This week, I’ve had a great time in the 110-degree heat in Las Vegas at our Inspire and Ready conferences (well, maybe not enjoying the heat so much). I’ve had the opportunity to share the role of innovation and the power of artificial intelligence with partners and employees from every corner of the globe. This is a really exciting time to be at the forefront of the AI revolution, and it’s been great to be involved in discussions about the profound effect AI is having on how we live and work.

Making the most of AI in business

Making AI real, and delivering tangible impact from it, is something we must work together to achieve. Our partners play a critical role in making the most of the opportunities that are only possible through AI. All week, I’ve heard stories of our partners embracing the power of AI to differentiate their services and extend their capabilities to create new business opportunities for themselves and great business outcomes for their customers.

For example, there’s Xanterra – a customer-experience-driven business that hosts 26 million visitors all over the world. Their goal is to provide world-class service and personalization for their well-traveled guests, many of whom are repeat customers at their different global properties. Xanterra’s challenge was that their properties weren’t connected, creating a gap between the high-touch experiences the company delivers and the need to personalize those experiences for guests. Our partner, RedPoint Global, used Microsoft AI to help Xanterra create a detailed profile of each and every customer by connecting data from more than 100 different sources. Now, they use this information to anticipate their guests’ needs more effectively and generate relevant, customized offers to each. Because of this, the Xanterra team increased their revenue with each touchpoint, elevated the guest experience and is sending customer communications more efficiently.

So how can we help unlock more opportunities for people to use AI? Our new Microsoft Azure AI Accelerate Program is helping our partners take advantage of the opportunities AI can bring to their business. It focuses on helping grow ecosystems and bridge adoption barriers to create more value for everyone. We’re also making it easier for partners to access AI Business School by connecting each learning path into the Partner Training Center. In addition, we are publishing the AI Business School in a Box in the Partner Marketing Center, a set of unique assets to enable partners to lead AI engagements with confidence.

Making the most of AI in society: AI for Good

While the opportunity that AI presents for our customers and partners is huge, the potential for AI to positively benefit society through ingenuity, vision and scale is even bigger. Microsoft’s AI for Good initiative already has more than 300 grantees across 63 countries. All of them are using AI to tackle some of our greatest challenges that go beyond business — including climate change, humanitarian crises and enabling greater accessibility for the more than 1 billion people across the world living with a disability.

One of my favorite stories, and one that I was honored to share at Microsoft Inspire this week, is the incredible work of Wild Me, one of the program’s grantees. They’re using the power of Microsoft AI to track individual animals to monitor the health of entire species in support of conservation efforts. As a result, they’ve been able to identify 10 times more whale sharks than ever before in human history. It’s truly awe-inspiring and vital work.

Wild Me’s story is one of many showing how AI is positively impacting society and transforming the world we live in. Building upon our commitment to use tech to make a positive impact on society, we just announced our newest AI for Good program dedicated to the preservation and enrichment of cultural heritage. Through our AI for Cultural Heritage program, we’re partnering with the people preserving places of historical and cultural significance for future generations – such as the work by nonprofit organization Iconem, which is using AI to digitally re-create at-risk locations in areas of conflict. The program will also help communities preserve languages that are at risk of being lost, such as the Yucatec Maya and Querétaro Otomi in Mexico. Because of this, more people across the world will be able to enjoy historical artifacts – as exemplified by our recent partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, making its collection of 1.5 million works of art that spans 5,000 years more accessible to everyone.

The innovations from the grantees we’re working with through our AI for Good initiative reflect our belief in the use of AI to inspire and nurture breakthrough ideas that have meaningful impact and can solve some of the world’s greatest problems.

I’m humbled by the work of our partners and grantees, and being at Inspire reminds me just how fortunate I am to help and work alongside them as they create what’s next and do really powerful things with AI. Technology is just one part of the story, and empowering people to shape and transform the world and do good are at the center of it. By encouraging our partners and users to create their own meaningful innovations, we’re working together to embrace change and find solutions to all sorts of challenges – whether they’re business or societal ones.

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Daniel

Today we are pleased to announce improved Razor tooling support in Visual Studio Code with the latest C# extension. This latest release includes improved Razor diagnostics and support for tag helpers and Blazor apps.

Get Started

To use this preview of Razor support in Visual Studio Code install the following:

To try out Visual Studio Code with Blazor apps, also install:

• .NET Core 3.0 (Preview 4 or later)

• The latest Blazor CLI templates:

  dotnet new -i Microsoft.AspNetCore.Blazor.Templates::3.0.0-preview4-19216-03
  

What’s new in this release?

Improved diagnostics

We’ve improved the Razor diagnostics in Visual Studio Code for a variety of scenarios, including floating @ characters:

Missing end braces:

And missing end tags in code blocks:

Tag helpers

Tag helper completions are now supported in ASP.NET Core projects:

As well as completions for tag helper attribute names and values:

Blazor

Visual Studio Code now works with Blazor apps too!

You get completions for components and component parameters:

Also data-binding, event handlers and lots of other Blazor goodies!

Limitations and known issues

This is an alpha release of the Razor tooling for Visual Studio Code, so there are a number of limitations and known issues:

• Razor editing is currently only supported in ASP.NET Core and Blazor projects (no support for ASP.NET projects)
• Limited support for colorization

Note that if you need to disable the Razor tooling:

• Open the Visual Studio Code User Settings: File -> Preferences -> Settings
• Search for “razor”
• Check the “Razor: Disabled” checkbox

Feedback

Please let us know what you think about this latest update to the Razor tooling support in Visual Studio Code by reporting issues in the Razor.VSCode repo. When reporting Razor tooling related issues please use the “Report a Razor Issue” command in Visual Studio Code to capture all of the relevant longs and diagnostic information. Just run the command and then follow the instructions.

Thanks for trying out Razor in Visual Studio Code!

Daniel Roth

Principal Program Manager, ASP.NET

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There is no shortage of card-based games on iOS (or Android). From straight up trading card games, to games that use the randomness of card drawing in some aspect of its design, there’s just something universally satisfying about drawing from a deck and taking your chances. In many ways, Void Tyrant isn’t that much different than many of its contemporaries. But like the Uncharted series on PlayStation consoles, Void Tyrant is more concerned with perfecting well-worn design features than innovating them completely.

A mysterious chaos pyramid has appeared at the edge of the solar system. It’s locked, its keys scattered across disparate planets, each granting both power and madness to their inhabitants. You must gather the keys, enter the deadly structure, and put an end to whatever is causing the malevolence. It’s a story that is both familiar, but resonant enough to climb onboard with quickly.

The “you” in this game is a character that gets randomly rolled at the start of each run. They are a mix of various races, classes, and passive attributes that make each character hold a specific sort of uniqueness each time. Sometimes, these variables can change some interactions with characters or environments you’ll encounter in your run. If you draw a race that can see in the dark, then wandering off of the beaten path into a spooky cave won’t be ominous for you.

The act of traversing these worlds in search of chaos keys is standard first person RPG fare. Every step takes you into a new encounter, which could be a monster, trap, or treasure. Every once in a while, you’ll have the option to turn left or right, but rarely do these paths branch farther than a single screen.

When you do stumble across a monster, that’s when the signature blackjack-style combat goes down. You and your enemy have a deck of 24 cards, each with a number of 1-6. While drawing, your goal is to get as close to 12 as possible without going over. The side who is closest wins, and gets an amount of attacks against their enemy equal to the difference between both numbers. Pretty simple stuff.

The many ways this basic concept gets modified is where combat really shines. Each combatant has another hand of cards full of spells and abilities. These either take effect when you win a round, or immediately. They can alter the count of your draw, add extra attacks if you win, put status ailments on your enemy, etc. Using all of these flairs strategically is when Void Tyrant feels most like an RPG. Analyzing your draw total, how many cards you’ve left to pull, and where a useful ability might fit into that equation is a rewarding exercise. The sort of risk taking aspect of playing around the draw is rewarding as well.

That said, combat can also feel arduous. Sometimes, you’ll find yourself in minutes long stalemates with enemies. Making the “right” decisions can put you in a holding pattern for what feels like an endless amount of turns. Especially against bosses, you could spend just as much time sticking and moving around the enemy as it did to get all the way to them.

That and the randomness of the game can truly feel unfair at times. More often than not, enemies that are supposed to be tough seem to always draw favorably, and you always seem to come up short. This isn’t to say that the numbers are being actively fudged, though. It’s more to draw a parallel to Void Tyrant’s casino counterpart. Just like you may feel like you’re caught in a bad card patch at a 21 table, you can feel that same bad energy against a big, icy, armored beetle.

Another pretty demoralizing thing can be playing the free to play version of this game. It’s heavily ad supported, which means almost everything will involve watching an ad to take part of. Getting bonuses from spirits – little npcs that grant you bonus currency, card packs, and extra lives – involves watching an ad first. Journeys on planets can be impeded every few steps by ads. It’s truly an annoying experience.

More than that, there are parts of the game that suddenly began to appear after I upgraded to the premium version. Side paths that used to just be a single treasure chest or monster encounter suddenly became doorways to whole new mini dungeons. I can’t confirm whether I passed a particular in-game threshold to open these up, or if it was a premium exclusive feature.

Many of the variants for your hero character is locked behind lots of grinding. Certain quests have to be completed before unlocking new classes or races. These quests can consist of killing a certain number of creatures or finding a number of a specific item. Many of these quests can only be done on specific planets, and can’t be done in one run. Also, you can’t just replay a specific planet without either cancelling your run prematurely, or finishing it to the end. You’ll play as a human knight for a large bulk of your early experience, which feels like a very narrow view of what this game has to offer.

If you can stick with it (and are willing to drop the approximately $5/£6 for the premium version) then Void Tyrant may very well be your next favorite iOS RPG. It’s clever, if not ground-breaking, take on the blackjack combat trope, as well as fun utilization of rogue-like mechanics, makes Tyrant a unique experience on the platform. It bogs itself down with the pacing of its free to play ads and the natural ebb and flow of card-based randomness. It also hides a big swath of its customizability behind arduous grinding. But if you have time to grind, Void Tyrant is worth the investment.

Ubisoft, or more specifically Ubisoft Animation Studio, has just joined the Blender Foundation as a gold sponsor.  The Blender Foundation Development Fund is a way for individuals and corporations to contribute financially to the development of Blender.  Additionally, UAS will be adopting Blender 2.80 for future animation projects.

Details from the Blender news:

Today Ubisoft announced that they will join the Blender Foundation’s Development Fund as a corporate Gold member. Not only will Ubisoft help funding online support for Blender developers, Ubisoft Animation Studio – a department of Ubisoft Film and Television – will also use Blender for their productions and assign developers to contribute to Blender’s open source projects.

Pierrot Jacquet, Head of Production at Ubisoft Animation Studio says “Blender was for us an obvious choice: Its strong and engaged community paired up with the vision carried by the Blender Foundation makes it one of the most creative DCC of the market.”

“Good news keeps coming” says Blender founder and chairman Ton Roosendaal, “it’s such a miracle to witness the industry jumping on board with us! I’ve always admired Ubisoft, as one of the leading games and media producers in the world. I look forward to work with them and help them finding their ways as a contributor to our open source projects on blender.org.“

As well as from Ubisoft:

For those that may not know, Blender has been around for quite some time as open-source animation software. Why has Ubisoft chosen now to become a Corporate Gold Member?

PJ: We believe that Blender 2.8, which will be released in the coming days, is a game-changer for the CGI industry. Blender has been on Ubisoft’s radar for a long time already, and in the past year, more and more of our artists have shown an interest in using it in production. The growth of our internal Blender community, as well as the innovations brought by 2.8 – e.g. a revamped UX, Grease Pencil, EEVEE real-time rendering – convinced us that this was the right time to bring support to our artists and productions that would like to add Blender to their toolkit. What better way to support that switch than donating to the Blender Foundation, so we can help Blender to continue to grow?

How does working with open-source tools balance out with in-house developed tools?

PJ: At Ubisoft Animation Studio, we will always have very specific needs, and in-house development is the most efficient way to serve these.

On the other hand, when we had our own DCC, we had to spend a significant amount of time to maintain and improve the core of the software; this was less time we could spend innovating. Working with open source solutions like Blender offers us more flexibility and frees some resources to focus on research and exploration of new ways and tools to create animated shows.

Our discussions with the Blender Foundation have shown us that our goals are aligned, making the open source collaboration the obvious choice.

The above is only a portion of the complete Ubisoft interview about their plans for using Blender and open source in the future.  If you are interested in supporting Blender, be sure to check out details on the Corporate Developer Fund available here or here (PDF).

GameDev News Blender

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In this 2017 GDC session, Brightskull Entertainment Group founder Michael Csurics showcases the experimental and extensive lengths that were taken to create the voiceover performances in Fullbright’s space station exploration game Tacoma.

It was an intriguing look at how the game’s experimental voice-over recording process was created and implemented; Csurics walked the audience through how, with indie resources, the Tacoma team was able to capture 6-on-mic ensemble scenes while giving the actor’s freedom to use full body movement, theatrically performing every scene with crystal-clear audio fidelity.

Whether you work in big-budget game dev or a tiny indie team, this is a talk with useful takeaways you can apply to your next project — so take advantage of the fact you can now watch it for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel!

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 XRDC 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. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Have you ever heard of a hero that always needs to be saved? No? Well, then get ready for the first one. Hero (yeah that’s how he likes to be called) is the only guy standing between the planet’s safety and 11 monsters that are trying to bring havoc everywhere. Why does he always need to be saved? Simple. He’s as forgetful as they come. He’s about to fight an ice monster? For sure, he forgets the fuel for his flamethrower! How about fighting a flame-breathing dragon? Obviously, he leaves his fireproof shield at home! It’s in these situations that he calls for backup, and here’s where the Hero Express comes into play. They’re the best of the best when it comes to deliveries. Their motto? “Heroic deliveries, right on time!” Delivery Guy (yeah, stop asking! It’s his name!) is the one they always send in these dire times. He’s their best man when it comes to delivering packages fast in dangerous places and never fails to do his job splendidly! Do you have the skills to get Delivery Guy to the end of each track in this 2D physics driven driving game? Cause Hero Express is already available on Xbox One!

To get to the end of each track you need some skills, as you don’t want your vehicle to topple over and break the package you’re delivering (at least we hope you don’t!). But you can also upgrade your car with the coins collected on the track and make its 4 stats (engine, wheels, traction, and stability) more powerful. But in the end the skill is what gets you to the end of the track, so here’s a couple of tricks for you.

By using the left analog stick you can tilt the car midair to balance it, doing air tricks and landing safely. This is a pretty basic skill that any player learns pretty early in the game, but there’s an advanced trick to it. What you might not notice is that this trick works even when the car is touching the ground, thus being able to balance it or to do wheelies. As the car starts with traction only on the back wheels this can be used to climb high hills. Try tilting the analog back as to do a wheelie. This will minimize the impact between the front wheels and the hill, while also keeping the rear wheel steady on the ground. With this trick you can climb hills way higher than you normally could at your level!

A second trick is related to the Jumper item. It’s an item that can be collected to make high jumps and reach otherwise unreachable areas. Normally it’s used to get to alternative routes on the track, to get other items or to avoid pits that would result in a game over. The trick is to just keep a few of them (most times one is enough but you never know) until you reach a hill you can’t pass yet. When you start climbing it immediately use the jumper. This will hurl you upwards making you reach a higher point at a speed you wouldn’t normally have thus giving you higher chances to reach the hill’s top.

These 2 tricks aren’t really necessary to finish the tracks of course, but will help you beating them in no time. What to do after that then? Each track has a hard mode. A modified version of the track that’s way more difficult to beat. Sometimes it’s even longer and includes parts that weren’t there in normal mode. These hard versions will really put your skills to test and the tricks we talked about will be invaluable when challenging them.

If you like how Hero Express sounds then you should get ready for this crazy driving adventure.

Hero Express is available now for Xbox One the Microsoft Store. Click here for purchase details.

Cuphead may well be one of the most well-received 2D run ‘n gun platformers of recent times, but how would its standout aesthetic have looked if everything was in 3D instead? If you’ve been hoping to find the answer to that very specific question, you’re in luck.

Raf Grassetti, art director on God of War, has recreated the game’s heroes Cuphead and Mugman. We’ve actually featured his work on the site several times over the past few months; he’s been sharing different takes on beloved gaming characters, including a large portion of the Super Smash Bros. roster.

That’s not all for Cuphead and co., though, as Grassetti has also recently posted these designs for King Dice and the Devil. We think they look great, even with Cuphead’s original art style being so important to the game’s overall feel.

What do you think? Are you a fan of these designs? Remember, Cuphead is soon getting its very own Netflix show.