Vav Labs

Long-lived software built deliberately.

A Wabi-Sabi approach to engineering.

Production-grade tools and developer systems for Unity and Godot teams, built with an unhealthy respect for maintenance. Designed by Vav Labs in Turin, Italy.

Godot · Unity · Rust · C#/.NET

Explore developer toolsView PathForge page

01 / Tools

Products and technical work, ordered by what matters now.

PathForge is the main product focus. Top-Down Water 2D for Godot is in development, with its first release planned for Q4 2026. Holo Shield for Godot and BugLens for Unity are available now, with free tooling, research, and longer technical work below.

View all products

Primary product / Early access

Heavy development · Early access open

PathForge for Godot

A production navigation intelligence layer for Godot 4.x: grid pathfinding, tactical movement, spatial AI maps, and editor diagnostics for games where movement is gameplay.

View PathForge pageOpen Playground

What it gives you

  • TileMap-driven grids, terrain costs, dynamic blockers
  • Multi-size agents, clearance maps, movement ranges
  • Influence maps, Dijkstra maps, flow fields, formations
  • Editor-first workflow with "why no path?" diagnostics
  • Optional Rust GDExtension performance core

Early access

Close-up of a rowing boat passing a sunken shipwreck in clear turquoise water, with fish and sunlit caustics on the lakebed, captured in Godot.

Godot 2D water / Planned Q4 2026

In development

Top-Down Water 2D for Godot

Shape the seafloor, show the underwater world, and put depth to work in your game.

View Top-Down WaterGet release updates

Secondary product / Available now

Direct launch

BugLens

Commercial Unity Editor extension for bug reports that arrive with evidence instead of folklore. €29 launch price, one-time, no subscription.

  • €29 launch · €49 regular · one-time, no subscription
  • Markdown, JSON, and AI-ready exports
  • Captures the boring context people forget to write down
View BugLensBuy — €29 launch

Secondary product / Available now

Available now

Holo Shield

A reactive energy shield shader for Godot 4 with layered projectile hits, sustained beam contact, custom meshes, and positional audio. €5, full source included.

  • €5 one-time purchase · full source · commercial use
  • Up to 24 layered projectile and beam reactions
  • Custom 3D meshes and positional audio
View Holo ShieldBuy — €5 one-time

Companion / Free & open-source

Shipped

Godot Project Doctor Mini

Godot 4 editor plugin that looks for project hygiene problems before they become a small weather system.

View Project Doctor

Tertiary / Shipped tools

Ravencap

Shipped

Streaming encrypted archives for files, folders, and pipelines. Less ceremony, fewer exciting surprises.

View on GitHub

Published products

Shipping evidence is more useful than a decorative logo row.

Vav Labs has public mobile releases as well as tools and experiments. Not everything needs a parade, but it should be possible to verify that the software exists.

Open Google Play

02 / Case studies

Case studies: constraints, decisions, and evidence.

These pages hold the technical narratives that need more context than a product card: the problem, the constraint, the tradeoff, and the evidence.

01 / study

Working prototype

Quest Signal — HTML-in-Canvas × Godot

Canvas games usually flatten interface content into pixels. Quest Signal tests whether a Godot world can use real browser-managed HTML as interactive 3D surfaces.

Godot 4.7.2WebGL 2HTML-in-CanvasAccessibility
  • Real HTML and CSS painted into three Godot WebGL textures
  • Browser selection, Find, focus, and language metadata retained
  • Native DOM controls drive Godot gameplay and physics
  • Godot state returns to an HTML live region

A playable scene where copying DOM text completes a Godot quest and an HTML button spawns six physics bodies.

Read case study

02 / study

Rendering architecture

SDF Raymarching in Godot 4

Node3D-authored signed-distance fields in Godot 4, with smooth CSG, opaque depth integration, and two free source editions.

Godot 4.7GDScriptGDShaderSDF
  • Regular SdfShape3D authoring nodes with live editor preview
  • Smooth CSG operations blend surface distance and color
  • Opaque scene-depth clipping and custom SDF depth writes
  • MIT node project plus CC0 standalone shader

Clean authored scene, Godot 4.7.1 editor/runtime smokes, and hash-bound downloads.

Read case study

03 / study

In progress

Meta Quest VR Performance

Mobile VR performance work on Quest, where every millisecond has witnesses and the thermal envelope is one of them.

UnityQuestURPProfiler
  • 11.1 ms / 13.8 ms frame budgets split across CPU, GPU, and the runtime compositor
  • Device captures first: OVR Metrics Tool, Unity Profiler over USB, RenderDoc when needed
  • Recovers structural cost: shadow distance, cascades, transparent overdraw, draw call ceiling
  • Tunes FFR, MSAA tier, render scale, and depth ownership against URP + Quest compositor reality
  • Thermal-aware: a frame that passes certification cold can still fail after five minutes

Optimization checklist and capture notes are being written from real device sessions, not editor estimates.

Read case study

04 / research

Advanced private research

Hyperplex.TDA

Real-time topological analysis engine for dynamic point clouds. The public page documents the architecture and validation discipline. Implementation artifacts remain private while the product direction is undecided.

Unity 6.3.NET 10Burst/JobsTopology
  • Computational topology applied to live data
  • Hard real-time constraints, zero-allocation hot path
  • Unity 6.3 Burst/Jobs runtime + .NET 10 offline CLI
  • Source, datasets, benchmark captures, and release artifacts not public yet

Architecture and status notes are public. Measured evidence and artifacts remain private until a release path is chosen.

Read research page

03 / Blog

Technical notes from Vav Labs.

Unity, Godot, rendering, product tooling, and maintenance notes from real shipped projects.

01 / article

Godot pathfinding

RTS Crowd Movement in Godot: From Right-Click to Arrival

Build a Godot RTS move order with reachable destination slots, shared claims, partial allocation, and honest arrival states. Includes a tested 2D demo.

2026-09-22 / 12 min read

Read

02 / article

Godot pathfinding

How to Pathfind in an Infinite World in Godot

Plan paths through unloaded Godot terrain with bounded implicit A*, explicit overlay state, and a measured GDScript demo.

2026-09-18 / 17 min read

Read

03 / article

Godot water

Water Depth Maps and Bathymetry in Godot 2D

Build a shared water depth map in Godot 4 for top-down 2D swimming and boat clearance. Includes an MIT example project and CPU/GPU checks.

2026-09-10 / 18 min read

Read

04 / article

Godot pathfinding

NavigationServer3D in Godot 4: Path Queries, Map Sync, and Debugging

Use NavigationServer3D directly in Godot 4. Query a map RID, wait for synchronization, diagnose short paths, and inspect query metadata.

2026-08-24 / 16 min read

Read
Start with the pathfinding guideView all posts

04 / Contact

Vav Labs builds tools for the part of software that has to keep existing.

Downloadable tools, developer products, and long-lived software, built with a Wabi-Sabi approach to engineering and a healthy suspicion of perfect diagrams.

Current work includes PathForge and Top-Down Water for Godot, BugLens for Unity, diagnostics tooling, and computational research. Small pieces, made to survive being used.

Contact and links

Contact formGitHubLinkedInGoogle Play

Other shipped work

Premium games for kids

Ad-free, offline mobile titles for diverse minds.