Author: sick skills

A game maker and modder who operates under the name “Skelux” is in the middle of a quest to find and preserve “ancient relics”: the many Flash games Nintendo once made and hosted on its website.

As Motherboard aptly points out, it’s an important effort to recover some of what is being lost amid the slow death of Flash.

Game devs who never saw these games, which were published as ads and companion pieces for everything from Metroid Prime to Odama, can get a quick overview of the project by watching Skelux’s video on the project. 

You can also browse a list of games Skelux has recently created which both links to playable versions of games that have been rebuilt (often, evidently, by canny use of the Waybck Machine) and lists the pieces of games he’s still missing.

Early last month, he put out a call for help that includes promise of a cash bounty ($50 for a complete game) for assistance in finding Flash games which were used to promote Nintendo games and are now offline.

Today Blizzard Entertainment announced that it will be making its real-time strategy game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty freely available to download and play on November 14th 

This has the potential to rejuvenate the StarCraft II community, especially those who still play the game’s multiplayer component, as anyone who downloads Wings of Liberty as a free game will have full access to up-to-date versions of StarCraft II ranked multiplayer and its co-op mode.

It may also help juice sales for Blizzard, since StarCraft II spans three core installments (Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm, and Legacy of the Void) and last year’s Nova Covert Ops mission packs. While Wings of Liberty will go free on the 14th, players will still have to pay to access the other installments. 

However, people who already own Wings of Liberty will be able to download Heart of the Swarm for free for a limited time (between November 8th and December 8th, specifically), and all StarCraft II owners will get a smattering of cosmetic DLC come the 14th.

StarCraft II will be joining its predecessor amid the ranks of games Blizzard offers for free, including the F2P digital card game Hearthstone, which has proven incredibly successful since its debut in 2014.

Game development is not an easy road. Rates of burnout, anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns are high.

That’s why, at GDC 2017, psychiatric care professional Dr. Jennifer Hazel and Framed game dev Joshua Boggs  explored the issue and offered some tips on how to remain well while working in games.

It was a good talk that spoke to the specific traps that the games industry can lure people into, such as crunch, competition and social isolation. The pair talked about how making a game can make you feel terrible, and shared techniques you can use that may help you come out of it afterwards a better person.

Plus, they provided evidence-based, clinically relevant tips about how to be mindful of your own mental health and what you can do if things get tough. If you missed it at GDC this year, don’t miss your chance to now watch their talk for free on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Woodland Hills, California

Infinity Ward is currently seeking a Senior AI Engineer in the Woodland Hills, CA area.  The ideal candidate will have five or more years of experience in a similar role.  This is an opportunity to work on cutting edge AI in the world’s premiere FPS franchise.  We’re looking for someone who comes to the table with new ideas, but has the pragmatism required to ship a video game.

Responsibilities:

• Work with the AI engineering team to craft best-in-class AI technology for our next AAA title
• Work closely with the design and content teams to bring new AI characters and behaviors to life
• Contribute ideas for new AI architectures and technologies
• Design, plan, and implement performant and optimized AI systems

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in games, military simulation, or real-time AI
• 1+ shipped titles working as an AI Engineer
• Have architected (or significantly extended) an AI decision framework
• Strong design sensibilities and outstanding communication skills
• Excellent debugging and performance analysis skills
• A love for competitive FPS play
• Strong 3D math and algebra skills as they relate to game programming
• Strong knowledge of C++ programming and practices

Pluses:

• Use of analytics to guide behavior
• Networking
• Single-player AI systems
• Working in and extending an established code base
• Experience with animation technology – blend trees, IK, motion matching
• Experience with C#
• Previous experience with scripting languages such as Lua, Python

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

Here’s a fun challenge: How do you convey unique character traits and quirks in a game primarily played from a first-person perspective?

That’s exactly what Blizzard had to figure out while designing its character-packed multiplayer shooter Overwatch. At GDC 2017’s Animation Bootcamp, Blizzard’s own Matthew Boehm took the stage to explain how the Overwatch team ulled it off — and what other devs can learn from the experience.

It was a fun talk that dug into the artistic and technical challenges of expressing personality in first-person animation while staying true to the designer’s intent for gameplay. How would a gunslinger like Overwatch‘s McCree reload a revolver, for example — and how can you do it in 45 frames?

Boehm’s talk was interesting to developers of all stripes, and if you missed it the first time around you can now watch entirely for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas

Alongside the announcement of a new World of Warcraft expansion at Blizzcon today, Blizzard Entertainment revealed that it will be launching its own classic World of Warcraft server at some point in the future.

A ‘vanilla’ version of World of Warcraft is something that longtime players of the game have been requesting for years. A classic server would offer those players a way to experience the game as it was in 2004, before expansions and updates permanently altered both the landscape and content of the game itself.

There have been numerous fan attempts to create such a server in the past, many of which have been met with threats of legal action from Blizzard since such running such a project requires, among other things, unauthorized use of Blizzard’s IP and reverse-engineered source code.

One of the more infamous attempts at doing so was the private vanilla server Nostalrius, which shut down in 2016 after Blizzard threatened to take them to court over copyright infringement. At the time, Nostalrius representatives said that over 150,000 actively played on the unofficial classic server.

The latest effort to do so was the fan-project Elysium (which was born out of that shuttered Nostalrius fan server), but that project itself shut down in mid-October following its own internal management complications.

Other online games like RuneScape have already taken to maintaining an official classic server for nostalgic fans. In that case, RuneScape developer Jagex says that maintaining both classic and modern versions of the game is something that helps it meet the desires of its community.

Blizzard has not announced when the server will go live, saying only that it is currently in development.