Tag: GameDev News

In a time where far too many people are being laid off, it’s nice to get a bit of good news for a change.  AR tech start-up Magic Leap, have had a bit of a rocky year cumulating in the announcement they would be laying off half of their employees.  Thankfully it was just announced that they received a $350M investment and those layoffs have been cancelled.

Details of the new funding from SiliconAngle:

Troubled augmented reality company Magic Leap Inc. has raised $350 million in new funding, according to an internal memo to employees obtained by The Information.

Details on the round, which depending on its form should be a late-stage Series F, are somewhat vague. The investors are described only as current and new investors with the suggestion that a key healthcare company may have been involved.

Although the fundraising itself is surprising, it was good news for employees as Magic Leap withdrew a notice to terminate about 1,000 staff issued in April — meaning that staff on the chopping block will now keep their jobs. Notably, at that time, Magic Leap said it was in the process of negotiating “revenue-generating partnerships.”

The news that a healthcare company may have invested in the company follows Magic Leap’s announcement in December that it was shifting to enterprise augmented reality after failing in the consumer market. The company’s first product, the $2,295 Magic Leap Creator Edition, sold only 6,000 units, a huge disappointment give that the company predicted sales of 100,000 units.

It is nice to see that Magic Leap lives to fight another day, although it’s less and less likely we will see Magic Leap in game development with the shift towards enterprise computing, where they will compete directly with Microsoft’s HoloLens.  More details of the investment and Magic Leaps rocky recent history check out the video below.

GameDev News VR

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ezEngine is an open source 3D game engine with a complete editor written in C++ using the Qt framework.  It is hosted on GitHub and available under the MIT source license.

Details of the ezEngine:

ezEngine is an open source C++ game engine in active development. It is currently mainly developed on Windows, and higher level functionality such as rendering and the tools are only available there, but the core libraries are also available for other platforms such as Mac and Linux.

ez is built in a modular way, enabling users to either use all available functionality, or to pick and choose individual features and build the rest yourself. Larger features are implemented through engine and editor plugins and can therefore be easily removed or replaced. For instance sound (Fmod), physics (PhysX) and particle effects are all provided through runtime plugins.

The ezEditor is a full blown editor used for editing scenes and importing and authoring assets.

ezEngine documentation is available here, while Windows binaries are available for download here.  You can learn more about ezEngine in action in the video below.

GameDev News CPP 3D Engine

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Humble are running a new bundle of interest to game developers, the Learn You Some Python by No Starch Press bundle.  This is a collection of Python ebooks including a few specifically about game development.  Be aware though, a very similar bundle Python Programming ran about a year ago with many of the same titles.  As with all Humble Bundles, it is organized into tiers:

1$ Tier

• Teach Your Kids to Code
• Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
• Black Hat Python
• Gray Hat Python

8$ Tier

• Mission Python: Code a Space Adventure Game
• Python For Kids
• Cracking Codes with Python
• Python Playground
• Math Adventures with Python

15$ Tier

• Python Crash Course
• Automating the Boring Stuff with Python
• Python Flash Cards
• Serious Python
• Impractical Python Projects

As with all Humble Bundles, you decide how your money is allocated, between Humble, charity, the publisher and (thanks so much if you do!) to support GFS using this link.  You can learn more about the bundle in the video below.

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GameDev News Sale

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Humble, famous for the Humble Bundle deals, have just launched an indie game developer focused publisher Humble Games.  Humble have already worked with a number of developers to bring games such as Void Bastards and Slay the Spire to market.  In celebration of the Humble Games launch, they are also running a “Make Your Own Bundle sale” featuring games they have published.

Reasons to publish with Humble Games include:

BRAND

Humble Bundle has done right by millions of gamers and thousands of industry partners – Humble Games is no different.

IP OWNERSHIP

Our Humble terms allow you to own your IP.

MARKETING

We will help you market your game with a dedicated team of experienced publishing marketers.

12M CUSTOMERS

As part of the Humble family, Humble Games will help you connect with customers across Bundles, Store, and Choice.

FINANCING

We give you money upfront so you don’t need to starve to finish your game.

CREATIVE CONTROL

We look for developers and games we believe in. We want you to be able to build the game of your dreams.

PRODUCTION

You’ll receive a dedicated producer to help you with all technical milestones, processes, and challenges you may encounter.

CROSS PLATFORM

We will help you succeed not just on the Humble Store, but on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and more.

If you are interested in applying, the form is available here.  You can learn more in the video below.

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GameDev News Sale

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Epic games just made a trio of announcements today that are going to be absolute game changers for the game development industry.

Unreal Engine Free To Use Up To $1M Gross Revenue

This one is huge!  Retroactive to January 1st, 2020, Unreal Engine has been changes so developers only pay royalties after their first MILLION dollars in revenue!

Starting today, you can download and use Unreal Engine to build games for free as you always have, except now royalties are waived on your first $1 million in gross revenue. The new Unreal Engine license terms, which are retroactive to January 1, 2020, give game developers an unprecedented advantage over other engine license models. For more information, visit the FAQ.

Wow!

Unreal Engine 5 First Look

Epic also gave us a first look at Unreal Engine 5, showing off the two major new features, Nanite and Lumen.

Nanite is describe as:

Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see. Nanite virtualized geometry means that film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine—anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans to CAD data—and it just works. Nanite geometry is streamed and scaled in real time so there are no more polygon count budgets, polygon memory budgets, or draw count budgets; there is no need to bake details to normal maps or manually author LODs; and there is no loss in quality.

While Lumen is:

Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes. The system renders diffuse interreflection with infinite bounces and indirect specular reflections in huge, detailed environments, at scales ranging from kilometers to millimeters. Artists and designers can create more dynamic scenes using Lumen, for example, changing the sun angle for time of day, turning on a flashlight, or blowing a hole in the ceiling, and indirect lighting will adapt accordingly. Lumen erases the need to wait for lightmap bakes to finish and to author light map UVs—a huge time savings when an artist can move a light inside the Unreal Editor and lighting looks the same as when the game is run on console.

Preview releases of UE 5 should arrive early 2021 with a final release later in the year.  You can see UE5 in action in this video.  Additionally UE 4.25 was just released as you can see here.

Epic Online Services Launched

First announced in GDC 2019, Epic Online Services are finally available.  This is a collection of free online tools that are battle tested using Fortnite.

Friends, matchmaking, lobbies, achievements, leaderboards, and accounts: we built these services for Fortnite, we launched them across seven major platforms – PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. Now we’re opening up Epic Online Services to all developers FOR FREE in a simple multiplatform SDK!

Learn more about all of these announcements in the video below.

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GameDev News Engine Unreal

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