Keeping track of how many games Chinese publishing giant Tencent is involved in can be tricky, but what’s clear is that the company is leaning into this year’s autobattler craze in a big way. First, it’s adding an autobattler mode to its MOBA, which is titled Arena of Valor in western markets and Honor of Kings in China.

As our friends at PCGamesN note, Honor of Kings is the most profitable mobile game in the world, which makes the addition of an Auto Chess-style mode a natural choice. The game will also receive a map editor, and both updates are due to roll out sometime this month.

Meanwhile, Tencent is also updating its purpose-built autobattler, Chess Rush. That game now has a co-op mode that pits four teams of two players against each other, with a four-player co-op mode due to roll out August 15, according to Pocket Gamer.

Chess Rush is also starting up its first “season” tomorrow, so expect to be able to purchase a Fortnite-style battle pass in order to earn rewards for playing. This month, Chess Rush will also add two new characters to its roster, the Undead Assassin and Undead Thief.

Tencent will update Honor of Kings, the #1 mobile game in the world by revenue, with a map editor and Auto Chess mode this August.

The 5v5 MOBA has had many content updates over the year, in line with popular trends, including a battle royale mode last year. pic.twitter.com/9BVdnDfP7m

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) August 2, 2019

There are a ton of autobattlers to choose from, and at this point it looks as though most if not all are angling for the lucrative mobile market. It’s a space that’s likely to get even more crowded before the year’s out.

Today we are checking out the web based tool, the Universal LPC Sprite Sheet Character Generator, a free tool that enables you to quickly and easily create multi angle animated character sprite sheets.  The LPC in the name stands for Liberated Pixel Cup a contest/organization on OpenGameArt for creating open source 2D pixel art in a consistent style.  You can browse the entire content of LPC assets right here.  The assets on LPC and generated by this tool are available under split open source licenses, the CC BY-SA 3.0 and GPLv3.

The Sprite Sheet Generator enables you to quickly compose characters by selecting a male or female base sprite, then customizing dozens of attributes and accessories, such as eyes, hair style, clothing and weapons.  While the UI isn’t amazing, the process is remarkably straight forward, as shown in the following video.

Art GameDev News 2D Tools

Click Here!

Cococucumber has announced it will release its shoot-and-slash multiplayer dungeon crawler Riverbond on the Switch later this year. The game supports up to four players in couch co-op and is all about destroying mobs, taking down bosses and treasure hunting in a “stunning” voxel world.

The game has “real-time” physics and allows players to break apart enemies, objects and environments. Players will discover secrets and face foes across multiple handcrafted levels and eight whimsical worlds. The combat is said to suit any play style and is supported by quick and responsive arcade-like controls, giving you the advantage in battle.

There are also a number of indie-themed crossover skins to unlock. These include skins based on characters such as The Kid from Bastion, Shovel Knight, Raz from Psychonauts, Juan from Guacamelee!, and Bullet Kin from Enter the Gungeon.

Here’s what Vanessa Chia – the co-founder and art director of Cococucumber – had to say about this announcement:

Riverbond is a homage to the 16-bit era and some of the best co-op memories we’ve ever made, but we’re also inspired and humbled by modern indies which hold a special place in our hearts. By fusing classic arcade action with a modern approach to level design and co-op gaming, we hope to give families, friends, and every kind of adventurer a warm welcome on Nintendo Switch.

Would you be interested in trying out this game on your Switch? Leave a comment below.

The Hawaiian poʻo-uli, a small bird from the honeycreeper family, was first discovered in 1973. Less than half a century later, it disappeared from the planet. 

Declared extinct in 2018, it is one of almost 700 vertebrate species that have been driven to extinction in the last 500 years. According to a United Nations report issued earlier this year to policymakers, one million species are at risk of extinction: Human actions threaten more plants and animals than ever before. Although the precise number of species on the planet is difficult to calculate, recent estimates put it at around 8.7 million. 

The plight of the poʻo-uli illustrates a key problem for conservationists: It is difficult to track and monitor populations of endangered species. Despite efforts to tag and locate the dwindling poʻo-uli population, scientists were unable to unite breeding pairs. 

Now, technology is offering hope to scientists. Collecting better data and analyzing it more effectively with machine learning and AI allows conservationists to make more targeted and timely interventions.  

Here are five ways Microsoft and conservation efforts are coming together to help endangered species. 

[Subscribe to Microsoft on the Issues for more on the topics that matter most.]

Identifying lions and giraffes 

Facial– and pattern–recognition technology allows researchers to pinpoint and track individual animals, helping scientists monitor populations and their migrations. 

However, without the distinctive markings of cheetahs and leopards, it is harder for researchers to identify individual lions. The Lion Identification Network of Collaborators uses facial recognition techniques to monitor population levels. Identification involves taking a high-quality photo and zooming in on areas such as whisker spots – something a computer is more capable of than the human eye. This technology helps reduce reliance on expensive and difficult–to–fit GPS monitors, which can have limited battery life. 

Similar technology is being used by researchers from Penn State University and the Wild Nature Institute to study the births, deaths and movements of more than 3,000 giraffes in northern Tanzania.  

Habitat loss and illegal hunting for meat have meant giraffe populations have experienced a dramatic decline in recent years. Pattern–recognition technology trained to identify the unique markings on a giraffe’s torso can now process images in minutes, a task that previously took conservationists weeks. 

Monitoring the impact of humans on grizzly bear populations 

Clayton Lamb, a researcher at the University of Alberta, Canada, is using Microsoft Azure tools along with AI to create a comprehensive analysis of the human and environmental factors limiting grizzly bear density in British Columbia.  

With human populations increasingly expanding into areas of wilderness, the grizzly is coming under threat as its habitat is shrinking. These roaming omnivores are particularly sensitive to human disturbance, and globally now live in an area only about half their original range.  

Lamb uses DNA sampling and GPS collars to track individual bears in order to better understand the connectivity between populations and their habitats at a granular level. By generating such specific data, he is able to move his work beyond theoretical population ecology and suggest steps to reduce the impact of humans on wildlife populations.

Assessing whale health and feeding patterns 

At Duke University in North Carolina, scientists are using marine robotics and remote–sensing, machine–learning models on Microsoft Azure to assess data relating to the size and health of whales. 

As oceans warm, krill stocks – a critical whale food – are falling, while fishing and commercial exploitation of habitats are also placing a strain on whale populations. 

Given the distances whales travel, monitoring their movements using traditional methods is both time-consuming and expensive. Neural networks have allowed scientists to link multiple systems, including satellites, drones and autonomous underwater vehicles, to paint a more comprehensive picture of the migration and health of these great animals.

Tracking penguin populations 

Monitoring penguin populations in remote habitats is also difficult work. Identifying colonies often involves looking for hard-to-find markers such as guano stains on rocks of a very similar color.  

Ecologist Heather J. Lynch, from the Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, is coupling AI capabilities with predictive population modelling to allow real-time tracking of Antarctic penguins. 

She’s using computer vision to search for guano stains in satellite imagery in order to inform and develop the classification algorithms that generate population estimates for colonies.  

Protecting elephants from poachers 

It is estimated that an elephant was killed every 15 minutes between 2007 and 2014 – and that 25,000 to 35,000 were killed each year by poachers for their ivory.    

With huge areas to monitor, defending these animals is a challenge. Resources can be thinly spread, communication can be patchy and gathering usable data tricky. 

The Elephant Listening Project is helping protect the threatened forest elephant. Teams at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with assistance from Conservation Metrics based in Santa Cruz, California, are using AI to identify and analyze recordings of elephant calls, helping to create an “elephant dictionary” by matching noises to behavior.  

A growing understanding of elephant communication is allowing researchers to better appreciate the impact of factors such as oil exploration, logging and poaching, as well as enabling them to coordinate conservation efforts more efficiently. 

For more on how AI can be used to solve global environmental challenges, visit AI for Earth. And follow @MSFTIssues on Twitter.   

Mobile devices and computers become more and more like each other every day, but desktops and consoles are still considered the superior platforms for serious gameplay. Their ability to push more pixels, accept more control inputs, and deliver complex strategies remain unequalled. Yet, sometimes, a game that was once a “real gamerz” exclusive crosses over to mobile devices. So which cross-platform games are actually better on mobile?

Board and card games do very well on mobile for obvious reasons: a simulation of moving cards and tokens around a tabletop definitely feels better when you’re using your hands. So consider most of the games on our Best Board and Card games lists to be honorary members of this one. Adventure games likewise often control extremely well with touch controls, but the difference is small enough that it’s hard to say they are really ‘better’ on mobile. Beyond that, here are a some cross-platform gems that actually have superior mobile versions.

SteamWorld Heist

SteamWorld Heist is a unique tactics game played on 2D platforms with guns that you can manually aim. It’s got a wide variety of enemies, weapons, and interesting multi-level maps with lots of cover. What’s more, Heist gives the player the ability to nudge their shots ever so slightly to ricochet off one or a dozen surfaces, pinging across the iron spaceships to nip the hat right off that annoying royal guardsman’s head. While mouse control is fine for this, the game really shines as you slowly roll your finger into the perfect position. Missions can take only twenty minutes in some cases, making Heist a perfect mobile game.

FTL

FTL was one of the earliest indie darlings to make the jump to mobile devices, and quickly became the obsession of many a pocket gamer. The game’s frantic gameplay has you putting out multiple fires (some of them literal) on a spaceship with limited tools. Tapping on your tablet far exceeds mouseclicking as a control scheme in this situation. What’s more, the ‘episodic’ structure of the game, where you deal with crises in one star system at a time, is perfectly suited for short bursts of play. At the same time, its rogueish world map makes it a compelling long-player.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions

Console ports are a dime a dozen on the app store these days, but any review of a classic port is going to mention that a gamepad is basically required for a good experience. On the other hand, Final Fantasy XV got a great port with great mobile controls, but it still needed a lot stripped away to fit on mobile.

Final Fantasy Tactics is the one game that really became better in its mobile iteration, despite losing its multiplayer component. Touch controls are an obvious improvement over selecting your units and their actions through endless scrolling through menus and maps using a joystick. What’s more, the mobile version includes the enhanced script and cutscenes of the PSP port. For experiencing the epic story of a game considered one of the best of the PlayStation era, if not the best tactical RPG of all time, mobile is where its at for Final Fantasy Tactics.

Touchscreen-based games from the Nintendo DS are also worth checking out, including Square’s RPG The World Ends with You and Capcom’s ports of the Phoenix Wright games and forgotten gem Ghost Trick.

Gorogora

Tons of puzzle games have made the crossover to mobile, and a lot of them definitely benefit from having touch controls. One that truly stands out is Gorogora. This game sees the player manipulating a grid of illustrations, dragging pieces, uncovering details, and matching patterns in increasingly unexpected ways. Gorogora is like a jigsaw puzzle for the ubiquitous-computing age, and its highly tactile gameplay really benefits from a touchscreen. It just doesn’t feel the same to click and drag these beautiful paintings that beg to be touched.

Kingdom: New Lands

Kingdom began as a Flash game, and its boiled-to-the-bone gameplay reflects that simplicity in its instantly-iconic visuals and super-simple controls. You simply swipe to move your monarch around, collecting and distributing coins to build an unimpeachable castle, and eventually escape the ever-multiplying monsters.

While its simple controls suit mobile, there’s one caveat: Kingdom relies on the player keeping the status of their kingdom in mind at all times. It deliberately doesn’t keep a count of how many people you’ve recruited or make an automap for you. That makes it the most accurate horseback-strategy simulator around, but it also makes it hard to pick up and play. It’s easy to forget what you were doing even moment to moment, and get overwhelmed by an attack you forgot was coming.

But, when you have the attention to devote to it, there’s nothing quite as engaging as Kingdom on mobile. The game’s day-to-night cycle is perfect at compelling you to finish just one more task before dark, and its procedural design makes every round unique. It’s the perfect game for a long commute or an rainy afternoon at the beach house. It will hold your attention for hours without requiring more than a few swipes a minute, and is easily played from bed.

What games do you think are better on mobile vs. other ports or versions? Let us know in the comments!

Humble are running another e-book/video bundle of interest to developers, this one is the Humble Book Bundle: Coding & App Development by Packt.  It is a collection of books and training videos on a broad variety of application development topics from iOS and Android development, to Dart, React and Node.js.  As always it is split into tiers, those tiers are:

1$ Tier

• Locked content Architecting Modern Java EE Applications
• Learn Qt 5
• Learning jQuery 3
• Learn Flutter and Dart to Build iOS and Android Apps (VIDEO)
• Real-World iOS Projects (VIDEO)

8$ Tier

• Mastering iOS 12 Programming
• Android 9 Development Cookbook
• ASP.NET Core 2 and Angular 5
• Node.js Design Patterns (VIDEO)
• Hands-On Full Stack Development with Spring Boot 2.0 and React
• Universal JavaScript with React, Node and Redux (VIDEO)
• Develop Advanced Cross Platform Apps Using Xamarin Forms and XAML (VIDEO)
• Hands-On Full Stack Web Development With Angular 6 and Laravel 5

15$ Tier

• Angular 6 for Enterprise-Ready Web Applications
• React and React Native
• Android Programming For Beginners
• Vue.js Design Patterns and Best Practices
• WordPress 5 Complete
• Spring 5 Design Patterns
• Mastering Xamarin UI Development
• React Design Patterns and Best Practices
• React Native Cookbook
• Learning Node.js Development
• Django 2 Web Development Cookbook
• Hands-On Web Development with Vue.js (VIDEO)

Buying a higher dollar tier will entitle you to all the lower priced tiers as well.  When your purchase a Humble Bundle, you get to decide how your money is allocated, between Humble, the Publisher, charity and if you should choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GameFromScratch.  The Bundle is available here.  Check out the video below for more details on the contents of the bundle.

GameDev News Book