Tech News - Game Development

Yesterday, the Khronos Group announced that its Vulkan API (modern cross-platform graphics and compute API) has become the world’s first graphics API to include a formal memory model (Vulkan Memory model) for its associated GLSL™ and SPIR-V™ programming languages. This announcement has a number of components that come together to significantly boost the robustness of the Vulkan standard for programming correctness and sophisticated compiler optimizations. The Vulkan memory model Vulkan’s memory model is based on the C++ memory model. However, it adds valuable functionality such as scopes, storage classes, and memory availability and visibility operations. These capabilities can be exploited to reduce the cost of synchronization and thus increase performance. Scopes allow synchronization to be limited to threads in close proximity to each other. Storage classes allow synchronization to be limited to specific types of memory. Availability and visibility operations give control over when and how cache maintenance operations are performed in systems with noncoherent cache hierarchies. Additional memory model materials The Khronos Group has lined up additional memory model materials in provisional form to enable feedback from the C++ community, academics, compiler engineers and software developers throughout the industry with experience in multi-threaded communication and memory usage. The additional memory model materials include: A provisional Vulkan Memory Model Specification: This specification includes extensions for Vulkan, SPIR-V, and GLSL that gives Vulkan developers additional control over how their shaders synchronize access to memory in a parallel execution environment. Memory model extension conformance tests to help shader compilers ensure that they implement the specified memory model synchronization functionality correctly. A formal description of the Vulkan memory model using Alloy, which is a language developed by MIT for describing logical structures and a tool for exploring them. This is the first instance where Khronos has used an Alloy model for its specifications. This is because, Alloy precisely documents the interactions of memory operations between multiple threads and devices, and enables formal modeling and experimentation. To know more about the Vulkan Memory model in detail, visit its GitHub page. macOS gets RPCS3 and Dolphin using Gfx-portability, the Vulkan portability implementation for non-Rust apps AMD open sources V-EZ, the Vulkan wrapper library Think Silicon open sources GLOVE: An OpenGL ES over Vulkan middleware

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

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

Yesterday, Unity Technologies won its first Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for excellence in engineering creativity. Unity has won this award for their collaboration with Disney Television Animation on the broadcast-quality shorts Baymax Dreams. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), a service organization for advancement in arts and sciences of television, have acknowledged the efforts taken by Unity in Baymax Dreams. Earlier this month Unity also won an Emmy for 3D Engine Software for the Production of Animation. Baymax Dreams series is based on the story of a 14-year old tech genius Hiro and his robot, named, Baymax. The characterization and the visual effects are mesmerizing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpuUnNLZf5k Different Unity teams from animation, films, Virtual Reality (VR), and gaming, united for this creative project. They designed the entire workflow and matched it as per the story and the vision of the director. Graphics Engineer, John Parsaie used Unity’s High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) to create materials like Baymax’s emissive ‘night light’. He also worked with the Unity artist, Keijiro Takahashi on the voxelization effect. This effect can be seen, when Baymax first enters his dream state. The characters and artwork were built and reviewed in VR. This, of course, helped in increasing clarity and imagining the visuals better. This also enabled experimenting with different styles and formats. The team at Unity made use of multiple methods, including, Unity’s multi-track sequencer, Timeline and Cinemachine’s suite of smart cameras and Post-Processing Stack v2. These were used for layout, lighting, and compositing. To read more about this news, check out the official blog post by Unity. The Technology and Engineering Emmy® Awards in partnership with the NAB show (National Association of Broadcasters) will be held in Las Vegas on Sunday, April 7, 2019. Exploring shaders and materials in Unity 2018.x to develop scalable mobile games Building your own Basic Behavior tree in Unity [Tutorial] Getting started with ML agents in Unity [Tutorial]

Google plans to unveil a new gaming-related announcement on March 19th at the Game Developers Conference. This could possibly be based on their Project Stream announced last year. Google teased this announcement to members of the press with a GIF that shows light at the end of a tunnel followed by the date March 19th and at the end are the words "Gather around". There is no concrete information available about this but it is speculated that it’ll be a subscription based game streaming service using Project stream. Unveiling this service at the GDC would make a lot of sense as the conference will attract a lot of gamers. A Hacker news user suggests: “Project Stream will probably allow those on Linux, macOS, and especially ChromeOS to play most games, including recent ones. Which may let people switch platform more easily and/or avoid dual-booting.” Source: Engadget Another user thinks that the subscription service would need a partnership with gaming companies: “If it is Project Stream, Google better announce some serious partnerships alongside the service. Their best bet would probably be to outright buy a major publisher,” Google is not alone or first, in this space, Microsoft also has a game streaming service called xCloud. Amazon is also building a game streaming service. The idea is to handle the graphics-heavy computation at the server end and the users will be able to ‘stream’ the game without the need for high-end hardware. Microsoft is planning to bring Xbox Live gaming to Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, and more Amazon is reportedly building a video game streaming service, says Information Now you can play Assassin’s Creed in Chrome thanks to Google’s new game streaming service

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

Once again, we've teamed up with the guys at Humble Bundle to bring game developers - professional, hobbyists, or complete newbies - a huge stash of game development eBooks. In total you can buy $1467 worth of content for just $15! Click here to visit Humble Bundle now. Featuring eBooks and videos on some of the most popular tools in game design and development, we're sure that this is one of our best Bundles yet. From Unity to Blender, we've got useful resources on the software that matters. And with further content on AI and VR, you can also be sure you'll have what you need to learn the trends that are helping to define and drive the industry in 2018. As well as lots of content at incredible prices, you'll also be able to support some incredible organizations. As always, Humble Bundle makes it possible for you to donate a portion of the money you pay to charity. This month its the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who have been doing some exceptional work campaigning for a free and open internet. What you can get in this month's Humble Bundle For just $1 you can bag yourself... Creating a Game with Blender Game Engine [Video] Mastering SFML Game Development Game Physics Cookbook Basics of Coding with Unreal Engine 4 [Video] Beginning C++ Game Programming Three Months of Mapt Pro for $30 Or, you can pay at least $8 to get all that above and... Practical Game AI Programming Modern OpenGL C++ 3D Game Tutorial Series & 3D Rendering [Video] Mastering Unreal Engine 4.x Game Development [Video] Virtual Reality Blueprints Building a Character using Blender 3D [Video] Unity 2017 Mobile Game Development Unity 2017 Game Optimization (Second Edition) Practical Game Design Learning C# 7 By Developing Games with Unity 2017 (Third Edition) Or, you can pay at least $15 to get all of the content above and... Vulkan Cookbook Godot Engine Game Development Projects Swift 3 Game Development (Second Edition) Mastering Unity 2017 Game Development with C# (Second Edition) Getting Started with Unity 2018 (Third Edition) Unity 2017 Game AI Programming (Third Edition) Unity 2017 2D Game Development Projects Unity Virtual Reality Projects (Second Edition) Learning C++ by Creating Games with Unreal Engine 4 [Video] Game Development Patterns and Best Practices Learning C# by Developing Games with Unity    

Last week, the Molly Rocket team released a high-speed hash function called Meow hash. It is named after the character Meow in the game Meow the Infinite. Meow the Infinite is a fun little game in which a cat runs infinitely and tries to save its life from dogs and other obstacles. The new hash function will be used in the asset pipeline of 1935, a historical fiction game about the criminal underworld of New York City in the 1930s. Why Meow Hash is developed? Building game packages demand a faster, non-cryptographic hash for use in change detection and deduplication. Earlier, the Molly Rocket team relied on SHA-1, which was unnecessarily slowing things down. Also, they did not find a well-optimized, large-data hash function to address their game development needs. Currently, most of the hash work seems to focus on small input sizes or on cryptographic quality. Instead of focusing on the cryptographic quality, this hash function focuses on speed, large datasets, and is collision-free in practice. How fast and robust it is? Meow hash hashes 16 bytes per cycle single-threaded. It hashes at a rate of 64 gigabytes per second on a 4.2 GHz machine in the cache. Out of cache, it can hash at whatever speed your main memory bus can provide to a single core since that is usually the limiting factor on modern x64 CPUs. But actually, hashing 16 bytes per cycle is the lower bound for Meow hash. In future, once the VAES debuts, it would be able to hash 64 bytes every cycle in the cache for a clean 4x speedup. Talking about its robustness, it is extremely robust for its designed purpose. It was able to pass every test in smhasher without any collisions on their large datasets. It produces a full 512 bits of usable hash every time. It also passed smhasher cleanly at every truncation level down to 32 bits, so you can safely truncate a Meow hash value to the size you want to store. Also, one thing to note here is it is not designed for cryptography, so it is completely insecure. You can read more about Meow hash on the official website of Molly Rocket. Also, check out its GitHub repository. HashiCorp announces Consul 1.2 to ease Service segmentation with the Connect feature Django 2.1.2 fixes major security flaw that reveals password hash to “view only” admin users Say hello to Sequoia: a new Rust based OpenPGP library to secure your apps

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

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.

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