Category: Game Releases

New game releases.

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Ogre 2.1 Baldur Released

The long running open source C++ framework Ogre just released Ogre 2.1 Baldur.  Performance optimizations, a new compositor and shading system and more top the list of features.

Highlight features from the release announcement:

  • Hlms (High Level Material System) to generate shaders automatically. Replaces RTSS and manual shaders
  • PBS – Physically Based Shading
  • New Compositor. More flexible, faster and powerful
  • Refactored Ogre 1.x to increase performance by several factors; using cache friendly techniques (Data Oriented Design), SIMD instructions, AZDO (Approaching Zero Driver Overhead), auto instancing, and multithreading
  • Windows Vista/7/8/10 support, macOS via Metal and OpenGL, iOS via Metal, Linux via OpenGL
  • Many new features: Area lights, Parallax Corrected Cubemaps, Forward Clustered lights, HDR, Exponential Shadowmaps and more

Ogre is open source under the MIT license and available here on GitHub.  Learn more about Ogre and the 2.1 release in the video below.

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Godot Reels Released – Corona and Xenko Renamed

There have been several minor stories in the world of game development. Too small to be covered on their own, but significant enough to be covered in this summary.

This week’s game development announcements include:

Xenko Game Engine Now Called Stride

The Xenko open source game engine has just been renamed to Stride. This was due to Trademark issues with previous Xenko owners Silicon Studios. In addition to the Stride rename, we have been told to expect Xenko… er, Stride 4.0 shortly. You can learn more about Xenko/Stride here.

Corona Game Engine Now Called Solar2D

Another open source game engine, Corona from Corona Labs, has just been renamed to Solar2D. This name change is for obvious and unfortunate reasons. Additionally, they announced progress on their migration to a completely open source project. Learn more about the open sourcing of Corona/Solar2D here.

Godot Sizzle Reels Released

Godot have just released their showreel for 2020. In fact they just released 2, one for Desktop/Console and one for Mobile. Compiled from over 200 submissions, they highlight games in development using the Godot game engine.

GFS Discord Launched

Upon hitting 100K subscribers, we just launched the GameFromScratch official discord, and we have already got a community of 2K+ like minded game developers. Come join in the fun with this invite link. We have cake.

Learn more about all these stories in the video below. Also let me know what you think of this compilation format for minor game development news?

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Beef Programming Language

Beef is an in development programming language designed specifically for games and similar performance critical applications.  This comment from Hacker News best sums up the intentions of the BEEF language:

Author here. I’m the engineering co-founder of PopCap Games. I left PopCap after the EA acquisition, and I’ve been working on this project mostly full-time for the last five years.

Before Beef, I was developing game code in C# and engine code in C++ and I felt C# was just much more pleasant to work with – faster compile times, better IDE tooling, better errors, etc. Then it struck me that none of the things I liked about C# really had anything to do with the JIT or the GC, and it may be possible to create a “best of” merging between C# and C++.

I know there are other “C replacement” contenders out there – the differences are probably best explained through Beef’s specific design goals listed at https://www.beeflang.org/docs/foreward/

Beef consists of a complete compiler tool chain built on an LLVM backend, as well as a full IDE with modern features such as refactoring and code completion as well as a complete debugger and profiler.  It is available as a small (>100MB) download for Windows, or can be built from sources on Mac and Linux environments.

The Beef homepage is available here.

The Beef documentation is available here.

The move recent versions release notes are available here.

You can learn more about the Beef language and see the IDE in action in the video below.

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KartRider Rush+ hit three million pre-registrations in just one week

Nexon’s upcoming multiplayer kart racer, KartRider Rush+, has hit three million pre-registrations in a single week, which is quite astounding really. The pre-registration period began on April 16, and on April 23, Nexon reported that over three million hungry mobile gamers had hit that pre-registration button already. It seems that Mario Kart Tour has some stiff competition on its hands.

You may recognise the name. That’s because KartRider is a fairly long-running series, with the first entry launching on PC back in 2004. This isn’t even the first time the series has made it to mobile, as another entry, KartRider Rush, launched on the App Store back in 2011. This is basically a bigger and better version of that.

It features a story mode, which introduces you to the various game modes. You can think of it as kind of a lengthy, and more entertaining, tutorial. In terms of modes, there’s Speed, which challenges you to go fast across a series of winding tracks, Arcade, which features sub-modes Item Race, Infini-Boost, and Lucci Runner. Rounding out the modes is Time Trial, which pits you against the clock, and Ranked, which challenges you to race through the ranks and show off your skills.

When not racing you can customise your racer with a wide variety of outfits, accessories, and karts. There’s a ton of cosmetic options, including decals and pets. You can also form a club with other players and participate in quests together, customise your own home, and participate in minigames.

KartRider Rush+ is expected to land on May 31 so there’s still time to pre-register for it if you’re interested. You’ll earn the following rewards at launch just for doing so:

  • Skelemech kart
  • Sluggar Dao character
  • 5,000 turbo crystals
  • Angel wing headgear
  • Star driftmoji
  • 1,000 Lucci coins
  • 3,000 k-coins
  • 500 Lucci

You’ll also earn bonus rewards for pre-registering via Google Play or the App Store, including:

  • Prism plate
  • Prism helmet
  • CA goggles
  • CA plate

If you’re interested, you can pre-register right now on the official site, or via Google Play or the App Store. We’ll see you at the starting line on May 31.

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The Machinery Game Engine

The Machinery by Our Machinery  is a new game engine, currently in beta, by some of the creators of the Stingray/BitSquid game engine.  It follows many of the same design prinicipals, being data driven, light weight and extended via a simple C interface.  The Machinery is designed from day one to be a framework for creation of your own tools and features, essentially a game engine construction kit.

The Machinery is described as such:

A toolbox of building blocks

The Machinery is completely plugin-based. You can pick and choose the parts you need to customize it to your specific needs. You can extend the engine, and the editor, by writing your own plugins. You can even build completely new applications on top of our API, or embed our code into your existing applications or workflows.

Powerful editing model

The Machinery uses a powerful data model to represent edited assets. This model has built-in support for serialization, streaming, copy/paste, drag-and-drop as well as unlimited undo/redo. It supports an advanced hierarchical prefab model for making derivative object instances and propagating changes. It even has full support for real-time collaboration. Multiple people can work together in the same game project, Google Docs-style.

Since all of these features are built into the data model itself, your custom, game-specific data will get them automatically, without you having to write a line of code.

Easy to build tools

The Machinery uses an in-house, lightweight IMGUI framework that sits directly on top of our rendering system. The same UI system is used both by the editor and the runtime, making it possible to run the full editor UI inside a game or in VR. With The Machinery you no longer need watertight boundaries between the editor and the runtime, editing can be done inside the game itself, if you so like.

Using our drawing primitives, it is easy to create custom UI controls. And everything has been heavily optimized to feel snappy and responsive. In fact, the entire editor UI is rendered with just a single draw call.

Modern rendering architecture

The renderer has been designed to take full advantage of modern explicit graphic APIs like Vulkan, DX12 and Metal 2. You can reason explicitly about advanced setups such as multiple GPUs and GPU execution queues. Similar to the rest of the engine, the built-in rendering pipeline is easy to tweak and extend.

High performance

All the code in the engine is built based on data-oriented design principles. We focus on data flows and cache friendly memory layouts. All performance critical code is written to run as jobs, taking full advantage of the parallel processing power of modern CPUs.

Simplicity

The Machinery explicitly aims to be simple, minimalistic and easy to understand. In short, we want to be “hackable”. All our code is written in plain C, a significantly simpler language than modern C++. The entire code base compiles in less than a minute and we support hot-reloading of DLLs, allowing for fast iteration cycles.

Our APIs are exposed as C interfaces, which means they can easily be used from C, C++, D or any other language that has a FFI for calling into C code.

The Machinery is currently in invite only beta, write to them for access.  Or you can check out an early build of The Machinery in action in the video below.

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Activision has announced a Call of Duty: Mobile world championship 2020 tournament

Activision has announced the Call of Duty: Mobile world championsip 2020 tournament in partnership with Sony. It opens on April 30 to all players ranked veteran or above in multiplayer, with a bunch of exclusive cosmetics and cash prizes available to those lucky few who make it to the top. There’s over $1 million in prizes in total, sponsored by Sony.

The tournament will take place over numerous different stages, the first of which is the qualifiers. These take place between April 30 and May 24, and will see players ranked at least veteran in multiplayer duke it out for in-game rewards. The battles will take place on each weekend during this period, and the absolute best will qualify for stage two.

There are four weekends in total to compete in, and you’ll earn tournament points for your first ten ranked matches each weekend. You’ll receive more points for a win at higher ranks, and your goal is to hit 80 points in one of the four weekends to qualify for stage two. Even if you don’t make it that far, there are rewards up for grabs just for earning tournament points and signing up.

To compete, you’ll need an eligible mobile device, be over 18 years old, and live in a participating region. You’ll also need to be at least veteran rank in multiplayer, as we mentioned earlier.

Looking ahead at stage two, you’ll need to form a team out of qualified players and compete together to progress to further stages. Activision is yet to announce the full details of further stages yet though, including prizes.

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You can grab Call of Duty: Mobile right now from the App Store or Google Play. If you want to compete, there’s still time to boost your rank to veteran, making you eligible.

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TreeIt Free Tree Creation Software

Today we are looking at TreeIt, a completely free Windows application for creating game textured and multi-LOD models in just a few seconds.  TreeIt is made by Evolved Software and has the following features:

  • Very easy to create top quality 3D trees models.
  • Create any tree, not limited to just one tree type.
  • Edit each joint as well as break joints.
  • Render to image for leaf creation.
  • Adjustable LOD.
  • Exports to *.dbo *.fbx *.obj *.x .
  • Free.

While TreeIt ships with several textures making it easy to get started creating trees, you can also download several preconfigured trees from the tree library.  Check out TreeIt in action in the video below, including a quick step by step tutorial on importing your model into the Godot game engine.

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We’re giving away 10 codes for RPG The Greater Good

If you grew up playing classics like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VII, you really should check out the brand new premium JRPG The Greater Good. Developed by the lone wolf Sam Enright, The Greater Good wears nostalgia like a woolly jumper, featuring everything that you love about your favourite genre.

The visuals both harken back to that bygone era while remaining distinctly modern. In fact, we can’t really compare it to any other title directly. It combines minimalist characters and environmental backdrops with flashy visual effects, creating quite the eye-catching juxtaposition. Sonically, it’s a similar story, with a pleasingly modern-yet-retro electronic soundtrack produced by EnrightBeats, Sam’s musical alter-ego.

Those modern-yet-retro sensibilities are entirely deliberate, with Sam’s goal to fill the gap between the classics and the JRPGs today. The Greater Good offers us a glimpse of what a classic JRPG might have looked like had the genre continued to thrive during the 3D boom, which is a mission shared by Tokyo RPG Factory, who push out the likes of I am Setsuna and Lost Sphear.

Play The Greater Good and it’ll feel very familiar though. The turn-based combat is reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII, as is the user interface. There’s also heaps of humour, a wide variety of environments to explore, hidden areas and secrets to uncover, and a deep skill system. If you find you love it so much that you can’t get enough of it, there are optional superbosses to try and defeat and a New Game Plus mode.

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The Greater Good launches today, April 22, on the App Store (no Android as of yet) and to celebrate we’re giving away ten codes to our lucky readers. To get in with a chance of winning, you simply need to complete the Gleam form below, which shouldn’t take you longer than a handful of minutes.

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.

PT – The Greater Good giveaway

If you’d simply like to grab The Greater Good right now, you can grab it on the App Store right now for $3.99 (£3.99).

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bforartists 2.0 Released

bforartists 2.0 was just released.  bforartists is a fork of Blender aimed at making Blender more usable for artists, new users and indie developers with a series of changes including new keymaps, icons, workflow and completely new documentation.

Key changes over traditional Blender include:

  • custom key mapping
  • mouse only navigation (great for touch screens like the Surface)
  • widget manipulation with cursor off widget
  • keymaps can switch between BForArtists and Blender
  • theme has coloured icons and increased contrast
  • icons in menus, 2x more icons
  • removal of duplicate menus, if its in toolshelf, it’s not in the menu
  • menus for all hotkey only items (such as Text->Move Cursor)
  • reduced number of workspace templates
  • left aligned text in menus such as toolbox
  • lock camera to view icon
  • primitive toolbar in 3D viewport, customizable and dynamic to mode
  • bforartist targeted at beginners and indie developers, not pros
  • PDF manuals (WIP) with more detail, in PDFs

Learn more about the 2.0 release here.  You can check out bforartists in action in the video below.  The documentation is currently a WIP and is available here.

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Humble Math Books By Mercury Bundle

There is a new Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, the Humble Applied Math Productivity by Mercury Learning bundle is a collection of mathematics related e-books. As with all Humble Bundles, this one is organized into tiers, including:

1$ Tier

  • · Dimensional Analysis for Unit Conversion Using MATLAB
  • · Numeric Methods in Engineering and Science
  • · Algebra Essentials
  • · Mathematical Physics: An Introduction
  • · Foundations of Physics
  • · Research Methods for Information Systems
  • · Linear Algebra

8$ Tier

  • · Essentials of Modern Algebra
  • · RFModule
  • · The Special Theory of Relativity
  • · Foundations of Mathematics: Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry and Calculus
  • · Mathematical Methods for Physics
  • · Excel Functions and Formulas
  • · Applied Linear Algebra and Optimization using MATLAB
  • · Finite Element Analysis A Primer
  • · Optimization using Linear Programming

15$ Tier

  • · Multivariable Vector Calculus
  • · Structural Steel Design
  • · Mathematics for Computer Graphics and Game Programming
  • · Geometry Creation and Import
  • · Flight Science
  • · Direct Energy Conversion Technologies
  • · Cluster Analysis and Data Mining
  • · Commutative Algebra
  • · Comsol: Heat Transfer Models

As with all Humble Bundles, you 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 if purchased using this link. You can learn more about this bundle in the video below.

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