Next weekend, Pokémon GO is launching a new ‘Limited Research’ event style, and things are kicking off with a particularly elusive monster to snag for your collection.

On 19th January, players will be able to complete special Field Research tasks that all focus on one particular Pokémon – Feebas. Known for its unique evolution into Milotic (in which it must be walked as your buddy Pokémon for 20km before gobbling up 100 Feebas candy) this Pokémon will become available in encounters triggered by those featured tasks; if you’re lucky, you might even find a shiny version of the monster.

It would appear that this will be a new, regular thing for 2019, joining the already-popular Community Days (the next of which takes place tomorrow), and will likely play out in a similar way to last year’s Squirtle Squad bonus tasks.

If you want to join in the fun, here are the times you’ll need:

– Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India: Jan. 19, 2019, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. UTC (GMT +0)
– The Americas and Greenland: Jan. 19, 2019, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. PST (GMT −8)
– Asia-Pacific: Jan. 20, 2019, from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. JST (GMT +9)

Will you be heading out on the 19th to snag some Feebas? Do events like these keep you interested in playing the game? Let us know in the comments.

Researchers trying to cure some of the world’s least-understood diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, are discovering new and exciting opportunities in the cloud. With the ability to instantly access vast amounts of computing power, and without the burden of large initial investments or ongoing costs, cloud technology is making it easier for healthcare organizations to study complex disorders and develop innovative new treatments. This is helping lead to an era of more precise and effective medicine.

Although the healthcare industry has used distributed computing networks to tackle large-scale health challenges before—such as the Folding@Home project, which allows individual PC users to contribute unused computing cycles to study how protein misfolding can lead to disease—there are a number of benefits to using a modern cloud computing solution. Cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools, for example, are helping healthcare organizations become more efficient and medical researchers develop better treatments for diseases.

Here are a few ways the cloud is powering healthcare research that’s leading to new cures, while also making the industry more efficient and secure.

Curing Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s using the cloud

Together, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s afflict over 50 million people worldwide. Although the complexity of these disease processes has made finding cures elusive, the cloud’s ability to effortlessly scale resources and instantly tap into significant amounts of computing power is helping researchers gain a better understanding of these diseases faster.

One example: Researchers have built a comprehensive digital model of the human neurological system at comparatively low cost through quicker, on-demand access to high-performance technology stacks. Biotech startup NeuroInitiative uses virtualized GPUs in the cloud to create a general model of the nervous system, a strategy that has proved 40 times faster than using physical GPUs. “The need for lots of GPUs in a pay-as-you-go, easy-to-use model led us to the cloud from day one,” said Andy Lee, co-founder of NeuroInitiative. “We can spin up a 100,000-core cluster in minutes and stop paying for it after experiments finish.”

Using this technology, researchers have been able to simulate a variety of different treatments for neurological diseases. NeuroInitiative alone has identified more than 25 promising drug targets for Parkinson’s. They’ll be ready for human clinical trials in two to three years—half the time it typically takes for preclinical work.

Speeding up treatments with AI and ML

As more healthcare organizations embrace digital technology, they are dealing with increasing volumes of data, which must be quickly processed and analyzed in order to be meaningful. This is just the sort of work cloud-based AI and ML tools are designed to do. Just like on-premises AI and ML systems, these cloud-based tools can help humans handle routine and time-consuming tasks with unmatched speed and accuracy. Plus, these tools don’t require any special knowledge or equipment to set up, making data processing more cost-effective.

However, there’s more to be saved than money. When it comes to the development and distribution of new treatments, fast data analysis can also help combat diseases and save lives. Genomics researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, for example, needed a way to analyze and sequence large sets of genomic data with a limited set of resources. Using cloud-based AI tools from Microsoft Genomics, as well as Azure Data Lake Analytics, they were able to download their data, and then use AI to quickly process and archive it. “The tool can uniformly realign everything and let me do the variant calling for the analysis I want,” said Dr. Robert Klein, head of the Klein Lab at the Icahn School. They are scaling up their research as a result.

Likewise, Intelligent Retinal Imaging Systems (IRIS) wanted to build a platform that could detect diabetic retinopathy, a form of vision loss that can develop rapidly. To help make tests more accessible, they designed a system doctors can use to quickly analyze images of retinas and detect anomalies using ML algorithms. All doctors have to do is send a retinal image to IRIS, which then processes it using Azure Service Bus and Azure Machine Learning Package for Computer Vision. Within 24 hours, doctors receive an enhanced image back with anomalies identified, making it easy for them to give a final diagnosis. “We went from zero to 300,000 patients examined in under five years,” said Jonathan Stevenson, chief strategy and information officer at IRIS. “There is no way we could have done that without Azure.”

Automatically securing healthcare data

Privacy and security have long been concerns in healthcare, and they’ve taken on a much larger significance with the digitization of the industry. Organizations that want to modernize their operations without sacrificing security can use the cloud as an alternative to siloing all their patient records on site.

One of the most effective ways to do this is by choosing a cloud solution that comes with HIPAA and HITRUST compliance. Instead of having to worry about properly storing, accessing, and analyzing sensitive health data, an organization can simply transfer patient information to their cloud, where it will automatically adhere to secure data regulations. Another layer of protection is to use cloud services that emphasize security from the ground up. This includes introducing security elements at every phase, from the initial hardware components to the final transfer of information.

Cloud technology means better treatments are on the way for some of humanity’s most difficult diseases. By giving researchers easy and scalable access to computing resources, cloud technology is helping to reduce the time it takes to test hypotheses, increase the iteration of promising ideas and treatment methods, and develop new cures. It’s also allowing healthcare organizations to modernize without neglecting security. All this is helping to make medicine more effective, accessible, and timely. For doctors, researchers, and patients, the future of healthcare is in the cloud.

To stay up to date on the latest news about Microsoft’s work in the cloud, bookmark this blog and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Earlier today Improbable released the following statement regarding their cloud based networking service SpatialOS:

Today we must regretfully inform our community of the following developments.

• Unity’s block of SpatialOS: The game engine provider Unity recently changed (Dec 5) and then clarified directly to us (9 Jan) their terms of service to specifically disallow services like Improbable’s to function with their engine. This was previously freely possible in their terms, as with other major engines.
  
• What this means: Unity has clarified to us that this change effectively makes it a breach of terms to operate or create SpatialOS games using Unity, including in development and production games.
  
• Ongoing negotiation: Worryingly, this change occurred during an open commercial negotiation with the company to find a way to do more together.
  
• Revoked Unity license: In addition, Unity has revoked our ability to continue working with the engine for breaching the newly changed terms of service in an unspecified way.  This will affect our ability to support games.
  
• Continuing service for all other engines: Users of all other engines remain completely unaffected and we are working with other engine providers to see if they can help support engine transitions for customers hit by this change.

The updated Terms of Service section 2.4 from Unity now reads:

2.4 Streaming and Cloud Gaming Restrictions.

You may not directly or indirectly distribute the Unity Software, including the runtime portion of the Unity Software (the “Unity Runtime”), or your Project Content (if it incorporates the Unity Runtime) by means of streaming or broadcasting so that any portion of the Unity Software is primarily executed on or simulated by the cloud or a remote server and transmitted over the Internet or other network to end user devices without a separate license or authorization from Unity. Without limiting the foregoing, you may not use a managed service running on cloud infrastructure (a “Managed Service”) or a specific integration of a binary add-on (for example, a plugin or SDK) or source code to be integrated in the Unity Software or Your Project Content incorporating the Unity Runtime (an “SDK Integration”) to install or execute the Unity Runtime on the cloud or a remote server, unless such use of the Managed Service or SDK Integration has been specifically authorized by Unity.  Additionally, you may not integrate the Unity Runtime with a Managed Service or  SDK Integration and offer that integration to third parties for the purpose of installing or using the Unity Runtime on the cloud or a remote server. For a list of Unity authorized streaming platforms, Managed Services and SDK Integrations, click here.This restriction does not prevent end users from remotely accessing your Project Content from an end user device that is running on another end user device.  You may not use a third party to directly or indirectly distribute or make available, stream, broadcast (through simulation or otherwise) any portion of the Unity Software unless that third party is authorized by Unity to provide such services.

In a nutshell, the new ToS seem to prevent running any portion of the Unity runtime on a cloud based install without prior licensing of the cloud hosting company and Unity directly.  The timing of this is quite interesting following on the heels of a partnership between Unity and Google to provide cloud based networking services.

In the meantime, developers that built their game around Unity and SpatialOS are going through a bit of a rollercoaster ride of emotions right now, such as Spilt Milk Studio:

Followed by:

Unity have not yet released a public content although their forums are quite… lively.

UPDATE: Tim Sweeney, founder and owner of Epic Games was quick to comment upon Unity’s gaff here and to reassure Unreal Engine developers that this wont happen to them:

GameDev News Unity

Catherine Classic is Now Available on Steam!

Catherine: a tale of love, betrayal, and the terror of commitment. Experience the mature action-adventure-puzzle game unlike any other from the makers of the Persona series, now enhanced for PC in all its Classic glory. Is love over? Climb to the top or die trying.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

I keep writing about “deep gameplay” and how it needs “complex verbs”, i.e. mechanisms that go beyond probabilities, progress bars and damage numbers. But how exactly do those systems work then? This article will explore one possible answer to this question: space.

Gameplay can get strategically interesting when you cannot “simply” calculate everything, i.e. when factors are involved that cannot, or at least not easily, be turned into some kind of “points” or “score”. If that would be possible, you would basically be facing a math puzzle. Of course that might be interesting in itself, but rather in terms of computing the correct solution and not so much in terms of intuition and decision-making.

Should the latter elements be supposed to be the game’s core, offering strong spatial interactions can go a long way in moving it away from “flat” arithmetic. Positioning and movement in space or even aspects such as momentum or inertia are essentially complex resources that can, quite literally, be “played with”. Obviously they are ultimately based on math as well, but a form of math that is both more complex than mere subtraction and yet also intuitively accessible for human beings.

This base complexity can furthermore be used to foster an emergent interplay between gameplay elements and thereby create even more depth without having to resort to more and more convoluted math. Of course the verbs in the game, i.e. the actions players are able to perform, have to be tightly connected to the game’s spatial structure, so they can properly support it and give it meaning. Dealing damage, filling bars or the much-loved mass extermination of actors in the game world usually do not belong in this category. The same goes for mere asset tourism.

The following sections will take a look at some concrete examples on how to do it better. The games described below offer strongly spatial possibilities of interaction and consistently manage to align the design of all gameplay elements in support of this aspect.

In Heat Signature you enter procedurally generated spaceships and, by making use of a diverse set of gadgets, try to reach a specific target object or person. Almost everything in the game is centered on movement. For example, there are multiple types of teleport gadgets that e.g. allow you to swap positions with an enemy (“Swapper”), to instantly move through open corridors and doors (“Sidewinder”), or to jump to any position within a certain radius for a short amount of time (“Visitor”). The “Key Cloner” lets you steal key cards if the guard carrying them is in range. Luring enemies into the “Glitch Trap” will move them to another spot, often directly into outer space. And the “Slipstream” makes everyone act super slowly – except for yourself. More agility, more options.

These are just a few examples of the verbs in the game but one thing is pretty clear already: There is no flat number crunching. Enemies, just like your avatar, do not have “health points” or “stats” and do not “deal damage”. The focus of the game lies on finding creative ways to bypass them or, if needed, take them out unnoticed in one hit. Most of the time you will not have a huge arsenal of weapons to achieve this. Hence one of the simplest tricks in the game is to let an enemy fire a bullet at you and then swap positions with him. A tactical option enabled by consistent rules and spatially meaningful verbs. Emergence.

Situations in the game can quickly get much more complex though. Therefore you always have the ability to pause the game, analyze what is going on, plan your next steps and even execute the first one of those directly from the pause menu. However, that will not make things super easy. It is just another design decision making perfect sense in the context of the core game and its depth. Players are supposed to plan ahead and think about which actions make sense in a given situation, instead of merely being challenged by their physical execution.

Spelunky is a modern classic and regarded as a game design masterpiece. Rightfully so, since basically all the elements in the game are tailored to interact with moving around its incredibly hostile environment. It starts with the two basic items: Bombs allow you to reach sealed off areas or create new connections. Ropes can be used to move upwards, which goes against the natural gravity-based direction the game usually takes. The same is true for climbing gloves and the iconic jetpack that additionally increases your horizontal reach. Jumping boots increase your jumping height. The mattock can manipulate a level’s layout. Spike shoes prevent you from sliding over ice blocks.

But it is not just the items. The behavior of each enemy and every trap in the game has an immediate spatial impact and frequently forces you to reconsider how to move forward. You cannot land on spikes or stand next to a tiki trap for too long. Boulders need to be dodged. Arrow traps can be triggered by throwing rocks or other objects into their line of sight. Crush traps try to, well, crush you in a straight line. Spiders jump around, bats can fly. Tiki men throw boomerangs that return to them on the same path. Mummies vomit poison that can make a whole corridor impassable. And so on.

Again, all these elements are spatially meaningful and follow clearly defined rules that can then be combined in all kinds of ways to generate a large variety of interesting situations and confront players with new challenges. Therefore it makes perfect sense that the procedural level generation is often praised as one of Spelunky’s greatest achievements.

At first sight, Invisible Inc. and XCOM have a lot in common. You take turns, leading a squad of characters with certain specializations through a grid of square tiles. But that is basically it. Where XCOM goes on to rely on hit probabilities and rolling damage numbers, Klei Entertainment’s title focuses much more on dynamics and level layouts.

Once again, enemies in Invisible Inc. have no hit points and lethal weapons are not only extremely rare, but also punish players by increasing the alarm level on every kill. Typically you will only use them in cases of emergency and try to deal with patrolling enemies in another way. The simples of which is to knock them out temporarily. However they then remain an active and spatially relevant element of the game world because they will wake up a couple turns later and furiously search their surroundings. Hopefully you took some precautions in the meantime!

In general traversing the levels of the game is based a lot on collecting information about the layout itself. Where are the cameras? Where can I catch enemies unprepared? Where should I place a trap? Which devices can I hack to increase my mobility? The alarm timer will also keep ticking up without you killing anyone. It pushes you forward and away from playing for safety. The game rewards clever, yet often risky maneuvers of efficient exploration. Of course the positioning of your units does play a role in XCOM as well, but one that is quickly reduced to mere arithmetic.

Other comparisons can be drawn within the realm of card games. Gwent for example has been hunting the holy grail of “row identity” for a long time now, trying to give the different rows on its battlefield as much meaning as possible. (By the way, this was a core design pillar of Crimson Company and also the recently released Artifact.) This aspect had taken a backseat during the game’s development in beta, where in most cases it didn’t really matter where you put a card on the board. With the recent full launch entitled “Project Homecoming” the team tried to put an emphasis on positioning again, e.g. by introducing effects that depend on which row a card is played on and by reducing the number of rows from 3 to 2, thus making the resource “space” more scarce.

The battlefield can get quite crowded in Minion Masters, too. However by making use of continuous space and real-time, it can go even further. Not only does the positioning of units matter when you play them, but also their autonomous behavior once they are in play. They follow very specific rules of movement. Some creatures are faster than others, some can fly past obstacles, some ignore certain enemies. The game quickly becomes a complex interplay of unit positions and mobility, always depending on the current state of the game.

Hearthstone does not have as much of a spatial structure: One row of up to 7 units, no movement. Compared to Magic: The Gathering though, the relative positioning of units can matter in some cases, e.g. when they buff adjacent targets. Prismata on the other hand refrains from using any kind of spatiality whatsoever. It simply arranges units and buildings on the screen in such a way that they can be easily perceived. Appropriately, it is the most mathematical of all mentioned examples, and arguably the least accessible.

Of course there are more examples worth discussing. The brilliant Portal is all about an unusual way of movement. Auro‘s design is a “clockwork” of spatial actions and abilities. The battle royale genre (Fortnite) is based on restricting players’ freedom of movement over time. And the core of every MOBA (League of Legends), i.e. pushing lanes, is a fundamentally spatial mechanic.

However, the overarching point should be clear by now: A design that is tightly focused on spatial interactions can quite easily lead to interesting gameplay situations, incentivize intuitive decision-making over hard mathematical solutions, and foster systemic emergence. Praise space!

With 2018 behind us, we here at Xbox Wire decided that now would be the perfect time to start looking ahead to some of the big games coming out in 2019. There are already a lot of them on the books, many of which will be coming out during the first few months of the year. While there’s already a decent amount of info on these titles, we’ve found that it can be tough to figure out details with all of the information spread out across the web. So, with that in mind, we’ll be spending the rest of the year taking a closer look at some of 2019’s biggest games and pulling together as much info as we can into one place. Today, we look at 4A Games’ upcoming Metro Exodus.

When was Metro Exodus Announced?

At the Xbox E3 2017 Briefing with this awesome reveal trailer and has been in development since 2014.

When will Metro Exodus be released?

February 15, 2019.

What sort of game is Metro Exodus?

Exodus describes itself as an epic, story-driven, first-person shooter, with a mix of combat, stealth, exploration, and survival horror. It also sounds like there will be a significant amount of exploration above ground and allow us to experience a variety of seasons from spring, summer, fall, and winter.

Who is making it?

Metro Exodus is being developed by 4A Games, creators of the series predecessors Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light (as well as their Redux versions) and will be published by Deep Silver.

What is the story about?

Heavily inspired by the series of novels by Dmitry Glukhovsky (Metro Exodus draws a lot from “Metro 2035”) and will continue the story of Artyom – the main protagonist from the first two games. And in case you’re wondering how he’s still around after the events of Metro: Last Light, I hate to break it to you but that was the “bad” ending. Artyom is just fine. Well, as fine as having to live underground, freezing to death, and fighting mutants.

The world of Metro takes place in Russia in the not-too-distant future where a nuclear winter has made the surface of the planet inhospitable to life. This has left the last remaining survivors of the country to live out their lives in the twisted underground metro tunnel system below ground. Not all human settlements get along so there can be a bit of tension (see: killing) between these human factions. Oh, and there are hellish and mutated monsters that roam both the surface and the tunnels of the metro, along with the mysterious Dark Ones. As you might have been able to surmise, the universe of Metro is incredibly rich for some post-apocalyptic, sci-fi storytelling (and shooting).

But this time it sounds like a lot of the game may take place above ground. As shown in the reveal trailer, Metro Exodus will have players board the Aurora, a heavily modified steam locomotive, and join a handful of survivors as they search for a new life in the east.

What is the combat like?

Like the previous games, Metro Exodus will feature a variety of gameplay mechanics that blend into an incredibly immersive experience. It’s like a mix of Fallout, Thief, and Call of Duty, blending a deep RPG with some awesome gunplay and weapon upgrades as well as stealth elements. It also sounds like the levels will be much larger, focusing on non-linear gameplay and sandbox survival elements with a dynamic weather system. Our hands-on time with the game from E3 2018 attests to this.

Like the original games, your choices and interactions in the world will affect your experience. The prior games offered multiple endings based on these choices, and now it will involve companions who will join you on this adventure, adding a new level of choice/consequence.

Is Metro Exodus Xbox One X Enhanced?

Yes it is! Metro Exodus will be running on an upgraded version of the 4A engine that powered Last Light and is made for 4K on the Xbox One X with intricately detailed characters, crisp textures, and impressive sight lines. It will also have full HDR support at launch.

What versions of the game will be available?

The Standard Edition of Metro Exodus will include the base game and pre-orders will receive a free copy of Metro 2033 Redux when Exodus is released. The Gold Edition includes the base game, the pre-order bonus (Metro 2033 Redux), and the Metro Exodus Expansion Pass. There’s also a Spartan Edition that includes an incredible resin statue and other goodies. Learn more about that version here on MetroTheGame.com.

Previous Xbox Wire coverage:

Catherine Classic is Now Available on Steam!

Catherine: a tale of love, betrayal, and the terror of commitment. Experience the mature action-adventure-puzzle game unlike any other from the makers of the Persona series, now enhanced for PC in all its Classic glory. Is love over? Climb to the top or die trying.

Finally, it’s time for the first snapshot of the year! While most of the Java team has been on holiday, we’ve still managed to cram some things into this snapshot such as smokingly hot Campfires, Cartography Table functionality and Lectern functionality. Enjoy!

A full summary of the content available in this snapshot can be found in the changelog on Minecraft.net, the following is a short summary:

• Added Campfire
• Added Cartography Table functionality
• Added Lectern functionality
• Performance improvements
• Fixed bugs
• Added teammsg command which sends a message to all players on your team

CAMPFIRES

Come one, come all, and toast your buns around the campfire!

• Decorative fireplace without fire spread
• Cooks up to four foods, but slowly
• Acts as a smoke signal you can see very (VERY!) far away when a hay bale is below (hint: think note blocks!)
• Cosy light source
• Can be lit/unlit

CARTOGRAPHY TABLE FUNCTIONALITY

• Fancy UI which more closely represents what the recipes actually do functionally
• Provides an easier and simpler way of cloning, extending, and locking of maps
• Map locking allows you to lock maps in the Cartography Table with a glass pane so that they can no longer be modified

LECTERN

Ermahgerd berks… holder… thingy?

• Right-click empty lectern to place book
• Right-click lectern with book to open
• Current page is persistent and shared between all readers
• Emits redstone pulses when page is changed
• Use comparator to get book reading progress

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!

Today, at 2PM Pacific Time, the Bergusia Forge will be unlocked for all players who own the Annual Pass.

While coming together as a community to solve puzzles can be fun, setting this puzzle up as a gate between you and new content that you want to play has not been an ideal experience. As such, we will be decoupling the puzzle from the final offering of the Black Armory. All Annual Pass owners will be able to experience the Bergusia Forge when the puzzle is solved or when the deadline expires – whichever happens first.

We realize that many of you have been working hard to solve the puzzle of the Niobe Labs. Whatever the outcome, it will remain open for Annual Pass owners who still want to test their problem solving skills. There is a Ghost and an Emblem to earn as evidence that you completed the challenge.

We love trying new things with Destiny, but we’re also flexible enough to pivot when you point out room for improvement. We’ll continue to monitor the conversation about this event and learn from your feedback as we create future content releases. 

Thanks for playing. Enjoy the final forge.