Tech News - Game Development

Last week, the team at Minecraft introduced a new AR-based game called ‘Minecraft Earth’, which is free for Android and iOS users. The most striking feature about Minecraft Earth is that it builds on the real world with augmented reality, I am sure it will remind you of the game Pokémon Go. https://twitter.com/minecraftearth/status/1129372933565108224 Minecraft has around 91 million active players, and now Microsoft is looking forward to taking the Pokémon Go concept on the next level by letting Minecraft players create and share whatever they’ve made in the game with friends in the real world. Users can now build something in Minecraft on their phones and then drop it into their local park for all their friends to see it together at the same location. This game aims to transform single user AR gaming to multi-user gaming while letting users access the virtual world that’s shared by everyone. Read Also: Facebook launched new multiplayer AR games in Messenger Minecraft Earth will be available in beta on iOS and Android, this summer. This game brings modes like creative that has unlimited blocks and items; or survival where you lose all your items when you die. Torfi Olafsson, game director of Minecraft Earth, explains, “This is an adaptation, this is not a direct translation of Minecraft. While it’s an adaptation, it’s built on the existing Bedrock engine so it will be very familiar to existing Minecraft players. If you like building Redstone machines, or you’re used to how the water flows, or how sand falls down, it all works. Olafsson further added, “All of the mobs of animals and creatures in Minecraft are available, too, including a new pig that really loves mud. We have tried to stay very true to the kind of core design pillars of Minecraft, and we’ve worked with the design team in Stockholm to make sure that the spirit of the game is carried through.” Players have to venture out into the real world to collect things just like how it works in Pokemon Go! Minecraft Earth has something similar to pokéstops called “tapables”, which are randomly placed in the world around the player. They are designed to give players rewards that allow them to build things, and players need to collect as many of these as possible in order to get resources and items to build vast structures in the building mode. The maps in this game are based on OpenStreetMap that has allowed Microsoft to place Minecraft adventures into the world. On the Minecraft Earth map, these adventures spawn dynamically and are also designed for multiple people to get involved in. Players can play together while sitting side by side to experience similar adventures at the exact same time and spot. They can also fight monsters, break down structures for resources together, and even stand in front of a friend to block them from physically killing a virtual sheep. Players can even see the tools that fellow players have in their hands on your phone’s screen, alongside their username. Microsoft is also using its Azure Spatial Anchors technology in Minecraft Earth which uses machine vision algorithms so that real-world objects can be used as anchors for digital content. Niantic, a Pokémon Go developer had to recently settle a lawsuit with angry homeowners who had pokéstops placed near their houses. With what happened with Pokemon Go in the past could be a threat for games like Minecraft Earth too. As there are many challenges in bringing augmented reality within private spaces. Saxs Persson, creative director of Minecraft said, “There are lots of very real challenges around user-generated content. It’s a complicated problem at the scale we’re talking about, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tackle it.” https://twitter.com/Toadsanime/status/1129374278384795649 https://twitter.com/ExpnandBanana/status/1129419087216562177 https://twitter.com/flamnhotsadness/status/1129429075490160642 https://twitter.com/pixiebIush/status/1129455271833550848 To know more about Minecraft Earth, check out Minecraft’s page. Game rivals, Microsoft and Sony, form a surprising cloud gaming and AI partnership Obstacle Tower Environment 2.0: Unity announces Round 2 of its ‘Obstacle Tower Challenge’ to test AI game players OpenAI Five beats pro Dota 2 players; wins 2-1 against the gamers

Microsoft and Sony have been fierce rivals when it comes to gaming starting from 2001 when Microsoft’s Xbox challenged the Sony PlayStation 2. However, in an unusual announcement yesterday, Microsoft and Sony signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly explore the development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services. Sony and Microsoft will also explore collaboration in the areas of semiconductors and AI. For semiconductors, they will jointly develop new intelligent image sensor solutions.  In terms of AI, the parties will incorporate Microsoft’s AI platform and tools in Sony’s consumer products. Microsoft in a statement said,  “these efforts will also include building better development platforms for the content creator community,” seemingly stating that both companies will probably partner on future services aimed at creators and the gaming community. Rivals turned to Allies Sony’s decision to keep aside the rivalry and partner with Microsoft makes sense because of two main reasons. First, cloud streaming is considered the next big thing in gaming. Only three companies Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have enough cloud experience to present viable, modern cloud infrastructure. Although Sony has enough technical competence to build its own cloud streaming service, it makes sense to deploy via Microsoft’s Azure than scaling its own distribution systems. Microsoft is also happy to extend a welcoming hand to a customer as large as Sony. Moreover, neither Sony nor Microsoft is going to commit to focus on game streaming completely, as both already have consoles currently in development. This is unlike Amazon and Google, who are going to go full throttle in building game streaming. It makes sense that Sony chose to go with Microsoft putting enough resources into these efforts, and going so far as to collaborate, showing that they understand game streaming is something not to be looked down on for not having. Second, this partnership is also likely a direct competition to Google’s Stadia game streaming service, unveiled at Game Developers Conference 2019. Stadia is a cloud-based game streaming platform that aims to bring together, gamers, YouTube broadcasters, and game developers “to create a new experience”. The games get streamed from any data center to any device that can connect to the internet like TV, laptop, desktop, tablet, or mobile phone. Gamers can access their games anytime and virtually on any screen. And, game developers will be able to use nearly unlimited resources for developing games. Since all the graphics processing happens on off-site hardware, there will be little stress on your local hardware. “Sony has always been a leader in both entertainment and technology, and the collaboration we announced today builds on this history of innovation,” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Our partnership brings the power of Azure and Azure AI to Sony to deliver new gaming and entertainment experiences for customers.” Twitter was filled with funny memes on this alliance and its direct contest with Stadia. https://twitter.com/MikieDaytona/status/1129076134950445056 https://twitter.com/shaunlabrie/status/1129144724646813696 https://twitter.com/kettleotea/status/1129142682004205569 Going forward, the two companies will share additional information when available. Read the official announcement here. Google announces Stadia, a cloud-based game streaming service, at GDC 2019 Microsoft announces Project xCloud, a new Xbox game streaming service Amazon is reportedly building a video game streaming service, says Information

At the end of January, Unity announced the ‘Obstacle Tower Challenge’ to test AI game players. The Obstacle Tower Challenge examines how AI software performs in computer vision, locomotion skills, and high-level planning. The challenge began on 11th February and will run through 24th May. Round 1 ran from 11th Feb till 31st March and the results are just in. For the first round of the challenge, Unity received 2000+ entries from 350+ teams. Now, Unity has announced the launch of the second round of the challenge. Teams who trained an agent in round one and received an average score of five on unseen versions of the tower will advance for round 2. Agents will need to account for a variety of new challenges in Obstacle Tower Environment 2.0 including enemies to dodge, distractions to avoid, and more complicated floor layouts with circling paths. What’s new in the Obstacle Tower Environment 2.0? Unity has expanded the floors in the tower from 25 to 100 with three new visual styles - Industrial, Modern, and Future. The higher floors also contain new challenges apart from the ones already present such as enemies to dodge, distracting TVs to avoid, more complex floor layouts with circling paths, and larger rooms on each floor with additional platforming challenges. Obstacle Tower Environment 2.0 has expanded on the number of available parameters which can be customized when resetting the environment. These include the ability to change things like the lighting, visual theme, floor layouts, and room contents on the floors in the tower. They have also worked on the placement of the reset button in puzzle rooms which, based on feedback from round 1, was unintuitive. So Unity has now separated out the block, goal, and reset button positions in these rooms, to make it less likely that the agent will press the reset button by accident. The Obstacle Tower Environment natively supports the Unity ML-Agents Toolkit. To learn more about the environment, you can go through their research paper. Unity has also released the final list of contestants selected for Round 2. Unity has launched the ‘Obstacle Tower Challenge’ to test AI game players Unity updates its TOS, developers can now use any third party service that integrate into Unity. Improbable says Unity blocked SpatialOS; Unity responds saying it has shut down Improbable and not Spatial OS.

This year’s Google IO 2019 was meant to be big, and it didn't disappoint at all. There's a lot of big news to talk about as it introduced and showcased exciting new products, updates, features and functionalities for a much better user experience. Google I/O kicked off yesterday and it will run through Thursday May 9 at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. It has approximately 7000 attendees from all around the world. “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. We are moving from a company that helps you find answers to a company that helps you get things done. Our goal is to build a more helpful Google for everyone.” Sundar Pichai, Google CEO commenced his Keynote session with such strong statements. He further listed a few recent tech advances and said “We continue to believe that the biggest breakthroughs happen at the intersection of AI.” He then went on to discuss how Google is confident that it can do more AI without private data leaving your devices, and that the heart of the solution will be federated learning. Basically, federated learning is a distributed machine learning approach which enables model training on a large corpus of decentralized data. It enables mobile phones at different geographical locations to collaboratively train a machine learning model without transferring any data that may contain personal information from the devices. While the keynote lasted for nearly two hours, some of the breakthrough innovation in tech were introduced which will be briefed in detail moving ahead in the article. Google Search at Google IO 2019 Google remains a search giant, and that's something it has not forgotten at Google IO 2019. However, search is about to become far more visually rich, thanks to the inclusion of AR camera trick which is now introduced directly into search results. They held an on-stage demonstration at Google IO which showed how a medical student could search for a muscle group, and be presented within mobile search results with a 3D representation of the body part. Not only could it be played with within the search results, it could be placed on the user’s desk to be seen at real scale from their smartphone’s screen. Source: Google And even larger things, like an AR shark, could be put into your AR screen, straight from the app. The Google team showcased this feature as the shark virtually appeared live in front of the audience. Google Lens bill splitting and food recommendations Google Lens was something which caught audience’s interest in the Google's App arsenal. Lens was presented in a way that it can use image recognition to deliver information based on what your camera is looking at. A demo was shown on how a combination of mapping data and image recognition will let Google Lens make recommendations from a restaurant’s menu, just by pointing your camera at it. And when the bill arrives, point your camera at the receipt and it'll show you tipping info and bill splitting help. They also announced their partnership with recipe providers to allow Lens to produce video tutorials when your phone is pointed at a written recipe. Source: Google Debut of Android Q beta 3 version At Google IO Android Q beta 3 was introduced, it is the 10th generation of the Android operating system, and it comes with new features for phone and tablet users. Google announced that there are over 2.5 billion active Android devices as the software extends to televisions, in-car systems and smart screens like the Google Home Hub. Further it was discussed how the Android will work with foldable devices, and how it will be able to seamlessly tweak its UI depending on the format and ratio of the folding device. Another new feature of live caption system in Android Q will turn audio instantly into text to be read. It's a system function triggered within the volume rocker menu. They can be tweaked for legibility to your eyes, doesn't require an internet connection, and happens on videos that have never been manually close-captioned. It's at an OS level, letting it work across all your apps. Source: Google The smart reply feature will now work across all messaging apps in Android Q, with the OS smartly predicting your text. The Dark Theme activated by battery saver or the quick tile was introduced. Lighting up less pixels in your phone will save its battery life. Android Q will also double down on security and privacy features, such as a Maps incognito mode, reminders for location usage and sharing (such as only when a delivery app is in use), and TLSV3 encryption for low end devices. Security updates will roll out faster too, updating over the air without a reboot needed for the device. With Android Q Beta 3 which will be launched today on 21 new devices, Google also announced that it will make Kotlin, a statically typed programming language for writing its Android apps. Chrome to be more transparent in terms of cookie control Google announced that it will update Chrome to provide users with more transparency about how sites are using cookies, as well as simpler controls for cross-site cookies. A number of changes will be made to Chrome to enable features, like modifying how cookies work so that developers need to explicitly specify which cookies are allowed to work across websites — and could be used to track users. The mechanism is built on the web's SameSite cookie attribute and you can find the technical details on web.dev. In the coming months, Chrome will require developers to use this mechanism to access their cookies across sites. This change will enable users to clear all such cookies while leaving single domain cookies unaffected, preserving user logins and settings. It will also enable browsers to provide clear information about which sites are setting these cookies, so users can make informed choices about how their data is used. This change also has a significant security benefit for users, protecting cookies from cross-site injection and data disclosure attacks like Spectre and CSRF by default. They further announced that they will eventually limit cross-site cookies to HTTPS connections, providing additional important privacy protections for our users. Developers can start to test their sites and see how these changes will affect behavior in the latest developer build of Chrome. They have also announced Flutter for web, mobile and desktop. It will allow web-based applications to be built using the Flutter framework. The core framework for mobile devices will be upgraded to Flutter 1.5. And for the desktop, Flutter will be used as an experimental project. “We believe these changes will help improve user privacy and security on the web — but we know that it will take time. We’re committed to working with the web ecosystem to understand how Chrome can continue to support these positive use cases and to build a better web.” says Ben Galbraith - Director, Chrome Product Management and Justin Schuh - Director, Chrome Engineering Next generation Google Assistant Google has been working hard to compress and streamline the AI that Google Assistant taps into from the cloud when it is processing voice commands. Currently every voice request has to be run through three separate processing models to land on the correctly-understood voice command. It is only data that until now has taken up 100GB of storage on many Google servers. But that's about to change. As Google has figured how to shrink that down to just 500MB of storage space, and to put it on your device. This will help lower the latency between your voice request and the task you've wished to trigger being carried out. It's 10x faster - 'real time', according to Google. It also showed a demo where, a Google rep fired off a string of voice commands that required Google Assistant to access multiple apps, execute specific actions, and understand not only what the rep was saying, but what she actually meant. For example she said, “Hey Google, what’s the weather today? What about tomorrow? Show me John Legend on Twitter; Get a Lyft ride to my hotel; turn the flashlight on; turn it off; take a selfie.” Assistant executed the whole sequence flawlessly, in a span of about 15 seconds. Source: Google Further demos showed off its ability to compose texts and emails that drew on information about the user’s travel plans, traffic conditions, and photos. And last but not the least it can also silence your alarms and timers by just saying 'Stop' to help you go back to your slumber. Google Duplex gets smarter Google Duplex is a Google Assistant service which earlier use to make calls and bookings on your behalf based on the requests. But now It's getting more smarter as it comes with the new 'Duplex on the web' feature. Now you can ask Google Duplex to plan a trip, and it'll begin filling in website forms such as reservation details, hire car bookings and more, on your behalf. And it only awaits you to confirm the details it has input. Google Home Hub is dead, Long live the Nest Hub Max At Google IO, the company announced it was dropping the Google Home moniker, instead rebranding its devices with the Nest name, bringing them in line with its security systems. The Nest Hub Max was introduced, with a camera and larger 10-inch display. With a built-in Nest Cam wide-angle lens security camera (127 degrees), which the original Home Hub omitted due to privacy concerns, it's now a far more security-focussed device. It also lets you make video calls using a wide range of video calling apps. Cameras and mics can be physically switched off with a slider that cuts off the electronics, for the privacy-conscious. Source: Google Voice and Face match features, allowing families to create voice and face models, will let the Hub Max know to only show an individual's information or recommendations. It'll also double up as a kitchen TV, if you've access to YouTube TV plans, and lowering the volume is as simple as raising your hand in front of the display. It'll be launched this summer for $229 in the US, and AU$349 in Australia. The original Hub also gets a price cut to $129 / AU$199. Other honorable mentions Google Stadia: Google had introduced its new game-streaming service, called Stadia in March. The service uses Google’s own servers to store and run games, which you can then connect to and play whenever you’d like on literally any screen in your house including your desktop, laptop, TV, phone and tablet. Basically, if it’s internet-connected and has access to Chrome, it can run Stadia. Today at I/O they announced that Stadia will not only stream games from the cloud to the Chrome browser but on the Chromecast, and other Pixel and Android devices. They plan to launch ahead this year in the US, Canada, UK, and Europe. A cheaper Pixel phone: While other smartphones are getting more competitive in terms of pricing, Google introduced its new Pixel 3a which is less powerful than the existing Pixel 3, and at a base price of $399, which is half as expensive as Pixel 3. In 2017 Forbes had done an analysis on why Google Pixel failed in the market and one of the reason was its exorbitant high price. It states that the tech giant needs to come to the realization that its brand in the phone hardware business is just not worth as much as Samsung's or Apple's that it can command the same price premium. Source: Google “Focus mode:” A new feature coming to Android P and Q devices this summer will let you turn off your most distracting apps to focus on a task, while still allowing text messages, calls, and other important notifications through. Augmented reality in Google Maps: AR is one of those technologies that always seems to impress the tech companies that make it more than it impresses their actual users. But Google may finally be finding some practical uses for it, like overlaying walking directions when you hold up your phone’s camera to the street in front of you. Incognito mode for Google Maps: It also announced a new “incognito” mode for Google Maps, which will stop keeping records of your whereabouts while it’s enabled. And they will further roll out this feature in Google Search and YouTube. Google I/O 2019: Flutter UI framework now extended for Web, Embedded, and Desktop You can now permanently delete your location history, and web and app activity data on Google Google’s Sidewalk Lab smart city project threatens privacy and human rights: Amnesty Intl, CA says

Valve introduced the new VR headset kit, Valve Index, only one month ago. And said the preorders will begin from, May 1st, and will ship in June. Today, Valve is fully detailing the Index headset for the first time, and revealing exactly how much it will cost: $999. The price seems to be relatively high according to today’s VR headset standards. In comparison, Facebook announced the Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S to be shipped on May 21st for $399. But Valve says it will let you buy parts piecemeal if you need, which is good deal if you do not wish to buy the whole kit. And if you’ve already got a Vive or Vive Pro and / or don’t need the latest Knuckles controllers, you won’t necessarily need to spend that whole $999 to get started. Get the best look yet of the Index headset at the Valve Index website. Like the HTC Vive, which was co-designed with Valve, the Index will still be a tethered experience with a 5-meter cable that plugs into a gaming PC. It also uses the company’s laser-firing Lighthouse base stations to figure out where the headset is at any given time. That’s how it lets you walk around a room worth of space in VR — up to a huge 10 x 10 meter room. Valve’s not using cameras for inside-out tracking; the company says the twin stereo RGB cameras here are designed for passthrough (letting you see the real world through the headset) and for the computer vision community. Instead, Valve says the Index’s focus is on delivering the highest fidelity VR experience possible, meaning improved lenses, screens, and audio. In this case it actually includes a pair of 1440 x 1600-resolution RGB LCDs, rather than the higher-res OLED screens much of which the competition is already using. But Valve says its screens run faster — 120Hz, with an experimental 144Hz mode — and are better at combating the “screen door effect” and blurry when you move your head, persistence issues that first-gen VR headsets struggled with. The Valve Index also has an IPD slider to adjust for the distance between your eyes and lenses that Valve says offer a 20-degree larger field of view than the HTC Vive “for typical users.” Most interesting in Valve are the built-in headphone images shown on the website which aren’t actually headphones — but they’re speakers. And they are designed to not touch your ears, instead firing their sound toward your head. It is similar to how Microsoft’s HoloLens visors produce audio, which means that while people around you could theoretically hear what you’re doing, there’ll be less fiddling with the mechanism to get that audio aligned with your ears. They have also provided a 3.5mm headphone jack if you want to plug in your own headphones. Another interesting part of the Valve Index is it can be purchased separately for $279. The Valve Index Controllers, formerly known as Knuckles, might be the most intuitive way to get your hands into VR yet. While a strap holds the controller to your hand, 87 sensors track the position of your hands and fingers and even how hard you’re pressing down. Theoretically, you could easily reach, grab, and throw virtual objects with such a setup, something that wasn’t really possible with the HTC Vive or Oculus Touch controllers. Here’s one gameplay example that Valve is showing off: Source - Valve website Another small improvement is the company’s Lighthouse base stations. Since they only use a single laser now, and no IR blinker, Valve says they play nicer with other IR devices, which mean you can turn on and off TV without needing to power off them first. According to the reports by Polygon which got an early hands-on with the Valve Index, they say the Knuckles feel great, the optics are sharp, and that it may be the most comfortable way to wear a VR headset over a pair of glasses yet. Polygon also further explained the $999 price point. They said, during Valve’s demonstration, a spokesperson said that Index is the sort of thing that is likely to appeal to a virtual reality enthusiast who (a) must have the latest thing and (b) enjoys sufficient disposable income to satisfy that desire. It’s an interesting contrast with Facebook’s strategy for Rift, which is pushing hard for the price tipping point when VR suddenly becomes a mass-market thing, like smartphones did a decade ago. Get to know about pricing details of Valve Index kit on its official page. Top 7 tools for virtual reality game developers Game developers say Virtual Reality is here to stay Facebook releases DeepFocus, an AI-powered rendering system to make virtual reality more real

Update 23rd August 2019: Riot Games has finally settled a class-action lawsuit filed by Riot workers on grounds of sexual harassment and discrimination faced at their workspace. "This is a very strong settlement agreement that provides meaningful and fair value to class members for their experiences at Riot Games," said Ryan Saba of Rosen Saba, LLP, the attorney representing the plaintiffs. "This is a clear indication that Riot is dedicated to making progress in evolving its culture and employment practices. A number of significant changes to the corporate culture have been made, including increased transparency and industry-leading diversity and inclusion programs. The many Riot employees who spoke up, including the plaintiffs, significantly helped to change the culture at Riot." "We are grateful for every Rioter who has come forward with their concerns and believe this resolution is fair for everyone involved," said Nicolo Laurent, CEO of Riot Games. "With this agreement, we are honoring our commitment to find the best and most expeditious way for all Rioters, and Riot, to move forward and heal." Update as on 6 May, 2019: Riot Games announced early Friday that they will soon start giving new employees the option to opt-out of some mandatory arbitration requirements when they are hired. The catch - The arbitration will initially narrowly focused on a specific set of employees for a specific set of causes. Riot games employees are planning to walkout in protest of the company’s sexist culture and lack of diversity. Riot has been in the spotlight since Kotaku published a detailed report highlighting how five current and former Riot employees filed lawsuits against the company citing the sexist culture that fosters in Riot. Out of the five employees, two were women. Per Kotaku, last Thursday, Riot filed a motion to force two of those women, whose lawsuits revolved around the California Equal Pay Act, into private arbitration. In their motions, Riot’s lawyer argues that these employees waived their rights to a jury trial when they signed arbitration agreements upon their hiring. Private arbitration makes these employees less likely to win against Riot. In November last year, 20,000 Google employees along with Temps, Vendors, and Contractors walked out to protest the discrimination, racism, and sexual harassment encountered at Google’s workplace. This Walkout lead to Google ending forced arbitration for its full-time employees. Google employees are also organizing a phone drive, in a letter published on Medium, to press lawmakers to legally end forced arbitration. Per the Verge, “The employees are organizing a phone bank for May 1st and asking for people to make three calls to lawmakers — two to the caller’s senators and one to their representative — pushing for the FAIR Act, which was recently reintroduced in the House of Representatives.” https://twitter.com/endforcedarb/status/1122864987243012097 Following Google, Facebook also made changes to its forced arbitration policy for sexual harassment claims Not only sexual harassment, game developers also undergo unfair treatment in terms of work conditions, job instability, and inadequate pay. In February, The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), published an open letter on Kotaku. The letter urges the video game industry workers to unionize and voice their support for better treatment within the workplace. Following this motion, Riot employees have organized to walkout in protest demanding Rio leadership to end force arbitration against the two current employees. This walkout is planned for Monday, May 6. An internal document from Riot employees as seen by Kotaku describes the demands laid out by walkout organizers a clear intention to end forced arbitration, a precise deadline (within 6 months) by which to end it a commitment to not force arbitration on the women involved in the ongoing litigations against Riot. Riot’s sexist culture and lack of diversity The investigation conducted by Kotaku last year unveiled some major flaws in Riot’s culture and in gaming companies, in general. Over 28 current and former Riot employees, spoke to Kotaku with stories that echoed of Riot’s female employees being treated unfairly and being on the receiving end of gender discrimination. An employee named Lucy told Kotaku that on thinking of hiring a woman in the leadership role she heard plenty of excuses for why her female job candidates weren’t Riot material. Some were “ladder climbers.” Others had “too much ego.” Most weren’t “gamer enough.” A few were “too punchy,” or didn’t “challenge convention”, she told Kotaku. She also shared her personal experiences facing discrimination. Often her manager would imply that her position was a direct result of her appearance. Every few months, she said, a male boss of hers would comment in public meetings about how her kids and husband must really miss her while she was at work. Women are often told they don’t fit in the company’s ‘bro culture’; an astonishing eighty percent of Riot employees are men, according to data Riot collected from employees’ driver’s licenses. “The ‘bro culture’ there is so real,” said one female source to Kotaku, who said she’d left the company due to sexism. “It’s agonizingly real. It’s like working at a giant fraternity.” Among other people Kotaku interviewed, stories were told on how women were being groomed for promotions, and doing jobs above their title and pay grade, until men were suddenly brought in to replace them. Another women told Kotaku, “how a colleague once informed her, apparently as a compliment, that she was on a list getting passed around by senior leaders detailing who they’d sleep with.” Two former employees also added that they “felt pressure to leave after making their concerns about gender discrimination known.” Many former Riot employees also refused to come forward to share their stories and refrained from participating in the walkout. For some, this was in fear of retaliation from Riot’s fanbase; Riot is the creator of the popular game League of Legends. Others told that they were restricted from talking on the record because of non-disparagement agreements they signed before leaving the company. The walkout threat spread far enough that it prompted a response from Riot’s chief diversity officer, Angela Roseboro, in the company’s private Slack over the weekend reports Waypoint. In a copy of the message obtained by Waypoint, Roseboro says“ We’re also aware there may be an upcoming walkout and recognize some Rioters are not feeling heard. We want to open up a dialogue on Monday and invite Rioters to join us for small group sessions where we can talk through your concerns, and provide as much context as we can about where we’ve landed and why. If you’re interested, please take a moment to add your name to this spreadsheet. We’re planning to keep these sessions smaller so we can have a more candid dialogue.” Riot CEO Nicolo Laurent also acknowledged the talk of a walkout in a statement "We’re proud of our colleagues for standing up for what they believe in. We always want Rioters to have the opportunity to be heard, so we’re sitting down today with Rioters to listen to their opinions and learn more about their perspectives on arbitration. We will also be discussing this topic during our biweekly all-company town hall on Thursday. Both are important forums for us to discuss our current policy and listen to Rioter feedback, which are both important parts of evaluating all of our procedures and policies, including those related to arbitration." Tech worker union, Game workers unite, Googlers for ending forced arbitration have stood up in solidarity with Riot employees. “Forced arbitration clauses are designed to silence workers and minimize the options available to people hurt by these large corporations” https://twitter.com/GameWorkers/status/1122933899590557697 https://twitter.com/endforcedarb/status/1123005582808682497 “Employees at Riot Games are considering a walkout, and the organization efforts has prompted an internal response from company executives", tweeted Coworker.org https://twitter.com/teamcoworker/status/1122936953698160640 Others have also joined in support. https://twitter.com/theminolaur/status/1122931099057950720 https://twitter.com/LuchaLibris/status/1122929166037471233 https://twitter.com/floofyscorp/status/1122955992268967937 #NotOkGoogle: Employee-led town hall reveals hundreds of stories of retaliation at Google DataCamp reckons with its #MeToo movement; CEO steps down from his role indefinitely Microsoft’s #MeToo reckoning: female employees speak out against workplace harassment and discrimination

GLFW is traditionally the OpenGL library that offers a basic API for the creation of windows/contexts/surfaces across software platforms. GLFW version 3.3 is now available with exciting feature enhancements to it. GLFW works for both desktop and mobile, various devices, and works across all major operating systems while being under the liberal Zlib license. Notable for macOS users is that GLFW 3.3 now supports Vulkan on macOS via the MoltenVK library that translates Vulkan calls for Apple Metal driver usage. The increase in Vulkan support on macOS is great to see and ultimately benefits Linux users/gamers too by allowing Vulkan to be a single common denominator across platforms and making it an attractive target for game engine developers. GLFW 3.3 also has improvements around HiDPI and display scaling, raw mouse motion input support, transparent windows and frame-buffer handling, and other configuration tunables. Get to know about more details on GLFW 3.3 via GLFW.org. Best game engines for Artificial Intelligence game development How AI is changing game development Microsoft plans to use Windows ML for Game development

The EU has sent Valve, the creator of desktop gaming’s biggest storefront Steam and five other video game publishers a ‘Statements of Objections’ for “geo-blocking” PC video game purchases. In a statement, the EU found that these companies “prevented consumers from purchasing videogames cross-border from the other Member States, which is a breach of EU competition rules.” Valve is the owner of the largest PC video game distribution platform called “Steam”. The other five PC video game publishers include Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media, and ZeniMax. The ‘Statements of Objections’ was sent more than two years after the investigation was first opened against these companies. Valve provides "activation keys" to these video game publishers which are required for consumers to play PC video games bought on channels other than Steam. However, Valve and the five PC video game publishers are accused of forming a bilateral partnership to prevent consumers from purchasing and using PC video games acquired elsewhere than in their country of residence. This is against EU antitrust rules and violates Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union via Regulation 2018/302, which prohibits geo-blocking. Valve is accused of blocking cross-border sales of PC games in countries, including Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania. EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: "In a true Digital Single Market, European consumers should have the right to buy and play video games of their choice regardless of where they live in the EU. Consumers should not be prevented from shopping around between the Member States to find the best available deal. Valve and the five PC video game publishers now have the chance to respond to our concerns." EU said it can "adopt a decision prohibiting the conduct and imposing a fine of up to 10% of a company's annual worldwide turnover" if it "concludes that there is sufficient evidence of infringement." In a statement, Valve told Venture Beat, that while it has indeed worked with game publishers to implement region locks, these are not related to sales made through its Steam store. A spokesperson for Valve, Doug Lombardi, said, "The EC's charges do not relate to the sale of PC games on Steam. Instead, the EC alleges that Valve enabled geo-blocking by providing Steam activation keys and—upon the publishers' requests—locking those keys to particular territories within the EEA". Valve further explained: The region locks only applied to a small number of game titles. Approximately just 3 percent of all games using Steam -- and none of Valve's own games -- at the time were subject to the contested region locks in the EEA. Valve believes that the EC's extension of liability to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by applicable law. Nonetheless, because of the EC's concerns, Valve actually turned off region locks within the EEA starting in 2015, unless those region locks were necessary for local legal requirements. Such as German content laws or geographic limits on where the Steam partner is licensed to distribute a game. Koch Media claimed the proceedings date back to business performed before 2015 in a public statement. They said, “Koch Media will monitor the process closely and is fully committed to complying with all rules and regulations." Valve’s multitude of online defenders opposed the EU’s decision considering, uniform prices may leave developers in a tricky position when it comes to finding the ideal price point. In a Hacker News thread, people wrote down their views: “But now think about the consequences of this: everybody in the EU has to pay the same price for the games. There's an income difference of 5-10 times between different EU countries. The poorest ones will have to now pay the same price as the richest ones. A game costing >€60 when you have less than €300 disposable income per month is crazy expensive.” “Why would everyone have to pay the same price for games? Where does this logic come from? The EU doesn't force you to price thing the same across all countries. But you are just not allowed to ban people from buying a thing in one EU country and take it to another - this is the CORE tenement of EU's single market and without this limitation, the EU single market cannot exist.” Seeing the EU’s allegations, Valve will most probably stop all these practices in the EU, but continue to make profits elsewhere in the world.  On Hacker News, a user wrote down Valve's response, “Basically, they don't agree with it, but stopped doing it years ago since they knew the EU was going to give them problems with it. They also said that it only applied to physical copies of games that included a code to redeem on steam, so they weren't making any money off of this, and it was only done at the request of some publishers.” Valve plans to bring new events system and store discoverability feature to Steam this year. Fortnite creator Epic games launch Epic games store where developers get 88% of revenue earned; challenging Valve’s dominance. Valve’s Steam Play Beta uses Proton, a modified WINE, allowing Linux gamers to play Windows games.

Epic games released a new version of it’s flagship game engine, Unreal Engine 4.22. This release comes with a total of 174 improvements, focused on “pushing the boundaries of photorealism in real-time environments”. It also comes with improved build times, up to 3x faster, and new features such as real-time ray tracing. Unreal Engine 4.22 also adds support for Microsoft HoloLens remote streaming and Visual Studio 2019. What’s new in Unreal Engine 4.22? Real-Time Ray Tracing and Path Tracing (Early Access): The Ray Tracing features, first introduced in a preview in mid-february,  are composed of a series of ray tracing shaders and ray tracing effects. They help in achieving natural realistic looking lighting effects in real-time. The Path Tracer includes a full global illumination path for indirect lighting that creates ground truth reference renders right inside of the engine. This improves workflow content in a scene without needing to export to a third-party offline path tracer for comparison. New Mesh drawing pipeline: The new pipeline for Mesh drawing results in faster caching of information for static scene elements. Automatic instancing merges draw calls where possible, resulting in four to six time fewer lines of code. This change is a big one so backwards compatibility for Drawing Policies is not possible. Any Custom Drawing Policies will need to be rewritten as FMeshPassProcessors in the new architecture. Multi-user editing (Early Access): Simultaneous multi user editing allows multiple level designers and artists to connect multiple instances of Unreal Editor together to work collaboratively in a shared editing session. Faster C++ iterations: Unreal has licensed Molecular Matters' Live++ for all developers to use on their Unreal Engine projects, and integrated it as the new Live Coding feature. Developers can now make C++ code changes in their development environment and compile and patch it into a running editor or standalone game in a few seconds. UE 4.22 also optimizes UnrealBuildTool and UnrealHeaderTool, reducing build times and resulting in up to 3x faster iterations when making C++ code changes. Improved audio with TimeSynth (Early access): TimeSynth is a new audio component with features like sample accurate starting, stopping, and concatenation of audio clips. Also includes precise and synchronous audio event queuing. Enhanced Animation: Unreal Engine 4.22 comes with a new Animation Plugin which is based upon the Master-Pose Component system and adds blending and additive Animation States. It reduces the overall amount of animation work required for a crowd of actors. This release also features an Anim Budgeter tool to help developers set a fixed budget per platform (ms of work to perform on the gamethread). Improvements in the Virtual Production Pipeline: New Composure UI: Unreal’s built-in compositing tool Composure has an updated UI to achieve real time compositing capabilities to build images, video feeds, and CG elements directly within the Unreal Engine. OpenColorIO (OCIO) color profiles: Unreal Engine now supports the Open Color IO framework for transforming the color space of any Texture or Composure Element directly within the Unreal Engine. Hardware-accelerated video decoding (Experimental): On Windows platforms, UE 4.22 can use the GPU to speed up the processing of H.264 video streams to reduce the strain on the CPU when playing back video streams. New Media I/O Formats: UE 4.22 ships with new features for professional video I/O input formats and devices, including 4K UHD inputs for both AJA and Blackmagic and AJA Kona 5 devices. nDisplay improvements (Experimental): Several new features make the nDisplay multi-display rendering system more flexible, handling new kinds of hardware configurations and inputs. These were just a select few updates. To learn more about Unreal Engine 4.22 head on over to the Unreal Engine blog. Unreal Engine 4.22 update: support added for Microsoft’s DirectX Raytracing (DXR) Unreal Engine 4.20 released with focus on mobile and immersive (AR/VR/MR) devices Implementing an AI in Unreal Engine 4 with AI Perception components [Tutorial]

Epic Games, an American video game and software development company, made a series of announcements, earlier this week. These include: Epic Game’s CEO, Tim Sweeney to offer $100 million in grants to game developers Stunning RTX-powered Ray-Tracing Demo named Troll Epic’s free Online Services launch for game developers Epic MegaGrants: $100 million funds to Game Developers Tim Sweeney, CEO, Epic Games Inc, announced earlier this week that he will be offering $100 million in grants to game developers to boost the growth of the gaming industry. Sweeney made the announcement during a presentation on Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). GDC is the world's largest professional game industry event that ended yesterday in San Francisco. Epic Games also created a $5 million fund for grants that have been disbursed over the last three years. Now Epic Games is off to build a new fund called Epic MegaGrants. These are “no-strings-attached” grants, meaning that they don’t consist of any contracts requiring game developers to do anything for Epic. All that game developers need to do is apply for the grants, create an innovative project, and if the Epic’s judges find it worthy, they’ll offer them the funds. “There are no commercial hooks back to Epic. You don’t have to commit to any deliverables. This is our way of sharing Fortnite’s unbelievable success with as many developers as we can”, said Sweeney. Troll: a Ray Tracing Unreal Engine 4 Demo Another eye-grabbing moment at GDC this year was a “visually stunning” ray tracing demo revealed by Goodbye Kansas and Deep Forest Films called "Troll”. Troll was rendered in real time using Unreal Engine 4.22 ray tracing and camera effects. And powered by a NVIDIA’s single GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card.  Troll is visually inspired by Swedish painter and illustrator John Bauer, whose illustrations are famous for Swedish folklore and fairy tales anthology known as ‘Among Gnomes and Trolls’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjt_MqEOcGM                                                            Troll “Ray tracing is more than just reflections — it’s about all the subtle lighting interactions needed to create a natural, beautiful image. Ray tracing adds these subtle lighting effects throughout the scene, making everything look more real and natural,” said Nick Penwarden, Director of Engineering for Unreal Engine at Epic Games. NVIDIA team states in a blog post that Epic Games has been working to integrate RTX-accelerated ray tracing into its popular Unreal Engine 4. In fact, Unreal Engine 4.22 will have the support for new Microsoft DXR API for real-time ray tracing. Epic’s free online services launch for game developers Epic Games also announced the launch of free tools and services, part of the Epic Online Services, which was announced in December 2018. The SDK is available via the new developer portal for immediate download and use. SDK currently supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. Moreover, the SDK, as a part of the release, provides support for two free services, namely, game analytics and player ticketing. Game analytics help developers understand player behavior. It features DAU (Daily active users), MAU (Monthly active users), retention, new player counts, game launch counts, online user count, and more. The ticketing system connects players directly with developers and allows them to report bugs or other problems. These two services will continue to evolve along with the rest of Epic Online Services (EOS) to offer infrastructure and tools required by the developers to launch, operate, and scale the high-quality online games. Epic games will also be offering additional free services throughout 2019, including player data storage, player reports, leaderboards & stats, player identity, player inventory, matchmaking etc. “We are committed to developing EOS with features that can be used with any engine, any store and that can support any major platform...these services will allow developers to deliver cross-platform gameplay experiences that enable players to enjoy games no matter what platform they play on”, states the Epic Games team. Fortnite server suffered a minor outage, Epic Games was quick to address the issue Epic games CEO calls Google “irresponsible” for disclosing the security flaw in Fortnite Android installer Fortnite creator Epic games launch Epic games store where developers get 88% of revenue earned

Yesterday, at the ongoing Game Developers Conference (GDC), Google marked its entry in the game industry with Stadia, its new cloud-based platform for streaming games. It will be launching later this year in select countries including the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Europe. https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1108097130147860480 GDC 2019 is a five-day event, which commenced on 18th of this month at San Francisco, CA. It is the world’s largest game industry event which brings together 28,000 attendees to share ideas and discuss the future of the gaming industry. What is Stadia? Phil Harrison, Google’s Vice President, and GM, announcing the game streaming platform said, “Our ambition is far beyond a single game. The power of instant access is magical, and it's already transformed the music and movie industries." Stadia is a cloud-based game streaming platform that aims to bring together, gamers, YouTube broadcasters, and game developers “to create a new experience”. The games get streamed from any data center to any device that can connect to the internet like TV, laptop, desktop, tablet, or mobile phone. With this, gamers will be able to access their games anytime and virtually on any screen. And, game developers will be able to use nearly unlimited resources for developing games. Since all the graphics processing happens on off-site hardware, there will be little stress on your local hardware. The demo that Google shared at GDC currently streams video at 1080p, 60 frames per second. At launch, Stadia will come with up to 4K resolution and 60 frames per second with approximately 25Mbps of bandwidth. In the future, Google is planning to offer 8K resolution and 120 frames per second. Google, in partnership with AMD, is building a custom GPU for its data centers, which will deliver 10.7 teraflops of power.  Also, each Stadia instance will be powered by a custom 2.7GHz x86 processor with 16GB of RAM. Stadia Controller At GDC, Google also talked about a dedicated controller for Stadia that directly connects to a game session in the cloud through WiFi. The controller provides a button for capturing, saving, and sharing gameplay in up to 4K resolution. It also comes integrated with Google Assistant and a built-in microphone. According to a blog post shared by Google, it is not guaranteed that the controller will be offered for sale as the device is not yet authorized by the Federal Communications Commission. While unveiling the game-streaming service, Google did not reveal any details on the pricing. Also, the details regarding when exactly we can expect this service to reach the gamers and developers are unknown. To know more in detail about Stadia, check out the official announcement on Google’s blog post. Google is planning to bring Node.js support to Fuchsia Google to be the founding member of CDF (Continuous Delivery Foundation) Google announces the stable release of Android Jetpack Navigation

Last week, Reinder Nijhoff, a computer vision researcher, created a project that does real-time ray tracing in WebGL1 using Nvidia’s RTX graphics card. This demo was inspired by Metro's real-time global illumination. https://twitter.com/ReinderNijhoff/status/1106193109376008193 This demo uses a hybrid rendering engine created using WebGL1. It renders all the polygons in a frame with the help of traditional rasterization technologies and then combines the result with ray traced shadows, diffuse GI, and reflections. Credits: Reinder Nijhoff What is the ray tracing technique? In computer graphics, ray tracing is a technique for rendering 3D graphics with very complex light interactions. Basically, in this technique, an algorithm traces the path of light and then simulates the way the light will interact with the virtual objects. There are three ways light interacts with the virtual objects: It can be reflected from one object to another causing reflection. It can be blocked by objects causing shadows. It can pass through transparent or semi-transparent objects causing refractions. All these interactions are then combined to determine the final color of a pixel. Ray tracing has been used for offline rendering due to its ability to accurately model the physical behavior of light in the real world. Due to its computationally intensive nature, ray tracing was often not the first choice for real-time rendering. However, this changed with the introduction of Nvidia RTX graphics card as it adds custom acceleration hardware and makes real-time ray tracing relatively straightforward. What was this demo about? The project’s prototype was based on a forward renderer that first draws all the geometry in the scene. Next, the shader used to rasterize (converting an image into pixels) the geometry, calculates the direct lighting. Additionally, the shader also casts random rays from the surface of the rendered geometry to collect the indirect light reflection due to non-shiny surfaces using a ray tracer. The author started with a very simple scene for the prototype that included a single light and rendered only a few spheres and cubes. This made the ray tracing code pretty much straightforward. Once the prototype was complete, he wanted to take the prototype to the next level by adding more geometry and a lot of lights to the scene. Despite the complexity of the environment, Nijhoff wanted to perform ray tracing of the scene in real-time. Generally, to speed up the ray trace process, a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) is used as an acceleration structure. However, when using WebGL1 shaders it is difficult to pre-calculate and use BVH. This is why Nijhoff decided to use a Wolfenstein 3D level for this demo. To know more in detail, check out the original post shared by Reinder Nijhoff. Unity switches to WebAssembly as the output format for the Unity WebGL build target NVIDIA shows off GeForce RTX, real-time raytracing GPUs, as the holy grail of computer graphics to gamers Introducing SCRIPT-8, an 8-bit JavaScript-based fantasy computer to make retro-looking games  

On 13 March, Wednesday, the Godot developers announced the release of a new version of the open source 2D and 3D cross-platform compatible game engine, Godot 3.1. This new version includes the much-requested improvements to the major release, Godot 3.0. Improved features in the Godot 3.1 OpenGL ES 2.0 renderer Rendering is done entirely on sRGB color space (the GLES3 renderer uses linear color space). This is much more efficient and compatible, but it means that HDR will not be supported. Some advanced PBR features such as subsurface scattering are not supported. Unsupported features will not be visible when editing materials. Some shader features will not work and throw an error when used. Also, some post-processing effects are not present either. Unsupported features will not be visible when editing environments. GPU-based Particles will not work as there is no transform feedback support. Users can use the new CPUParticles node instead. Optional typing in GDScript This has been one of the most requested Godot features from day one. GDScript allows to write code in a quick way within a controlled environment. The code editor will now show which lines are safe with a slight highlight of the line number. This will be vital in the future to optimize small pieces of code which may require more performance. Revamped Inspector The Godot inspector has been rewritten from scratch. It includes features such as proper vector field editing, sub-inspectors for resource editing, better custom visual editors for many types of objects, very comfortable to use spin-slider controls, better array and dictionary editing and many more features. Kinematicbody2d (and 3d) improvements Kinematic bodies are among Godot's most useful nodes. They allow creating very game-like character motion with little effort. For Godot 3.1 they have been considerably improved with: Support for snapping the body to the floor. Support for RayCast shapes in kinematic bodies. Support for synchronizing kinematic movement to physics, avoiding a one-frame delay. New Axis Handling system Godot 3.1 uses the novel concept of "action strength". This approach allows using actions for all use cases and it makes it very easy to create in-game customizable mappings and customization screens. Visual Shader Editor This was a pending feature to re-implement in Godot 3.0, but it couldn't be done in time back then. The new version has new features such as PBR outputs, port previews, and easier to use mapping to inputs. 2D Meshes Godot now supports 2D meshes, which can be used from code or converted from sprites to avoid drawing large transparent areas. 2D Skeletons It is now possible to create 2D skeletons with the new Skeleton2D and Bone2D nodes. Additionally, Polygon2D vertices can be assigned bones and weight painted. Adding internal vertices for better deformation is also supported. Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) CSG tools have been added for fast level prototyping, allowing generic primitives and custom meshes to be combined via boolean operations to generate more complex shapes. They can also become colliders to test together with physics. CPU-based particle system Godot 3.0 integrated a GPU-based particle system, which allows emitting millions of particles at little performance cost. The developers added alternative CPUParticles and CPUParticles2D nodes that perform particle processing using the CPU (and draw using the MultiMesh API). These nodes open the window for adding features such as physics interaction, sub-emitters or manual emission, which are not possible using the GPU. More VCS-friendly The new 3.1 version includes some very requested enhancements such as: Folded properties are no longer saved in scenes. This avoids unnecessary history pollution. Non-modified properties are no longer saved. This reduces text files considerably and makes history even more readable. Improved C# support In Godot 3.1, C# projects can be exported to Linux, macOS, and Windows. Support for Android, iOS, and HTML5 will come soon. To know about other improvements in detail, visit the changelog or the official website. Microsoft announces Game stack with Xbox Live integration to Android and iOS OpenAI introduces Neural MMO, a multiagent game environment for reinforcement learning agents Google teases a game streaming service set for Game Developers Conference

Microsoft has good news for all the game developers out there. It launched a new initiative, called Microsoft Game Stack yesterday, which includes an amalgamation of different Microsoft tools and services into a single robust ecosystem to ‘empower game developers’. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a rookie indie developer or an AAA studio, this developer-focused platform will make the game development process ten times easier for you. The main goal of Game Stack is to help developers easily find different tools and services required for game development at one spot. These tools range from Azure, PlayFab, DirectX, Visual Studio, to  Xbox Live, App Center, and Havok. Cloud plays a major role in Game Stack and it makes use of Azure to fulfill this requirement. Source: Microsoft Azure is globally available in 54 regions will help scale its Project xCloud (a service that streams games to PCs, consoles, and mobile devices) to provide an uninterrupted gaming experience for players worldwide. Not to forget, companies like Rare, Ubisoft and Wizards of the Coast are already hosting multiplayer game servers and storing their player data on Azure. It is also capable of analyzing game telemetry, protecting games from DDOS attacks, and training AI. Moreover, Microsoft Game Stack is device agnostic which makes it really convenient for the gamers. Another great component of Game Stack is a backend service for operating and building new games, called PlayFab. PlayFab offers game development services, real-time analytics, and LiveOps capabilities to Game Stack. PlayFab is also device agnostic. It supports iOS, Android, PC, Web, Xbox, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and all the other major game engines such as Unity and Unreal. Microsoft has also released a preview for five new PlayFab services. Out of these five, one, called, PlayFab Matchmaking is open for public preview, while other four including PlayFab Party, PlayFab Insights, PlayFab PubSub, and PlayFab user-generated Content are in private preview. Game Stack also comes with Xbox Live, one of the most engaging and interactive gaming communities in the world. Xbox Live will be providing identity and community services in the Game Stack. Microsoft has also expanded the cross-platform capabilities of Xbox Live under Game Stack with a new SDK for iOS and Android devices. Mobile developers will be able to easily connect with some of the most highly engaged and passionate gamers on the planet using Xbox Live. Other benefits of the Xbox Live SDK includes more focus on building games and leveraging Microsoft‘s trusted identity network to offer support for log-in, privacy, online safety and child accounts. Apart from that, there are features like gamerscore, and “hero” stats, that help keep the gamers engaged. Also, components such as Visual Studio, Mixer, DirectX, Azure App Center, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and Havok are all a part of Game Stack. For more information, check out the official Microsoft Game Stack blog post. Microsoft open sources the Windows Calculator code on GitHub Microsoft open sources ‘Accessibility Insights for Web’, a chrome extension to help web developers fix their accessibility issue Microsoft researchers introduce a new climate forecasting model and a public dataset to train these models

On Monday, the team at OpenAI launched at Neural MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Games), a multiagent game environment for reinforcement learning agents. It will be used for training AI in complex, open-world environments. This platform supports a large number of agents within a persistent and open-ended task. The need for Neural MMO Since the past few years, the suitability of MMOs for modeling real-life events has been explored. But there are two main challenges for multiagent reinforcement learning. Firstly, there is a need to create open-ended tasks with high complexity ceiling as the current environments are complex and narrow. The other challenge, the OpenAI team specifies is the need for more benchmark environments in order to quantify learning progress in the presence of large population scales. Different criteria to overcome challenges The team suggests certain criteria which need to be met by the environment to overcome the challenges. Persistence Agents can concurrently learn in the presence of other learning agents without the need of environment resets. The strategies should adapt to rapid changes in the behaviors of other agents and also consider long time horizons. Scale Neural MMO supports a large and variable number of entities. The experiments by the OpenAI team consider up to 100M lifetimes of 128 concurrent agents in each of 100 concurrent servers. Efficiency As the computational barrier to entry is low, effective policies can be trained on a single desktop CPU. Expansion The Neural MMO is designed to update new content. The core features include food and water foraging system, procedural generation of tile-based terrain, and a strategic combat system. There are opportunities for open-source driven expansion in the future. The Environment Players can join any available server while each containing an automatically generated tile-based game map of configurable size. Some tiles are traversable, such as food-bearing forest tiles and grass tiles, while others, such as water and solid stone, are not. Players are required to obtain food and water and avoid combat damage from other agents, in order to sustain their health. The platform comes with a procedural environment generator and visualization tools for map tile visitation distribution, value functions, and agent-agent dependencies of learned policies. The team has trained a fully connected architecture using vanilla policy gradients, with a value function baseline and reward discounting as the only enhancements. The team has converted variable length observations, such as the list of surrounding players, into a single length vector by computing the maximum across all players. Neural MMO has resolved a couple of limitations of previous game-based environments, but there are still many left unsolved. Few users are excited about this news. One of the users commented on HackerNews, “What I find interesting about this is that the agents naturally become pacifists.” While a few others think that the company should come up with novel ideas and not copied ones. Another user commented on HackerNews, “So far, they are replicating known results from evolutionary game theory (pacifism & niches) to economics (distance & diversification). I wonder when and if they will surprise some novel results.” To know more about this news, check out OpenAI’s official blog post. AI Village shares its perspective on OpenAI’s decision to release a limited version of GPT-2 OpenAI team publishes a paper arguing that long term AI safety research needs social scientists OpenAI’s new versatile AI model, GPT-2 can efficiently write convincing fake news from just a few words