Category: Game Releases

New game releases.

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Humble Be A Creative Superhero Bundle on Now

There is a new Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, specifically the artists among us, in the form of the Be A Creative Superhero Bundle. The primary stars of this bundle are the suite of Corel graphics applications, specifically Painter 2020, Particle Shop and PaintShop, as well as Corel Draw Suite, which unfortunately is only a 6-month subscription. As with all Humble Bundles, this one is organized into tiers, and the tiers in this bundle are:

1$ Tier

  • AfterShot Standard

25$ Tier

  • PaintShop Pro 2020
  • ParticleShop + 11 Brushes
  • 6 extensions for PaintShop Pro

30$ Tier

  • Corel CAD 2019
  • Painter 2020
  • CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2020 6-month sub
  • 10 Brush packs
  • Light Leak Scripts for PaintShop Pro 2020

It should be noted earlier versions of Painter have been featured in prior bundles, but never 2020. PaintShop 2020 was also featured in a prior bundle so be sure to check your Humble inventory before purchasing. As with all Humbles you get to decide how your money is allocated between Humble, charity, the publisher and if you so choose (and thanks so much if you do) to support GFS by using this link. You can learn more about this bundle in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWjnAEg7LZs?feature=oembed&w=1500&h=844]
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Pokémon Sword and Shield the Crown Tundra gets an October release date

September 29, 2020: an Ash hat Pikachu code was given out during the stream, find it below!

A live stream held by The Pokémon Company has revealed The Crown Tundra expansion is coming to Pokémon Sword and Shield on October 23. You can also grab a pack including either Pokémon Sword or Shield and both expansions on November 6, this pack is perfect for new fans looking to get the full experience.

The Crown Tundra is the second area unlocked by the expansion pass, with The Isle of Armor being the first. From the trailer, we can see these areas are significantly different geographically, with The Isle of Armor set on a tropical island and The Crown Tundra set near an icy mountain peak. This should lead to some interesting ice-type Pokémon encounters.

This expansion will bring back over 100 Pokémon from previous generations, including Absol, Relicanth, Swablu, and the legendary Regi trio, who have now expanded into a quintet with the additions of the electric-type Regieleki, and the dragon-type Regidrago. Exciting new Galarian forms of the legendary birds, Moltres, Zapdos, and Articuno, will be available to find and catch, along with a brand new legendary, the psychic/grass-type Calyrex.

You can view the stream live right here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayIZaCMKpYE?modestbranding=1&rel=0&feature=oembed]

hat Pikachu codes

A series of eight hat-wearing Pikachu was announced during the Crown Tundra live stream. These codes can be redeemed in Pokémon Sword or Shield. Only one code has been revealed as of yet, but this section will be updated when any further codes are revealed!

  • Ash hat Pikachu – P1KACHUGET

Newly discovered Pokemon

Brand new Pokémon are coming to the Crown Tundra. During the expansion live stream, the poison/psychic type Galarian Slowking and steel type Gigantamax Melmetal were shown off.

What we know about the Crown Tundra

Much like The Isle of Armor expansion, The Crown Tundra will add an assortment of fresh cosmetic items, such as new winter-themed outfits, and all-new League Card designs to help your character stand out from the crowd.

The first brand new game mode is Dynamax Adventures, a co-op mode where players can explore Pokémon dens. In this mode, you will link up with three other players to search Pokémon dens, and compete in Max Raid battles, which will play out similarly to the base games. The major perk in completing a Dynamax Adventure is the opportunity to catch returning Legendary Pokemon, including Mewtwo, Giratina, Lugia, Ho-Oh, and much more.

The second new mode is The Galarian Star Tournament. You unlock this mode while progressing through The Crown Tundra’s story. In this tournament, you will compete in 2v2 battles against the Galar gym leaders, your rivals, and the Galar champion Leon.

Rumours are currently swirling around the potential release of a Pokémon Diamond and Pearl remaster, but for now The Crown Tundra will have to tide restless fans over till we can get the facts on any future releases.

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Cascadeur 2020.2B Released

The currently free animation tool Cascadeur (previously covered in more detail here) for Windows and Linux, just released a new beta update, Cascadeur 2020.2.

Key new features of the 2020.2b release include:

  • Quick Rigging tool for humanoid models – you can now create a simple humanoid rig much faster and with less hassle
  • Simplified Ballistics edit menu and new Ballistic ghosts options – you can now see ghosts of all the ballistic trajectories or only the selected one, but the ballistics in your old scenes will need to be created again
  • Improved Interval Edit mode – now with Linear and Bezier options 
  • Notification of a new version inside the program – as soon as the new version of Cascadeur becomes available, you will see the announcement directly in the program
  • Several minor bug fixes and improvements

You can learn more about this new release, including seeing the new Quick Rigging tools in action, in the video below. For more details on creating animations in Cascadeur, be sure to check out this earlier video.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhqpYvXi428?feature=oembed&w=1500&h=844]
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Miniaudio — Open Source Single File C Audio Library

Miniaudio is a cross platform open source C library for implementing low level audio functionality including playback and capture. MiniAudio is released under either public domain or MIT No Attribution licenses and amazingly enough is implemented as a single .H file with no external dependencies (except optionally stb_orbis if Ogg Vorbis format support is desired).

Miniaudio features include:

  • Your choice of either public domain or MIT No Attribution.
  • Entirely contained within a single file for easy integration into your source tree.
  • No external dependencies except for the C standard library and backend libraries.
  • Written in C and compilable as C++, enabling miniaudio to work on almost all compilers.
  • Supports all major desktop and mobile platforms, with multiple backends for maximum compatibility.
  • Supports playback, capture, full-duplex and loopback (WASAPI only).
  • Device enumeration for connecting to specific devices, not just defaults.
  • Connect to multiple devices at once.
  • Shared and exclusive mode on supported backends.
  • Backend-specific configuration options.
  • Device capability querying.
  • Automatic data conversion between your application and the internal device.
  • Sample format conversion with optional dithering.
  • Channel conversion and channel mapping.
  • Resampling with support for multiple algorithms.
    • Simple linear resampling with anti-aliasing.
    • Optional Speex resampling (must opt-in).
  • Filters.
    • Biquad
    • Low-pass (first, second and high order)
    • High-pass (first, second and high order)
    • Second order band-pass
    • Second order notch
    • Second order peaking
    • Second order low shelf
    • Second order high shelf
  • Waveform generation.
    • Sine
    • Square
    • Triangle
    • Sawtooth
  • Noise generation.
    • White
    • Pink
    • Brownian
  • Decoding
    • WAV
    • FLAC
    • MP3
    • Vorbis via stb_vorbis (not built in – must be included separately).
  • Encoding
  • Lock free ring buffer (single producer, single consumer).

Miniaudio is available on GitHub and has solid documentation available here and several examples available here. Installation consists of downloading and #include’ing the header and that is it, making this a remarkably simple library to get started using. There are also unofficial language bindings for Go, Rust and Python available as well. You can learn more about the Miniaudio library in the video below (or view here on Odysee).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIye2LeLLUc?feature=oembed&w=1500&h=844]
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MagicaVoxel 0.99.6.2 Released

The popular free Voxel application MagicaVoxel just got a new release, 0.99.6.2. This release isn’t just significant for adding a large number of features added, but also because it may be the last release we see for quite some time.

A tweet sequence from @ephtracy, MagicaVoxel’s creator:

Now back to the release, details from the release notes:

New Unified Material System[06/30/2020]

  • Blend Material: weighted blending Metal/Plastic/Glass/Cloud materials (similar to Disney Principled BRDF).
  • SSS Material: sub-surface scattering. transparency tp control light transmission. density to control light scattering.
  • Aborb/Scatter/Emissive Media Material: emissive cloud. can be contained in the glass with ior > 1.
  • Improved Alpha Blending: glass material, absorb media type, density = 0, ior = 0, transparency > 0

New Transform and Voxel Shader Brushes[09/26/2020]

  • Refactored the brush menu and add icons.
  • Voxel Shader Brush to use Voxel Shaders interactively and directly.
  • Transform->Scale Brush : live scale models, point sampled, low quality but fast.
  • Transform->Wrap Brush : live wrap/crop models with mirroring and spacing modes.
  • Geometry Mode->Line/Square/Circle: the old center mode is combined with the old line mode
  • World Editor->Pattern and Wrap Brush: can create patterns from selected object (check the pattern model menu on the right panel).

Rotate Transform Brush [09/26/2020]

  • Axis rotate : press any inner circle.
  • Screen rotate : press the outer circle.
  • Sphere rotate : press any point inside the outer circle.
  • Snap rotate : press SHIFT or SHIFT+ALT to snap angle to multiple of 5 or 15.

Voxel Shader[09/13/2020]

  • no need to define id for arguments.
  • use var to define alias of arguments. same as float var = i_args[id];.
  • can import and export arguments values.
  • can display compile errors in the console window.
  • can get color selections via: color_sel().
  • can get palette color via: palette().
  • increase number of arguments to 16.
  • add interation number to the interface.

Editing[09/26/2020]

  • Boolean operations for groups and objects.
  • Modify->Mask/Texture: mask and texture models with pattern models.
  • Sort: only sorts selected colors if number of selection is greater than one.
  • command log: display count of models, scene size, count of voxels for each color, etc.
  • command shear [axis] [scale] [scale] shear model, e.g. shear z 0.2 0.2 .

Camera Control Panel[09/26/2020]

  • click the arrow on the bottom bar to show the camera control panel.
  • can change camera global/local position, pitch/yaw/roll angles, save/load camera slots, etc.
  • press SHIFT to change values in smaller steps.
  • the nine values can also be modified by cmds cam x/y/z tx/ty/tz rx/ry/rz

Pattern Pack[09/26/2020]

  • can load all the models in a project as a pattern pack.
  • can create pattern pack from multiple selected objects.
  • use left/right mouse button to rotate the preview model; use mouse wheel to zoom in/out.
  • use 1/2 to select previous/next color in the palette.
  • use 3/4
  • use ctrl+alt to switch to pattern tool.
  • use ctrl to switch to free move tool.
  • use ESC to switch between pattern/move brush and select brush in the world editor.

You can learn more about the release in the video below. Hopefully this doesn’t mark the final release and after a long well earned pause, MagicaVoxel development will resume!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4hpQGpNFJM?feature=oembed&w=1500&h=844]
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LEd — Awesome New Level Editor From Dead Cells Creator

LEd is a new open source level editor written in the Haxe language by a developer at Motion Twin, using lessons learned creating games such as Dead Cells. LEd is designed to be user friendly and from my experiences it succeeds.

Key details of LEd:

  • Easy to use: modern UI with a strong focus on ease-of-use and quality-of-life features.
  • Universal and agnostic: compatible with all languages (not only Haxe) and game frameworks in the world
  • JSON: easy to parse file format for any game-engine out there (I promise it’s actually really easy). Haxe isn’t required.
  • Customizable layers: Integer grid layers, Tile layers and Entity layers support
  • Auto-layers: paint your collision map and see the grass, textures and all the small details being drawn automatically!
  • Entities: fully customizable Entity with custom properties (ex: you can have a “Mob” entity, with a “hitPoints” field, which is an Integer limited to [0,10] bounds).
  • Enums: you can define an enumeration (ex: an “ItemType” enum with “Money”, “Ammo”, “Gun” values) and use this enum in your entity custom fields.
  • External enums: enums can be imported and synced directly from Haxe source code files (HX file)!
  • HTML5: LEd is built around modern web standards.
  • Auto update: you get notified as soon as a stable update is released and it’s up to you to install it when you’re ready, with a single click.
  • LEd loves Haxe: a powerful Haxe API which gives you access to fully typed values from your levels. It avoids mistakes like mistyping, renaming or removals: you see errors during compilation, not at runtime.

You can see LEd in action in the video below. The project is open source under the MIT license and hosted on GitHub.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYBWGt8wbsU?feature=oembed&w=1500&h=844]
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The first look at Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity gameplay

Nintendo recently announced Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the Dynasty Warriors-style prequel to The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The game is set 100 years prior to the events of Breath of the Wild and allows players to engage in combat that took place during the battle of Hyrule before the great calamity. You can expect some fast-paced action as you cut through vast waves of enemies and in-depth storytelling fans have come to expect from Zelda titles.

Many fan favourite characters are playable in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, such as Link, Zelda, the four champions introduced initially in Breath of the Wild, and the freshly announced young Impa! Nintendo has confirmed the Amiibo set of the four champions will be re-released in time for the release of the new title.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity releases November 20 for Nintendo Switch, and is available to pre-order at $59.99 / £49.99. The pre-order will include a Lucky Ladle as an in-game bonus for Link to use in battle. While you wait for the release, find something to play with help from our list of the best mobile RPGs.

Check out the full Koei Tecmo Tokyo Game Show stream here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AekjTmJNhFs?modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=4459&feature=oembed]
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Epic Games Have Acquired Super Awesome

Epic Games have just announced the acquisition of Super Awesome, a company dedicated to the protection of children online. Super Awesome make a number of products for creators, game developers and advertisers to be able to collect information on children in a manner that is compliant with major laws such as COPPA and GDPR.

Details of the acquisition from the Super Awesome announcement:

That question was the start of a discussion which began many months ago at a (pre-lockdown) dinner in Cary, North Carolina. It concludes today as I’m delighted to announce that we have agreed to be acquired by Epic Games, joining their family while continuing our mission as SuperAwesome (see the announcement here).

Tim Sweeney and his team understand the importance of responsibly engaging with kids and parents. They’re also incredibly serious about privacy. It’s a set of values that instantly became apparent when Tim and I began discussing a partnership. 

Joining Epic Games means many things. It means continued (and indeed greater) support for our customers: developers, content-owners and brands who want to do more for kids. It means continued investment in kidtech solutions to help the overall ecosystem. Ultimately (and crucially), it’s a step-change in making the internet safer for kids. We have always been proud of our mission. We’re even prouder to do it with a principles-driven company like Epic Games.

You can learn more about the acquisition and Super Awesome’s products in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sy0Qm4hV0o?feature=oembed&w=1500&h=844]
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Zaphreal and Lucretia are the newest characters to join the AFK Arena roster

The popular idle RPG, AFK Arena, has just announced two brand new characters are coming, Zaphreal and Lucretia. The pair are a married couple with a tragic backstory that you can check out by watching a couple of upcoming animated shorts, with the series titled Tales of Esperia.

The first short is Memory of Lucretia, which provides a brief history of the characters and shows the moment that the pair were torn apart. The second is titled, Desperation, and will bring even more depth to the lore of AFK Arena and the characters it is based around. Zaphreal and Lucretia are available from September 29, and players can redeem one of them for free until October 26.

Choose wisely, as players that choose Zaphreal, of the Celestials faction, will harness his lightning attacks that deal massive damage. those of you that choose Lucretia, with the Hypogeans, will go for a character with a physical combat-style that features curved attacks that cut her foes to shreds. AFK Arena is available for free from Google Play and the App Store. While waiting for Zaphreal and Lucretia to release, check out our AFK Arena codes and AFK Arena tier list.

Check out the Memory of Lucretia short below:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NV0mWrbwmk?modestbranding=1&rel=0&feature=oembed]

The Desperation short can be seen here:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lQYHZ-YqiQ?modestbranding=1&rel=0&feature=oembed]
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Unreal Engine 4.26 Preview 1 Released

Epic Games have just released the first Preview version of Unreal Engine 4.26. UE4 preview 1 releases are extremely important as they highlight the new features that you can expect in the final 4.26 release, as well as adding several new experimental features. Unreal 4.26 is no exception, with the biggest new feature being the fact the Chaos Physics and Destruction engine is now enabled out of the box replacing the existing PhysX physics, although the new experimental water system taken from Fortnite is a close second.

Details of the release from the Unreal Engine blog:

Experience the latest features coming to Unreal Engine with Unreal Engine 4.26 Preview 1—available now. 

Test drive the production-ready Chaos Physics and Destruction System—the now default physics system—and take the new experimental Chaos Vehicle system for a spin. Virtual production pipelines also receive a boost with added movie render queue controls, Sequencer updates, and DMX improvements. If that’s not enough, check out the brand-new water system, the Chaos Ragdoll system (beta), production-ready hair and fur, and more!

You can learn more details about the release on the Unreal Engine forums. While Chaos is now enabled out of the box, it isn’t immediately obvious how to get started using Chaos Physics and Destruction. Therefore in the video below, in addition to covering what is new in the 4.26 release, we also have a getting started with Chaos tutorial to get you up and going quickly.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSe7prXzP2w?feature=oembed&w=1500&h=844]