Tech News - 2D Game Development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Godot is an open source community-driven 2D and 3D game engine. It works on a unified interface and is cross-platform. Godot is completely free and under the MIT license. Games made in Godot can be exported to Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, and HTML5. As of a recent commit made two days ago, the master branch of Godot is now in the alpha stage. This means that v3.1 is now considered feature-complete and the focus of the developers will be only on bug fixing along with improvements to existing features. Such a stage is called as a feature freeze. Any new features will have to wait for 3.1-stable to come in a couple of months. Contributors are requested not to make feature pull requests as they have a potential to create new bugs. PRs can be made once the feature freeze is lifted and a stable release is out. The feature pull requests currently made won’t be closed but will be targeted at the v3.2 milestone release. There are some exceptions to the freeze rule. Enhancements to the major new features of the 3.1 release may be considered, especially usability fixes. Work on mono/C# support is continuous. Approved features discussed with contributors on IRC  may still be considered if they are a priority for the 3.1 release. Features of the Godot game engine version 3.1 Godot comes with hundreds of built-in nodes that make game design easy Flexible scene system allows creating node compositions with support for inheritance and instancing A visual editor packed with all the tools you need Persistent live editing without loss of changes after stopping the game which also works on mobile devices Ability to create your own custom tools with ease via the tool system For more details on Godot 3.1, visit the GitHub page. How to Create 2D Navigation with the Godot Engine Unity 2018.2: Unity release for this year 2nd time in a row! Xenko 3.0 game engine is here, now free and open-source