This week the Reporters Without Borders NGO and its collaborators unveiled The Uncensored Library, a virtual library built in Minecraft that’s stocked with censored works and information on press freedom.

It’s a notable use of the venerable block-based building game, one intended to circumvent regional censorship and press suppression by keeping a read-only collection of relevant work accessible on an open Minecraft server.

“[In countries] where websites, blogs and free press in general are strictly limited, Minecraft is still accessible by everyone,” reads a press release announcing The Uncensored Library’s debut this week. “Reporters Without Borders (RSF) used this backdoor to build ‘The Uncensored Library’: A library that is now accessible on an open server for Minecraft players around the globe. The library is filled with books, containing articles that were censored in their country of origin. These articles are now available again within Minecraft – hidden from government surveillance technology inside a computer game.”

Relevant reports on press freedom, as well as censored works from journalists who have been suppressed, jailed, exiled, or killed in five different countries are currently available to read (in English and their original language) in The Uncensored Library, with more to come in the future.

The Library itself was built by 24 people at Minecraft design studio Blockworks, working in concert with Reporters Without Borders as well as digital production and advertising agencies to unveil it the same week as yesterday’s World Day Against Cyber Censorship.

The following article explaining why Remedy recently posted a photo of a dog in a mocap suit to Twitter was submitted to Gamasutra by Remedy Entertainment’s Vida Starcevic, who adds that “it was all done in collaboration with our amazing animation and cinematography team. (And Uuno, of course.)”

We had a dog, a mocap studio, and some spare time. So we thought, why not?

Let’s try and see if we can capture some useable data with Uuno, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier belonging to our Junior Cinematographer, Sami Kastarinen. That’s how it all started, at least.

And then pictures of Uuno with mocap markers stuck to him were published on Remedy’s Twitter, and a spur-of-the-moment experiment went viral.

People wanted to know who the dog was. They were speculating that we’re working on a John Wick game. (We aren’t.) Some of them couldn’t believe we didn’t stick a marker to the tail. But all of them agreed on one thing: Uuno was a very, very good boy.

Here at Remedy we have our own, custom-built motion capture studio, and we pride ourselves on doing a lot of our own mocap. However, we’ve only ever captured humans. According to Henri Blåfield, our Animation Team Supervisor, the team did what was perhaps an even less serious test with a canine some years ago. So this time, we decided to try again.

Improv puppy mocap

Because of his playful character and fast learning skills, Uuno was the ideal candidate. The only goal we had in mind was to do it just to see if it was something that could be done with the equipment we have. Maybe, we thought, if the data worked we could push it forward, put it in Motionbuilder and see if we could do anything with it.

First came the planning and the logistics. We looked at some reference pictures and data from other studios just to see what their tactic was for doing motion capture with dogs. Our baseline was a human, since that’s the kind of motion capture we do at Remedy, and we looked at the movement differences with joints and specific areas of the body between humans (or bipeds, if you like) and quadrupeds. In our case, Uuno the Staffy.

Since this wasn’t anything that was preplanned all too much, we didn’t have the time or the resources to sew a custom-made mocap suit for Uuno and stick markers to that. We decided to improvise further, and so we borrowed a surgical recovery suit for dogs. Uuno had never worn one before and although he’s a very patient dog, the thickness of the fabric made him feel uncomfortable and weird.

Luckily, Uuno had his own walking harness that we could use as a base for the markers. Additionally, our Junior Cinematographer Sami and one of our animators, Matias Leminen, added markers with tape that we knew were going to come off easily. Of course, we wouldn’t put tape on a dog if it wouldn’t come off easily! The amount of markers we used for this were enough to give us data for a baseline. But ideally for future reference, we would add more. For instance, we could have added a tail marker.

However, this time around we felt that it was more important to get natural movement out of Uuno rather than putting the markers on exactly the right spots. When the first marker set was placed, what we noticed was that Uuno was walking a little stiffly so we needed to adjust our marker placement. To achieve that natural movement, we needed to get Uuno even more comfortable with the placement of the markers.

When we got Uuno comfortable with the markers, we started recording some baseline walking data. We also recorded a bunch of other stuff, like tricks that Uuno can do: rolling over, doing the squirrel pose, that kind of thing. Overall, the situation was new for Uuno and we felt that he was excited and had a lot of fun. We saw that there was potential in him, but for this first test we wanted to keep it light and playful.

As for Uuno? He had a lot of fun doing it. No dogs were harmed during this experiment! He likes attention… and tasty chicken treats. Comparing this to our earlier motion capture test with a quadraped, in this case Uuno was bigger than the dog we used last time, but the issues encountered were quite similar to the ones we had previously. That shows really how much effort and training you should put into a case like this.

Looking forward, if we at some point find ourselves needing motion capture data from Uuno, the first thing that we would require would be a proper motion capture suit made of a lighter fabric and with solid marker locations. While it’s our first priority, the suit is also a big, big if – what if Uuno never fully gets used to it and his movements are unnatural? Then the data might not be useable in the long run after all. At most, it would be used just for reference.

What kind of reference? Well, the data we would get out of successfully doing motion capture of an animal could be compared to keyframed animation, so that we could see which of the two solutions would be more cost effective for us and our needs. Are we dealing with a gimmick? Do we need the animation for a playable character? A sidekick? The amount of data we require depends hugely on the kind of character we’ll be using it for. Depending on how much we need, motion capture could be the solution, or perhaps keyframe animation would still be better and faster. We can’t know unless we try.

Even if we don’t manage to record motion capture we are happy with, we could still use the data as reference for poses and timing. There is also the question how many technical loops we would have to jump through to get this to run in our Northlight engine.

If there’s a big enough need to record motion capture of Uuno in the future, we think this is viable and could be possibly pushed forward. Remedy just moved to a new, bigger studio in Espoo (check out our work in progress video) because our company got too big for our old one, and a bigger building also means a bigger motion capture studio.

While our new mocap studio floor is about four times the size of the previous one, we were not satisfied with just a larger area. We wanted to go one step further in the quality of the data we capture. This naturally meant that we needed quite a few more cameras to meet that goal. With more cameras, we can make sure that our capture data is more solid. A larger volume size gives us the possibility of capturing longer movement ranges and choreographies.

And who knows, maybe even a dog.

There are certain things those familiar with romantic comedy, slice-of-life visual novels have doubtless come to expect by this point: a scene involving a maid costume; a heroine who can’t cook; a date at an amusement park; and some sort of boob-based misunderstanding. NinNinDays from Qureate has all of these things… plus leading lady Sumire is a ninja. Because why not?

The “ninja” aspect is primarily used to explore the clash between the culture of modern, urban life and the cultures of more traditional, rural communities. Sumire, hailing from a traditional, isolated ninja village, is naive and innocent in the ways of our world, but both she and the ‘self-insert’ protagonist find they have a lot to learn from one another after an initial, fateful encounter over a half-eaten meat bun. NinNinDays is mostly a narrative about learning to accept and even embrace your own flaws – and coming to understand that a good relationship can use this as a strong foundation. With apologies to Ru Paul, “if you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

As the narrative proceeds, the ways in which the protagonist and Sumire support one another help them understand the things they need to work on – and that it’s okay to ask for help sometimes. It’s a rather inspiring, surprisingly relatable tale – if a tad clichéd at times – and the multiple endings all present a different way of looking at how one deals with a major turning point in one’s life and outlook. It’s a beautifully presented visual novel; artist AkasaAi, last seen designing the demure Princess Aria in NinNinDays’ stablemate Prison Princess, has done a fine job on the artwork, with the event scenes, in particular, having a real sense of presence and physicality to them… particularly when Sumire’s butt is visible. Which it is, quite frequently. Ahem.

Meanwhile, the standard interactions between the protagonist and Sumire make use of the impressive E-Mote “emotional motion technology” for animated character sprites, best known for its use in the popular Nekopara series. E-Mote certainly breathes some life into Sumire, though it’s clear that the NinNinDays team aren’t masters of the tech like Nekopara’s Sayori is. Sumire very obviously uses fixed, “stock” animations for her various emotes rather than the gorgeous, natural-looking body language unique to each line of dialogue seen in Sayori’s work. It’s a small nitpick, but if you’ve previously enjoyed Nekopara, it’s clearly noticeable.

The localisation is also a little wonky from a technical perspective, featuring a number of typos, incorrect homophones, one instance of confusion between “earlier” and “later” and an apparent distaste for putting a space after a comma, but nothing that makes it unreadable. The actual tone of the English script is fine – and the translation is pretty true to the Japanese voice without being overly stilted.

In summary, then, this is a perfectly serviceable visual novel which boasts gorgeous presentation but is held back by its short runtime, lack of narrative ambition and rough edges in terms of localisation. It’s not going to make you fall in love with the genre if you’re a newcomer, but longstanding fans will be more forgiving of its shortcomings.

At the end of February, The Pokémon Company unveiled the new ‘Rogue Monkey Pokémon’ Zarude. It’ll be appearing alongside a pink Shiny Celebi in the upcoming film Pokémon the Movie: Coco and the Switch titles, Pokémon Sword and Shield.

As revealed earlier this week, Japanese fans who pre-book tickets to see the new movie will receive two codes allowing them to get their hands on both of these Pokémon. The first code for a Level 60 Shiny Celebi is redeemable from 17th April to 30th September, and the second code for the Dark/Grass-type mythical Zarude can be redeemed between 15th June and 30th September.

While there’s still no word on whether we’ll be able to get our hands on these same codes here in the west, we do now have a fresh batch of screenshots of these movie star Pokémon, directly from the movie website. Enjoy!

Against all odds, Twitch chat has managed to complete yet another video game. Well, kind of. It’s not quite as straightforward this time around, but it still is quite the feat. With the help of his followers, streamer Pointcrow was able to conquer Nintendo’s highly-praised action-adventure title, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

As explained by Polygon, the content creator gave viewers the ability to input commands into chat (as we’ve seen in the past in series like Twitch Plays Pokémon) – allowing them to perform various actions like parries and backflips with the assistance of macros. One difference was that Twitch only had control over Link for five minutes at a time, and Pointcrow took control in between.

Often he tried to give the chat achievable goals like defeating Bokoblins and even a Guardian, but did admit to teasing viewers by putting Link in front of enemies such as Lynel.

Rather than give a Sisyphus task to my viewers that might take months, if not years, I wanted to make something achievable in a realistic amount of time. And we did!

All up, the game took around 25 hours to play through, and Pointcrow estimates about 17 of those hours were controlled by the viewers in the chat. Link is believed to have been killed in action about 80 times – mostly due to fall damage, and at the very end, the streamer allowed the viewers to land the final blow on Ganon. You can see the action play out in the recording above.

What game do you think Twitch should play next? Did you participate in this latest experiment? Leave a comment down below.

Unity are currently running a Mega Bundle over on their asset store.  Organized into 3 tiers $49.99, $79.99 and $99.99 and representing savings up to 90%.  The Bundle runs until the end of March 2020.  The bundle breaks down as follows:

49.99$ Tier or Higher

• Snaps Art HD Sci-Fi Military Base
• Realistic Explosion Pack
• Snaps Prototype Sci-Fi Military Base
• Snaps Art HD School
• SciFi Cockpit Bridge 6

79.99$ Tier or Higher

• Animal Controller
• InControl
• Poly Art Animals Forest Set
• Dwarven Expedition Pack

99.99$ Tier or Higher

• Unity Learn Premium 1 Year Subscription
• SciFi Laboratory Pack 2
• Playmaker
• DarkTree FPS 1.3
• Snaps Art HD Buried Memories Volume 2: Serekh
• POLYGON – Battle Royale Pack
• Space Skyboxes & Planets

It is important to realize that some of these assets have been included in prior bundles such as this Humble Bundle.  Fortunately the 1 year Unity Learn Premium stacks with existing subscriptions, extending your subscription.  The links to the Unity Asset Store contain an affiliate code. 

You can learn more about this Bundle in the video below.

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GameDev News Unity

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I’ve tried to be a bit more proactive this week, although I spent the first couple of days with Glen and Sean to help teach them about Pocket Tactics and its’ legacy. They’re already very excited to get stuck-in, but they’re spending these next couple of weeks doing a lot of boring admin work.

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, make sure you catch up on my post from Tuesday going into more details about what the future holds for Pocket Tactics. The header image is from Door Kickers: Action Squad.

Meanwhile, in mobile gaming…

New App Releases

I haven’t seen anything massively exciting released this week that we haven’t already covered, have you? There’s a new Orangepixel game on the way later this month – Snake Core – which you can pre-order now on iOS, but we’ll talk more about it closer to the time.

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App News & Updates

Something not everyone might think about amidst the growing Covid-19 situation is the effect certain games have on our lifestyle. Sure, Esports events and game conferences are being cancelled, but what about games like Pokemon GO that almost require you to go outside?

Will, Niantic have definitely been thinking about it themselves, because they recently announced to Polygon that they’re implementing a number of chagces which will allow their players to enjoy the game without having to go outside as much. The main changes coming include:

• More habitats, so that more Pokemon can be encountered at home.
• Incense packs have been reduced in price by 99% and last an hour.
• Incubators can hatch eggs twice as fast
• Several real-world community events have been cancelled or postponed.

Niantic postponed a Harry Potter event as well, and they’re not the only ones trying to make changes to help deal with the situation. Discord, for example, have offered increased functionality even for non-paying users to help with the increasing number of people working from home.

I’ve actually been kind of interested in checking out Games of Thrones: Beyond the Wall ever since I heard about it last year. Sure, it’s likely going to be a free-to-play gacha game, but hey, I’m a sucker for the Night’s Watch. We haven’t really heard or seen much about it in recent months, but Behaviour Interactive are in the midst of a press tour and have confirmed it will be released on iOS first on March 26th, with Android following on April 3rd. Pre-registration is open for both.

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We’ve got a decent new game announcement this week as well: Door Kickers: Action Squad is a 2D side-scrolling platform/action game released late 2018 that’s a spin-off from 2014’s Door Kickers. It’s finally coming to mobile (having gone everywhere else first). You play as one of six different SWAT troopers sent into one of 84 different levels to deal with whatever situation has arisen – rescue the hostage, disarm the bomb… if you squint, it’s like a 2D solitaire Rainbow Six: Siege.

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Pre-registration/Pre-Order is available for both iOS and Android. The App Store hints at a release date of April 8th, 2020, but that could change of course.

Singapore is the place to be if you want to get your hands on Legends of Runeterra before anyone else. An eagle-eyed twitter user has spotted that Riot’s own collectable card game offering has soft-launched on the Google Play store over there. We’ve not been able to find out if it’s landed anywhere else yet, but it seems to also be in the iOS app store in the region.

Last but not least; I know we don’t really cover PUBG much here, but the mobile version just got a colourmind mode in a recent update, which is neat.

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App Sales

A handful of games on sale this week you might be interested in – haven’t thought about some of these games in a long while! All of the discounts listed below are available on both iOS and Android.

• Friday (or Freitag) by Friedemann Friese is one of the more understated digital board game ports to come out during my time so far. It’s a modest card game, and this is a modest digital version of that game, and you can pick it up for $1.99.
• Cosmic Express is one of our favourite puzzle games, and it’s now down to its cheapest price yet – also $1,99.
• One of Orangepixel’s earlier classics, Sir Questionnaire is back down to $1.99 for the first time since May 2019. This is the official ‘best price’ right now, so if you haven’t picked it up yet this is your chance.

This isn’t technically a discount, but as of earlier this week the XCOM-like squad tactics game Xenowerk Tactics has gone ‘Free-to-Try’. You can download the game for free and play through a trial, and then the full-game unlock has been turned into an IAP. That IAP is still currently $6.99, however.

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments?

Exclusive

By Christine McKee
Saturday, March 14, 2020, 04:02 pm PT (07:02 pm ET)

Master & Dynamic has partnered with AppleInsider this week to offer readers the lowest price anywhere on its MW07 wireless earphones. Enjoy half off the premium earbuds in your choice of color with our exclusive coupon.

Master & Dynamic MW07 deal

Master & Dynamic MW07 True Wireless Earphones: $99.50 (50% off)
*Price with coupon code APPLEINSIDER50.

This special deal, which is available exclusively for AppleInsider readers, knocks half off the MW07 True Wireless Earphones with promo code APPLEINSIDER50 when ordered from M&D directly.

Now $99.50 in your choice of seven colors, the MW07 earphones are made of handcrafted acetate for a luxurious look, with rich sound thanks to custom 10mm high-performance Beryllium drivers. In our hands-on review, we found the Master & Dynamic MW07 earphones to offer superior sound vs Apple’s first-gen AirPods.

The MW07 earphones also offer a customizable fit with two different parts — the silicone tip and a “fit wing” — that can be adjusted independently, keeping you comfortable and the MW07 earbuds secure.

The 50% markdown delivers the lowest price available, with retailers like Amazon and B&H selling the same earphones for up to $70 more. Master & Dynamic is also including free delivery, and orders placed Monday-Friday by 1 p.m. Eastern are typically shipped the same day.

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Additional Apple deals

AppleInsider and Apple authorized resellers are also running additional exclusive savings on Apple hardware that will not only deliver the lowest prices on many of the items, but also throw in bonus discounts on AppleCare, Office 365 and more. These offers are as follows:

Interested in additional Apple hardware? See if there is a Mac, iPad or Apple Watch deal that will save you $100s by checking out prices.appleinsider.com.

Monkey Craft might not necessarily be a household name, but you’re probably at least familiar with its previous release. It was the company contracted by Bandai Namco to help bring Katamari Damacy REROLL to the Nintendo Switch in 2018 and has also assisted with another Bamco remaster on the hybrid device known as Mojipittan Encore.

Here’s where it gets interesting. In addition to helping out with the “planning, programming, and 2D Design” of both of these remasters, the company is now believed to have at least one other Switch title in development. This is all according to its official website, which goes on to reveal it began three different projects in January 2018, May 2019, and August 2019.

The first two dates are thought to cover Katamari Damacy REROLL and Mojipittan Encore. As for the third one, there’s some speculation it could be tied to the recent trademarks for Klonoa, Mr. Driller, Wagyan Land, Genpei Touma Den, and Splatterhouse.

Could another Bandai Namco remaster be coming to Switch? What would you like to see next? Tell us below.