Category: Game Releases

New game releases.

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Unity Fantastic Fantasy Asset Bundle

Today on the Unity Asset Store, they are running the Fantastic Fantasy bundle, a collection of Unity assets around a common medieval/fantasy theme with a consistent low polygon art style.  The bundle is organized into tiers, purchase a higher value tier you get all of the asset in the tiers below it as well.  The bundle assets consist of:

10$ Tier

  • Simple Fantasy UI
  • Fantasy Village Pack
  • Interface and Item Sounds

20$ Tier

  • POLYGON Fantasy Characters
  • 2000 Fantasy Icons
  • Low Poly Medieval Castle Pack
  • Tower Defence Pack
  • Fantasy Game (Sound FX)

30$ Tier

  • Stylized Fantasy Forest Environment
  • POLYGON Knights Pack
  • Fantasy Adventure Environment
  • Fantastic Village Pack
  • Low Poly Animated Animals
  • Emerald AI 2.0
  • Low Poly Terrain Polaris V2

The bundle runs until the end of June 2020, purchasing the bundle using this link provides a small commission to GFS (and thanks if you do!).  You can learn more about this bundle on the Unity blog or watching the video below.

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PICO-8 Fantasy Console

PICO-8 is perhaps the most popular of the fantasy consoles and if you are extremely quick, you can pick it up as part of the Itch.io Racial Justice bundle along with a ton of other development tools and indie games.  PICO-8 is described as:

PICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs. It feels like a regular console, but runs on Windows / Mac / Linux. When you turn it on, the machine greets you with a commandline, a suite of cartridge creation tools, and an online cartridge browser called SPLORE.

It emulates a very limited virtual machine:

Display
128×128 16 colours

Cartridge Size
32k

Sound
4 channel chip blerps

Code
Lua

Sprites
256 8×8 sprites

Map
128×32 cels

Additionally PICO-8 has several built in tools including a sprite editor, sound editor, level editor and music editor, as well as tools for publishing and sharing your creations with out.  The underlying programming language is Lua and is documented here.  You can check out PICO-8 in action in the video below.

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wren Programming Language

Very similar in scope and purpose to the recently covered Gravity language, today we are looking at wren.  wren is a class based programming language that aims to bring Smalltalk like programming to a Lua sized footprint, with the intention of being embedded in application code.  Highlights of wren include:

  • Wren is small. The VM implementation is under 4,000 semicolons. You can skim the whole thing in an afternoon. It’s small, but not dense. It is readable and lovingly-commented.

  • Wren is fast. A fast single-pass compiler to tight bytecode, and a compact object representation help Wren compete with other dynamic languages.

  • Wren is class-based. There are lots of scripting languages out there, but many have unusual or non-existent object models. Wren places classes front and center.

  • Wren is concurrent. Lightweight fibers are core to the execution model and let you organize your program into an army of communicating coroutines.

  • Wren is a scripting language. Wren is intended for embedding in applications. It has no dependencies, a small standard library, and an easy-to-use C API. It compiles cleanly as C99, C++98 or anything later.

Wren is open source under the MIT license with the source available on GitHub.  You can also try out the wren language in your browser using this handy site.  You can learn more about wren in the video below.

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A new Lord of the Rings mobile game is in the works

The new mobile games announcements keep on coming. NetEase and Warner Bros. have revealed that they’re working on a new strategy title based on The Lord of the Rings. Little is known about The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War apart from the genre. The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War release date is currently unknown, too. So it may be a while before you learn anything else.

“With NetEase, we have an excellent partner for The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War bringing gamers the mobile experience in this rich universe they are looking for,” says Warner Bros. president David Haddad. “This adaptation will unlock new opportunities for players to explore the iconic settings and characters of Middle-earth while utilizing their strategic skills in battle.”

This isn’t the first time NetEase and Warner Bros have worked together. NetEase is also working on a mobile RPG game with card elements based on Harry Potter. It’s called Harry Potter: Magic Awakened, and it’s currently being tested in China. Not much on a Harry Potter: Magic Awakened release date there, either – but as it’s now in beta, we have more hope that you can play that one sooner.

If you don’t fancy waiting to get your strategy fix, though, then you can always check out our best mobile strategy games article. We also have a list of upcoming mobile games, too, so you can see some of the best games releases that are over the horizon.

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People are being arrested over selling hacks for China’s version of PUBG Mobile

Twelve people have gotten themselves into hot water with police in China over allegedly selling hacks for the Chinese version of PUBG Mobile. As translated and reported by Abacus, the group used Bitcoin to purchase the cheats from “overseas personnel” before going on to sell them to Peacekeeper Elite players. Kunshan police say the business is worth up to $15 million, which makes me question what I’m doing with my life.

The hacks themselves are relatively standard. The cheats give players the ability to see people through walls and hit as many headshots as they please through the use of an aimbot, which is particularly brutal given it’s a mobile FPS game. The punishment is currently unclear if the group is found guilty, but people have been fined for similar offences. As Abacus further points out, two men were given a one-year prison sentence and a $2,833 fine for creating Honor of Kings hacks.

If you’re unaware, Peacekeeper Elite is Tencent’s Chinese version of PUBG Mobile. Despite initially being available in China, the battle royale game was modified and re-released under a different name to satisfy China’s censorship restrictions. Peacekeeper still looks just like PUBG Mobile, from character models to general graphic texts. In this version, though, there is no blood or gore, and words like ‘kill’ are swapped to non-violent alternatives like ‘defeat’.

It appears that PUBG Mobile hacks aren’t just limited to China, however. A glance at the game’s unofficial Subreddit page reveals several complaints from players in the last few hours alone. There’s even a specific post flare designed to report accounts of cheating.

5th time today getting killed by a cheater 🤦🏽‍♂️ so annoying from PUBGMobile

We’ve reached out for more information and will update this story if we hear back. In the meantime, though, you can check out our PUBG Mobile update guide for more up-to-date information on what’s going on. We even have a guide on the best multiplayer mobile games if you fancy something different.

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Epic Games Announce Unreal Fest 2020

In a post-Covid world, Epic Games are joining the GDC conference in going online this summer.  Unlike GDC however, Unreal Fest is completely free to attend!

Details from the Unreal Website:

Coming to you from the comfort of your own home on Tuesday, July 14, Unreal Fest Online is a free one-day virtual event that brings together Unreal Fest and Unreal Academy to offer an exciting and informative program of sessions that’s open to everyone.

Unreal Engine creators can choose between five content tracks: architecture; automotive; games; film, TV & live events; and cross-industry. With a choice of sessions for each timeslot in each track, there are over 50 sessions in total, and each session includes a live Q&A.

Creators across all industries are invited to come together to hear about the latest Unreal Engine developments (including more on what’s coming in UE5), learn new techniques and skills, and watch inspirational speakers from companies like Audi, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, Rocksteady Studios, and Zero Density reveal how they use Unreal Engine in their projects.

Whether you’re a game developer, architect, engineer, designer, artist, producer, or cinematographer, if you create with Unreal Engine or are thinking about getting started, Unreal Fest Online is for you.

As mentioned earlier, GDC is also online this year with a $299 early bird all access price.  GDC will run from August 4th – August 6th.  Details of both online events is available in the video below.

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NetEase has an Eve Online-like strategy game in closed beta

It’s certainly a good time to be into mobile strategy games set in space. NetEase has joined in the fun with Infinite Lagrange, an Eve Online-like strategy game that has landed in closed beta. If you want to get involved, you’ll need to have an Android phone handy and be in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines. The test will last between two to three weeks, and once the server closes all the game data will be deleted.

Infinite Lagrange puts you at the head of a galactic fleet and lets you travel through uncharted space. You’ll use stargates to hop from area-to-area, coming across lost cities and alien fleets from friends and foes alike. You’ll start off with three to five ships, but once you construct a space port and upgrade your tech’ you’ll be able to get more. You’ll be able to design a plethora of different ships for your varying needs, from constructing frigates for cargo to forging battlecruisers to defend yourself.

It looks like there will be plenty of different fights you’ll find yourself in, too. When not picking scraps with other players, you’ll be able to join forces with many more to take on massive space cities. NetEase even goes as far as to say fights like these will involve hundreds of players.

If you’d like to get involved, follow this link to the Google Play store. Keep in mind, though, you’ll need to be in the United States, Canada, Australia, or the Philippines for it to work. I tried it and ended up on the game’s Facebook page – woe is me.

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If you’re feeling stranded as an iPhone user, you can always head over to our best iOS games list for a couple of strategy recommendations like Iron Marines or The Battle of Polytopia.

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DragonRuby Game Framework

DragonRuby is a game development framework powered by the Ruby programming language.  It is lightweight and crossplatform with an easy to learn API.  It is regularly $47USD, however it is currently included in the Bundle For Racial Justice currently running on Itch.io, along with hundreds of games for just $5.

Key features of DragonRuby include:

  • Dirt simple apis capable of creating complex 2D games.
  • Fast as hell. Powered by highly optimized C code written by Ryan C. Gordon, the creator of SDL (a library that powers every commercial game engine in the world).
  • Battle tested by Amir Rajan, a critically acclaimed indie game dev.
  • Tiny. Like really tiny. The entire engine is a few megabytes.
  • Hot loaded, realtime coding, optimized to provide constant feedback to the dev. Productive and an absolute joy to use.
  • Turn key builds for Windows, MacOS, and Linux with seamless publishing to Itch.io.
  • Cross platform: PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, XBOX One, and PS4 (mobile and console compilation requires a business entity, NDA verification, and a Professional GTK License, contact us).

You can learn more about DragonRuby in the video below.

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ZBrushCore Mini Released

Pixologic have just released a new free version of their ZBrush sculpting application, ZBrushCore Mini.  Details of the software from the homepage:

ZBrushCoreMini is all about sculpting. Start with a simple sphere or a stone block, then use a select group of the most popular digital sculpting brushes from ZBrush to add or remove material and simply… create! ZBrushCoreMini frees you to explore your imagination.

Once you are happy with your creation, it also provides an exciting new way to share your work with others, through the iMage3D format. On any website, this will simply appear as a regular 2D image. But other users of ZBrushCoreMini can open the file in full 3D!

And with 3D printers increasingly coming into their own, ZBrushCoreMini includes the ability to export your model for real-world printing.

Interestingly however, nowhere do they mention the major limitation of the Mini version, not even on the version comparison page.  From the EULA:

       2.5 ZBrushCoreMini 

ZBrushCoreMini is intended for educational purposes. It may not be used for commercial, professional and other for-profit purposes. 

This non-commercial license will greatly limit what you can use ZBrushCore Mini for and is something you should be made aware of immediately.  You can learn more about ZBrushCore Mini and see it in action in the video below.

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Blender 2.83 VR Support In Action

Blender 2.83 was released last week and one of the new features is tentative support for Virtual Reality headsets in the form of Scene Inspection:

Scene inspection refers to the ability to inspect the scene in VR, without interacting with content. Essentially this means head-mounted display (HMD) support as well as some simple settings (controllable from outside the VR view) to control the experience.

Examples of supported use cases:

  • VR as a way for directors or clients to inspect scenes and give feedback to artists.
  • Pre-visualization for artists working on VR games.
  • Samsung GearVR/Google Cardboard movie making and app development.

Blender VR support is via OpenXR, which unfortunately isn’t currently supported by HTC or Steam VR headsets.  Details about supported headsets are available here.  Check out the new Blender VR functionality in action in the video below.

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