Hey devs, the Game Developers Conference is just over a month away — which means now is the time for you to start planning out what you’re going to see and do to get the most out of your time at the event!

Conference organizers encourage you to take advantage of the free GDC 2019 Session Scheduler to lay out our week at the show in an intuitive, easy-to-navigate fashion.

(And if for some reason you’re not signed up to attend GDC, don’t worry — there’s still time to register for a pass!)

If you’ve never used the Session Scheduler before, no worries: it’s pretty easy to get started. Simply select “Create Account” from the Session Scheduler page and provide a valid email address, then start adding talks that look interesting to your personal GDC 2019 schedule!

GDC 2019 itself will take place March 18th through the 22nd at the newly-renovated Moscone Center in San Francisco. 

For more details on GDC 2019 visit the show’s official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa

This interview is part of our Road to the IGF series. You can find the rest by clicking here.

Nth Dimension[al] Hiking explores places you’re not supposed to be, leaving players to explore and wander them as they seek the hidden truths buried within seemingly dead ends.

Gamasutra spoke with Zachariah Chandler, developer of the Nuovo Award-nominated Nth Dimension[al] Hiking, to talk about creating worlds where the truth is hidden in out-of-the-way places and the joys of being lost and unsure in digital realms.

Hiker’s history

I’m Zachariah Chandler, and I’m the guy making Nth Dimension[al] Hiking (NDH). I do all the stuff: programming, shader work, level design, sound, music (eventually), animation, etc.

I just came out of a game design bachelors at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology). NDH is my final-semester project, actually. So, I’ve been making games for three years now. Before my degree, I hadn’t really meddled in anything game-related; I focused on visual art in school.

A philosophical game born of design studies

There wasn’t a single moment where I thought “I’m gonna make a game about a lil triangle ghost navigating an obtuse chiaroscuran public transit system,” but rather a series of disparate ideas came together all at once and coalesced into NDH.

I had been playing with the idea of a complex character controller that used Game Boy controls (D-pad, A, B, start, select) for a while before I started NDH. I also wanted to learn a little more about procedural meshes, shaders, and level design in general (ironically practical and production-focused for a game which would end up being so philosophical and theory-oriented). As I started to put all these things into the same project, some kind of a something began to take shape. I then spent six months talking to smart people and thinking lots about game design conventions and the kinds of works I liked and aspired to, and eventually I knew what I wanted NDH to be.

The tools for making Nth Dimension[al] Hiking

[I used] Unity for the engine, Shader Forge for some of the graphical stuff (although a lot of what I did could be done without Shader Forge), Atom for script-editing (C#), Blender for modeling, BFXR and Audacity for sound, Photoshop and Gimp for 2D graphics.

Spaces telling truths

Honesty, I always want to make spaces that are mysterious and strange, but truthful. Every part of the geometry and environment is solid and interactable. There are no invisible walls. The space is always telling you the exact truth about what is there. 

That kind of level design creates a trust between the world and the audience, and gives the space a great deal more weight and intrigue because the player doesn’t have to worry about arbitrary gate-keeping or correct paths or whether or not what they can see is what is really there. 

Another aspect of this kind of design is encouraging lateral thinking. I spend a lot of time just dicking around and trying to get to strange parts of my levels. I like to find out-of-the-way areas and think about what it might be interesting to find there, and how it might relate to the rest of the space. Much like my mechanical design, the spacial design happens very slowly and organically, and usually according to what I personally find compelling.

On how to create spaces where the player feels they shouldn’t belong

Obfuscation. Everything from the graphics to the controls to the sound design is all set up to be a little opaque and inscrutable. The space itself is also arranged in such a way that if one follows it according to common sense, it will lead nowhere. One must instead poke around in the corners and edges of the space to find what is worth finding. You have to start thinking about the space in a different way, and while the whole environment is designed to be navigable by the player. it is not immediately apparent and that adds to that feeling of unbelonging.

Designing the means with which to go places you’re not meant to

I play a lot of walking sims. I think they might be my favorite “genre” of game. I also really like action games; games where you get a significant level of control over your “body” (Mario 64, Tomb Raider (1996), Elite Dangerous, and Eurotruck Simulator 2 are good popular examples).

One of the things I particularly enjoy doing in walking sims (and in games in general) is trying to get to places that it looks like I shouldn’t be able to get to, or to climb as high as I can. Unfortunately, most walking sims do not have interesting controls with which to do this, but they often have compelling atmospheres and environments. I wanted to combine these two things and create a slow, atmospheric action game. 

As for the specific mechanics/affordances: I chose those based on what I wanted to do while I was prototyping; I didn’t have a comprehensive list laid out prior to development (although I had some rough ideas which I had been mulling over for a few months before I started). I wanted to fly, so I added a glider. I wanted to see in the dark, so I added a torch, and so on. Much of the refinement process was simply sitting down and playing – seeing how the different tools talked to each other and what kinds of meta-tools they created. It was very organic.

Allowing the player to become lost

I think games focus too heavily on being easy to understand and easy to consume. If players are confused or uncertain, then this is seen as a flaw in the game. I think that’s garbage. Sometimes it’s cool to be uncertain or wary or to feel kinda lost, and creating situations for players to feel that way shows a level of respect for your audience, as well as the world you have created. 

NDH is about learning. You have to learn how to use your tools, how to navigate the space, where to go and how to get there, and being able to read the space is a part of that. I think the game would lose something if it was easier to look at and understand at a glance.

Discoveries hidden within obscured worlds

When I was a little kid, my dad took me to his university computer lab and sat me down with some games while he studied. I don’t remember much of what I played, but I do remember being kind of afraid of games. I didn’t really understand the limitations of technology or have an awareness of the concept of authors or designers, so to me, these things just existed with no origin or history except what I could see on the screen.

Because I was so young, I often had a hard time understanding what to do or where to go or how to engage with the games properly, but I had this implicit understanding that there was something more going on than what I could see, and that if I just kept trying I might find out what that was.

The combination of not quite understanding how to engage with an object, and the implicit promise of something more to discover if you just keep trying, is a really cool feeling, and is something I wish more games would embrace.

Far Cry New Dawn is now available on Xbox One and enhanced for Xbox One X. This time around, the adventure takes place in a superbloom-covered post-apocalypse that’s as vibrant as it is chaotic, but a healthy coating of pink flowers and graffiti isn’t the only thing that’s different about Hope County. To help you get the lay of the brightly colored land, we’ve assembled eight things you need to know before you venture out into the post-apocalypse either by yourself or with a co-op buddy.

Live Long and Prosper(ity)

Nearly everything you’ll do in Far Cry New Dawn begins and ends with your homebase, Prosperity. Here, you’ll take on missions, get to know the locals, upgrade your gear, and even travel outside of Hope County on Expeditions. When you first arrive in Prosperity, you’ll be tasked with heading out to find local Specialists to help you upgrade your homebase. These Specialists won’t go out into the wilderness with you to fight back against the Highwaymen. Instead, they’ll take up residence in Prosperity and allow you to upgrade everything, from weapons to vehicles to explosives.

Using the most valuable resource in the apocalypse, ethanol, you’ll upgrade stations around Prosperity that will provide you with the means to improve your gear. Upgrading your Workbench allows you to craft more powerful weapons, improving your Garage will improve the quality of vehicles available to you, and buffing your Training Camp strengthens your Guns for Hire. And then there’s the Healing Garden, Explosives Lab, Infirmary, and Cartography station; the people in Prosperity are eager to lend a hand against the Highwaymen.

Build Your Roster

While the Specialists needed to build up Prosperity are clearly marked on your map, Guns for Hire are not. If you want to take out the Highwaymen with Hurk, Pastor Jerome, or Timber the adorable genius dog by your side, you’ll have to explore Hope County and take on side missions from captured Outposts. Want Nana, the sniper, to take out your enemies from afar? Or Horatio the massive boar to bulldoze Highwaymen? You’re going to have to find them.

Travel the World

After you earn enough ethanol, you’ll gain access to Expeditions, earning the ability to leave Hope County for smash-and-grab missions at Highwaymen strongholds across the country. Expeditions are missions that take you to a wide variety of memorable locales across the US, including abandoned amusement parks, stranded aircraft carriers, and desert canyons, among others. They are rollicking and raucous adventures, with more enemies to outwit, special packages to search for, and mad dashes through heavy fire to an extraction point once you’ve grabbed your prize.

Expeditions are also excellent ways to acquire many of the resources you’ll need to upgrade and craft your gear. Just make sure you have a varied arsenal for the job. It’s best to try and go in as quietly as possible because once you grab the target package, a GPS tracker attached to it will notify the Highwaymen of your exact position, at which point you’ll have plenty of enemies on your tail and will need all the stopping power you can get. And as an added bonus, upgrading Prosperity’s Expeditions station also means upgrading your helicopter, which opens up the ability for you to fast travel around Hope County.

Level Up

You may notice that your rank one (white) assault rifle isn’t doing much damage to those rank two (blue) enemies and is barely tickling those rank three (purple) and four (gold) baddies. That’s because in Far Cry New Dawn everything, from weapons to vehicles to enemies and wildlife, has ranks. They’re also packing health bars so you can see exactly how effective your weapons are on your current target. If you find yourself up against some Highwaymen that are more than one rank above you, it’s best to retreat and wait until you’ve upgraded your arsenal to take them down. You’ll also need to spend some Perk Points on the Advanced, Expert, and Master Takedown perks if you want to be able to stealthily take down enemies that are rank two and above (which you definitely want to do).

Loot Everything

You’ll likely notice that new weapons and vehicles aren’t exactly coming fresh off the supply line in the post-apocalypse, that means that if you want a new Saw Launcher, sniper rifle, or truck, you’ll need to craft it using various crafting materials. Collecting resources like components, gears, springs, copper, and titanium is your ticket to better gear. Fortunately, locations now show you how much of a coveted resource they hide, so you’ll know just how many rolls of duct tape to look for before packing up and moving on to the next spot.

As mentioned above, you won’t get far without ethanol. While you won’t find it just lying around like you will other resources, there are a few reliable ways to acquire it. The first, and most efficient, is by clearing Highwaymen Outposts. Defeat all the Highwaymen at a particular Outpost, and you’ll claim it for yourself and earn a healthy dose of ethanol – and if you take the Outpost down without triggering alarms or being spotted, you’ll earn even more for your troubles.

While wandering the open world of Hope County, you’ll occasionally see nearby Supply Drops falling from the sky; if you chase them down and claim them before any nearby Highwaymen, you’ll net yourself additional resources, including ethanol. Also, be on the lookout for ethanol truck shipments moving from Outpost to Outpost; successfully highjack one and return it to one of your Outposts or Prosperity, and you’ll secure more ethanol for your cause.

Perks of the Apocalypse

Make sure you’re not so busy upgrading Prosperity, your weapons, and your vehicles that you neglect your Perks. Like Far Cry games of the past, Perks allow you to expand your capabilities and do things like grapple up to high points, hold more weapons, perform takedowns on tougher enemies, and repair broken vehicles. You’ll naturally unlock Perk Points through your progress, but there are a few ways to earn some more. Head to the Challenges menu to find weapon, exploration, hunting, and kill challenges that you can complete for bonus Perk Points (simply killing a bunch of enemies with every new weapon you find is a great way to grab Perk Points early on).

You’ll also be able to get Perk Points by completing Treasure Hunts. Marked with a diamond symbol, Treasure Hunts will task you with solving an environmental puzzle; success will earn you three Perk Points and a nice bundle of resources. Lastly, Highwaymen across Hope County are terrorizing civilians and kidnapping them; save a civilian caught in a tricky situation, and you’ll earn yourself another Perk Point.

Scavenge Outposts and Expeditions

Once you take out an Outpost or complete an Expedition, you’ll have the option to scavenge it, essentially abandoning it to the Highwaymen. Doing so will get you a small dose of ethanol, but also means that the Highwaymen will reclaim the area and repopulate it with tougher enemies and more alarms. At that point, braving the tougher challenge you’ve created and reclaiming the Outpost will earn you even better rewards. Just be sure not to tackle a challenge too early; trying to take down an Outpost or Expedition that’s ranked above your current weapon loadout will likely result in your premature death.

Also, if you set off an alarm at any scavenged Outpost, you’ll trigger the arrival of an Enforcer, a rank four enemy that will make short work of you if you’re packing inferior weaponry. Moral of the story: Scavenging Outposts and taking on higher-rank Expeditions can be lucrative, but be sure your arsenal matches the difficulty rank or you’re in for a rough ride.

What’s that Beeping Sound?

Highwaymen vehicles – with their steel cages, LMG turrets, and graffiti paint jobs – may look like a tempting ride, but beware: if you enter or even approach a Highwaymen ride and hear a beeping sound, it’s best to distance yourself from it as quickly as possible. The beeping indicates the vehicle is booby-trapped and rigged to explode any second, and the blast is enough to kill both you and your Gun for Hire if they’re anywhere near you. If you’d rather not worry about blowing up anytime you get behind the wheel of a car, it might be worth investing in the Hotwire Perk, which will automatically disable Highwaymen booby traps.

Far Cry New Dawn is available now on Xbox One for $39.99 on the Microsoft Store. And if you haven’t played Far Cry 5 yet, you can purchase both games as part of the Far Cry New Dawn Complete Edition and Ultimate Edition bundles.

If you’re tired of all the Hollywood spectacle of modern shooters and long for a simpler time without frame-sapping particle effects and or scripted sequences, you might want to keep an eye out for Beyond Enemy Lines: Covert Operations.

An Unreal Engine 4 game which saw release on PC in 2017, BELCO (as nobody is calling it) comes from one-man developer Polygon Art. While it doesn’t have the bells and whistles you’d expect find in a AAA shooter from one of the big devs, as you can see from the trailer, what it lacks in looks it promises to make up for with freedom of choice in how you approach your objectives.

The story revolves around regaining control of a satellite that’s been hijacked by Soviet seperatists. No points for guessing that the satellite is loaded with nuclear missiles, so it’s up to you to James Bond your way in and get the job done in whatever manner you think best – guns ablazin’, or all quietly-like.

The press blurb highlights the following features:

8 Mission long Story Campaign with ~10h playtime
Adapted gameplay especially for Nintendo Switch
100% Freedom – You chose the tactics
100% Hardcore – Challenge your skill
Ported inhouse by Polygon Art

While we doubt it’ll be troubling the Best Looking category at the 2019 GOTYs, hopefully there’s more than meets the eye with this one. DOOM and Wolfenstein II are excellent shooters, but there’s a gap in the market for something a bit more tactical.

Does this take you back a generation or two? Do you miss shooters without loot boxes? You know what to do…

As time marches on inexorably – week after week, year after year – it should come as no surprise that The Legend of Zelda is 33 years old today. No, not the cartridge version – that wouldn’t make an appearance until July ’87 in North America – we’re talking about the Famicom Disk System original.

The game also shares a birthday with the Famicom Disk System itself, the Japan-only console that plugged into the original cartridge-based Famicom and offered an improved experience over the base console. That console launched with The Legend of Zelda and a disk version of Super Mario Bros. – quite the one-two punch, wouldn’t you agree?

© 2019 Valve Corporation. All rights reserved. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries.

We’re slowly entering the “bug fixing and polishing” phase of the 1.14 Village & Pillage update, but that didn’t stop us from sneaking in a few cool features like Leather Horse Armor (it’s dyeable!), making Invisiblity Potions actually useful in survival, and best of all… wait, oh dear, I’ve forgotten what that last thing was. Oh well, it’ll come to me later. 

A full summary of the content available in this snapshot can be found in the changelog on Minecraft.net.

• One Iron Golem now spawns in all villages upon generation
• Improvements to invisibility to allow it to correctly work in many cases where it didn’t but you’d expect it to
• Added Leather Horse Armor
• Textures for potion effects are now split into individual files
• Command parser now accepts ' as string quotes. Inside '-quoted string " is handled as normal character and requires no escaping (and vice-versa) – so now it’s easier to input text components in NBT.
• Stopped foxes, dolphins, and pandas from having armor equipped onto them via dispenser
• Changed bounding box and eye height of foxes (prevents them from drowning when swimming)
• Foxes that trusted you in the previous snapshot will unfortunately no longer be trusting

LEATHER HORSE ARMOR

• Added a new armor type for horses
• Dye it in lots, yes LOTS, of different colors

To get snapshots, open your launcher and go to the “launch options” tab. Check the box saying “Enable snapshots” and save. To switch between the snapshot and normal version, you can find a new dropdown menu next to the “Play” button. Back up your world first or run the game on in a different folder (In the “launch options” page).

Please report any and all bugs you find in Minecraft to bugs.mojang.com.

Snapshots can corrupt your world, please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds. 

Share your thoughts on how 1.14 is shaping up in the comments below!

Food retail is a complex, competitive business that belies the simple consumer act of buying bananas or avocados. Supply chains must deliver thousands of products with a limited shelf life, and retailers must serve in-store and online customers, all of whom want fresh food and convenient shopping.

Albertsons Companies, the second largest food and drug retailer in the United States, is meeting those challenges with a comprehensive digital strategy. With Microsoft as a partner, the Boise, Idaho-based company is launching cloud-based innovations that optimize operations, personalize promotions, differentiate the business and ultimately make shopping faster and easier for its 35 million weekly customers.

“We are reimagining the future to serve customers in a way they want to interact with us across all channels,” says Anuj Dhanda, Albertsons Cos. executive vice president and CIO. “Microsoft’s strengths in technology applied at scale at Albertsons Cos. is a winning combination for a great step up in customer experience and how we run the end-to-end company.”

The retailer operates 20 supermarket banners, including Albertsons, Safeway and Vons, in 35 states and Washington, D.C.

The businesses are exploring how to use computer vision, connected sensors and other artificial intelligence technology to reduce friction in the shopping experience.

The work is part of the company’s growing digital investments, including a redesigned e-commerce platform now on Microsoft Azure for scalability. The retailer has also installed customer Wi-Fi in stores, improved its mobile apps, and expanded services for home and rush deliveries of groceries and Plated meal kits. It expanded options for customers to buy online and pick up in-store. And it launched a pilot last year to deliver deli meals with Grubhub.

Last month, the company announced a 73 percent quarterly increase in e-commerce sales.

“We know our consumers are changing how they interact with us, so we want to move with them and be where they want us to be,” says Ramiya Iyer, Albertsons Cos. general vice president of digital stores and pharmacy. “It’s about advancing choices and making those choices even better.”

The choices include easier gas payments through the pilot program One Touch Fuel. Customers can download an app, store credit card info and then simply tap their phone to pay at a gas station. There’s no need to dip a credit card, enter a ZIP code or go through other pump prompts.

Hosted on Azure, the digital innovation saves receipts and can automatically apply discounts from just for U®, the company’s loyalty and digital rewards program. One Touch Fuel is available at 27 of Albertsons Cos.’ nearly 400 gas stations.

“Everybody who uses the app finds it very convenient and likes how it saves time,” says Mark Schumacher, Albertsons Cos. senior director of fuel and convenience.

For workplace efficiency, the retailer uses Microsoft 365 to enable a secure, collaborative environment for store and corporate employees. The intelligent solution provides access to important information like promotions and recalls, leading to better customer service.

The retailer is also leveraging Microsoft’s expertise in data science to streamline its massive supply chain, which involves thousands of manufacturers and growers, 2,000 trucks, 2,280 stores and an average of 50,000 products per store. Data helps the company match supply and demand, keep food fresh, serve customers, and anticipate weather- and event-related impacts.

“Clearly, data is the lifeblood for optimization of the flow, and carrying the widest, smartest variety of products,” says executive vice president and CIO Dhanda.

As data science advances in speed and precision, the company wants to use it for real-time, personalized promotions. So, if you just bought avocados and entered your loyalty number, the retailer might send you a coupon for chips that taste good with avocados – while you’re still in the store.

“The whole idea is that we’re able to create personalized deals for millions of customers based on what they shop for, how they shop and what we believe they would want to consider,” says Dhanda. “We’re using data to get effective and efficient to really meet our customers’ needs.”

All photos courtesy of Albertsons Companies.

Angelos

If you weren’t aware, Visual Studio subscribers have free monthly Azure credits, that are ideal for experimenting with and learning about Azure services. When you activate this benefit, it creates a separate Azure subscription with a monthly credit balance that renews each month while you remain an active Visual Studio subscriber. If the credits run out before the end of the month the subscription is suspended until more credits are available. No surprises, no cost, and no credit card required for any of it!

The table below shows you how many Azure credits you get based on your type of Visual Studio subscription:

Now that you know how many Azure Credits you get every month for free, you are probably wondering what you can spend it on! We have put together the following simple table to help you get going:

Hopefully, you found this information helpful and you are on your way to make use of your Azure credits. If you are interested in the cost of an Azure service you didn’t see in the table above, try the Azure price calculator. If you have any questions or problems just leave us a comment below.

As noticed on Twitter by @teamkirby92, the developer that brought us Kirby, BOXBOY, Earthbound, Smash Bros. and much more is celebrating 39 years in the video game business with a little comic featuring Qbby and his companion, Qucy.

Below is the entire comic, plus a translation courtesy of the wonderful NintendoSoup:

Ahh, cute.

HAL has a long and illustrious history with Nintendo. Satoru Iwata worked for the company before becoming President of Nintendo until his untimely death in 2015. Masahiro Sakurai, overseer of the Smash Bros. franchise, began his long relationship with the series while working at HAL. Check out this story if you don’t know how the company got its name.

Also be sure to click in the direction of HAL’s fantastic website for more history on the company that created Kirby and so much more.

Think HAL have got big plans for next year’s 40th anniversary? Let us know your thoughts below…