Category: Game Releases

New game releases.

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Rider For Godot

Yesterday we talked about Rider for Unreal Engine, but did you also know that Rider can be used to develop Godot games as well?

There are a few things you are going to need to get started.  First off obviously is JetBrain’s Rider, which is available with in a 30 day free trial.  However if you are a student or are an open source contributor there are free licenses available.

Next you are going to need to download and install the Godot plugin from the JetBrains plugin repository.  Simply click the blue Get button to download the required zip file.  By the way, there is also a community contributed GDScript plugin available here, but that is not what we will be covering today.

To install the plugin simply select File->Settings, locate the Plugins option on the left, then click the Gear icon and select Install Plugin from Disk…

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Then select the just downloaded zip file.  This will now required a restart of the IDE.  You now have Godot support in Rider.

In Godot you do need to enable Mono debugging however.  This is available under Project->Project Settings, then on the left hand side locate Mono->Debugger Agent, then turn on Wait for Debugger.

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You can see the entire process in action in the video below.  If you Rider isn’t your IDE of choice, perhaps you want to check out using Visual Studio Code with Godot instead.

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You can now pre-register for Romancing Saga Reuniverse

And the winner of the most ridiculous video game title of all time goes to… Romancing Saga Reuniverse. Let’s all give it a big round of applause. It’s an upcoming brand new entry in the long-running JRPG series that rolls the clock right back to a time when pixels were cool.

It takes place in a world trapped in a cycle of destruction, with an apocalypse ending life every 300 years. This is all thanks to a group known as the Sinistrals, who As is ever the case with JRPGs, it’s your job to gather up a big party of heroic individuals and put a stop to the bad guys once and for all.

And you do that Gacha-style. This is a free-to-play RPG that features all of the usual trimmings: summoning heroes, automatic battles, and grinding for upgrade resources. It also shares a lot in common with its JRPG forebears though, with gorgeous hand-drawn character art, beautiful pixel visuals, and a bunch of roles and skills to unlock for each character.

It’s not the first entry in the series to arrive on mobile. Romancing Saga 2, 3, and Saga: Scarlet Grace, a port of the PlayStation Vita entry, are all available right now on the App Store or Google Play.

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At this point, you’ve probably got a good idea about whether or not you want to play this. If you’re in the former camp, and can’t wait to check it out, you can pre-register right now on the App Store or Google Play. According to the App Store, Romancing Saga Reuniverse will launch on mobile on June 23.

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Rider For Unreal Engine

Rider is a .NET IDE by JetBrains, currently heavily focused on Unity game developers.  Recently JetBrains launched a early preview of Rider For Unreal Engine.  Wait a minute you might say… isn’t Rider for C#, while CLion is their C++ IDE, and isn’t C++ the primary language for Unreal Engine developers.  Why yes, you are correct astute reader.  JetBrains however are focusing Rider toward game developers, which includes C++ and to a lesser degree Blueprint support, in addition to C#/.NET support that already exists in rider.

The top 5 reasons to choose Rider according to JetBrains:

1.

A Fast IDE with native C++ support

Rider is powered by ReSharper C++, which offers native and cutting-edge support for modern C++. Users are helped daily by its 250+ code inspections, 50+ context actions, solution-wide refactoring, and code generation abilities.

This is all combined with the IntelliJ Platform’s solid IDE features, such as super-fast navigation, integrated version control, and extensive plugin support. Rider provides this rich feature set without compromising speed or responsiveness.

2.

Knowledgeable about Blueprints

Rider for UE4 doesn’t just work with your C++ code. It also reads the Blueprints (BP) from your project and the Unreal Editor, along with plugins from both. This allows Rider to show the usages in BP files, as well as the values of the overridden properties. When navigating to BP objects, Rider opens them in the Unreal Editor.

3.

Assists with the reflection mechanism

UE4 reflection macros are more than just simple text! To speed up the process of game development, Rider provides code completion for reflection specifiers and shows the documentation in the Quick Documentation popup.

4.

Takes care of the UE4 code style

Rider accommodates UE4 naming conventions across all its actions, which helps keep your code easy to read. Inconsistent UE4 naming inspections detect names that don’t follow the rules and suggest a quick fix.

5.

Profound code analysis & RPC support

Rider ensures that your UE4 code is accurate with the help of specialized UE4 inspections for missing or incorrectly set UE4 reflection macros. Similarly, code navigation and generation actions are set up to deal with UE4 Remote Procedure Calls correctly.

If you want to check out Rider for Unreal Engine, the signup is available here.  You can learn more about Rider for Unreal Engine and see it in action in the video below.

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We get a first look at upcoming card battler Total War: Elysium

Creative Assembly has revealed gameplay footage for its card-battler, Total War: Elysium. The famed developer of the Total War series announced the game last year, at the same time as a partnership with NetEase, a prominent network and game services provider in China. The partnership is part of Creative Assembly’s plan to expand into the Chinese market.

Total War: Elysium is a historical deck builder, drawing famous generals and iconic figures into card-based battle. The game takes place in Elysium, a Civ-esque city drawing together the greatest military leaders from throughout history. We’ve seen some of these generals already, including Sun Ren and Cao Cao from the Three Kingdoms period, but others we haven’t seen before. One general wears what appears to be French regency dress, and another clad in furs and armour, could potentially be Boudica. All the heroes  have individual abilities to give them a unique battle advantage.

Creative Assembly also announced a closed beta test for Elysium to go alongside the new reveal, which you can sign up for on the Total War: Elysium website. We don’t currently know when the beta will take place.

However, the trailer gives us an initial look at how the card-battler might play.

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Elysium is the first Total War game made for mobile since Total War Battles: Kingdom, a free-to-play town builder and RTS strategy game. What we’ve seen so far fits with the expectations of a deck builder, but what they do with the number and variety of generals is another matter. Could this be a Total War gacha? Who knows.

But sign up for the beta, and you’ll see for yourself. If you’re looking also for other deck builders on mobile, be sure to check out our list of the best mobile card games.

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Big Music Humble Bundle

There is a new Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, this one is a collection of audio tracks and music loops.  Called the Big Music for Games, Film and Content Creators bundle, it is a collection of zip files containing WAV soundtracks for use in your game or film project.  As with all Humble Bundles this one is organized into tiers:

1$ Tier

  • Mystical Game Music Pack
  • Music Loops Mini Set
  • Scary & Mystical Music Pack

15$ Tier

  • Medieval & Adventure Game Music Loops
  • Cosmos Music Pack
  • Lyric Voices Choir Music Pack
  • Heavy Riffs Full Bundle
  • Big Casual & Arcade Game Music Bundle

25$ Tier

  • Big Action Music Bundle 1 (Action, Rock, Energy)
  • Big Action Music Bundle 2 (Powerful, Dynamic, Energetic)
  • Big Orchestra Music Collection
  • Universal Music Collection
  • Fantasy Adventure Game Music Pack
  • Epic Battle Trailers Music Pack
  • Space Adventure Music Pack

The content of this bundle are under this license which seems pretty straight forward and fair.  As with all Humble Bundles, you decide how your money is allocated, including if you wish (and thanks if you do!) to support GFS if purchased using this link.  You can learn more about the bundle in the video below.

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Get a free copy of the brilliant Door Kickers: Action Squad!

Door Kickers: Action Squad is an excellent new tactical shooter that rolls back the clock to the ’80s, when Bruce Willis was the very height of cool. You play as one of six different law enforcement officers and send them out on a wide variety of challenging missions. You can take the law into your own hands, blasting away fools with a wide variety of weapons and equipment.

You can kick doors in, throw grenades and flashbangs, and fire your weapons with great abandon. You’ll have to manage recoil, cooldowns, and ensure you have enough supplies for the challenge ahead though. Action Squad is a sequel to the original Door Kickers, which took great pride in its bevvy of tactical options. While the sequel might look sillier, it shares a lot more in common with its predecessor than you’d think.

We really liked the 2D shooter, which is evident from our Door Kickers: Action Squad review. So it’s with great delight that we can announce that we’re giving away ten codes for the shooter across iOS and Android to you, our valued readers.

To get in with a chance of winning, you simply need to complete one of the two Gleam forms below, depending on the platform that you’d like your code for.

We’ll need your full name and email address so we can contact you in a week’s time if you win. We also require that you read our full terms and conditions before you enter, listed here.

Door Kickers: action squad Android giveaway

PT – Door Kickers: Action Squad Android Giveaway

Door kickers: action squad ios giveaway

PT – Door Kickers: Action Squad iOS Giveaway

You could always just go ahead and grab Door Kickers: Action Squad right now from the App Store or Google Play.

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Unreal Engine 4.25 Released

Unreal Engine 4.25 was just released today, with tons of improvements, new features and bug fixes.  The biggest theme of the 4.25 release was production ready with several in development systems now considered ready to use in a production environment.

Major features of the 4.25 release include:

  • Niagara VFX system improved and production ready
  • Unreal Audio Engine improved and production ready
  • Real Time Raytracing Support production ready
  • Added support for Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 development
  • Hololens 2 support now production ready
  • Chaos Physics Engine improved and being used in Fortnite
  • New Thin Transparency shading model and a new Anisotropy material input property
  • LiDAR data support
  • much, much more

A summary of new features in Unreal Engine 4.25 is available here while detailed release notes are available here.  You can learn more about Unreal Engine 4.25 in the video below.

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Unreal Engine Free May 2020 Assets

Epic Games have released another round of free assets for Unreal Engine developers.  These assets are yours forever, as long as you “purchase” them before the first Tuesday of June 2020.  Interestingly this month there was no addition to the permanently free collection.

This months free content includes:

Currently the SciFi Robot pack does not appear to be showing up in the Epic Game Launcher, hopefully a problem that is rectified soon.  You can learn more about this months giveaway in the video below.

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Inkscape 1.0 Released

First launched in 2003, the open source cross platform vector graphics application Inkscape just hit the major 1.0 milestone!  Inkscape is open source with the source code available on GitLab.  Details of the release from the Inkscape news page:

After a little over three years in development, the team is excited to launch the long awaited Inkscape 1.0 into the world.

Built with the power of a team of volunteers, this open source vector editor represents the work of many hearts and hands from around the world, ensuring that Inkscape remains available free for everyone to download and enjoy.

In fact, translations for over 20 languages were updated for version 1.0, making the software more accessible to people from all over the world.

A major milestone was achieved in enabling Inkscape to use a more recent version of the software used to build the editor’s user interface (namely GTK+3). Users with HiDPI (high resolution) screens can thank teamwork that took place during the 2018 Boston Hackfest for setting the updated-GTK wheels in motion.

Smoother performance & first native macOS application

This latest version is available for Linux, Windows and macOS. All macOS users will notice that this latest version is labelled as ‘preview’, which means that additional improvements are scheduled for the next versions. Overall, 1.0 delivers a smoother, higher performance experience on Linux and Windows, and a better system integration (no more XQuartz!) on macOS.

So many new bells and whistles

One of the first things users will notice is a reorganized tool box, with a more logical order. There are many new and improved Live Path Effect (LPE) features. The new searchable LPE selection dialog now features a very polished interface, descriptions and even the possibility of marking favorite LPEs. Performance improvements are most noticeable when editing node-heavy objects, using the Objects dialog, and when grouping/ungrouping.

You may encounter some challenges downloading today.  I was unable to download the Win64 version, but the 32bit version worked fine.  Hopefully these download issues are fixed soon.  You can learn more in the video below.

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Unity Acquire Bolt From Ludiq

Today Unity Technologies purchased the rights to the visual scripting solution Bolt 1 & 2 from Ludiq.  The asset is already under the Unity name on the asset store and community and development efforts will be shift to Unity Montreal going forward.

Details from the Ludiq blog:

Ludiq is proud to announce that its flagship visual scripting solution Bolt has been acquired by Unity Technologies. This acquisition will empower Unity developers worldwide with a production-ready visual authoring tool that helps artists, designers and programmers collaborate on their game or application. Thanks to Unity’s involvement, Bolt will benefit from a wealth of resources and experience in middleware development, while its users can continue to rely on the same level of quality support and trusted new releases they had come to expect.

As the lead developer of Bolt to this day, I am thrilled about the potential of putting this tool in the hands of more creators and allowing them to concretize their ideas in a visual way. Bolt started as a solo endeavor nearly four years ago, and over time, our team and community grew to welcome thousands of visual thinkers. Today, passing the torch to Unity means Bolt will enter an exciting new phase of its life. While letting go of a project you love is never easy, I have met the amazing people at Unity who will carry it forward and I am confident that Bolt is in the best of hands.

We are working closely with Unity Montreal to ensure a seamless transition. Support for Bolt 1 will continue uninterrupted and development of Bolt 2 is progressing on track. We want to make sure there are no sudden or unexpected changes for existing users. In the meantime, we want to address any question or concern you may have.

It is important to realize that Unity have just acquired Bolt, not the entire company for other technologies such as Peek.  There are more details of the acquisition over on the Unity forums.  With Bolt 2 currently in development and offered as a free upgrade by Ludiq, people are obviously concerned if this is still the case, rest assured it is.

Ludiq pledged to make Bolt 2 free for users of Bolt. Will Unity honor this pledge?

Yes. Bolt 2 will be free for current Bolt users as well as those who purchase Bolt on the Asset Store before 11:59:59 pm PST on May 31, 2020. Bolt users will receive an individual license for Bolt 2 when it becomes available.

You can learn more about the acquisition in the video below.

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