Staraban on Sergey Taraban Blogs

Context Engineering for Modern AI Agents: Less Instruction, Better Results

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0300

Modern AI agents often work better with fewer, clearer instructions.

This sounds counterintuitive. Older models needed detailed rules, repeated warnings, and examples for nearly every action. Newer models are better at reading a repository, understanding intent, and choosing an appropriate method. Too many instructions can now slow an agent down or create conflicts.

Tools Development

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 13:34:12 +0000

Screenshot capturing tool

I've released my new game A Maze In Love

Sun, 17 Sep 2017 01:43:22 +0000

Hi to all. I’ve just released my new puzzle game for iOS (iPad and iPhone).
This is a game about a boy who falls in love and you need to help him solving maze to reach his love.

Screenshot capturing tool for Unity. Video tutorial. Part 1

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 08:58:16 +0000

This tutorial is about writing automatic screen shot capturing tool for Unity. You know this is always pain to make game screenshots for multiple devices and platforms when you have plenty of resolutions. So this tool makes life match easier.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided videos full game let's play

Wed, 24 Aug 2016 22:33:34 +0000

Full game passing of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided without commenting and talking. Adding new video during the game playing

Hook Wars: Run Pudge Run! game was released on Android

Thu, 11 Aug 2016 22:35:24 +0000

Recently there was a release of new free to play game - Hook Wars: Run Pudge Run! on Android platform.

Unity 5 beta overview. Migration to new Unity version

Mon, 25 Aug 2014 23:35:06 +0000

Several days ago “Unity 5 beta 1” was leaked to the web. And I think that it is time to start migration of my game project to new Unity version.

Hook Wars: Pudge Revenge new multiplayer 3D game. Avaliable for early access now!

Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:09:19 +0000

Hook Wars: Pudge Revenge is a browser 3D multiplaeyer game, a reincarnation of a greate Pudge Wars game mode for Warcraft. Powered by Unity Web Player technology.

Unreal Engine 4 key concepts of C++ programming and comparison with Unity

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 22:39:45 +0000

In this article I will briefly describe a basics concepts of the developing using Unreal Engine 4 and compare it with Unity developing. It will help you to fast understand how Unreal Engine 4 works especially if you are Unity programmer. This article is based on UE4 guide for Unity developers and contained additional information

2D Game Tutorial. Part 2. 2D character with several states and dynamic sprite changing

Thu, 03 Apr 2014 22:17:46 +0000

In this video tutorial I will talk about 2D character, combined with random sprites sets and which has several states, like walk, idle etc. This character can consist of a lot of different sprite sets and change them dynamically, which allows as to create a lot of different characters using same animation and movement logic.

Unreal Engine 4 overview. Features, cons and pros

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 10:17:42 +0000

This article is a brief overview of the new Unreal Engine 4. I’m going to describe a basic features, cons and pros of the new game engine.

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Sun, 23 Mar 2014 15:40:34 +0000

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Unity Fog of War. Part 3. Static and dynamic fog of war using render to texture (video tutorial)

Thu, 30 Jan 2014 10:23:16 +0000

In this tutorial I show how to make simple static and dynamic fog of war using render to texture (i.e. render target or RT). Static fog of war is fog that saves after the character movement.

Unity fog of war. Part 3. Static and dynamic fog of war using render to texture. Web player demo

Thu, 30 Jan 2014 10:10:35 +0000

Back to article ( Tutorial part 3 )

Tutorial part 1 Tutorial part 2

:ad2: [WP_UnityObject src="/resources/fog-of-war-unity-demo/fog_of_war_demo_part3.unity3d" width=“940” height=“600”/]

Color Picker для Unity. Web player demo

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 16:07:46 +0000

Статья :ad2: [WP_UnityObject src="/resources/color_picker_demo.unity3d" width=“940” height=“600”/]

Unity Web demos

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:56:06 +0000

/en/unity-web-demos-2/2d-game-tutorial-part-1-characters-with-cusomization-using-tint-shader-web-player-demo/

/en/unity-web-demos-2/unity-fog-of-war-webplayer-demo/

Unity Web demos

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:55:23 +0000

/unity-web-demos/2d-igra-chast-1-sozdanie-i-raskraska-personazha-ispolzuja-shejder-maski-web-demo/

/unity-web-demos/unity-fog-of-war-web-player-demo/

Miscellany

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 10:41:58 +0000

Kharkiv - my home city

All about the Kharkiv - interesting places, events, photos etc.

2D Game Tutorial. Part 1. Character creating and tinting

Sat, 11 Jan 2014 22:27:55 +0000

In this video tutorial I show you how to create and colour simple 2d character in Unity using tint shader. I write a tint shader and script for character customization.

Color picker for Unity

Thu, 09 Jan 2014 01:10:00 +0000

Simple and handy color selector UI control based on Unity GUI system.

Color picker for Unity. Web player demo

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 21:39:26 +0000

Tutorial :ad2: [WP_UnityObject src="/resources/color_picker_demo.unity3d" width=“940” height=“600”/]

2D Game Tutorial. Part 1. Character creating and tinting. Web player demo

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 20:04:00 +0000

Tutorial :ad2: [WP_UnityObject src="/resources/unity-2d-game-1-character-tint/unity_2d_game_1_character_tint.unity3d" width=“940” height=“600”/]

Unity custom particle system video tutorial. Making Christmas tree and curves

Wed, 25 Dec 2013 11:03:33 +0000

This video tutorial about custom particle system feature in Unity Engine. This feature allows you to create and manage particles data of the shuriken particle system manualty in code. It is very useful feature if you need to manage many same objects in scene. It allows you to make very good performance optimization in some cases.

Asset Bundle export script for simple DLC creation

Sat, 23 Nov 2013 19:35:27 +0000

Update from 6.11.2015

This script is actual for Unity 4. Unity 5 has new match better sultion for asset bundles creation.

I’ve wrote a simple editor script for easy AssetBundle creation.

X Rebirth. First look overview

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 10:59:51 +0000

A couple of days ago X Rebirth from Egosoft was released.

Unity fog of war. Part 2. Mobile version. Web player demo

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 00:13:40 +0000

Tutorial part 1 Tutorial part 2 :ad2: [WP_UnityObject src="/resources/fog-of-war-unity-demo/fog_of_war_vertex_demo.unity3d" width=“940” height=“600”/]

Unity fog of war tutorial. Part 2. Mobile version (web demo)

Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:44:00 +0000

This article is extension of my previous tutorial about fog of war implementation in Unity. My previous technique is good for mobile device, but it still too heavy for it. That’s why I’ll write a mobile version of fog of war for Unity in this little tutorial. It will looks different bug will work faster.

Testing MSI NVidia GeForce 760 in Ubuntu Linux and Windows

Wed, 06 Nov 2013 11:16:43 +0000

MSI NVidia GeForce 760 Twin Frozr Gaming is one of the best game video system. It’s advantages is noiseless cool system and hight performance. In this overview I’ll test it in Windows and Ubuntu Linux 12.04.

Project Anarchy vs Unity 3D. A comparison of two modern game engines.

Wed, 30 Oct 2013 20:16:53 +0000

Project Anarchy (PA) - new free desktop and mobile game engine from Havok. In this article I’ll try to compare Project Anarchy and Unity 3D Engine and find out main advantages and disadvantages of these two engines.

Unity fog of war webplayer demo

Tue, 29 Oct 2013 17:33:59 +0000

Tutorial part 1 Tutorial part 2 :ad2: [WP_UnityObject src="/resources/fog-of-war-unity-demo/fog_of_war_demo.unity3d" width=“940” height=“600”/]

Unity fog of war video tutorial with webplayer demo

Wed, 23 Oct 2013 09:18:43 +0000

In this video tutorial I want to tell you about fog of war implementation in Unity engine. This technique does not require rendering to texture so it can be used in Unity free version. It also works well in mobile devices.

Unity DLC system implementation tutorial. Problems and features overview.

Wed, 09 Oct 2013 22:55:02 +0000

In this article I’ll tell you how I implemented Downloadable content system (DLC system) in Unity for one of my game and overview some problems and features.

Games

Tue, 08 Oct 2013 08:56:50 +0000

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Trevel

Tue, 08 Oct 2013 08:55:52 +0000

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Links

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 20:48:33 +0000

My faworite sites. censor.net.ua - best Ukraine news site gamedev.net - game developer portal Игромания - game news Хабрахабр - best IT comunity Lingualeo - englist learning SFW - Kharkiv fun portal

Petition about release GTA V on PC broke all records on Change.ru

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 15:41:31 +0000

Petition about release GTA 5 on PC got absolute record by number of signatories. Now it is signed by

Adding quaternion scene node transformation support into Irrlicht engine.

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 15:34:27 +0000

In this article I will talk about adding support of quaternion transformation in Irrlicht graphic engine. This example could be useful for any other open source game engines. More about quaternion’s

Saints Row IV. Ending with dancing.

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 15:21:53 +0000

I like this game for fun parodies about Mass Effect, Prototype, GTA etc. Fun ending screen shots and game credits also here.

Popular Firefox plugins.

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 14:59:35 +0000

This is my top useful and popular plugins for Firefox browser, which I use. This good plugins don’t slow down the browser and ease of use.

Bitbucket. Issue tracking system.

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 14:45:22 +0000

Recently, for my current project on Bitbacket I decided to connect the issue tracking system like Youtrack or Jira.

Git commands overview. Git working ways. Git vs svn commands comparison.

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 14:19:53 +0000

In this article I am going to describe the basic approaches in working with git and basic commands git versus svn subversion systems.

Kharkiv my home city

Sun, 29 Sep 2013 22:26:20 +0000

Kharkiv - is the biggest city in East Ukraine. Second after Kiev by number of universities. One of the rich city of Ukraine after Kiev and Odessa.

The Old Center

Constitution Square and Museum

Heart of Kharkov. Here is the Assumption Cathedral, Constitution Square, Historical Museum, department, Pavlov area (former Rosa Luxemburg), City Hall. Here the main strits Sumskaya and Pushkinskaya started.

Games

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 21:21:04 +0000

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Gallery

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 21:17:57 +0000

Places where I was.

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Kharkiv - city I am living in.

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Game screenshots.

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Projects and Tools

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 09:15:59 +0300

This page collects selected commercial games, personal projects, prototypes, and development tools I have worked on. It includes only public work and projects not covered by an NDA.

Games

Dead Island Mobile

I helped develop the mobile game from scratch. My work included core gameplay, UI, metagame systems, zombie-horde locomotion, inventory, base building, shaders, development tools, performance optimization, and iOS and Android support.

Hook Wars Online

Genre: Multiplayer Online Battle Arena
Technologies: C#, Unity, Photon Networking, NGUI, Cg shaders, HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, MySQL
Platforms: Windows, macOS, and Linux

Articles

Wed, 18 Sep 2013 21:08:20 +0000

Video tutorials

Overview

About

Wed, 18 Sep 2013 20:27:33 +0000

My name is Sergey Taraban (mmortall). I am the creator of this blog.

I live in Ukraine and work as a software and game developer.

My articles My projects

Feel free to contact me or subscribe: