It’s been well documented that searching for your next favourite game on the Nintendo Switch eShop is more hassle than it should be and as a result, we’ve seen plenty of developers slash the prices of their releases in a bid to land their title on the store’s ‘Deals’ and ‘Best Sellers’ tabs. Sometimes, they’ve even given games away for free.
In some ways, it’s great that you can load up your Switch and grab so many games for such a little amount, but we’d argue that things are getting a little out of control. We’ve just had a quick browse of the eShop ourselves in the hopes of finding some quirky, fun games for cheap, and discovered that a whopping 64 titles are currently being offered for less than a single dollar in the US. It’s a similar story in Europe, too – visiting the UK’s eShop reveals 49 games available for less than £1.
A small handful of these appear to be titles that are permanently priced that low; Soccer Pinball, for example, has always been priced at $0.99 which is fair enough. The majority of the list, however, are games which are on sale with prices reduced by as much as 90%. That isn’t an extreme, either – plenty of the games listed are 90% off.
If you’ve landed here hoping to find a bargain and want to see the cheap list of games for yourself, you can do so by heading to the ‘Search’ tab of the eShop (top-left), clicking ‘Price Range’, clicking ‘View More’ on the ‘$0.01 – $9.99’ (or equivalent) section, and then changing the filter at the top-right to ‘Price (low to high)’. Even that was unnecessarily complicated, wasn’t it?
It leaves us with an interesting topic for debate: should we be celebrating the fact that, as gamers, we have access to plenty of games for relatively low prices, or does this just further highlight the discoverability issues faced by both developers and players as a result of the eShop’s design and the sheer volume of games releasing each and every week? We’ll let you mull that one over in the comments.
Fortnite Food Truck Locations Guide: Where To Visit Food Trucks
Fortnite's Winterfest event is now over, but a new set of challenges has gone live in the battle royale game. This batch is called Remedy vs. Toxin, although there isn't much of a theme running through the challenges, so you'll be doing various tasks like getting SMG eliminations and earning Survivor medals.
While many of the Remedy vs. Toxin challenges are fairly straightforward, one that may give you some trouble asks you to visit three different food trucks. If you don't know where those are located, this guide will show you where to go.
Where Are The Food Truck Locations?
Food trucks aren't nearly as common in Fortnite as they were on the game's old map. That said, we've found four of them spread out around the island, and you only need to visit three to complete this challenge. We've marked all the food truck locations on the map below.
How To Complete The Challenge
You don't need to do anything special to complete this challenge; simply make your way to three of the food trucks listed above and you'll be finished. You need to visit three different trucks, so you can't simply return to the same one in different matches, but other than that, this challenge shouldn't pose too much of a problem. Once you've visited three, you'll earn 52,000 XP for your troubles and unlock another Remedy vs. Toxin challenge to complete.
There are still a few weeks left in Season 1 of Fortnite Chapter 2, so there's still time to complete any challenges you may have missed from earlier weeks. If you need help with those, we've collated all of our maps and guides in our full Fortnite Chapter 2 challenges roundup.
ArmorPaint is an open source competitor to Substance Painter, from the creator of the Armory game engine (tutorial series available here). It is available for just 16 Euro in binary form, but can also be built from source code. This guide walks you step by step through the process of building ArmorPaint from source.
There are a few requirements before you can build. Download and install the following programs if not already installed:
First step, we clone the repository. Make sure to add the –recursive flag(that’s two ‘-‘ by the way).
Open a command prompt, cd to the directory where you want to install ArmorPaint’s source code and run the command:
Depending on your internet speed this could take a minute to several minutes while all of the files are downloaded.
In Explorer, go the installation directory, then navigate to armorpaint\Kromx\V8\Libraries\win32\release and using 7zip extract v8_monolith.7z to the same directory as the .7z file.
Next in the command prompt run the following commands
(Assuming you are reusing the same CMD that you did the git clone from)
cd armorpaint
node Kromx/make –g direct3d11
cd Kromx
node Kinc/make –g direct3d11
explorer .
If you receive any errors above, the most likely cause is node not being installed. The final command will now open a Windows Explorer window in the Kromx subdirectory. Open the build directory and load the file Krom.sln.
This will open the project in Visual Studio. If you haven’t run VS yet,you may have to do some initial installation steps. Worst case scenario run through the initial install, close and double click Krom.sln again.
First make sure that you are building for x64 and Release mode at the top:
In the Solution Explorer, select Krom then hit ALT + ENTER or right click and select Properties.
Then select Debugging, in Command Arguments enter ..\..\build.krom then click Apply.
You are now ready to build ArmorPaint. Select Ctrl + SHIFT + B or select Build->Build Solution.
Assuming no errors, are exe should be built. Now go to the folder armorpaint\Kromx\build\x64\Release and copy the file Krom.exe, then copy to armorpaint\build\krom. You can now run Krom.exe and you’re good to go.
Step by step instructions are available in the video below.
I don’t know if you could tell but I’ve been doing a lot of random things this week. Early Jan is usually a slow time so might as well experiment to fill the void. Been doing a bit more news as interesting stories have cropped up, and also been refreshing our Apple Arcade coverage to try and get a read on where to take that.
Black Desert Mobile seems to be doing very well for itself at the moment, so we’re going to be updating and maintaining our guide on it for the moment. It’s genuinely a beautiful game, even on mobile, and if you enjoy MMORPGs then you should definitely check it out. Don’t let the free-to-play trappings put you off – there’s barely anything gated behind paywalls, but it is very grindy.
Immortal Rogue released around 11 months ago and was one of the highlights of mobile rogue-likes in 2019. Developer Kyle Barrett has returned this week with another creation. This one swaps an immortal vampire-thing with a star fighter. It’s a shooter designed for one-touch player, and has rogue-like elements as well as lots and lots of space monsters. We haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but we’ll add it to the review pile. Here’s some gameplay to tide you over in the meantime:
App News & Updates
Speaking of Black Desert Mobile, they’ve added yet more content to the game this week with a new PvP Guild War mode. Here’s an official summary:
Guild War is a PvP mode specifically made for guilds, where Adventurers can engage in battle against enemy guild members in the open world of Black Desert Mobile. Guild masters and officers can declare war by entering the enemy guild’s name in the guild window. At least 10 guild members are required to attend within 48 hours along with a payment of 3 million silver from their guild fund.
While we’re on the subject of MMORPGs, it seems there’s an official Final Fantasy XIV spin-off game in the works for mobile in this genre. It will be set in a parallel universe to the main FF15 game that was released in 2016. It’s being developed by developers JSC and GAEA in conjunction with Square. Enduins has more details.
If I were to ask you what you thought the most talked about game on Twitter was in 2019, what would be your answer? It’s not what I thought it would be, but it was in the same ballpark – Fate/Grand Order is the winner, with Fortnite coming in second. PocketGamer.biz has the full top-ten list if you want to check it out.
Last and certainly not least, our good friends over at Tiny Touch Tales are working on a new game due out on January 15th on both iOS and Android. From Mr. Rauers himself:
Maze Machina combines a simple turn-based swipe to move mechanic with a tile based item system that allows for endless combinations of tactical attack, defense and utility moves on a small 4×4 grid. Short game sessions allow for quick bursts of tense gameplay which you can hop in and out of at any point. In various modes and high score challenges you can measure your skill against other players.
We’ve missed having a new TTT game to play around with. Michael’s already lined up to do the review, but because he’s also away on holiday we might not have it ready for launch day. Will be done ASAP, though. Here’s a trailer:
Best App Sales
There’s honestly nothing worth shouting about this week as far as I can see, although feel free to suggest anything you’ve seen you think readers should know about.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 01-11-2020, 09:00 AM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Expanding our vision for retail with Dynamics 365 at NRF 2020
Retailers experienced more change in the last decade than nearly any other industry, a trend that is not likely to slow as we enter 2020. The only certainty in the new decade is the need for technologies that help retailers stay nimble, relevant, and anticipate customer needs and shopping preferences.
As my colleague Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President, Retail and Consumer Goods Industries, shared in a blog post today, consumers are driving the future of retail—from when, where, and how they engage with a retail brand to demands for higher standards in data privacy and secure shopping. Technology will usher in a new era of intelligent retail experiences across every storefront, physical and digital.
Next week, at the National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Show, Microsoft will demonstrate Dynamics 365 solutions as part of the breadth of our company’s offerings, that will power retail innovation in the next decade. These applications unify customer experiences across every commerce channel from physical to online stores and pop up shops to subscription services as well as unlock AI-powered insights from the back office to the frontline to deliver exceptional, personalized customer experiences.
This vision for the future of retail is spotlighted by new features and product releases announced today:
Dynamics 365 Commerce, generally available on February 3rd is a modern omnichannel commerce solution that unifies back office, e-commerce, in-store, and call center and simplifies the integration of new emerging channels.
Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, featuring two new capabilities to reduce fraud and related costs while improving the buying experience: loss prevention and account protection, available for preview on March 2nd.
Dynamics 365 Connected Store is an application that combines AI-driven insights and IoT-connected sensors and cameras to empower retailers with real-time observational data to improve in-store performance, coming to preview later this calendar year.
Deliver insightful shopping experiences
Omnichannel retailing is now the standard for success in the market. For too many retailers, however, the slow adoption of technology to support the model has hampered progress toward truly unified cross-channel shopping experiences that bridge physical and online channels.
At NRF, Microsoft will demonstrate a modern, flexible cloud commerce solution that powers rich, customer-first experiences at all touchpoints. Dynamics 365 Commerce, slated for general availability on February 3rd, is an evolution of our Dynamics 365 Retail offering and delivers a comprehensive omnichannel solution to unify back-office, e-commerce, in-store, and call center experiences.
Spotlighted features for the February 3rd launch include:
Native e-commerce capabilities, featuring built-in web authoring and development tools to create engaging, intelligent digital storefronts, plus a connected marketing and commerce platform for seamless management of content, assets, promotions, inventory, and pricing across channels.
Native integration with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection.
AI-moderated ratings and reviews and intelligent customer recommendations for more personalized customer experiences.
Dynamics 365 Commerce customers are finding new ways to build brand loyalty, optimize operations and supply-chain efficiencies, and deliver better business outcomes. Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, the third-largest premium wine company in the United States, leverages Dynamics 365 Commerce to provide a seamless customer experience across all three direct-to-consumer channels, e-commerce, brick and mortar, and clubs, and across the different brands in the Ste. Michelle Wine Estates portfolio. With a full end-to-end retail solution, Ste. Michelle can put the customer at the center of the buying journey and provide more personalized and timely customer recommendations and experiences from the tasting room to digital touchpoints.
“From the moment a consumer visits one of our wineries or tasting rooms, joins one of our clubs, or decides to purchase products online, we want to remove all sources of friction that come between the consumer and the perfect wine choice.” – Francis Perrin, Chief Marketing Officer for Ste. Michelle Wine Estates
Even for global e-commerce leaders, it’s not always easy to safeguard millions of transactions and deliver the best possible shopping and purchasing experiences at the same time. The accelerating shift toward omnichannel has increased the threat of fraud-related losses. And greater exposure to theft or improper discounting can introduce more pressure on the already thin margins in brick and mortar stores. In fact, fraudulent transactions globally account for over $175 billion in fraud-related costs every year.
In 2019, Microsoft introduced Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection to help reduce fraud and its related costs, increase revenue, and deliver better buying experiences with lower friction and more support.
Today we’re announcing two new capabilities for Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection—both available for preview on March 2nd—to help prevent loss and mitigate risks for merchants, leveraging the power of big data and ethical AI to provide a best-in-class fraud solution for omnichannel merchants:
Account protection helps retailers recognize patterns related to fraudulent e-commerce activities during account creation or attempted hijacking. Account protection uses artificial intelligence to aid in decreasing the costs of account fraud by helping to reduce the number of fraudulent accounts, in turn protecting the businesses’ reputation and improving customer experiences and satisfaction.
Account protection can help retailers improve the bottom line by reducing fraud activities and friction throughout the customer journey, improve business reputation by preventing negative exposure due to fraudulent activity, and increase customer satisfaction by protecting customer authenticity and privacy.
Loss prevention helps reduce fraud in brick and mortar stores and boost revenues at the retailer by providing insights around returns and discount fraud. By using data from commerce systems and the power of AI, loss prevention helps merchants decipher patterns of losses from returns, improper discounts, merchandise mishandling, and inventory turn-over.
Loss prevention helps provide anomaly reporting and actionable insights that allow retailers to gain visibility into specific business functions which may require additional controls. In addition, loss prevention can help reduce the manual effort needed to determine the business entities and functions which are at risk.
BESTSELLER, the international clothing and accessories company, is leveraging Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection to reduce fraud-related losses across its 70 markets spanning most of Europe, the Middle East, Canada, India and globally via e-commerce. BESTSELLER uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection to spot patterns of activity that suggest fraud and work to remedy the situation within its stores. After a successful pilot deployment, BESTSELLER is rolling out Fraud Protection across its stores in Europe, and eventually the world. The company projects that it will save millions of dollars as a result, while also boosting BESTSELLER’s core value of trust.
“By identifying fraud and loss quickly with Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection, we’re boosting business outcomes and building a culture where our core value of honesty is practiced by everyone every day.” – Kim Guldager, Senior Program Manager at BESTSELLER.
With real-time observational data about customer movement or the status of products and store devices, there’s tremendous opportunity to gain a better understanding of the retail space and improve in-store performance. Microsoft is dedicated to helping retailers adapt and optimize physical retail spaces to meet new levels of customer expectation.
Available in preview later this year, Dynamics 365 Connected Store helps retailers both understand how customers use the retail space over time, as well as monitor real-time activities from checkout line queues to shelf voids to help frontline workers deliver exceptional customer service.
Connected Store can optimize the shopping experience in real time through triggered alerts based on real-time data from video cameras and IoT sensors and also provides longer term insight that can illuminate patterns and opportunities that lie within the day-to-day occurrences of a retail space.
Marks & Spencer, for instance, is using Dynamics 365 Connected Store to capture observational data from customer behavior across multiple stores worldwide, and over a period of time, to identify patterns and trends. This unlocks the opportunity to predict inventory needs and replenish stock levels in real time, all to create first class experiences for the customer.
See what’s in store for retail and technology
Microsoft, along with our global partner ecosystem, is dedicated to enabling intelligent retail by empowering the industry with the tools to unlock the full potential of customers, employees, and data. Together with the solutions highlighted above, NRF attendees can see demonstrations of our portfolio of business applications which will include Supply Chain Management, Customer Insights, and Power BI dashboards for frontline workers to the back office. We’ll also be showing our new mixed reality solution, Product Visualize, that lets sales representatives place a 3D digital twin of a product in their customer’s environment.
Get the full story
For those attending NRF, stop by the Microsoft booth for immersive demonstrations of our full range of retail solutions, attend deep dive sessions, network with us at the FQ Lounge, and more. View the agenda for all the ways to engage with us at NRF.
We also invite you to view our latest research, the Retail Trends Playbook 2020 for more insights into emerging trends that will help empower retailers to create exceptional, insightful shopping experiences for customers.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 01-11-2020, 08:59 AM - Forum: Minecraft
- No Replies
Minecraft Forum – Plans for 2020
Greetings!
The last year was an interesting one for MinecraftForum. With the planned archiving of the forum and then the change of ownership to keep the forum active, there has been a lot of back-end work to keep this site going. While we’ve definitely been struggling to keep up in some areas (poor news…), we’ve certainly not been twiddling our thumbs behind the scenes.
With that in mind, we figured it’s probably a good time to just let you know of some of the plans that we hope to get to in the year 2020. Some of these would be more hidden changes, some small, but some giant. Let’s go through what we have in our minds for this year.
1) Restructure of our forum sections as a whole
This one is a giant goal of ours. We know that the current structure is…. not exactly great for a lot of different reasons. When we made the current structure we tried to keep the naming similar to what Mojang calls their versions of the game, but we knew when we did it that it would be confusing. We’re re-evaluating this and are looking at better ways to collapse or expand sections in order to make the most of what we have from you, the community, and to get your content shared with millions of users. We’ll have posts later in our Forum Discussion and Information section once we have a better plan for how we’d like to restructure things. We know this won’t be an easy change, but we will value your input into this process as we go, to point out things we may not notice or think of. Keep an eye out for more information regarding this.
2) New server list
In continuing the forum restructure, we’ve had a thread that’s been trying to gather ideas for a new server list. If you didn’t know, Minecraft Forum used to run a server list, which tried to help promote servers in a different light. Sadly, this list wasn’t maintained well, and so it was discontinued. We are looking at the idea of bringing a list back, knowing that it has to cater to small servers, large servers, whitelist servers, graylist servers, realms, even just the occasional “i want a friend” servers. And not just for Java Edition, we know there’s more to the multiplayer world. We don’t know if this will happen in 2020 due to the amount of effort it would take, but it’s a goal we have.
3) Alternate logins
We know that only having a Twitch login is a huge turn-off for some people. We are looking into additional providers to support in the future. We’re hoping to offer Xbox Live and Google as alternative providers, perhaps some others too, however there is no ETA on this yet. We are still doing research and work to determine how difficult it will be to support multiple providers like this within our existing system.
4) Better filters for content searching
The server search functionality is a feature that we know is… not great. Not only that, the prefix system that we have is not obvious to users that you can actually use it to find content. We are looking into better ways of making this more apparent, and to make it more of an actual search feature. It’d be a lot nicer to find those 1.15 fantasy packs if we had a simple filter, wouldn’t it?
5) More news
News is one of the most important things that makes it to the front page here. And while we’ve done our best to keep up with the essential updates, we know we’ve been really slacking to keep you all up to date on all that’s going on in the world of Minecraft. We are looking at ways to better put news in front of you that you would care about, and not just repeat what Mojang already gives you. After all, there’s more to the community than just the latest build update.
6) More bug fixes
2019 was full of back-end fixes that you may not have seen. Although, being able to see your old PMs was definitely a fix I know some of you have noticed. We know there’s still a lot of issues with the site, and will be continuing to work on improving your experience so that you can find and share your content.
That about covers it for this update! We will continue to strive to keep this forum going far into the future with Magic Find, whose administrative & dev teams have been directly working with us to make the site work even better than before. Let us know of any other things you’d like to see, and who knows, maybe your ideas might be done.
The game has you taking on the role of Stella, a game developer who works at the ‘Awesome Rainbow Corp’. Stella’s tasked with removing bugs from the studio’s big game on the eve of its release – no pressure, then – and as she scrambles around to fix all of the issues, she stumbles across some very mysterious errors indeed.
To combat this, she whips up a debug program – the Code Shifter – which allows her digital avatar ‘Sera’ to rather literally fight the bugs from within. As you can see from the trailer and screenshots on this very page, you’ll be presented with two very different aesthetic styles as you cross from Stella’s real world to Sera’s in-game world. Here are some key features:
– Iconic Arc System Works characters remixed in 8-bit pixel art, including Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, the River City series and more! – Utilize a whopping 100 characters to successfully overcome deadly obstacles and enemies to ship the game in time! – The soundtrack features 8-bit renditions of popular character themes like “Give Me a Break” (Sol Badguy’s Theme), Bullet Dance (Noel Vermillion’s Theme) and more! – By defeating the bosses of each stage Sera is rewarded with new costumes that gives her different powers when equipped. – The “COLORFUL FIGHTERS” game mode is a brawler mini-game that allows up to 4 players to duke it out in a free-for-all! – Fight against other CPU controlled characters in the Ex Stages of the main story to unlock more playable characters!
The game is set to launch on Switch and other platforms in Q1 of 2020, so it shouldn’t be too long before we hear a little more about this one.
Do you like what you see? Do you think this might be something to add to your Switch wishlist? Let us know in the comments.
Available Today with Xbox Game Pass for Console: Grand Theft Auto V
You know us at Xbox Game Pass, we like to make memes and jokes about our games. I am sitting here giggling to myself about something Trevor Phillips said in Grand Theft Auto V, and then realized that there is no possible way I could repeat that out loud without getting in trouble. I am productivity personified, and here to tell you that GTA V is available today with Xbox Game Pass for Console!
Welcome to Los Santos and Blaine County, where the great
outdoors meets shopping, glamour, and so much more… Jump in the lives of a
retired bank robber, a terrifying psychopath, and a young street hustler while
pulling off heists and essentially causing all sorts of mayhem.
For those of you with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or Xbox Live
Gold, you’ll also have access to Grand Theft Auto Online, a dynamic and
persistent online world for up to 30 players. Since coming to Xbox One, GTA
Online has received 25 updates which allow players to become CEO of a
business, own a nightclub, or visit The Diamond Casino & Resort.
The latest update released on December 12 challenges players
to pull off the most sophisticated and daring robbery the city of Los Santos
has ever seen in The Diamond Casino Heist. This is all in addition to allowing
you to customize your appearance, change your stats, customize your cars, find
your friends and become scooter brothers, take part in jobs, missions, and
activities to earn reputation and cash. Rise through the criminal ranks and
pull off the heists of your life.
Don’t forget: with your Xbox Game Pass membership, you get up to 10% off on any purchase of the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack or Shark Cash Cards to fancy-up your cars, buy new real estate, or even a helicopter! (Pro tip: Best way to get those high value targets trying to hide from you on top of a tall building.) You can also use your membership to save up to 20% on a purchase of the base game from the Microsoft Store.
Tune in to the brand new iFruit Radio Station that launched
with The Diamond Casino Heist update for Grand Theft Auto Online, and
follow us on Twitter and Instagram – we’ll share the
best that Los Santos has to offer. Don’t forget, if you want to start your own
crew with your friends in Grand Theft Auto Online, they can snag their
first three months of Xbox Game Pass
Ultimate for $1 right now! The deal ends on January 6, so jump on it now.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 01-11-2020, 08:58 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
Don’t Miss: An in-depth breakdown of Dead Cells’ mobile port
Laura Saada is lead producer at Paris-based Playdigious.
First of all, before anyone asks: yes, Dead Cells will be a premium mobile game. It is a premium game on PC, on consoles and it is a premium game on mobile. No argument here.
One year ago, Motion Twin (Dead Cells’ developers) entrusted us to take on the challenge of bringing Dead Cells on mobile and granted us full latitude. It was a big day for Playdigious since Dead Cells won several prestigious awards, got some amazing coverage and of course a lot of players and us loved the game.
What a challenge! (And some pressure on our heads.)
When we started working on Dead Cells, we couldn’t even imagine what challenges were waiting for us around the corner. However, we’ve tackled challenging ports before. We previously worked on Shiro Games’ Evoland 2, a complex 20-hour-long RPG. Even its developers didn’t believe it was doable on mobile, due to this complexity.
But we did it!
Now that you’ve got the setup, here we go: how do you port the precise, frenetic, action-packed, controller-centric roguevania game that is Dead Cells to mobile and tablets devices that utilize a single touch screen?
The first thing we did before anything else, was to make sure the game could run on mobile devices. We made a very rough first build, without controls or anything, just to check performances and see if there were any technical blockers. Spoilers: there weren’t.
A Switch version was also in the pipeline, so we weren’t that worried about it. The thing to know about mobile nowadays is that mobile devices are way more powerful than what a lot of people expect. Obviously, there are some additional constraints on the technical side, such as the variety of devices to manage, specific texture optimization, RAM usage, not to mention various OS versions. We won’t talk about the Android platform with strong GPU disparity etc. However, generally speaking, high-end mobile devices nowadays are very close to a Nintendo Switch in terms of technical power. So, if you’re planning a Switch version, please have a look at mobile and see if it would fit. It’s an awesome platform with a huge reach and there’re already some awesome games on it and…Ok I’ll stop here, this is for another article (sorry, but I do love mobile).
Let’s get back to Dead Cells. So, there were no technical blockers (we won’t talk about the Haxe/Heaps engine here and that’s not my place to do so anyway). I’m not saying this was easy — on the contrary, it was a very difficult task, but not impossible. Porting a game, specifically on mobile, is not trivial. It does require some hard work and I’m still really impressed with the work our developers are doing. However, with a little experience it gets easier. Unfortunately, Dead Cells won’t be supported on “old” devices but (thanks to QA) we are confident that it can run smoothly on all supported devices.
2.1 Controller settings PC
2.2 Keyboard settings PC
We knew (and will always know) that a mobile port will never be the exact same experience as it was on the original platform (PC or console). For Dead Cells, the main challenge was to take all the controls and find a way to make them enjoyable on mobile.
Now that a first build is here and works, it is time to start thinking about the UX and do some mock-ups and tests.
Where should we start?
On Dead Cells, one of the key features is movement. The player needs to move the character easily, run to the left, the right, crouch, and jump. This is a question we knew well, thanks to our previous porting experiences.
Moving left and right was not too difficult to solve: let’s use a virtual floating pad. It is way more precise today than it was in the past and lot of action games on mobile are using it. Players are already used to it, and we can tweak and tune it as much as we want.
Jump and Dodge, not so much. Both are required in Dead Cells and used so many times.
How could we let players use them easily?
3. First Jump and Dodge drafts
My first mock-up was something like one button for both actions, and I wanted to let the player slide from one side of the button to another, to either jump or dodge without too much gesture. We tried a little.
That didn’t work. It was a nightmare to play, the precision was not here at all and players would mis-click every time. Big nope!
Let’s get back to basics, shall we? One button to jump and one button to dodge. With the right positioning, that could be it. We’re getting closer to the game feel we wanted. But still, this is a lot of buttons on screen, so we tried something else.
Get rid of the Dodge button and use a Swipe on the right part of the screen to dodge.
Yes! That works too!
“Swipe-to-Dodge” was a great idea but wasn’t the best for the whole team. It is a very different way of playing and we weren’t all happy with it. So, by default, we kept the basic two buttons idea.
Let’s talk about what came next: using skills, weapons, and potions; how to pass through a door without breaking it; how to talk to a character; how to pick up items or interact with stuff, etc.
Skills & Weapons: Jump and Dodge buttons worked well, ok let’s do the same! The challenge here was to find the right positioning for the virtual buttons. We checked other successful action games on mobile like Fortnite and Lineage 2 to have a better understanding of players’ habits when playing: How do they move? How do they jump, How do they manage an interface with a lot of buttons? Thanks to benchmarks set by other games, we figured we were good here.
4. Lineage 2
Menu and Potion buttons (and homunculus but shhh! That comes later in the game): On PC you just have to press “Esc” to open the Menu and Settings; on consoles, you press Start or Options. But on mobile, you need something on screen to open it. For a long time, the Menu was just on the HP bar and we were used to it. It wasn’t the first time this was used on a mobile game; I was confident that it would be enough.
Good lesson here: When doing UX design = NEVER EVER EVER assume too many things for players. And please, playtest. Because yes, playtests showed me how wrong I was. Putting the Menu on the HP bar wasn’t enough at all, we needed a Menu icon! So, we listened and added one.
Interaction: How should players control passing through doors, talking to characters, pick up items and weapons, etc.? How should all those different actions work on mobile? We didn’t want to add too many things or give players more controls to understand. One button would be enough, so we added exactly that: a new “Interact” button. Finding the right visual asset for this one was not an easy task but with the right icon and some visual signs and feedback, this button became very simple to understand and use.
For all of those buttons, a lot of mock-ups and tweaks were involved, but thanks to some playtests, we managed to get something nice. Additionally, right from the start, we had this idea of letting players choose how they wanted to play, so we integrated some nice features inspired by Evoland 2… But we’ll get back to that later. At that time, I still personally thought there were a lot of buttons in game, but when playing, I kind of just enjoyed the experience and forgot about that pretty quickly.
Ok let’s recap all the things we needed to fit on onesmall screen:
A floating pad (left of the screen — no discussion here as players are used to it, so let’s not change their habits)
Jump and Dodge
Skills and Weapons
Potion
Menu
Interaction
+ all the UI already there on other platforms: HP bar – Gold & Cells count – Map – Timer etc.
And we needed to adapt to small screens and a completely different way of playing: holding the device with two hands wrapped around it, sometimes on the go.
This required some harsh UI work.
We just couldn’t keep the existing UI; everything was at the bottom of the screen, and this doesn’t work well on mobile since players have their hands and fingers there. They wouldn’t see a thing.
We moved almost everything; the HP bar got a new spot on the top left corner of the screen, with both Gold and Cells as good company. The Map is moved to the top right corner, with the Timer, Keys etc.
That left us a lot of space at the bottom – and that’s where we placed controls. We put the pad zone on the left and other controls on the right, with the little exception for the Potion and Homunculus controls behind the HP bar.
5.1 Original PC UI
5.2 Mobile UI (WIP)
We never found the perfect fit for every player. And this, just within the office. We all had our own ways of playing, our little habits playing the game on PC or consoles, and our little habits when playing on mobile in general.
What could we do? Easy. We did what we did for Evoland 2 and what I expected we’d have to do from the start: Give the player freedom.
You can translate it as: let players customize their controls and experience to their needs and envy.
We did some playtests specifically for the mobile version, and one big thing that came up was that the right direction was to give players the freedom to customize their controls.
I already talked about it briefly, but as the button positioning was really tricky. We implemented what we call the custom controls: an interface in the Settings letting players move and resize the buttons as they want. We hope all our iterations on controls and positioning for the default settings will be enough but if not, that’s ok: controls can adapt a little to the players. We did limit it to positioning and size only, to make sure everything is still working nicely with those changes.
6. Custom controls (WIP)
Also, remember the test on Swipe to Dodge that we put aside? Surprise! It’s back! Not available by default but as an option. Players will just have to activate it et voilà!
Another option often asked is a fixed pad. This is something that came up with playtests and some past experience with mobile games. We can show it this way, 80 percent of players prefers a floating pad and 20 percent a fixed pad. So, just like with the Swipe to Dodge, it’s now an option the player can activate or not.
One last thing: at the beginning of this article I was talking about mobile not being exactly the same experience compared to other platforms. That’s ok. On the suggestion of Motion Twin, we actually added a nice new game mode to make sure the core experience won’t be affected too much by those new controls. At first, we weren’t really convinced. However in the end, it became by far the team’s favorite control option. (Thanks again Motion Twin for pointing this out.)
The idea was to help already on-board Dead Cells players to make the transition to the mobile version, and maybe attract new players to discover the game this way. Or maybe, it was just to have a cool new way to play Dead Cells with a focus on placement, dodging and long-range attack. We called it Auto-Hit. As its name suggests, primary attack (melee attack) will hit automatically nearby enemies. One weapon slot is dedicated to melee weapons only, and the second for the rest (long-range and shields).
8. Corgi jump
If we sum up, we now have:
A UI specifically thought for mobile (and tablet)
Two game modes: Original & Auto-Hit
A custom controls feature (positioning and size)
An option to Swipe to Dodge instead of a button
An option for a fixed pad
External controller support (MFi and Bluetooth)
All of that to make sure we’re as close as we could get to the original PC and console experience.
When porting a game on mobile (or console or anywhere), you do have to make some concessions. You do have to make the controls and interfaces fit the aimed platform. But you can also embrace it and add or modify some features to push it to its full potential on that particular platform.
For us and Dead Cells, the difficulty was to translate all the controls to a touch screen (and on mobile, the controls are often the UI). We knew there wasn’t a perfect solution for everyone, so we decided very early to let players decide for themselves. There are controls by default, and I personally hope this will be a good fit for them as it is. But if not, a lot of other options are available. Hopefully players will appreciate those options and will enjoy this new experience of taking one of their favorite games everywhere.
Porting a game, any game, is not an easy task. There is an infinite constraint from the original platform to work with and that’s why a lot of developers are often frightened when talking about it. But it is not impossible. I agree, some games won’t be right for it, but during the porting process, some devs might discover new ways of playing, and some might work so well you’ll ask yourself “why wasn’t it on this platform before?!”
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 01-11-2020, 08:58 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
Video: Valve’s perspective on brain-computer interfaces in games
In this 2019 GDC session Valve’s Mike Ambinder explores the world of brain-computer interface research, and how its applications might help developers today and in the future.
While current interaction patterns are restricted to interpretations of mouse, keyboard, gamepad, and gestural controls, future generations of interfaces may include the ability to interpret neurological signals in ways that promise quicker and more sensitive actions, much wider arrays of possible inputs, real-time adaptation of game state to a player’s internal state, and qualitatively different kinds of gameplay experiences.
This was an interesting talk because Ambinder discussed both the near-term and long-term outlook of BCI research for the game industry, with an emphasis on how technologies stemming from this research can benefit developers in the present day.
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page.
4. Lineage 2
