– Developer of Dig Dog Rusty Moyher on the process of coding by voice.

In an interview with Ars Technica published earlier today, game developer Rusty Moyher shared how he programmed and created art assets for Dig Dog using his voice and an interesting alternative to a hands-on mouse. 

After being diagnosed with Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) five years ago, Moyher needed to find an alternative to traditional keyboard and mouse development.

Relief came in the form of taking full breaks from typing and using a mouse, but that wouldn’t be good enough. “I still want to make games,” he admitted. “It’s hard to imagine any career or job that doesn’t involve computers.”

In the pursuit of proving that video games could be developed without using his hands, Moyher found a video by developer Travis Rudd which broke down how he customized the voice recognition software Dragon NaturallySpeaking to write code in Python using only his voice.

Despite warnings from various forums about the limitations of coding using Dragon, Moyher decided to give it a try. “The commands you come up with, basically in a made-up language, are all built to be quickly and easily recognized by Dragon,” Moyher explains, saying he recommended “short, tight words or phrases that can be executed quickly.”

Coding using this method meant creating an entirely new vocabulary. “I needed to build a vocabulary that was suited for what I was doing that I was familiar with,” he said. “The process of coding by voice is, I have to do programming tasks, like normal, and come up with commands and modify the system. On top of that, all at once, I also have to remember these [shortcut terms].”

With the programming taken care of, Moyher needed to figure out how to create art assets for Dig Dug without needing to use a mouse. The full interview at Ars Technica goes into how he did just that. 

During an analyst Q&A with Nintendo earlier this week, the company expressed uncertainty over the future of the Nintendo 3DS after a successful launch of the Switch. The Switch continues to be a platform where indie developers go to release and port their games, most likely contributing to that achievement. 

President of Nintendo Tatsumi Kimishima said that the 3DS is still profitable and the company hopes “consumers will embrace it together with Nintendo Switch. But as for what transpires in the future, that is uncharted territory.”

Nintendo director Jo Shiota noted up that the Switch may seem to be similar to a handheld game system, but the technology is very different (citing power consumption and performance). “Regarding development, we have not yet decided which direction to steer towards, but we have a variety of possibilities under consideration,” he explained. 

The 3DS saw a bump in sales over this past holiday season, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for Nintendo to say with certainty what their plans for the handheld console are. 

Me and my brother Matt have always shared a love of competitive multiplayer games… even though only one of us can win them. Our first games were multiplayer, and we just kept going. Marooners started life as a Global Game Jam entry, which won the National Jury and Audience Award in the Netherlands.

Marooners has a classic formula: chase treasure and beat up your friends in a dangerous environment. But we spiced it up by switching to a different mini-game unpredictably so that you need to stay on your toes (or stand on your opponent’s).

We’ve packed Marooners with 25 different mini-games and arenas, set in locations from frozen snowfields to lily-pad covered lakes and burning pools of lava. Some of the most fun we had in development was creating these settings and seeing them come to life! We obviously took a lot of inspiration from various famous adventure movies (why yes, we do have a game mode where you must flee ahead of a huge boulder), but much of it is original and simply inspired by our own observations of the natural world. Our light-hearted cartoon style made it easy for us to try all kinds of different decorations and mini-games.

This love of variety also led to us creating several characters to choose from, along with an incredible 70+ weapons to discover. As well as all the typical stuff like swords, clubs, and axes we also let our imaginations run wild to come up with anything that might be amusing to harass your friends with. And so, we’ve got toilet brushes, flags, balloons, toothbrushes, and even broccoli! To make sure you can really create a unique character we also added the option to pick colors for your clothing and weapons.

We even found a solution to that old problem of gathering enough friends on your couch for a full game! You can mix local and online players, so that you can play with three friends on your couch and find more online: the best of both worlds! Or you can just add in some bots to make up the numbers – they enjoy any game mode and are 99% guaranteed not to rage-quit.

We’re looking forward to seeing you online!

Mario’s been in countless fantastic games over the years, but to say our favourite portly plumber has a spotless record is an outright lie. Usually at the hands of another studio, Mario’s been the figurehead of some truly awful video games over the years.

That doesn’t mean they can’t be enjoyed for what they are, of course, but needless to say in one way or another we really wish the titles featured in the video above had never been made.

Don’t worry, Hotel Mario features heavily.

Though support hasn’t always been top notch, Ubisoft has been pretty good about bringing its games to Nintendo audiences in the past, and that trend has been continuing with the Switch. The launch of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was an incredible win for the company, mixing the famous plumber and his friends with a new gameplay style that pleased a lot of fans. Evidently, the game sold extremely well, too, as it’s placed Ubisoft at the forefront of third party successes on the Switch.

In its third quarter financial results briefing today, Ubisoft revealed that Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle has been the highest selling third-party game on the Switch, which consequently puts the publisher in the overall lead on the Switch in terms of third party sales. Hopefully, this proves to be encourage Ubisoft and other major developers to start taking more risks on the Switch; it’d be nice if that top spot started to change hands frequently.

What do you think? Did you enjoy Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle? Do you think it’ll get a sequel? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Minecraft News

• Microsoft have announced there’s a new head of Minecraft, Helen Chiang, who replaces Matt Booty after he was promoted to head of Microsoft Studios. Helen was previously head of operations for Minecraft, and has said “Above all else, Chiang wants to ensure that the Minecraft studio is a place where the creative staff can really work their magic.” in this interview with POPSUGAR.
• Minecraft developer LadyAgnes‏ shared a preview of what’s coming in the Update Aquatic, “Found something… odd?… on the beach today!” — look closely in the water and you might see something else too!
• Another Minecraft: Java Edition 1.13 Snapshot came out this week, “This weeks snapshot brings some performance boosts for data pack loading & command execution.” — and a new horse model.
• Minecraft will be in London in February, “Wanna hear about the year ahead for Minecraft? Wanna explode robots in exchange for prizes? Then you’ll wanna be at the UK’s most excellent PC gaming expo on February 17-18th, in London! The Big Smoke! […] Minecraft’s very own Lead Creative Designer, Jens is giving a talk on Minecraft – what it takes to add new stuff to it, and what we have planned for the year ahead.”
• Minecraft shared a video on Twitter of 2017’s best Minecraft features, check it out below.

Updates make you happy! And when you’re happy, we’re happy. With that in mind, here’s one of our chirpiest videos yet, featuring just some of 2017’s new features. (Not represented: devs drowning in code… but, er, still very happy! Honest!) pic.twitter.com/DcggnGAtHE

— Minecraft (@Minecraft) January 19, 2018