New game releases.
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Serif have just released version 1.7 of both of their flagship applications, Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. These tools provide excellent alternatives to Adobe products such as Photoshop and Illustrator with a much lower, pay once price tag. The 1.7 update applies to all platforms, Windows, Mac and iOS.
Affinity Photo changes:
Affinity Designer changes:
Learn more in the video below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BH4rtq6L50&w=853&h=480]
GitHub have released version 2.0 of GitHub Desktop. GitHub Desktop is the open source Electron based application that makes GitHub easier to use without requiring developers to drop to the command line to create, use and modify code repositories. The 2.0 release brings three major new features: stashing, rebasing and new collaborative tools.
Details of the release from the release notes:
New – You can now choose to bring your changes with you to a new branch or stash them on the current branch when switching branches – #6107
New – Rebase your current branch onto another branch using a guided flow – #5953
New – Repositories grouped by owner, and recent repositories listed at top – #6923 #7132
New – Suggested next steps now includes suggestion to create a pull request after publishing a branch – #7505
Added – .resx syntax highlighting – #7235. Thanks @say25!
Added – “Exit” menu item now has accelerator and access key – #6507. Thanks @AndreiMaga!
Added – Help menu entry to view documentation about keyboard shortcuts – #7184
Added – “Discard all changes” action under Branch menu – #7394. Thanks @ahuth!
You can learn more about the major new features of this release on the Github blog. GitHub Desktop is an open source MIT licensed project available here. See GitHub Desktop 2 in action in the video below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7f8qJscmRE&w=853&h=480]
YoYoGames have just released the beta version of the 2.2.3 release. In addition to the usual slate of bug fixes and improvements, the marquee feature of this release is TvOS support, which is part of the mobile plan and enables you to target and support iOS based set-top boxes. They have released three documents in support of TvOS with GameMaker.
Further details from the GMS blog:
Desktop targets can now disable the file sandbox from the Game Options for each platform (Windows, macOS and Ubuntu). This permits you to save and load files from anywhere on the target system (within the limits of the OS and any antivirus or other file-permission restrictions on the local machine).
The function surface_depth_disable() has been expanded to include all target platforms. This switches off the depth buffer for surfaces, which will reduce the memory overhead. For 2D games, especially on mobile, this is very useful – although for 3D you’ll probably want to leave it enabled. For more information see the manual.
You can now create Local Asset Packages from resources in your projects. This means that you no longer need to go through the Marketplace to create YYMP files, enabling you to create your own local asset packages of scripts, objects, etc…. You can access this new feature from the Tools menu in the IDE, and the full details can be found in the manual inside the 2.2.3 IDE.
New constants have been added to GML for NaN and infinity, as well as new functions to check these values, is_NaN() and is_infinity().
Drag and Drop™ users can now add comments to their action scripts. This option is available from the Right Mouse Button menu in the active workspace.
The resource tree has new options for sprites and sounds to quickly add one or more resources to a texture page or an audio group – accessed through the Right Mouse Button menu.
A new option in General Preferences > Compiling to disable subst drives. When disabled, GameMaker Studio 2 will not create any virtual drives when compiling most platforms.
Strings now accept 4 byte wide Unicode characters, allowing you to decode and encode Unicode characters in the upper bounds of the standard (including, but not limited to, emoji). This may adversely affect some users who have been using the \u escape character (see the manual for more information).
New error reporting mechanism for submitting crash details to YoYoGames.
You can learn more about future GameMaker Studio releases in the development roadmap available here. Details on accessing the beta channel of releases is available here.
05 Jun 2019
I never played NimbleBit’s most notable game, Tiny Tower, but I do remember Tiny Death Star which by all accounts was quite neat for what it was. As a company they’ve not really been a staple here at PT, since most of their work was done prior to the site’s founding.
Now it seems NimbleBit are returning to their vertical roots with LEGO Tower, a Tiny Tower-esque game, but LEGO. I did not even know this was a thing, but apparently it was announced back in March:
LEGO Tower gives players the ability to build and operate their own LEGO Tower. Construct a wide range of apartments and businesses for your Minifigure residents to live, work and play in. Visit your friends’ towers and trade items to help them build. Collect hundreds of unique Minifigure pieces and discover hidden characters. Build your dream LEGO Tower to new heights, the sky’s the limit!
I have to thank Stately Play Reader halfvoid for not only pointing out that the game exists, but that you can now also sign up for the mobile beta.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvXCGZhn-qo?controls=0]
Simply go to this page, and you can sign up on either Android via Google Play, or iOS via Testflight. There’s also a Discord channel, if you fancy joining.
There’s no other information that I can find on release date or pricing, I imagine it’ll be free-to-play like Nimble’s other games.
Did any of you play Tiny Tower or Tiny Deathstar? How do you feel about a LEGO game based on this concept? Answers on a postcard!
Barotrauma is Now Available on Steam Early Access and is 15% off!*
Overcome crisis and the unrelenting pressure of a frozen ocean. Flee or fight alien lifeforms, explore a strange new world in Jupiter’s orbit, command your crew and craft equipment in a tense 2D experience.
*Offer ends June 12 at 10AM Pacific Time
© 2019 Valve Corporation. All rights reserved. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries.
View mobile website
© 2019 Valve Corporation. All rights reserved. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries.
View mobile website
The Xenko open source game engine ( previously covered here, here and in tutorial form when it was still called Paradox here ) just released a complete game demo called Starbreach. The demo was demonstrated at GDC 2017 and was recently updated to the current version of Xenko and has been released with full source and assets.
Details of the Starbreach demo from the Xenko blog:
Hi everyone, Silicon Studio agreed to release the Starbreach demo from GDC 2017, along with all associated assets as open source (see license), for the Xenko community to use. Code in the project is released under an MIT license, the assets are released under a attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
Starbreach was originally developed as the Xenko GDC demo for 2016 by Silicon Studio with art support from N-iX production studios. Virgile Bello (xen), Xenko’s lead developer has spent a chunk of time updating the demo and assets to work with the latest release of the Xenko.
You can find the demo and assets here: https://github.com/xenko3d/Starbreach
Check out the demo in action and learn how to get started in the video below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKypHh-tJoM&w=853&h=480]
04 Jun 2019
You know, I’ve always enjoyed Minecraft. I don’t play often, but every now and then the mood strikes me to fire up the game (albeit, on PC these days) and just jump into a world and build Forts. I like Forts – they’re very versatile and useful defensive fortifications.
In Minecraft you don’t need a cohort of Roman Legionnaires to throw up something decent in half-an-hour or so, and with the recently announced Minecraft Earth, I can spread my defensive network across the planet via the power of augmented reality. You’re welcome.
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference was last night and Mojang/Microsoft used that as a vessel for the first live gameplay demonstration of the new AR game in action. It makes sense, considering Apple were all about their new ARKit 3 toolbox, which we imagine Minecraft Earth will be relying heavily on for iOS. Apples new AR support will come with a feature called People Occlusion, which allows AR content to handle the presence of a real-person within the virtual world – this will be something unique to the Apple’s version of the game.
Here’s a video of the main presentation:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeR0_ZBFX7g?controls=0]
If you already play and enjoy Minecraft, even the mobile versions, this should be an engaging new way to experience the game. I suspect the minutia of building and destruction may be a bit clunkier with the Pokémon GO style design, but resource collection works by walking around your local environment and visiting key locations. Once you have what you need, the building engine should be as free-form as it is in the main game. What we don’t know at the moment is the specifics of how you summon your designs to the world, and where they can be placed.
Minecraft Earth is so far set to be a free-to-play experience, with a closed beta scheduled for later this summer on both iOS and Android.
