Tech News - 2D Game Development

The 2019 Game Developers Conference published the results of their seventh annual state of the industry survey two days ago. The report added two new questions this time, should the games industry unionize? and will the games industry unionize?. Almost 4000 developers participated in the survey and nearly 50% of them believed that game industry workers should unionize. GDC 2019 is scheduled to take place March 18-22 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. 47 percent gamers said yes when asked whether they thought game industry workers should unionize; 26 percent said maybe, 16 percent said no, and 11 percent said they didn’t know. However, figures fell when it came to actual implementation. When asked whether they think video game workers actually will unionize, only 21 percent said yes. 39 percent said “maybe.” 24 percent of respondents said they don’t think it will happen, and 15 percent said that they don’t know. One developer responded saying, “There is too much supply: too many people want into the industry. Those who unionize will be shoved out of the way as companies hire those with fewer demands." The gaming industry has been abuzz with talks of unionization for quite some time now. Game Workers Unite, is a democratic organization fighting for union rights and gathering support for unionization in the gaming industry. Last year, in December, a UK chapter of Game Workers Unite became a legal trade union. Developers were also asked what PC/Mac game storefronts they sell their games on. The most popular answer was Steam, with roughly 47 percent saying that they sell games on Valve’s storefront. However, when asked if Steam still justifies its 30 percent cut, only 6 percent said yes, and 17 percent said maybe. On asking developers (both indie and professionals) how many hours they work per week on average, 44 percent of developers worked more than 40 hours per week. Almost 6 percent worked 76 to 80 hours, "suggesting that deadline-related crunch can go far beyond normal working hours," according to the survey. Other questions were based on what game platforms developers are creating for, iOS Android etc. The entire survey is available to be downloaded for free. Electronic Arts (EA) announces Project Atlas, a futuristic cloud-based AI-powered game development platform Packt partners with Humble Bundle to bring readers a stash of game development content Best game engines for Artificial Intelligence game development

Last week, a lot of drama had been going between Improbable and Unity, when Unity updated their TOS Clause 2.4 to restrict developers who planned to use Unity in any kind of distributed network capacity. Yesterday, in a blog post Unity improved on their  End User License Agreement to make it more open for developers. Per this new update, developers can now use any third party service that integrate into Unity. However, the choice of support of this service remains with Unity. Basically, Unity will integrate their own services, but not block developers from using competitive third-party services. [box type="shadow" align="" class="" width=""]Unity TOS Section 2.4 Unity developers are free to use any service offered to Unity developers (each, a “Third Party Service”).  Unity does not have any obligation to provide support for any Third Party Service provider or Third Party Service under this Agreement. Third Party Service providers may not, without Unity’s express written permission: (1) use a stylized version of any Unity name, trademark, logos, images or product icons, or other Unity-owned graphic symbols; (2) use a product name confusingly similar to a Unity product or that could be construed by Unity developers as being a Unity product or service; or (3) create or use any marketing materials that suggest an affiliation with, or endorsement by, Unity.  All use of Unity’s trademarks must comply with Unity’s Trademark Guidelines.[/box] Unity has also shared updates on their relationship with Improbable and has clarified that Improbable or SpatialOS is no longer blocked on their licenses and can be used for development and shipping games. “Improbable is no longer in breach by providing you a service, and that we are able to reinstate their licenses. But we do not consider them a partner, and cannot vouch for how their service works with Unity as we have no insight into their technology or how they run their business.”, they clarified in a blog post. Unity’s news has been taken positively by the developer community. Here are a few comments from a thread on hacker news. “Good move on their part, but the whole saga is a reminder of the risks of using non-free software, especially if it's a subscription. At any point, the developers can pull the rug out from under you.” “I've been following this rather closely as a company who provides backend services (so we're classified as a 3rd party service) to studios in the industry, many of whom use Unity. I'm rather surprised by this about-face, especially considering Unity had the upper hand in negotiations with Improbable. A pleasant surprise, and a much-needed one in the games industry where locked-down tech is often the norm.” Improbable says Unity blocked SpatialOS; Unity responds saying it has shut down Improbable and not Spatial OS Unity and Baidu collaborate for simulating the development of autonomous vehicles Unity 2018.3 is here with improved Prefab workflows, Visual Effect graph and more

Valve, a US-based video game development company, shared a sneak-peek of eight new features and changes that it's planning to work on in 2019, earlier this week. Let’s have a look at some of these new features that Valve is working on shipping this year. Store discoverability One of the things that Valve is focussing on is store Discoverability. “We’re working on a new recommendation engine powered by machine-learning, that can match players to games based on their individual tastes (on steam)”, reads the valve blog post. It will be working on bringing forth more broadcasting and curating features. Valve also mentioned that it is constantly analyzing and assessing the design of Steam, its online game store. Steam China Valve is working on bringing Steam to China. The company has teamed up with Perfect World, a Chinese Game development company, to bring Steam to Chinese users. Valve will update more regarding this in the upcoming months. New Events System Valve will be focussing on upgrading the events system in Steam. This will allow users to highlight the interesting activities within games such as tournaments, streams, or weekly challenges. Steam TV and chat The Valve team is going to be expanding Steam TV beyond broadcasting the specific tournaments and special events and will provide support to all games. Additionally, it will also be shipping a new steam chat mobile app. The app will let its users share their favourite GIFs with friends. Steam PC Cafe Program Valve will also be shipping an all-new PC Cafe Program that will allow players to have a good experience while using Steam in thousands of PC Cafes Worldwide. For more information, check out the official Steamworks announcement. Valve’s Steam Play Beta uses Proton, a modified WINE, allowing Linux gamers to play Windows games SteamVR introduces new controllers for game developers, the SteamVR Input system

According to a report by Information, Amazon is developing a video game streaming service. Microsoft and Google have also previously announced similar game streaming offerings. In October, Google announced a new experimental game streaming service, namely, Project Stream. In the same month, Microsoft’s gaming chief Phil Spencer confirmed a streaming game service for any device at the E3 conference called the Project X Cloud. Amazon’s idea is to potentially bring top gaming titles to virtually anyone with a smartphone or streaming device. The service will handle all the compute-intensive calculations needed to run graphics-intensive games in the cloud. It would then stream them directly into a smart device so that gamers can get the same experience as running the titles natively on a high-end gaming system. Information says that although the Amazon gaming service isn’t likely to be launched until next year, Amazon has begun talking to games publishers about distributing their titles through its service. Most likely, this initiative would succeed considering Amazon is the biggest player in the cloud market. Amazon currently owns 32 percent of the cloud market, compared with Microsoft Azure’s 17 percent and Google Cloud’s 8 percent. These make better chances for Amazon to succeed. This would make it easier for gamers to take advantage of Amazon’s vast cloud offerings and play elaborate, robust games even on their mobile devices As the Information noted, a successful streaming platform may possibly overcome the long-standing business model of the gaming world, in which customers pay out $50 to $60 for a Triple-A title. Amazon is yet to shell out the details of such a video gaming service officially. Check out the full report on The Information. Microsoft announces Project xCloud, a new Xbox game streaming service Now you can play Assassin’s Creed in Chrome thanks to Google’s new game streaming service. Corona Labs open sources Corona, its free and cross-platform 2D game engine

A fresh drama has emerged between Unity and Improbable. According to yesterday’s blog post by the SpatialOS creator, Improbable says that Unity has blocked SpatialOS based on a recent change in Unity’s terms of service (clause 2.4). Unity has contested this stating Improbable's blog post was misleading and added that they have terminated their relationship with Improbable without affecting anyone using SpatialOS. What did Improbable say? Unity had updated their terms of service on Dec 5 and then informed Improbable directly on Jan 9 that their service has been revoked on the Unity’s game engine. Per the blog, “all existing SpatialOS games using Unity, including production games and in development games of all developers, are now in breach of Unity’s license terms.” The blog also states that Unity has put a stop for Improbable to continue working with the Unity engine, affecting their ability to support games. The blog post disapproved Unity’s decision stating that Unity’s actions have done harm to projects across the industry, especially affecting vulnerable or small scale developers. Moreover, this is a threat to games that have been funded based on the promise of SpatialOS to deliver next-generation multiplayer as their choice of game engine. The improbable team has also stated that going further they would be helping developers using SpatialOS with Unity to finish, release and operate their games and set up an emergency fund. They are also fully open-sourcing the code of SpatialOS Game Development Kit for Unity, under the MIT license. How did Unity respond? Unity has termed Improbable's blog as ‘incorrect’ stating that they have “terminated their relationship with Improbable due to a failed negotiation with them after they violated Unity’s Terms of Service. However, anyone using SpatialOS will not be affected.” Unity also assures that even if a game developer runs a Unity-based game server on their own servers or generic cloud instances (like GCP, AWS or Azure), they are covered by Unity’s EULA. “From a technical standpoint, this is what our clarification on our TOS means: if you want to run your Unity-based game-server, on your own servers, or a cloud provider that provides you instances to run your own server for your game, you are covered by our EULA. We will support you as long as the server is running on a Unity supported platform.” Unity blocked Improbable because the company was making unauthorized and improper use of Unity’s technology and name in connection with the development, sale, and marketing of its own products. Early last year, they informed Improbable in person that they were in violation of Unity’s Terms of Service. Then, after six months, Unity informed Improbable about the violation in writing. Seeing no changes, Unity decided to take strict action by turning off Improbable’s Unity Editor license keys, about two weeks ago. Unity says they are trying to resolve the dispute with Improbable without affecting developers. SpatialOS Developers will receive support for any outstanding questions or issues directly at support@unity3d.com. What about Unity’s TOS Clause 2.4? Unity’s updated clause states that they are prohibiting "streaming or broadcasting so that any portion of the Unity Software is primarily executed on or simulated by the cloud or a remote server and transmitted over the Internet or other networks to end user devices..." This is alarming for Unity asset and service providers and developers. As explained by a gamedev.net user, this could mean that “any kind of processing offload for entity state occurring on a server or cloud provider (such as SpatialOS) is no longer allowed. As such, developers who planned to use Unity in any kind of distributed network capacity may find themselves in a difficult situation.” The creator of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, has reacted harshly to this clause as well. "We specifically make the UE4 EULA apply perpetually so that when you obtain a version under a given EULA, you can stay on that version and operate under that EULA forever if you choose." https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1083407460252217346 This battle has definitely added a boost to Unreal Engine’s popularity. https://twitter.com/patrickol/status/1083476747700576256 https://twitter.com/hippowombat/status/1083581963422691329 Epic Games have also said that it has partnered with Improbable to establish a $25 million fund to "assist developers who are left in limbo by the new engine and service incompatibilities that were introduced." Unity and Baidu collaborate for simulating the development of autonomous vehicles Unity 2018.3 is here with improved Prefab workflows, Visual Effect graph and more Unity ML-Agents Toolkit v0.6 gets two updates: improved usability of Brains and workflow for Imitation Learning

CES 2019, the annual consumer electronics show in Las Vegas will go from Tuesday, Jan. 8 through Friday, Jan. 11. However, the conference has unofficially kicked off on Sunday, January 6, followed by press conferences on Monday, Jan. 7. Over the span of these two days, a lot of companies showcased their latest projects and announced new products, software, and services. Let us look at the key announcements made by prominent tech companies so far. Nvidia Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled some "amazing new technology innovations." First, they announced that over 40 new laptop models in 100-plus configurations will be powered by NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs. Turing-based laptops will be available across the GeForce RTX family — from RTX 2080 through RTX 2060 GPUs, said Huang. Seventeen of the new models will feature Max-Q design. Laptops with the latest GeForce RTX GPUs will also be equipped with WhisperMode, NVIDIA Battery Boost, and NVIDIA G-SYNC. GeForce RTX-powered laptops will be available starting Jan. 29 from the world's top OEMs. Nvidia also announced the first 65-inch 4K HDR gaming display that will arrive in February for $4,999. LG LG Electronics, which have a major press release today, has already confirmed a variety of their new products. These include the release of LG's 2019 TVs with Alexa and Google Assistant support, 8K OLED, full HDMI 2.1 support and more. Also includes, LG CineBeam Laser 4K projector for voice control, new sound bars included with Dolby Atmos and Google Assistant and LG Gram 17 and new 14-inch 2-in-1. Samsung Samsung announced that their Smart TVs will be soon equipped with iTunes Movies & TV Shows and will support AirPlay 2 beginning Spring 2019. AirPlay 2 support will be available on Samsung Smart TVs in 190 countries worldwide. Samsung is also launching a new Notebook Odyssey to take PC gaming more seriously posing a threat to competitors Razer and Alienware. HP HP also announced HP Chromebook 14, at CES 2019. It is the world's first AMD-powered Chromebook running on either an AMD A4 or A6 processor with integrated Radeon R4 or R5 graphics. It has 4GB of memory and 32GB of storage and support for Android apps from the Google Play Store. These models will start shipping in January starting at $269. More announcements: Asus launches a new 17-inch, 10-pound Surface Pro gaming laptop, the Asus ROG Mothership. It has also announced Zephyrus S GX701, the smallest and lightest 17-inch gaming laptop yet. Corsair’s impressive compact gaming desktops come with Core i9 chips and GeForce RTX graphics L’Oréal’s newest prototype detects wearers’ skin pH levels Acer’s new Swift 7 will kill the bezel when it launches in May for $1,699. It is one of the thinnest and lightest laptops ever made Audeze’s motion-aware headphones will soon recreate your head gestures in-game Whirlpool is launching a Wear OS app for its connected appliances with simplified voice commands for both Google Assistant and Alexa devices. Vuzix starts selling its AR smart glasses for $1,000 Pico Interactive just revealed the Pico G2 4K, an all-in-one 4K VR headset based-on China’s best-selling VR unit, the Pico G2. It’s incredibly lightweight, powerful and highly customizable for enterprise purposes. Features include kiosk mode, hands-free controls, and hygienic design. You can have a look at all products that will be showcased at CES 2019. NVIDIA launches GeForce Now’s (GFN) ‘recommended router’ program to enhance the overall performance and experience of GFN NVIDIA open sources its game physics simulation engine, PhysX, and unveils PhysX SDK 4.0 Uses of Machine Learning in Gaming

Corona Labs announced yesterday that it’s making its free and cross-platform 2D game engine, Corona, available as open source under the GPLv3 license and commercial licenses. The license for builds and releases remains unchanged and the change applies only to the source code of the engine. Corona is a popular game engine for creating 2D games and apps for mobile, desktop systems, TV platforms, and the web. It is based on Lua language and makes use of over 1,000 built-in APIs and plugins, and Corona Native extensions (C/C++/Obj-C/Java). According to Vlad Sherban, product manager for Corona Labs, the Corona team had been discussing making Corona open source ever since it got acquired by Appodeal, back in 2017. “We believe that this move will bring transparency to the development process, and will allow users to contribute features or bug fixes to make the project better for everyone,” said Sherban. The team also mentions that transitioning to open source would help them respond quickly to market shifts and changes. It would also ensure that Corona stays relevant at all times for all mobile app developers. Moreover, now that Corona is open source, it will bring more visibility to the development process by letting users see what the engine team is working on and where the project is going. It will also offer extra benefits for businesses as they will be able to acquire a commercial license for source code and customize the engine for certain commercial projects. Additionally, Corona Labs won’t be collecting any statistics from apps built with daily build 2018.3454 or later. When Corona Labs was a closed source product, it used to collect basic app usage stats such as the number of sessions, daily average users, etc. With Corona available as open source now, there is no need to collect this data. “Powered by the new open source model and supported by the development of new features and bug fixes will make Corona more community driven — but not without our help and guidance --- going open source will provide confidence in the future of the engine and an opportunity to grow community involvement in engine development,” said Sherban. NVIDIA open sources its game physics simulation engine, PhysX, and unveils PhysX SDK 4.0 Microsoft open sources Trill, a streaming engine that employs algorithms to process “a trillion events per day” Facebook contributes to MLPerf and open sources Mask R-CNN2Go, its CV framework for embedded and mobile devices

Yesterday, the team at Unity released the next update of Unity for 2018. Unity 2018.3 has been released with improved Prefab workflows, Visual Effect Graph (Preview), and an updated Terrain System along with more than 2000 new features, fixes, and improvements. Improved Prefab Workflows Prefabs workflows have been improved in Unity 2018.3 with a focus on reusability, control, and safety. These updates implement support for nesting and make it safer for more efficient to work with Prefabs for teams in all sizes. Nested Prefabs make it easier for teams of all sizes to: Split up Prefabs into multiple entities for greater efficiency Reuse any content, from small to large Work on different parts of content simultaneously Visual Effect Graph (Preview) The Visual effect graph will make it easy for artists to create stand-out VFX for games and other projects in real-time. Developers can create simple and complex effects, with this tool. It also includes an API for creating custom nodes to meet the needs of advanced creators. Updated Terrain System The updated terrain tools provide developers with better performance and improved usability. Operations are shifted over to the GPU which helps creators get faster access to faster tools, larger brush sizes, improved previews, and the ability to paint Terrain tile borders with automatic seam-stitching. Improvements have been made to support the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and the Lightweight Render Pipeline (LWRP). FPS Sample Project Unity 2018.3 comes with FPS Sample which gives game developers source code access to a connected multiplayer FPS experience. They can download the sample and use it as a starting point to learn the latest technologies such as HDRP, or for their next connected game. In Unity 2018.3 significant improvements have been made to how Timeline Animation Tracks handle animations on the root transform of a hierarchy. This includes new Track Offset modes, Adapts to scale, improved editor preview, and depreciation of Root Motion. Mobile improvements include Dynamic Resolution Scaling support for Vulkan and Metal, Android AppBundle generation support and faster APK package build times on Android with APKzlib. Plans for 2019 For 2019 they are planning to release new announcements and innovations These include a new MegaCity Demo to showcase Unity’s approach to Data-Oriented Design. Another demo, Cinecast (Experimental) is an AI cinematography system that enables the creation of movie-like cinematic sequences from gameplay, in real-time. Project MARS is an extension for Unity that helps developers build applications that intelligently interact with any real-world environment, with little-to-no custom coding. 2019 will also see the preview of Project Tiny, which is Unity’s new, highly-modular runtime and Editor mode that enables the creation of small, light, and fast instant games and experiences. Find the full list of Unity 2018.3 features on the Unity blog. Unity introduces guiding Principles for ethical AI to promote responsible use of AI. Unity has won the Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for excellence in engineering creativity What you should know about Unity 2018 Interface

Minecraft team released Minecraft Bedrock beta 1.9.0.3 last week. The latest release explores new feature such as scripting API, along with minor changes and fixes. Let’s have a look at what’s new in Minecraft Bedrock 1.9.0.3 (beta). Experimental Scripting API Minecraft Bedrock beta 1.9.0.3 comes with a new Scripting API that allows users to tweak the inner components within a game by writing commands. The Minecraft Script Engine uses the JavaScript language with the help of which Scripts can be written and bundled along with Behaviour Packs to invoke different actions. These actions include listening to and responding to game events, retrieving and modifying data in components that entities have, and that can affect different parts of the game. This feature is currently only available in Windows 10 on enabling the “Use Experimental Gameplay” setting. Changes and Fixes A minor change has been made to the size of the crossbow, as it now appears bigger in pillager’s (hostile illager mobs with crossbows in Minecraft) hands. A crash occurring during gameplay has been fixed. The issue of tamed llamas turning into bioluminescent creatures on opening an inventory has been resolved. Items in hand appearing completely white in colour have been fixed. Rare instances of players getting teleported into a boat while travelling near water have been fixed. The issue of logo not being visible on the loading screen after suspending and resuming the game has been fixed. With the new release, players no longer have an option to respawn in a semi-dead state in case they get killed while in a bed. The texture of the Beacon beams has been improved. The inventory blocks once again follow the textures that are set in blocks.json. Optimizations have been done to get a proper synchronization between client and server. Minecraft bedrock beta 1.9.0.3 is available only on Xbox One, Windows 10, and Android (Google Play). For more information, check out the official release notes. Minecraft Java team are open sourcing some of Minecraft’s code as libraries Minecraft is serious about global warming, adds a new (spigot) plugin to allow changes in climate mechanics A Brief History of Minecraft Modding

NVIDIA team unveiled PhysX SDK 4.0, yesterday, and also announced that it's making its popular real-time physics simulation engine, PhysX, available as open source under the simple BSD-3 license. “We’re doing this because physics simulation — a long key to immersive games and entertainment — turns out to be more important than we ever thought. PhysX will now be the only free, open-source physics solution that takes advantage of GPU acceleration and can handle large virtual environments”, says the NVIDIA team. NVIDIA had designed PhysX specifically for the purpose of hardware acceleration using powerful processors that comprise hundreds of processing cores. This design offers a dramatic boost in the physics processing power, which in turn, takes the gaming experience to a whole new level, offering more rich, and immersive physical gaming environments. The new PhysX SDK 4.0 is a scalable, open source, and multi-platform game physics solution that offers support to a wide range of devices, ranging from smartphones to high-end multicore CPUs and GPUs. PhysX 4.0 SDK has been upgraded to offer industrial-grade simulation quality at game simulation levels. PhysX 4.0 comes with Temporal Gauss-Seidel Solver (TGS), that is capable of adjusting the constraints within games with each iteration, depending on the bodies’ relative motion. Other than that, the overall stability has been improved and now allows for new filtering rules for kinematics and statics. Some of the major features of PhysX SDK 4.0, includes effective memory usage management, support offered for different measurement units and scales, multiple broad-phase, convex-mesh, triangle mesh, and primitive shape collision detection algorithms. PhysX SDK 4.0 will be made available on December 20, 2018. Public reaction to the news is largely positive as PhysX was earlier available for commercial use for free, but now that its available as open source, people can interact deeply with the physics engine, modifying it as per their needs at absolutely no cost. https://twitter.com/puradawid/status/1069614540671909888 https://twitter.com/tauke/status/1069603803463184384 For more information, check out the official NVIDIA blog post. NVIDIA open sources its material definition language, MDL SDK NVIDIA unveils a new Turing architecture: “The world’s first ray tracing GPU” BlazingDB announces BlazingSQL , a GPU SQL Engine for NVIDIA’s open source RAPIDS

Electronic Arts (EA) announced Project Atlas, a new AI-powered, cloud computing based game development platform, earlier this week. Project Atlas comes with high-quality LIDAR Data, improved scalability, cloud-based engine, and enhanced security among others. Information regarding when the general availability of Project Atlas hasn’t been disclosed yet. “We’re calling this Project Atlas and we believe in it so much that we have over 1,000 EA employees working on building it every day, and dozens of studios around the world contributing their innovations, driving priorities, and already using many of the components” mentioned Ken Moss, Chief Technology Officer at Electronic Arts. Let’s discuss the features of Project Atlas. High-quality LIDAR Data Project Atlas will be using high-quality LIDAR data about real mountain ranges. This data will then be further passed through a deep neural network which has been trained to create terrain-building algorithms. With the help of this AI-assisted terrain generation, designers will be able to generate not just a single mountain, but a series of mountains along with the surrounding environment to bring the realism of the real world. “This is just one example of dozens or even hundreds where we can apply advanced technology to help game teams of all sizes scale to build bigger and more fun games,” says Moss. Improved Scalability Earlier, all simulation or rendering of in-game actions used to be limited to either the processing performance of the player’s console or to a single server that would interact with your system. But, now, with the help of the cloud, players will have the ability to tap into a network of many servers, that are dedicated to computing complex tasks. This will deliver hyper-realistic destruction within new HD games, that would be highly indistinguishable from real life. ”We’re working to deploy that level of gaming immersion on every device”, says Moss. Moreover, the integration of distributed networks at the rendering level means infinite scalability from the cloud. So, whether you’re on a team of 500 or just 5, you’ll now be able to scale games and create immersive experiences, in unprecedented ways. Cloud-based engine and Moddable asset database Now with Project Atlas, you can turn your own vision into reality, and share the creation with your friends as well as the whole world. You can also market your ideas and visions to the community. Keeping this in mind, Project Atlas team is planning on having a cloud-enabled engine that’ll be able to seamlessly integrates different services. Along with a moddable asset database, there’ll also be a common marketplace so that users can for share and rate other players’ creations. “Players and developers want to create. We want to help them. By blurring the line between content producers and players, this will truly democratize the game experience” adds Moss. Enhanced Security Project Atlas comes with a unified platform, where game makers have the ability to seamlessly deploy security measures such as SSL certificates, configuration, appropriate encryption of data, and zero-downtime patches for every feature from a single secure source. This will allow them to focus more on creating games and less on taking the required security measures. “We’re solving for some of the manually intensive demands by bringing together AI capabilities in an engine and cloud-enabled services at scale. With an integrated platform that delivers consistency and seamless delivery from the game, game makers will free up time, brainspace, and energy for the creative pursuit”, says Moss. For more information, check out the official Project Atlas blog. Xenko 3.0 game engine is here, now free and open-source Meet yuzu – an experimental emulator for the Nintendo Switch AI for Unity game developers: How to emulate real-world senses in your NPC agent behavior

The Go team has released version 1.8 of its 2D game library called Ebiten, yesterday. Ebiten 1.8 comes with new features such as experimental WebAssembly Port, newly added APIs, and bug fixes among other updates. Ebiten is a very simple 2D game library in Go that offers 2D graphics (Geometry/Color matrix transformation, Various composition modes, Offscreen rendering, Fullscreen, Text rendering), input and audio support. Experimental WebAssembly Port The Go team has added a WebAssembly port to Ebiten 1.8, but this is still in the experimental phase. This new feature compiles to a single WebAssembly module including the Go runtime for goroutine scheduling, garbage collection, maps, and other Go essentials, that results in a module of at least 2MB, or 500KB when compressed. WebAssembly refers to a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. It is designed for the compilation of high-level languages such as C/C++/Rust. This helps with easily deploying the apps on client and server applications. New APIs added New APIs have been added for different features such as polygon, TPS, Vsync, Package audio, and Package ebitenutil, in Ebiten 1.8. For polygon, type DrawTrianglesOptions API has been added which represents options to render triangles on an image. Another API type Vertex has also been added that represents a vertex passed to DrawTriangles. For TPS, func CurrentTPS() float64 API is added that returns the current TPS and represents the number of update functions called in a second. Another added API, func MaxTPS() int: returns the current maximum TPS. Also, func SetMaxTPS(tps int) API is added that sets the maximum TPS (ticks per second) and represents the number of the updating function called per second. For Vsync, func IsVsyncEnabled() bool API returns a boolean value that indicates if the game is using the display's vsync. Another func SetVsyncEnabled(enabled bool) API sets a boolean value that indicates if the game uses the display's vsync. For Package audio, the func (c *Context) IsReady() bool API returns a boolean value that indicates whether the audio is ready or not.  For Package ebitenutil, func DebugPrintAt(image *ebiten.Image, str string, x, y int) API draws the string str on the image at (x, y) position. Bug Fixes The bug causing multi monitors issue has been fixed. Also, issues related to macOS 10.14 Mojave has been fixed. For more information, check out the official release notes. GitHub is bringing back Game Off, its sixth annual game building competition, in November Microsoft announces Project xCloud, a new Xbox game streaming service, on the heels of Google’s Stream news last week Now you can play Assassin’s Creed in Chrome thanks to Google’s new game streaming service

The GitHub team announced yesterday that they’re coming back with their sixth annual game jam, called Game Off in November. In Game Off, participants are given one-month to create games based on a theme provided by GitHub. Anyone including newbies and professional game developers can participate, without any restrictions. Moreover, the game can be simple or complex, depending upon your preference. The Game Off team recommends using open source game engines, libraries, and tools but you can make use of any technology you want, as long as it is reliable. Also, both team and solo participation are acceptable. In fact, you can also make multiple submissions. The theme for the game off last year was “throwback”. There were over 200 games created including old-school LCD games, retro flight simulators, squirrel-infested platformers, etc. This year’s theme will be announced on Thursday, November 1st, at 13:37 pm. Last year Game off’s overall winner and the one that was voted best gameplay was a game called Daemon vs. Demon. This game included a hero that was supposed to slay rogue demons to continue remaining in the world of the living. This game was built by a user named Securas from Japan, with the open source Godot game engine. There were other categories such as best audio, best theme interpretation, best graphics, etc, for which winners were picked. To participate in Game Off, it is necessary for you to have a GitHub account. Then, you can join the Game Off challenge on itch.io. You don’t need to have a separate itch.io account, you can simply log in with your GitHub account. Once you’re done with creating an itch.io account, all you need to do is create a new repository to store the source code and other related assets. Just make sure that you push your changes to the game before December 1st. “As always, we'll highlight some of our favorites games on the GitHub Blog, and the world will get to enjoy (and maybe even contribute to or learn from) your creations”, mentions the GitHub team. For more information, check out the official Game off announcement. Meet wideNES: A new tool by Nintendo to let you experience the NES classics again Meet yuzu – an experimental emulator for the Nintendo Switch Now you can play Assassin’s Creed in Chrome thanks to Google’s new game streaming service

Microsoft announced a new game streaming project for Xbox yesterday, namely, Project xCloud. Microsoft is not the only one who has rolled out their game streaming service, Google announced a new experimental game streaming service, namely, Project Stream, last week, that lets the users play Assassin’s Creed in Chrome among other things. Project xCloud is a game streaming technology that enables existing Xbox users to play on any device that they want to without being limited to a particular device. This means gamers can choose either console or PC depending on their preference. Mobile-only players can also access the worlds, characters and immersive stories that they haven’t been able to experience before on a mobile. Project xCloud provides gamers with plenty of options and does so without altering the performance and experience of the game. “Our goal with Project xCloud is to deliver a quality experience for all gamers on all devices that’s consistent with the speed and high-fidelity gamers experience and expect on their PCs and consoles”, mentions Kareem Choudhry, Corporate VP, Gaming Cloud, Microsoft on the announcement page.” Microsoft Microsoft admits that Cloud game-streaming is a “multi-faceted, complex challenge”. In order to provide high-quality experience across different devices, it is crucial to watch out for obstacles, such as low-latency video streamed remotely, and support for a large, multi-user network. “With our nearly 40 years of gaming experience starting with PC, as well as our deep experience of being a platform company, we are equipped to address the complex challenge of cloud game-streaming”, mentions Choudhary. Microsoft had been working on Project xCloud over the past few years and aims to bring the public trials of this project in 2019. Moreover, Microsoft wants to make it easy for developers to bring their content to Project xCloud and deliver an amazing experience to the existing Xbox players. Developers will be able to deploy and dramatically scale to hundreds of millions of users across all devices on Project xCloud with no additional work. Microsoft has data centers in 54 Azure regions and services available in 140 countries, meaning that Azure has the scale to offer great gaming experience for players worldwide, regardless of their location. “We’ve enabled compatibility with existing and future Xbox games by building out custom hardware for our datacenters that leverages our years of console and platform experience. We’ve architected a new customizable blade that can host the component parts of multiple Xbox One consoles, as well as the associated infrastructure supporting it. We will scale those custom blades in datacenters across Azure regions over time”, writes Choudhry. Project xCloud was tested yesterday by Microsoft. The test was carried out on different devices (mobile phones, tablets) paired with an Xbox Wireless Controller through Bluetooth. As of now, the test experience is running at 10 megabits per second. Microsoft is also developing a new, game-specific touch input overlay that offers a maximum response in a minimal footprint to players wanting to play without a controller. Additionally, Project xCloud makes game streaming possible on 4G networks. “We are looking forward to learning with you during our public trials next year and sharing more details as we continue on this journey to the future of gaming with you at the center”, says Choudhary. For more information, check out the official Microsoft blog. Microsoft open sources Infer.NET, it’s popular model-based machine learning framework Microsoft announces new Surface devices to enhance user productivity, with style and elegance Microsoft’s new neural text-to-speech service lets machines speak like people

Google announced a new experimental game streaming service, namely, Project Stream, earlier this week. Google calls this project a “technical test” and has partnered up with Ubisoft, one of the most popular video game publishers, to stream their upcoming Assassin’s Creed Odyssey via Project Stream on Chrome. “We’ve been working on Project Stream, a technical test to solve some of the biggest challenges of streaming. For this test, we’re going to push the limits with one of the most demanding applications for streaming—a blockbuster video game,” writes Catherine Hsiao on the announcement blog post. Google points out that their major goal with Project Stream is for it to effectively stream AAA game titles. This is because the Google team is inspired by the technology that goes behind AAA video games. Additionally, working with a AAA game title is more challenging as opposed to working with a game that comprises less intense graphics. “Every pixel is powered by an array of real-time rendering technology, artistry, visual effects, animation, simulation, physics, and dynamics. We’re inspired by the game creators who spend years crafting these amazing worlds, adventures, and experiences, and we’re building technology that we hope will support and empower that creativity,” states the post.   Project Stream  With Project Stream, Google is working to ensure that latency stays minimal and the graphics of the game are not compromised when using its streaming service. “The idea of streaming such graphically-rich content that requires near-instant interaction between the game controller and the graphics on the screen poses a number of challenges.  When streaming TV or movies, consumers are comfortable with a few seconds of buffering at the start, but streaming high-quality games requires latency measured in milliseconds, with no graphics degradation,” adds Google. Google has made limited spaces available for users to try Project Stream, starting October 5. If you want to participate then you can apply on Project Stream’s official website. Participation is only open for the U.S. residents who are 17 years or older. For more information, check out the official announcement. Google Project Zero discovers a cache invalidation bug in Linux memory management, Ubuntu and Debian remain vulnerable Google announces new Artificial Intelligence features for Google Search on its 20th birthday Google announces the Beta version of Cloud Source Repositories