Tech News - Game Development

To provide compatibility with a wide range of Windows-only games to all Linux users, a Beta version of the new and improved Steam Play is now available. It uses Proton, a modified distribution of Wine, to allow games which are exclusive to Windows to run on Linux and macOS operating systems. Proton is an open source tool, allowing advanced users to alter the code to make their own local builds. The included improvements to Wine have been designed and funded by Valve, in a joint development effort with CodeWeavers. In order to identify games that currently work great in this compatibility environment and solve the issues, if any, they are testing the entire Steam catalog. The list of games that they are enabling with this Beta release include: Beat Saber, Bejeweled 2 Deluxe, Doki Doki Literature Club!, DOOM, Fallout Shelter, FATE, FINAL FANTASY VI, and many more. Using Steam Play the gamers can purchase the games once and play anywhere. Whether you have purchased your Steam Play enabled game on a Mac, Windows, or Linux, you will be able to play on the other platform free of charge. What are the improvements introduced? You can now install and run Windows games with no Linux version currently available, directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support. Improved game compatibility and reduced performance impact is facilitated by DirectX 11 and 12 whose implementations are now based on Vulkan. The support for fullscreen games is improved allowing them to seamlessly stretch to the desired display without interfering with the native monitor resolution or requiring the use of a virtual desktop. The support for game controller is improved enabling games to automatically recognize all controllers supported by Steam. Improved performance for multi-threaded games as compared to vanilla Wine. They have mentioned that there could be a performance difference for games where graphics API translation is required, but there is no fundamental reason for a Vulkan title to run any slower. You can find out more about the Stream Play Beta, the full list of supported games, and how Proton works in the Steam post. Facebook launched new multiplayer AR games in Messenger Meet yuzu – an experimental emulator for the Nintendo Switch What’s got game developers excited about Unity 2018.2?

Microsoft is reportedly planning to bring Xbox Live cross-platform gaming features to PC, Xbox, iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch. This news was first reported by Windows Central via a GDC 2019 schedule on Xbox Live. “Xbox Live is expanding from 400 million gaming devices and a reach to over 68 million active players to over 2 billion devices with the release of our new cross-platform XDK,” says the GDC listing. The GDC session will also offer a first look at the SDK to enable game developers to connect players between iOS, Android, and Switch in addition to Xbox and any game in the Microsoft Store on Windows PCs. Until now, Microsoft has reserved Xbox Live support on iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch platforms for its own games, but now, Microsoft is aiming to bring Xbox Live integration to even more gaming titles. This is a part of Microsoft’s gaming mission to bring software, services, and games to players on other platforms aside from its traditional PC and Xbox markets. Per Windows central, “Developers will be able to bake cross-platform Xbox Live achievements, social systems, and multiplayer, into games built for mobile devices and Nintendo Switch, as part of its division-wide effort to grow Xbox Live's user base.” For developers, this would mean allowing “communities to mingle more freely across platforms. Combined with PlayFab gaming services, this means less work for game developers and more time to focus on making games fun,” says the GDC listing. Microsoft is also building a xCloud game streaming service that will stream Xbox games to PCs, consoles, and mobile devices later this year. Twitter users are fairly excited about this news. https://twitter.com/Avers_G4GMedia/status/1091623967088144384 https://twitter.com/NintendoSwitchC/status/1092560268956233728 https://twitter.com/TannithArt/status/1092675726996844544 Microsoft announces Project xCloud, a new Xbox game streaming service. Epic games CEO calls Google “irresponsible” for disclosing the security flaw in Fortnite Android Microsoft plans to use Windows ML for Game development

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

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

Anthony Levandowski is back in the self-driving space with a new company. Pronto AI. This Tuesday, he announced on a blog post on Medium that he has completed a trip across the country in a self-driving car without any human intervention. He is also developing a $5,000 aftermarket driver assistance system for semi-trucks, which will handle the steering, throttle, and brakes on the highway. https://twitter.com/meharris/status/1075036576143466497 Previously, Levandowski has been at the center of a controversy between Alphabet’s self-driving car company Waymo and Uber. Levandowski had allegedly taken with him confidential documents over which the companies got into a legal battle. He was briefly barred from the autonomous driving industry during the trial. However, the companies settled the case early this year. After laying low for a while, he is back with Pronto AI and it’s first ADAS ( advanced driver assistance system). “I know what some of you might be thinking: ‘He’s back?’” Levandowski wrote in his Medium post announcing Pronto’s launch. “Yes, I’m back.” Levandowski told the Guardian that he traveled in a self-driving vehicle from San Francisco to New York without human intervention. He didn't touch the steering wheel or pedals — except for periodic rest stops — for the full 3,099 miles. He posted a video that shows a portion of the drive, though it's hard to fact-check the full journey. The car was a modified Toyota Prius which used only video cameras, computers, and basic digital maps to make the cross-country trip. In the medium blog post, he also announced the development of a new camera-based ADAS. Named Copilot by Pronto, it delivers advanced features, built specifically for Class 8 vehicles, with driver comfort and safety top of mind. It will also offer lane keeping, cruise control and collision avoidance for commercial semi-trucks and will be rolled out in early 2019. Alphabet’s Waymo to launch the world’s first commercial self-driving cars next month Apex.AI announced Apex.OS and Apex.Autonomy for building failure-free autonomous vehicles Uber manager warned the leadership team of the inadequacy of safety procedures in their prototype robo-taxis early March, reports The Information

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella published his letter to shareholders in the company’s 2018 annual report, on LinkedIn yesterday. He talks about Microsoft’s accomplishments in the past year, results and progress of Microsoft’s workplace, business applications, infrastructure, data, AI, and gaming. He also mentioned the data and privacy rules adopted by Microsoft, and their belief to, “ instill trust in technology across everything they do.” Microsoft’s result and progress Data and AI Azure Cosmos DB has already exceeded $100 million in annualized revenue. The company also saw rapid customer adoption of Azure Databricks for data preparation, advanced analytics, and machine learning scenarios. Their Azure Bot Service has nearly 300,000 developers, and they are on the road for building the world’s first AI supercomputer in Azure. Microsoft also acquired GitHub to recognize the increasingly vital role developers will play in value creation and growth across every industry. Business Applications Microsoft’s investments in Power BI have made them the leader in business analytics in the cloud. Their Open Data Initiative with Adobe and SAP will help customers to take control of their data and build new experiences that truly put people at the center. HoloLens and mixed reality will be used for designing for first-line workers, who account for 80 percent of the world’s workforce. New solutions powered by LinkedIn and Microsoft Graphs help companies manage talent, training, and sales and marketing. Applications and Infrastructure Azure revenue grew 91 percent year-over-year and the company is investing aggressively to build Azure as the world’s computer. They added nearly 500 new Azure capabilities in the past year, focused on both existing workloads and new workloads such as IoT and Edge AI. Microsoft expanded their global data center footprint to 54 regions. They introduced Azure IoT and Azure Stack and Azure Sphere. Modern Workplace More than 135 million people use Office 365 commercial every month. Outlook Mobile is also employed on 100 million iOS and Android devices worldwide. Microsoft Teams is being used by more than 300,000 organizations of all sizes, including 87 of the Fortune 100. Windows 10 is active on nearly 700 million devices around the world. Gaming The company surpassed $10 billion in revenue this year for gaming. Xbox Live now has 57 million monthly active users, and they are investing in new services like Mixer and Game Pass. They also added five new gaming studios this year including PlayFab to build a cloud platform for the gaming industry across mobile, PC and console. Microsoft’s impact around the globe Nadella highlighted that companies such as Coca-Cola, Chevron Corporation, ZF Group, a car parts manufacturer in Germany are using Microsoft’s technology to build their own digital capabilities. Walmart is also using Azure and Microsoft 365 for transforming the shopping experience for customers. In Kenya, M-KOPA Solar, one of their partners connected homes across sub-Saharan Africa to solar power using the Microsoft Cloud. Office Dynamics 365 was used in Arizona to improve outcomes among the state’s 15,000 children in foster care. MedApp is using HoloLens in Poland to help cardiologists visualize a patient's heart as it beats in real time. In Cambodia, underserved children in rural communities are learning to code with Minecraft. How Microsoft is handling trust and responsibility Microsoft motto is “instilling trust in technology across everything they do.” Nadella says, “We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right, which is why compliance is deeply embedded in all our processes and practices.” Microsoft has extended the data subject rights of GDPR to all their customers around the world, not just those in the European Union, and advocated for the passage of the CLOUD Act in the U.S. They also led the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, which has been signed by 61 global organizations, and are calling on governments to do more to make the internet safe. They announced the Defending Democracy Program to work with governments around the world to help safeguard voting and introduced AccountGuard to offer advanced cybersecurity protections to political campaigns in the U.S. The company is also investing in tools for detecting and addressing bias in AI systems and advocating government regulation. They are also addressing society's most pressing challenges with new programs like AI for Earth, a five-year, $50M commitment to environmental sustainability, and AI for Accessibility to benefit people with disabilities. Nadella further adds, “Over the past year, we have made progress in building a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone can do their best work.” Microsoft has nearly doubled the number of women corporate vice presidents at Microsoft since FY16.  They have also increased African American/Black and Hispanic/Latino representation by 33 percent. He concludes saying that “I’m proud of our progress, and I’m proud of the more than 100,000 Microsoft employees around the world who are focused on our customers’ success in this new era.” Read the full letter on Linkedin. Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder, philanthropist, and developer dies of cancer at 65. ‘Employees of Microsoft’ ask Microsoft not to bid on US Military’s Project JEDI in an open letter. Microsoft joins the Open Invention Network community, making 60,000 of its patents accessible to fellow members

Game publisher Activision-Blizzard announced that it will lay off 8% of its staff of 9,600 employees. This announcement was made during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. A total of nearly 800 employees, that will be laid off will mostly belong to non-game development and administrative areas of the company. CEO of Activision-Blizzard Bobby Kotick said, “The move is being made in an effort at de-prioritizing initiatives that are not meeting expectations and reducing certain non-development and administrative-related costs across the business." The company is undergoing restructuring because of missed expectations for 2018 and lowered expectations for 2019. It will boost up the numbers of employees in the development team of its franchises like Call of Duty and Diablo. In a note to its staff obtained by Kotaku, Blizzard, president J. Allen Brack said, “Currently staffing levels on some teams are out of proportion with our current release slate. This means we need to scale down some areas of our organization. I’m sorry to share that we will be parting ways with some of our colleagues in the U.S. today.” The letter also promised “a comprehensive severance package”, says Kotaku. It will include continued health benefits, career coaching, and job placement assistance as well as profit-sharing bonuses for the previous year to those who are being laid off at Blizzard. In the official press release on Blizzard's website, Brack said Blizzard is dedicated to bringing their unannounced projects to life. They will focus heavily on Esports and the Overwatch League, which is their biggest esports brand. Twitterati is highly disappointed with this news and is sympathetic towards dismissed employees. https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1095374774728048640 https://twitter.com/hitstreak/status/1095456359594610689 https://twitter.com/day9tv/status/1095390958584131584 Other organizations are also offering job opportunities to those in need. https://twitter.com/ScottLowe/status/1094052545297711104   https://twitter.com/MitchyD/status/1094061851804078082 Instacart changes its “tips stealing” policy after facing workers backlash Per the new GDC 2019 report, nearly 50% of game developers think game industry workers should unionize Tech Workers Coalition volunteers talk unionization and solidarity in Silicon Valley

Think Silicon, a firm that delivers ultra-low power graphics IP technology recently open sourced  GLOVE (GL Over Vulkan). GLOVE, a middleware allows Android, Linux, and Windows OS developers to seamlessly run OpenGL ES on supported hardware by translating OpenGL ES API calls to Vulkan API commands at runtime. Why GLOVE (GL Over Vulkan)? OpenGL and OpenGL ES are the most widely used standards for the development of graphics-based applications. Increased complexity of driver's implementation based on OpenGL and OpenGL ES led to the introduction of Vulkan (a lower-level API that transfers much of the driver's functionality to the application-side). However, in most situations, a direct transition to Vulkan requires additional efforts by the developers and vendors. This means they are forced to maintain driver support for both Vulkan and OpenGL. With the introduction of GLOVE, developers can seamlessly transition their software between both Vulkan and OpenGL APIs. Following this, vendors are able to discard duplicate OpenGL ES drivers and rely solely on a lighter implementation of the Vulkan API. Additional features of GLOVE GLOVE allows running OpenGL ES calls not only on Android and Linux systems but also on Windows operating systems, which was not possible before. It also offers the possibility to run legacy applications and games on top of Vulkan at a glance. This saves a lot of effort and provides backward compatibility. It allows you to quickly explore Vulkan driver capabilities and performance by using existing OpenGL ES code. Its modular design can be easily extended to encompass implementations of other client APIs as well. Dimitris Georgakakis, Team Lead, Graphics Software Stack, Think Silico said, "We are excited to release GLOVE™ as Open Source Project to the graphics developer community and we will continue our efforts to support more platforms and features to ensure GLOVE™ can be useful in a lot of use cases.” Read more about GLOVE (GL Over Vulkan) on ThinkSilicon release notes. Implementing Unity 2017 Game Audio [Tutorial] Unity assets to create interactive 2D games [Tutorial]

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

This week, Unity Technologies, the real-time 3D development platform creator, announced its collaboration with Baidu Inc., China's leading Internet giant for developing a real-time simulation product that creates virtual environments while allowing developers to test autonomous vehicles in real-world situations. This real-time simulation will be available for developers taking part in Baidu’s Apollo platform-- an open and reliable platform working towards the development, testing, and deployment of Levels 3, 4, 5 autonomous vehicles. It includes all the different areas of the self-driving technology spectrum, right from perception and localization to 3D simulation and end-to-end training and testing of autonomous vehicles. The collaboration between Baidu and Unity is expected to gear up the development of a simulation environment for testing autonomous driving software. This simulation will enable developers to digitalize the entire development process. There are advantages of using simulations and virtual environment in development and testing. For instance, risky or implausible scenarios can be generated and tested in simulation whereas it might be impossible to do the same in the real world. Moreover, dangerous situations which can’t be tested in real life can be created and tested using such a simulation. “The ability to accurately conduct autonomous testing in a simulated environment allows for millions of simulations to simultaneously occur, providing Apollo partners with a competitive advantage while helping to keep their business costs down,” said Tim McDonough, general manager of Industrial, Unity Technologies. Unity’s real-time 3D platform helps in reducing errors and risks while increasing efficiency and speed of testing by offering simulations that replicate real-world scenarios. Apart from Baidu, Unity also works the largest OEMs in the world by improving the way they design, build, service and sell automobiles. The company has experts from companies such as BMW,  Toyota, General Motors, Volvo, and the Volkswagen Group. Unity also recently launched SimViz Solution Template, a package that provides OEMs and helps in the building of simulation environments. Jaewon Jung, Chief Architect of Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group said, “By using a platform like Unity, our developers can focus on testing and research without worrying about non-functional environments or building something from scratch. The Unity-powered game engine simulation for Apollo has the ability to expedite autonomous vehicle validation and training with precise ground truth data in a more effective and safer way.” It would be interesting to see how this collaboration accelerates Baidu’s development of autonomous driving software. Read more about this news, check out Business Wire’ post. Unity ML-Agents Toolkit v0.6 gets two updates: improved usability of Brains and workflow for Imitation Learning Unity 2018.3 is here with improved Prefab workflows, Visual Effect graph and more Unity introduces guiding Principles for ethical AI to promote responsible use of AI

Xenko, a game engine owned by Silicon Studios has officially released its third version on August 2. The major change in Xenko 3.0 is the transition to being open-source. It also comes with changes made to the project system and added support for videos as well as hair, and skin rendering. Open-source and support Although Xenko won’t be supported officially anymore by Silicon Studios, the members of the Xenko development team will continue contributing to it. Virgile Bello, Lead Developer at Xenko Game Engine stated that he will personally work on it fulltime for the next couple of months in the official blog. The new version is released under the MIT License on Github. It is well received by the open source community. The Xenko repository has already gained almost 700 stars and a couple of issues showing active involvement. Changes in the Xenko 3.0 game engine Other than the open-source transition, there are a few other changes in the engine itself. Xenko 3.0 has made the switch to the new C# project system, which makes your game csproj as simple as a PackageReference to Xenko. This makes package management more convenient. It is now also possible to add video to your games with the latest release. This feature is not completely tested on all platforms so you may run into issues while implementing it. Hair and skin rendering support are also added, but like videos, this feature may need some improvements and tuning. The package names have also been changed since the move to open-source. The SiliconStudio.Xenko package is now Xenko. Also the SiliconStudio.Core and SiliconStudio.* packages are now Xenko.Core. Your earlier projects should automatically be updated but a backup before the upgrade is recommended. Virgile has set up a Patreon page if you’d like to support the project financially. The release notes state that the future plan is to split Xenko further into separate packages such as Xenko.Graphics, Xenko.Physics and Xenko.Editor. These are only the major changes. For the complete changelog and other minor updates in Xenko 3.0, you can see the Release Notes. Think Silicon open sources GLOVE: An OpenGL ES over Vulkan middleware Working with shaders in C++ to create 3D games Unity assets to create interactive 2D games [Tutorial]

Yesterday, many Fortnite players reported long queues for matches and timeouts while trying to play the game. The Fortnite outage happened during the holiday season. https://twitter.com/Soldier_Dimitri/status/1078029461461913614 Epic games knew about this issue and tweeted that an investigation is underway to find the cause of the timeouts and slowdowns when some users were trying to log in and play. Epic had told the players to check the status on their website. https://twitter.com/FortniteGame/status/1078027774034657282 TechCrunch noted this Fortnite outage and was able to replicate it. The game was continuously held for about five minutes and then timed out. Epic games reported a “minor service outage” that affected game services. Within three hours of acknowledging, Epic games also issued a fix for the issue and let the users know on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FortniteGame/status/1078065448585965568 A member from Epic Games explained the reason for the Fortnite outage on Reddit: “Quick summary is that deploying a fix for elf challenge reward not being granted exposed a latent bug in our profile migration code (the code that fixes up players). This caused players to be kicked etc and triggered our waiting room. We fixed the issue and deployed a new backend, however, didn’t see a recovery in login success. This ended up due to “sticky session” configuration having been lost on our waiting room load balances when moving them to ALBs. This meant that there was a 90% chance of having to requeue after hitting the front of the line. D’oh. This should all be fixed now and we are seeing a recovery in numbers/login throughout / waiting room / etc.” Gamers have appreciated the company’s transparency in letting users know about what happened: “As a company, I applaud you for your transparency. It is highly unusual and I hope you continue to set precedence in this industry.” Fortnite creator Epic games launch Epic games store where developers get 88% of revenue earned; challenging Valve’s dominance Epic games CEO calls Google “irresponsible” for disclosing the security flaw in Fortnite Android Installer before patch was ready Google is missing out $50 million because of Fortnite’s decision to bypass Play Store

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

Unity technologies have made a startling announcement of plunging into the automotive and transportation industry.  With their newly formed automotive division, they plan to pass on their rendering technology to auto creators. They plan to show off this technology at their very first Unity AutoTech Summit at Unite Berlin, scheduled to happen during June 19-21 this year. As John Riccitiello, Chief Executive Officer, Unity Technologies, describes it “The real-time revolution in automotive is here. Over the past 15 years, we’ve made great strides leading the game development industry – now, we’re bringing our real-time rendering technology to a new group of creators, equipping automakers with the tools that will allow them to iterate at the speed of thought.” Unity Automotive Division This automotive division will bring real-time 3D, VR, and AR technologies to the world’s automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers through the Unity engine. The division is led by of experts from key automobile companies like Volkswagen, Renault, GM, Delphi, and Denso. Unity has already been working alongside the world’s top OEMs. Including Audi (VR design review), Volkswagen (interactive VR training for 10,000 employees), Cadillac (Virtual Showroom) and Mercedes-Benz (AMG Powerwall). Unity AutoTech Summit The Unity AutoTech summit that will grace Unite Berlin, is a one of a kind, two-day gathering of sessions, tech demos, and networking dedicated to the automotive industry. Featured sessions will include: Bringing the Lexus LC500 to Life Through the Magic of Unity by David Telfer, (Lexus), Joe DeMiero, and Carl Seibert from Lexus. How to Drive VR/AR Use Cases for Enterprises Using the Example of Volkswagen by Torben Volkwein from Volkswagen. Creating Powerful Mixed Reality Applications Across Auto by Jason Yim from Trigger Global for Nissan. Next Level Rendering Quality for Automotive by Arisa Scott  from Unity Unity Training Workshops Taster: Introduction to Automotive Design Visualization by Anuja Dharkar from Unity. Unity in Automotive - The Road Ahead by Tim McDonough and Ed Martin from Unity. Unity for Enterprise Unity and PiXYZ have also partnered to launch the enterprise-level Unity Industry Bundle. This bundle consists of PiXYZ products, training, and Unity Pro. It streamlines the data preparation and import of CAD data for creating real-time experiences in Unity. It provides services like design and engineering, AR/VR training, and the creation of high-impact customer experiences for both datacenters to individuals. Visit the Unity Automotive and Transportation website for the list of Unity’s entire solutions. Put your game face on! Unity 2018.1 is now available Unity plugins for augmented reality application development Unity 2D & 3D game kits simplify Unity game development for beginners

Erik Kusma Faye-Lund, a graphics programmer, introduced Zink on Wednesday. Zinc is an OpenGL implementation on top of Vulkan. It is a Mesa Gallium driver that supports OpenGL implementation in Mesa to provide hardware-accelerated OpenGL when only a Vulkan driver is available. Currently, Zink is only available as a source code, distro-packages aren’t available yet. It has only been tested on Linux. To build Zink, one needs to have Git, Vulkan headers and libraries, Meson and Ninja. Also, one needs to build dependencies to compile Mesa. Erik says, “And most importantly, we are not a conformant OpenGL implementation. I’m not saying we will never be, but as it currently stands, we do not do conformance testing, and as such we neither submit conformance results to Khronos.” What Zink may include 1. Just one API OpenGL is a big API and is well-established as a requirement for applications and desktop compositors. But since the release of Vulkan, there are two APIs for essentially the same hardware functionality but both are important. As the software-world is working hard to implement Vulkan support everywhere, this is leading to complexity. One would only require things like desktop compositors to support one API in the future. There might be a future where OpenGL’s role could purely be one of legacy application compatibility. Maybe Zink can help in making the future better! 2. Lessen the workload of GPU drivers Everyone wants less amount of code to maintain for legacy hardware but the drivers to maintain are growing rapidly. Also, new drivers have been written for old hardware. If the hardware is capable of supporting Vulkan, it could be easier to only support Vulkan “natively”, and do OpenGL through Zink. There aren’t infinite programmers that can maintain every GPU driver forever. But maybe with Zink, driver-support might get better and easier. 3.  Zink comes with benefits Since Zink is implemented as a Gallium driver in Mesa, there are some side-benefits that come “for free”. For instance, projects like Gallium Nine or Clover could, in theory, may work on top of the i965 Vulkan driver through Zink in the future. In the coming years, Zink might also act as a cooperation-layer between OpenGL and Vulkan code in the same application. 4. Zink could be used as a closed-source Vulkan driver Zink might also run smoothly on top of a closed-source Vulkan driver and still get proper window system integration. What does Zink require? Currently, Zink requires a Vulkan 1.0 implementation and the following extensions: VK_KHR_maintenance1: This extension is required for the viewport flipping. VK_KHR_external_memory_fd : This extension is required for getting the rendered result on screen. Additionally, Erick has also shared a list of features that Zink doesn’t support, which include: Currently, glPointSize() is not supported. Though writing to gl_PointSize from the vertex shader does work. The texture borders are currently black due to Vulkan’s lack of arbitrary border-color support. Currently, no control-flow is supported in the shaders. There is no GL_ALPHA_TEST and glShadeModel(GL_FLAT) support yet. It would be interesting to see how Zink turns out when the features go live! Read more about this news on Kusma’s official website. Valve’s Steam Play Beta uses Proton, a modified WINE, allowing Linux gamers to play Windows games UI elements and their implementation Game Engine Wars: Unity vs Unreal Engine