might still render as black, even after placing a dense network of Light Probes. To shade such objects, you need to place a Reflection Probe that encompasses the affected object. Generate the lighting again or re-bake the probe in the Reflection Probe Component by clicking the Bake button.If you observe black areas in the reflections, try increasing the Bounces count. This will increase the number of bounces, thus creating reflections within reflections. You can access this property in Lighting > Environment > Environment Lighting.Visit Objects are missing lighting forumIf performing the previous steps still does not solve the issue, inspect the Mesh Renderer component of the affected object. Under the Probes section, make sure that the Light Probes and Reflection Properties are set to anything other than Off.Pure black materials will absorb all direct and indirect light. This is physically correct behavior. In real life, no naturally occurring material is completely black. For example, one of the darkest natural materials, coal, measures at “50, 50, 50” on an RGB luminosity scale.Adjust your material color values to follow the physically based shading standards. In the Built-in Render Pipeline, you can use the Validate Albedo Scene View Draw Mode to determine whether Albedo values are PBR-compliant. You can use the Rendering Debugger in URP and HDRP to do the same.If you are working with multiple scenes, check that the scene containing lighting is set as the Active Scene. By default, Unity sets the first loaded scene as the Active Scene, which might have a detrimental effect in the standalone player builds.There are two types of issues related to emissive material rendering:Emissive materials do not appear as “glowing,” which indicates a post-processing issue.Emissive materials are not contributing to Global Illumination, which indicates an issue with object or material setup.To correct either of these issues, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.To create the impression of a glowing material, enable Bloom in your post-processing stack of choice. Refer to Built-in RP, URP, or HDRP documentation for tips on how to do this.If you intend on using emissive objects for lightmapping, make sure that:You have marked the GameObject in question as a GI Contributor. Due to the self-illuminating nature of emissive objects, you can set their Receive Global Illumination property to Light Probes. This will save space in the lightmap atlas.The Global Illumination property is set to Baked in the Material Inspector. This property is available under the Emission input. Refer to Built-in RP, URP, or HDRP documentation for more details.In the Lighting window, make sure that the Indirect Intensity property is not set to zero. Setting it to zero will disable all indirect lighting, including baked contribution from baked emissive objects.Visit Emissive materials not rendering forumWhen baking in Non-directional mode, the Unity Editor will not create a separate texture to hold directionality information. This will result in objects looking flat after baking.It is worth noting that low frequency normal maps are hard to capture using directionality textures. Such textures will appear flat when generating lighting using fully baked lights.To correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.In the Lighting window, set the Directional Mode property to Directional. This mode will generate a secondary texture that will store dominant light direction. Normal maps will have a good representation of relief, but will lack specular response.Visit Flat normal maps ForumMixed lights provide real-time specular and normal response. The Progressive Lightmapper bakes indirect lighting into a lightmap. This combination ensures the highest quality material response when using baked lighting.If your project allows for it, switch the light Mode to Mixed in the Light component. Note that Mixed lights have the same performance cost as real-time lights. Depending on the Lighting Mode used, Mixed lights will cast real-time shadows but not baked soft shadows.Probe-lit GameObjects will often have a better material response than those lit by Baked lights. If your art direction allows for it, set their Receive Global Illumination property to Light Probes in the Mesh Renderer component. Note that you can also use Light Probe Proxy Volume (LPPV) to add a spatial gradient to probe-lit objects.One of the inherent limitations of Baked lights is that they do not provide real-time specular response to materials. This means that glossy materials will lack specular highlights after generating lighting.To correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.Unlike Baked lights, Mixed lights provide real-time direct specular response to materials. If specular highlights are important in your scene, switch the light Mode to Mixed in the Light component.Visit Missing specular response forumIt is possible to imitate specular response from lights by using emissive objects. To do so, follow these steps:Place a Reflection Probe in your scene.Right-click in the Hierarchy panel and select 3D Object > Sphere. Select the newly created object and set its Static Editor Flag to Reflection Probe Static.In the Project panel, create a new material by right-clicking and selecting Create > Material.Select the newly created material and enable the Emission checkbox. Set the Global Illumination property to None.Drag and drop the material onto the sphere to assign it.Place the sphere in the same position as your light.Generate lighting.After following the above steps, you should be able to see the emissive objects captured in the Reflection Probe cubemap. You can hide those objects after baking or set up a Culling Mask in the Camera component.For more tips on troubleshooting the Progressive Lightmapper, check out the full guide in the forums. If you’d like to discuss this article or share other solutions, feel free to connect with me there or here. Finally, be sure to watch for new technical blogs from other Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.

Until Dawn (4K Blu-ray + Blu-ray + Digital) $50 | Releases July 8 Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Walmart Until Dawn on Prime Video Buy for $25 / Rent for $20 | Available Now See at Amazon While movie adaptations of video games can be very hit or miss, Until Dawn was one of the more memorable projects thanks to the film putting its own spin on the game's choose-your-own-design mechanics. In case you missed it on the big screen, Until Dawn is now available to watch from the comfort of your own couch. You can rent or buy the digital release from Prime Video for $20-$25. If you prefer physical media and don't mind waiting, Until Dawn's 4K Blu-ray combo pack is up for preorder at Amazon and Walmart ahead of its July 8 release date.Until Dawn is the third video game film adaptation from PlayStation Productions following Uncharted and Gran Turismo. The production company, which was founded in 2019, is also credited with the TV adaptations of Twisted Metal and the critically acclaimed HBO series The Last of Us. Until Dawn (4K Blu-ray + Blu-ray + Digital) $50 | Releases July 8 Until Dawn's 4K Blu-ray edition also comes a 1080p Blu-ray disc and digital copy of the film. Along with native 4K resolution, Until Dawn will support Dolby Atmos audio on supported devices.Amazon and Walmart have the 4K Blu-ray combo pack priced at $50 at the moment. That said, we expect the price to drop prior to launch. Both retailers offer preorder price guarantees, so you'll be eligible for any future discounts from the moment you place your order until your Blu-ray ships.Until Dawn is also getting a DVD release, in case you want to experience the horror film in spine-tingling 480p resolution. Amazon has the DVD version priced at $28.60, while Walmart listed it for $35.Here's the full list of Until Dawn special features:Adapting a Nightmare - Director David F. Sandberg and writer Gary Dauberman discuss the inspirations of the film and how they built off of the game world from the hit PlayStation game.Death-Defying Cast - Meet the castPractical Terrors - A look at the practical effects and props used to garner realistic reactions from the actors and actresses.pAudio Commentary with director David F. Sandberg and producer Lotta LostenDeleted and extended scenes Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Walmart Until Dawn on Prime Video Buy for $25 / Rent for $20 | Available Now If you don't want to wait, you can rent Until Dawn for $20 or buy a digital copy for $25. If you buy the film, you can watch it whenever you want, but rentals on Prime Video have a couple of rules to keep in mind. You'll have 30 days to start watching the movie after making your purchase. Once the movie begins, it will be returned to Amazon in 48 hours. Your rental/purchase grants access to the 4K and standard definition versions of Until Dawn. See at Amazon In case you missed it, Until Dawn tells an original story and is set within the same universe as the game. Connecting the video game and the film is Stormare's character, Dr. Hill, who appeared in both mediums. Another nod to the game is that the movie has the same tone and vibe, as the main characters find themselves caught in a time-loop where they frequently die due to a variety of grisly means. The only way to break this vicious cycle is to survive…until dawn. The film has received mixed reviews, but if you're in the mood for a cheesy horror-comedy with slick direction, Until Dawn is an enjoyable watch.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Want something sexy, silly, and scandalous? Then you'll treasure Honey Don't!, the latest collaboration between married filmmakers Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke. The pair, who've been collaborating since the 1990 Coen Bros movie Miller's Crossing, brought audiences the madcap mayhem of Drive-Away DollsDrive-Away Dolls star Margaret Qualley reunites with Coen and Cooke, playing a title character once more. Honey O'Donahue is a small-town private eye who keeps her cards close to her chest. When a new client turns up dead in a suspicious car crash, she quips to the crumpled police detective on the scene (Charlie Day, perfectly cast as an affable dope), but won't give up a single observation. Unspoken, this is her mystery to solve. Over the course of this murder investigation, she'll cross paths with a moped-riding femme fatale (Lera Abova), a surly sapphic cop (Aubrey Plaza), and an ultra-vain cult leader (Chris Evans). It's a wild ride with twists, sex, and murder!  You May Also Like Margaret Qualley is dynamite in Honey Don't!While this is the second offering in Coen and Cooke's proposed lesbian trilogy, Honey Don't! doesn'tDrive-Away Dolls. The key to both films is Qualley, who sets the tone. In the first film, she was a chaotically comical masc with a Southern accent as thick as molasses and a libido as powerful as the sun. The movie followed her frenzied energy through pacing and plotting, taking wild turns with madcap energy. In Honey Don't!, click-clacking heels, pencil skirts or tailored flowing slacks with tidy but never bland dress shirts — reflects these old-school inspirations. So does her frankness; she carries a Katharine Hepburn attitude without the Mid-Atlantic accent. So when the aforementioned police detective flirts with her, she says, smooth as butter, "I like girls." (To which Day replies with a cheery bemusement, "You always say that!") Whether playing the cool gay aunt to a small army of nieces and nephews, uncovering a kinky clue, or hooking up with a one-night stand, Honey is suave and sharp, but also warm. This temperament sets her apart from the fleets of male detectives who've come before her, all swagger and steely glares. Plus, her attitude reflects the atmosphere of Honey Don't!'s setting: Bakersfield, California, a sunny place with a dark appetite.   Mashable Top Stories Stay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news. Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! Honey Don't! is a raw and refreshing caper.  Writer Tricia Cooke, actor Margaret Qualley and writer/director Ethan Coen on the set of their film "Honey Don't!" Credit: Karen Kuehn / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC The screenplay by Coen and Cooke is committed to dark humor, offering gleeful jokes about kinky sex, gruesome death, and the general idiocy of crooks and con men. As Coen directs Honey Don't!, it's tempting to look for comparisons in his shared filmography with his brother, Joel. Is Honey Don't! more Raising Arizona or The Big Lebowski? Burn After Reading or No Country for Old Men? But engaging in this debate risks overlooking the exciting exploration of crime stories that Coen and Cooke are building with their trilogy. Her stamp is clear and important here as the film's co-writer, producer, and editor. Yes, Honey Don't! pulls from film noir inspirations, as do several previous Coen Bros movies… and hundreds of other movies before that. But this crusty California setting gives fresh air to tropes like the femme fatale or the double cross. Where Drive-Away Dolls dug into the rich Americana and queer culture to be found in road trip attractions and lesbian bars, Honey Don't! embraces a less-familiar clutch of gnarly characters, sunbaked and deranged. Chris Evans is hilarious, freed from Disney constraints. Thank goodness that Chris Evans' MCU era has ended. Now the actor who has proven to be a sensational bastard in Knives Out can cut loose with characters who aren't remotely role models.  Related Stories In Honey Don't!, he plays Reverend Drew, a preacher who leads a congregation of dedicated minions who will grant any wish of sex or violence his twisted heart desires. Honey Don't! offers an array of beloved character actors, like Plaza, Day, Billy Eichner, and acclaimed theater performer Gabby Beans. And they are all game for whatever damned thing Cooke and Coen throw their way. Where Qualley plays the straight man to this cluster of kooky clowns, Evans is a ringmaster of his own circus. From the moment he flashes a comically insincere smile, there's a thrill of excitement. Playing punchlines with a gleeful obliviousness, Evans creates a sharp satire of a certain brand of religious leader who believes too much in his own bullshit. His physicality is suitably absurd. Whether he's barking orders in the nude or giving the most hysterical delivery of the word "oui" ever committed to screen, he moves like a cartoon caricature of an arrogant buffoon. Props to Evans for finding a new and fantastic way to continue being America's ass. What's most thrilling about Honey Don't! is perhaps also what's most frustrating about it. Coen and Cooke set up a mystery with a form that seems vaguely familiar at the start. But as Honey chases down the suspects and confounding clues, this story is anything but what you'd expect. And that comes down to the finale, which is sure to divide critics and audiences. Personally, I relished the final surprise of the film, as it suggests this story is bigger than one movie and maybe even one setting can contain. Instead of closure, Honey Don't! offers a taste of something sweet and wild, with the potential for more. And I'm not mad at that. Honey Don't! was reviewed out of the Cannes Film Festival. It will open in theaters on Aug. 22. Topics Film

“Everything I did and wrote was based in love and my desire to entertain and bring glee and creativity to young people and to everyone,” Paul Reubens says in the newly released Max docuseries, Pee-wee As Himself. Reubens ascended to cultural ubiquity in the 1980s with his smash hit character, Pee-wee Herman. First as a live show, then in the Tim Burton film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and perhaps most lastingly, in the television series Pee-wee’s Playhouse that ran for five seasons, Reubens undeniably did just what he set out to. Visually, the show conveyed an off the wall giddiness that didn’t confine itself to typical television set design rules.The jagged-edged red door, the wagging-armed chair named Chairry, the beatnik jazz band’s brick wall alcove—an entire bustling world was contained in the walls of Pee-wee’s playhouse, from the very first episode. The walls and floor were painted with abstract patterns in a variety of colors, and tchotchkes abounded. From Chairry to the three flowers in the flowerbed to Magic Screen, the decorations were his friends and his friends were his decorations. His space was very much alive. “He’s a really imaginative person who doesn’t let other people make rules for him, so naturally his place would reflect his personality,’” Gary Panter, the show’s lead production designer, told the New York Times in a 1987 interview.Chairry (right of centre) and other Pee-wee’s Playhouse staples including Dirty Dog, Chicky Baby, and Cool Cat in the background. Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesPanter was an alt comic artist who’d designed the original stage sets for Reubens before Pee-wee made his jump to the screen. He worked with two other then-comic artists, Wayne White and Ric Heitzman, to flesh out the world further for the television series. While in retrospect, people might lump the Playhouse in with the rest of the ’80s postmodern milieu, the team had rules to avoid fitting too cleanly into that aesthetic. “Jokingly, we said, ‘Okay, no more ’80s new wavy stuff,” White says. “No flying triangles and squiggly lines.” The result was a surrealist explosion of color and pattern, a Pop Art take on a ’50s sitcom set.Laurence Fishburne appeared as Cowboy Curtis on the show. Photo: John Kisch Archive/Getty ImagesGiven their punk-leaning backgrounds, their approach to creating the sets had a DIY sensibility. The first season of the show was filmed in a loft in SoHo, rather than on a soundstage in Los Angeles, and the team got crafty figuring out how to create the things they’d drawn up, rather than passing the designs off to fabricators to see them through. “We were downtown New York artists struggling to build the stuff in our apartments and little studios here and there,” White tells AD. “It was mostly sculptors and painters and cartoonists [working on the show]. It didn’t have that institutional network of showbiz builders like LA has, there were no scenic artists, no guys that build props, things like that.”This fact is surely part of what gives Pee-wee’s Playhouse its art-school-project sheen: despite its success, it truly was a passion project for those that worked on it. “Being trusted to do this stuff gave me just so much confidence and drive. It really supercharged my sense of being an artist,” says White. “I was 28 years old, and I was willing to do anything. We burned very brightly that first year.”Paul Reubens filming an episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Photo: John Kisch Archive/Getty ImagesFrom the start, Reubens let the production design team explore their wildest ideas. White’s comic strips (like Miss Car, which was published in the East Village Eye prior to Pee-wee’s Playhouse) featured anthropomorphized items, making the jump to Chairry and co. not too far of a leap. “I didn’t have to change [my style] at all,” White says. “I stepped right into another medium and it was a big lesson for me. You could take a vision or an idea or your imagination through all these different mediums, and they’re all really just the same.”Gary Panter and Paul Reubens. Courtesy of HBOPanter, White, and Heitzman didn’t worry about notes or being penned in by the network or anyone else. They were free to explore, to create as many drawings and iterations of items as were needed, from which Reubens would pick the option that he thought worked best. Reubens was already a major star by the time that the show was picked up, so it was intimidating to work with him so loosely at first. Still, “Paul was so interested in what we're doing that he quickly just became a friend,” White explains. “It was easy to go along with quickly, because he was a weirdo artist like me.” Reubens’s comfortability with his own oddity is what made the show so spellbinding, even for the adults who were well outside of the target demographic. Each episode presented an opportunity to disappear into a world where strangeness was not only expected, but celebrated too. “I do remember being on set and that it was the most exciting thing I’d ever done,” Natasha Lyonne, who was in six episodes of the show as a child, says in the docuseries. “I think it felt like permission to be myself.”Paul Reubens and Chairry. Courtesy of HBOFor much of Pee-wee Herman’s heyday, Reubens exclusively gave interviews in character. Though the new documentary thoroughly punctures that facade, the glimpses it offers into the Hollywood home that Reubens lived in from the mid-80s onward show that his personal taste wasn’t all that distant from the wacky world of Pee-wee. There were certainly no talking chairs, but still, the space was filled with color, pattern, and oodles of nostalgic memorabilia. Reubens also nurtured the wildlife that lived in the hills surrounding his house, spreading seeds for deer and crows, growing plenty of plants, and welcoming even the coyotes, wolves, and skunks of the area too. Though Pee-wee’s open door policy with his neighbors is a stretch further than Reubens’s, the nurturing relationship with these creatures certainly feels Pee-wee-esque.The Pee-wee’s Playhouse set. Courtesy of HBODecades after the final episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse aired, White cites the lasting brilliance of the sets to Reubens himself. “He is the nuclear reactor core of it all. Without him, none of this would have had the magic that it had,” White says. “The character of Pee-wee was so resonant with people and then it just radiated out from there. I give him most of the credit for creating the magic, and we just kind of floated along on it. It was such a strong character and such an enchanted world that it couldn't help and bring out the best of any artist.”

I’m back for part two! If you missed the first installment of my advanced Editor scripting hacks, check it out here. This two-part article is designed to walk you through advanced Editor tips for improving workflows so that your next project runs smoother than your last.Each hack is based on a demonstrative prototype I set up – similar to an RTS – where the units of one team automatically attack enemy buildings and other units. For a refresher, here’s the initial build prototype:In the previous article, I shared best practices on how to import and set up the art assets in the project. Now let’s start using those assets in the game, while saving as much time as possible.Let’s begin by unpacking the game’s elements. When setting up the elements of a game, we often encounter the following scenario:On one hand, we have Prefabs that come from the art team – be it a Prefab generated by the FBX Importer, or a Prefab that has been carefully set up with all the appropriate materials and animations, adding props to the Hierarchy, etc. To use this Prefab in-game, it makes sense to create a Prefab Variant from it and add all the gameplay-related components there. This way, the art team can modify and update the Prefab, and all the changes are reflected immediately in the game. While this approach works if the item only requires a couple of components with simple settings, it can add a lot of work if you need to set up something complex from scratch every time.On the other hand, many of the items will have the same components with similar values, like all the Car Prefabs or Prefabs for similar enemies. It makes sense that they’re all Variants of the same base Prefab. That said, this approach is ideal if setting up the art of the Prefab is straightforward (i.e., setting the mesh and its materials).Next, let’s look at how to simplify the setup of gameplay components, so we can quickly add them to our art Prefabs and use them directly in the game.The most common setup I’ve seen for complex elements in a game is having a “main” component (like “enemy,” “pickup,” or “door”) that behaves as an interface to communicate with the object, and a series of small, reusable components that implement the functionality itself; things like “selectable,” “CharacterMovement,” or “UnitHealth,” and Unity built-in components, like renderers and colliders.Some of the components depend on other components in order to work. For instance, the character movement might need a NavMesh agent. That’s why Unity has the RequireComponent attribute ready to define all these dependencies. So if there’s a “main” component for a given type of object, you can use the RequireComponent attribute to add all the components that this type of object needs to have.For example, the units in my prototype have these attributes:Besides setting an easy-to-find location in the AddComponentMenu, include all the extra components it needs. In this case, I added the Locomotion to move around and the AttackComponent to attack other units.Additionally, the base class unit (which is shared with the buildings) has other RequireComponent attributes that are inherited by this class, such as the Health component. With this, I only need to add the Soldier component to a GameObject so that all the other components are added automatically. If I add a new RequireComponent attribute to a component, Unity will update all the existing GameObjects with the new component, which facilitates extending the existing objects.RequireComponent also has a more subtle benefit: If we have “component A” that requires “component B,” then adding A to a GameObject doesn’t just ensure that B is added as well – it actually ensures that B is added before A. This means that when the Reset method is called for component A, component B will already exist and we’ll readily have access to it. This enables us to set references to the components, register persistent UnityEvents, and anything else we need to do to set up the object. By combining the RequireComponent attribute and the Reset method, we can fully set up the object by adding a single component.The main drawback of the method shown above is that, if we decide to change a value, we will need to change it for every object manually. And if all the setup is done through code, it becomes difficult for designers to modify it.In the previous article, we looked at how to use AssetPostprocessor for adding dependencies and modifying objects at import time. Now let’s use this to enforce some values in our Prefabs.To make it easier for designers to modify those values, we will read the values from a Prefab. Doing so allows the designers to easily modify that Prefab to change the values for the entire project.If you’re writing Editor code, you can copy the values from a component in an object to another by taking advantage of the Preset class.Create a preset from the original component and apply it to the other component(s) like this:As it stands, it will override all the values in the Prefab, but this most probably isn’t what we want it to do. Instead, copy only some values, while keeping the rest intact. To do this, use another override of the Preset.ApplyTo that takes a list of the properties it must apply. Of course, we could easily create a hardcoded list of the properties we want to override, which would work fine for most projects, but let’s see how to make this completely generic.Basically, I created a base Prefab with all the components, and then created a Variant to use as a template. Then I decided what values to apply from the list of overrides in the Variant.To get the overrides, use PrefabUtility.GetPropertyModifications. This provides you with all the overrides in the entire Prefab, so filter only the ones necessary to target this component. Something to keep in mind here is that the target of the modification is the component of the base Prefab – not the component of the Variant – so we need to get the reference to it by using GetCorrespondingObjectFromSource:Now this will apply all overrides of the template to our Prefabs. The only detail left is that the template might be a Variant of a Variant, and we will want to apply the overrides from that Variant as well.To do this, we only need to make this recursive:Next, let’s find the template for our Prefabs. Ideally, we will want to use different templates for different types of objects. One efficient way of doing this is by placing the templates in the same folder as the objects we want to apply them to.Look for an object named Template.prefab in the same folder as our Prefab. If we can’t find it, we will look in the parent folder recursively:At this point, we have the ability to modify the template Prefab, and all the changes will be reflected in the Prefabs in that folder, even though they aren’t Variants of the template. In this example, I changed the default player color (the color used when the unit isn’t attached to any player). Notice how it updates all the objects:When balancing games, all the stats you’ll need to adjust are spread across various components, stored in one Prefab or ScriptableObject for every character. This makes the process of adjusting details rather slow.A common way to make balancing easier is by using spreadsheets. They can be very handy as they bring all the data together, and you can use formulas to automatically calculate some of the additional data. But entering this data into Unity manually can be painfully long.That’s where the spreadsheets come in. They can be exported to simple formats like CSV(.csv) or TSV(.tsv), which is exactly what ScriptedImporters are for. Below is a screen capture of the stats for the units in the prototype:The code for this is pretty simple: Create a ScriptableObject with all the stats for a unit, then you can read the file. For every row of the table, create an instance of the ScriptableObject and fill it with the data for that row.Finally, add all the ScriptableObjects to the imported asset by using the context. We also need to add a main asset, which I just set to an empty TextAsset (as we don’t really use the main asset for anything here).This works for both buildings and units, but you should check which one you’re importing as units will have many more stats.With this complete, there are now some ScriptableObjects that contain all of the data from the spreadsheet.The generated ScriptableObjects are ready to be used in the game as needed. You can also use the PrefabPostprocessor that was set up earlier.In the OnPostprocessPrefab method, we have the capacity to load this asset and use its data to fill the parameters of the components automatically. Even more, if you set a dependency to this data asset, the Prefabs will be reimported every time you modify the data, keeping everything up to date automatically.When trying to create awesome levels, it’s crucial to be able to change and test things quickly, making small adjustments and trying again. That’s why fast iteration times and reducing the steps needed to start testing are so important.One of the first things that we think of when it comes to iteration times in Unity is the Domain Reload. The Domain Reload is relevant in two key situations: after compiling code in order to load the new dynamically linked libraries (DLLs), and when entering and exiting Play Mode. Domain Reload that comes with compiling can’t be avoided, but you do have the option of disabling reloads related to Play Mode in Project Settings > Editor > Enter Play Mode Settings.Disabling the Domain Reload when entering Play Mode can cause some issues if your code isn’t prepared for it, with the most usual issue being that static variables aren’t reset after playing. If your code can work with this disabled, go for it. For this prototype, Domain Reload is disabled, so you can enter Play Mode almost instantaneously.A separate issue with iteration times has to do with recalculating data that is required in order to play. This often involves selecting some components and clicking on buttons to trigger the recalculations. For example, in this prototype, there is a TeamController for each team within the scene. This controller has a list of all the enemy buildings so that it can send the units to attack them. In order to fill this data automatically, use the IProcessSceneWithReport interface. This interface is called for the scenes on two different occasions: during builds and when loading a scene in Play Mode. With it comes the opportunity to create, destroy, and modify any object you want. Note, however, that these changes will only affect Builds and Play Mode.It is in this callback that the controllers are created and the list of buildings is set. Thanks to this, there is no need to do anything manually. The controllers with an updated list of buildings will be there when play starts, and the list will be updated with the changes we’ve made.For the prototype, a utility method was set up that allows you to get all the instances of a component in a scene. You can use this to get all the buildings:The rest of the process is somewhat trivial: Get all the buildings, get all the teams that the buildings belong to, and create a controller for every team with a list of enemy buildings.Besides the scene being edited, you also need to load other scenes in order to play (i.e., a scene with the managers, with the UI, etc.) This can take up valuable time. In the case of the prototype, the Canvas with the healthbars is in a different scene called InGameUI.An effective way of working with this is by adding a component to the scene with a list of the scenes that need to be loaded along with it. If you load those scenes synchronously in the Awake method, the scene will be loaded and all of its Awake methods will be invoked at that point. So by the time the Start method is called, you can be sure that all the scenes are loaded and initialized, which gives you access to the data in them, such as manager singletons.Remember that you might have some of the scenes open when you enter Play Mode, so it’s important to check whether the scene is already loaded before loading it:Throughout parts one and two of this article, I’ve shown you how to leverage some of the lesser known features that Unity has to offer. Everything outlined is just a fraction of what can be done, but I hope that you’ll find these hacks useful for your next project, or – at the very least – interesting.The assets used to create the prototype can be found for free in the Asset Store:Skeletons: Toon RTS Units – Undead DemoKnights: Toon RTS Units – DemoTowers: Awesome Stylized Mage TowerIf you’d like to discuss this two-parter, or share your ideas after reading it, head on over to our Scripting forum. I’m signing off for now but you can still connect with me on Twitter at @CaballolD. Be sure to stay tuned for future technical blogs from other Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.