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What is Catlike Coding?
Catlike Coding is a personal tutorial site for game development, run by Jasper Flick. It publishes in-depth written tutorials for Unity and Godot Engine, and it is also where Flick hosts related projects such as the SDF Toolkit for Unity and AnyDice, an online dice probability calculator.
Its main audience is developers who want to understand how game systems work rather than just copy finished code. The tutorials are known for long, careful explanations and practical implementation steps, often covering topics like procedural generation, rendering, shaders, math for games, and engine-specific workflows.
If you are deciding whether to use it:
- Choose Catlike Coding when you want a structured, from-first-principles walkthrough of a Unity or Godot technique.
- Look elsewhere when you need quick copy-paste snippets, video-first learning, or broad beginner coverage of many unrelated topics.
- Expect text-heavy tutorials that reward patience and experimentation.
A useful next step is to open Catlike Coding and scan the tutorial list for your engine and current skill level. For example, a Unity developer trying to understand shader math can work through a rendering tutorial, while a Godot user can start with the engine-specific series.
Are Catlike Coding tutorials suitable for beginners in Unity or Godot?
They can work for beginners, but not as a first stop. Catlike Coding is a solo-written tutorial site by Jasper Flick, aimed at people learning Unity and Godot through long, code-heavy project series. The material assumes you already know your way around an editor, a scripting language and basic math, so it rewards persistence more than it removes initial confusion.
Who gets the most out of it
- Learners who have finished an introductory course and want to build something substantial, such as a procedural mesh, a custom render pipeline or a shader-driven effect.
- Developers who prefer typing along with written steps and reading code rather than watching video.
- People comfortable pausing to look up unfamiliar terms, since explanations are compact and rarely repeat fundamentals.
Where beginners struggle
- No hand-holding on installation, interface basics or language syntax.
- Long series where one skipped step breaks the next one.
- Unity and Godot versions move on; older tutorials may need small adjustments that a beginner cannot yet diagnose.
A practical way to decide
| Your situation | Sensible choice |
|---|---|
| Never opened Unity or Godot | Start with an official beginner path, then return here |
| Finished a basics course, can read code | Jump into a shorter Catlike Coding series first |
| Comfortable with C# or GDScript and vector math | Use the advanced series directly |
A concrete first project
Pick one narrow topic rather than a full multi-part series: a single tutorial on something visual and self-contained, such as generating a grid or writing a simple shader. Finish it end to end, then decide whether the pacing suits you before committing to a longer arc. For foundational material, the official documentation and learning portals are the safer starting point: Unity Documentation and Godot Documentation.
How can I use the SDF Toolkit to create signed distance field effects in Unity?
The SDF Toolkit is a Unity asset created by Jasper Flick, the developer behind Catlike Coding. It is designed for working with signed distance fields (SDFs) in Unity, which represent shapes mathematically as distance functions rather than as polygon meshes or textures. That approach makes effects like crisp outlines, soft shadows, rounded corners and resolution-independent rendering much easier to control.
What you can do with it
- Shape rendering without textures: Build shapes from distance functions so they stay sharp at any zoom level.
- Stylised effects: Outlines, glows and edge fades are natural fits because you already know the distance to the nearest edge.
- Procedural and parametric work: Change shape parameters at runtime instead of swapping sprites or meshes.
- Raymarching-style visuals: SDFs are the usual foundation for raymarched scenes, which the toolkit can support.
A practical starting point
If you are new to the toolkit, begin with a single simple shape, such as a circle or rounded box, and render it in a small test scene. Once that works, add one effect at a time, for example an outline, then a soft edge, then a shadow. This keeps the shader graph or code readable and makes it obvious which change caused a visual problem.
How to decide whether it fits
| Situation | SDF Toolkit is a good fit | Consider alternatives |
|---|---|---|
| You need sharp shapes at any scale | Yes | Sprite or mesh rendering may blur or show polygons |
| You want outlines and soft edges | Yes, distance data makes this straightforward | Texture-based outlines need extra passes |
| You need complex, textured 3D models | Not the main strength | Standard mesh rendering |
| You want a quick prototype | Reasonable if you know shaders | Built-in primitives may be faster to set up |
The trade-off is that SDF work usually means writing or editing shaders, so it rewards some comfort with Unity's shader pipeline. The Catlike Coding site also hosts written tutorials that walk through the underlying concepts, which is a sensible next step if the toolkit's documentation assumes familiarity with distance fields.
What are the differences between the Unity and Godot tutorials on Catlike Coding?
The main difference is scope and maturity rather than style. Catlike Coding is run by Jasper Flick, who writes and publishes tutorials for Unity and now also for the Godot Engine. The Unity material is the longer-established body of work, so it covers more ground and is likely the safer starting point if you are already working in Unity. The Godot tutorials are presented as a newer addition, so expect a smaller, growing set rather than a one-to-one mirror of the Unity catalogue.
Both sets come from the same author and the same site, so the teaching approach — long-form, project-based, code-heavy explanations — should feel consistent across engines. What changes is the API, node and scene conventions, and engine-specific workflows.
How to choose
- Learning Unity for a project or job: start with the Unity tutorials. The broader coverage means you are more likely to find the specific topic you need.
- Learning Godot, or switching engines: use the Godot tutorials, but treat them as a starting path rather than a complete reference.
- Wanting to compare the two engines: working through an equivalent topic in both sets is a genuinely useful exercise, because you see the same problem solved with different engine assumptions.
Practical next step
Pick one small feature you already understand in one engine — a character controller, a shader, or a simple UI — and find the matching tutorial on the other side. The differences you notice in setup and code structure are the real answer to this question for your purposes. Browsing the site's tutorial index first will show you how the two lists compare in size and topic coverage: Catlike Coding.
How does AnyDice calculate dice probabilities for tabletop games?
AnyDice computes exact probability distributions rather than estimating them with random rolls. You write a short expression—like 2d6 or 4d6kh3—and it enumerates every possible outcome, tallies how often each total occurs, and returns the probability of each result. Because it works by counting combinations instead of sampling, the numbers are exact: a 2d6 roll gives 1/36 for a 2, 6/36 for a 7, and so on.
The practical value for tabletop design is that you can test a mechanic before playtesting it at the table.
H3 What it does well
- Dice notation: standard
XdYpools, plus modifiers, keep/drop, highest/lowest, and rerolls. - Arbitrary expressions: you can compare rolls to target numbers, count successes, or define custom functions, so it handles systems beyond simple damage totals.
- Distribution output: results come back as a table or graph of probabilities, which is what you want when judging whether a mechanic is swingy or reliable.
- Edge-case checking: exact math exposes outcomes that feel fine in play but are vanishingly rare, or common enough to distort balance.
H3 Where it fits A designer tuning a "roll 4d6, keep the highest 3" stat generation, or a GM wondering how often a 3d6 skill check beats a target of 12, gets a precise answer in seconds. A player curious about the odds of a particular save can do the same. The trade-off is that AnyDice expects you to express the mechanic in its notation; complex conditional rules can take some fiddling to translate, and the output is statistical, not a simulation of an actual session.
H3 A concrete next step
Start with the simplest version of your mechanic—say output 2d6—confirm the shape of the curve, then layer on modifiers one at a time and watch how the distribution shifts. If a bonus flattens the curve toward one end, that is a balance signal worth acting on.
AnyDice is one of several tools maintained by Jasper Flick, who also publishes programming tutorials at Catlike Coding.
Can I access Catlike Coding tutorials for free or do they require payment?
You can access the Catlike Coding tutorials for free. The site is run by Jasper Flick, who writes and publishes tutorials for Unity and the Godot Engine, and the page evidence shows no payment requirement or pricing signals for reading the tutorials.
That fits the typical model for Catlike Coding: the tutorials themselves are the public-facing resource, while related projects such as the SDF Toolkit for Unity and AnyDice are separate tools. If a tutorial ever links to an asset or tool, treat that as a separate purchase decision rather than a paywall on the tutorial content.
Practical next step: open the tutorial index and pick a topic that matches your engine and skill level. For example, a Unity developer learning procedural mesh generation can start with the relevant tutorial series and work through it in the editor without entering payment details. If a page later points to a paid asset, that is an optional add-on, not a requirement for the tutorial itself.
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