Tech News - Game Development

Minecraft team released Minecraft Bedrock beta 1.9.0.3 last week. The latest release explores new feature such as scripting API, along with minor changes and fixes. Let’s have a look at what’s new in Minecraft Bedrock 1.9.0.3 (beta). Experimental Scripting API Minecraft Bedrock beta 1.9.0.3 comes with a new Scripting API that allows users to tweak the inner components within a game by writing commands. The Minecraft Script Engine uses the JavaScript language with the help of which Scripts can be written and bundled along with Behaviour Packs to invoke different actions. These actions include listening to and responding to game events, retrieving and modifying data in components that entities have, and that can affect different parts of the game. This feature is currently only available in Windows 10 on enabling the “Use Experimental Gameplay” setting. Changes and Fixes A minor change has been made to the size of the crossbow, as it now appears bigger in pillager’s (hostile illager mobs with crossbows in Minecraft) hands. A crash occurring during gameplay has been fixed. The issue of tamed llamas turning into bioluminescent creatures on opening an inventory has been resolved. Items in hand appearing completely white in colour have been fixed. Rare instances of players getting teleported into a boat while travelling near water have been fixed. The issue of logo not being visible on the loading screen after suspending and resuming the game has been fixed. With the new release, players no longer have an option to respawn in a semi-dead state in case they get killed while in a bed. The texture of the Beacon beams has been improved. The inventory blocks once again follow the textures that are set in blocks.json. Optimizations have been done to get a proper synchronization between client and server. Minecraft bedrock beta 1.9.0.3 is available only on Xbox One, Windows 10, and Android (Google Play). For more information, check out the official release notes. Minecraft Java team are open sourcing some of Minecraft’s code as libraries Minecraft is serious about global warming, adds a new (spigot) plugin to allow changes in climate mechanics A Brief History of Minecraft Modding

Blender, a free and open source 3D computer graphics software, celebrated its 25th birthday yesterday. Blender team celebrated the birthday by publishing a post that talked about the journey of blender from 1993 to 2018, taking a trip down the memory lane. Blender’s Journey (1994 - 2018) The Blender team states that during the 1993 Christmas Ton Roosendaal, creator of Blender started working on the Blender software, making use of the designs that he made during his 1993 course.                                                   Original design doc from 1993 The first blender version came to life on January 2nd, 1994 and used the subdivision-based windowing system working. This date has now been marked as Blender’s official Birthday and Roosendaal even has an old backup of this version on his SGI Indigo2 workstation. Blender was first released publicly online on 1st January 1998 as an SGI freeware. The Linux and Windows versions of Blender were released shortly after. In May 2002, Roosendaal started the non-profit Blender Foundation. The first goal for the Blender Foundation was to find a way to continue the development and promotion of Blender as a community-based open source project. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=164&v=8A-LldprfiE Blender's 25th birthday With the popularity of the internet in the early 2000s, the source code for Blender became available under GNU General Public License (GPL) on October 13th, 2002. This day marked Blender as the open source and free 3D creation software that we use till date. Blender team started “Project Orange” in 2005, that resulted in the world’s first and widely recognized Open Movie “Elephants Dream”. The success of the open movie project led to Roosendaal establishing the “Blender Institute” in summer 2007. Blender Institute has now become the permanent office and studio where the team organizes the Blender Foundation goals and facilitates the Open Projects related to 3D movies, games or visual effects. In early 2008, Roosendaal started the Blender 2.5 project, which was a major overhaul of the UI, tool definitions, data access system, event handling, and animation system. The main goal of the project was to bring the core of Blender to the contemporary interface standards as well as the input methods. The first alpha version for Blender 2.5 was presented on Siggraph 2009, with the final release of 2.5 getting published in 2011. In 2012, the Blender team put its focus on further developing and exploring a Visual Effect creation pipeline that included features such as motion tracking, camera solving, masking, grading and good color pipeline. Coming back to 2018, it was just last week when the Blender team released Blender 2.8 with a revamped user interface, high-end viewport, and other great features. Mozilla partners with Khronos Group to bring glTF format to Blender Building VR objects in React V2 2.0: Getting started with polygons in Blender Blender 2.5: Detailed Render of the Earth from Space

A few days ago, Epic released the first preview of Unreal Engine 4.23 for the developer community to check out its features and report back in case of any issues, before the final release. This version has new additions of Skin Weight Profiles, VR Scouting tools, New Pro Video Codecs and many updates on features like XR, animation, core, virtual production, gameplay and scripting, audio and more. The previous version, Unreal Engine 4.22 focused on adding photorealism in real-time environments. Some updates in Unreal Engine 4.23 XR Hololens 2 Native Support: With updates to the Stereo Panoramic Capture tool, it will be much easier to capture high-quality stereoscopic stills and videos of the virtual world in industry-standard formats, and to view those captures in an Oculus or GearVR headset. Stereo Panoramic capture Tool Improvements: This will make it easy to capture high-quality stereoscopic stills and videos of the virtual world in industry-standard formats. Animation Skin Weight Profiles: The new Skin Weight Profile system will enable users to override the original Skin Weights that are stored with a Skeletal Mesh. Animation Streaming: This is aimed at improving memory management for animation data. Sub Animation Graphs: New Sub Anim Graphs will allow dynamic switching of sub-sections of an Animation Graph, enabling multi-user-collaboration and memory savings for vaulted or unavailable items. Core Unreal Insights Tool: This will help developers to collect and analyze data about the Engine's behavior in a uniform fashion. This system has three components: The Trace System API will gather information from runtime systems in a consistent format and captures it for later processing. Multiple live sessions can contribute data at the same time. The Analysis API will process data from the Trace System API, and convert it into a form that the Unreal Insights tool can use. The Unreal Insights tool will provide an interactive visualization of data processed through the Analysis API, which will provide developers with a unified interface for stats, logs, and metrics from their application. Virtual production Remote Control over HTTP Extended LiveLink Plugin New VR Scouting tools New Pro Video Codecs nDisplay: Warp and Blend for Curved Surfaces Virtual Camera Improvements Gameplay & Scripting UMG Widget Diffing: Expanded and improved Blueprint Diffing will now support Widget Blueprints as well as Actor and Animation Blueprints. Audio Open Sound Control: It will enable a native implementation of the Open Sound Control (OSC) standard in an Unreal Engine plugin. Wave Table Synthesis: The new monophonic Wavetable synthesizer leverages UE4’s built-in curve editor to author the time-domain wavetables, enabling a wide range of sound design capabilities can be driven by gameplay parameters. There are many more updates provided for the Editor, Niagara editor, Physics simulation, Rendering system and the Sequencer multi-track editor in Unreal Engine 4.23. The Unreal Engine team has notified users that the preview release is not fully quality tested, hence should be considered as unstable until the final release. Users are excited to try the latest version of Unreal Engine 4.23. https://twitter.com/ClicketyThe/status/1149070536762372096 https://twitter.com/cinedatabase/status/1149077027565309952 https://twitter.com/mygryphon/status/1149334005524750337 Visit the Unreal Engine page for more details. Unreal Engine 4.22 update: support added for Microsoft’s DirectX Raytracing (DXR) Unreal Engine 4.20 released with focus on mobile and immersive (AR/VR/MR) devices What’s new in Unreal Engine 4.19?

The rise of the video game industry over the last two decades has been staggering, to say the least. Considered to be an area with massive revenue potential, we have seen a revolution in the way games are designed, developed and played across various platforms.Unity, the most popular cross-platform game development platform, is now encouraging even the non-programmers to take up Unity game development by equipping them with state-of-the-art tools for designing interactive games. Unity game development simplified for non-developers These days, there are a lot of non-developers, game designers and even artists who wish to build their own games. Well, they are now in for a treat. Unity have come up with their 2D and 3D Game kits wherein the users develop 2D or 3D gameplays without the need to code. With the help of these game kits, beginners can utilize the elements, tools and systems within the kit to design their gameplay. The Unity 2D game kit currently supports versions Unity 2017.3 and higher, while the 3D game kit is supported by Unity 2018.1 or higher. Visual scripting with Bolt Unity  have also introduced a new visual scripting tool called Bolt, which allows non-programmers to create new gameplays from scratch and design interactive systems in Unity, without having to write a single line of code. With live editing, predictive debugging and a whole host of other features, Bolt ensures you can get started with designing your own game in no time at all. The idea of introducing these game kits and the Bolt scripting engine is to encourage more and more non-programmers to take up game development and let their creative juices flow. It will also serve as a starting point for absolute beginners to start their journey in game development. To know more about how to use these Unity game kits, check out the introduction to game kit by Unity.

GitHub for Unity is now available in version 1. GitHub for Unity 1.0 is a free and open source Unity editor extension that brings Git into Unity 5.6, 2017.x, and 2018.x. GitHub for Unity was announced as an alpha version in March 2017.  The beta version was released earlier this year. Now the full release GitHub for Unity 1.0 is available just in time for Unite Berlin 2018, scheduled to happen on June 19-21. GitHub for Unity 1.0 allows you to stay in sync with your team as you can now collaborate with other developers, pull down recent changes, and lock files to avoid troublesome merge conflicts. It also introduces two key features for game developers and their teams for managing large assets and critical scene files using Git, with the same ease of managing code files. Updates to Git LFS GitHub for Unity 1.0 has improved Git and Git LFS support for Mac. Git Large File Storage (LFS) replaces large files such as audio samples, videos, datasets, and graphics with text pointers inside Git. Previously, the package included full portable installations of the Git and Git LFS. Now, these are downloaded when needed, reducing the package size to 1.6MB. Critical Git and Git LFS updates and patches are distributed faster and in a more flexible way now. File locking File locking management is now a top-level view within the GitHub window. With this new feature developers can now lock or unlock multiple files. Other features include: Diffing support to visualize changes to files. The diffing program can be customized (set in the “Unity Preferences” area) directly from the “Changes” view in the GitHub window. No hassles of command line, as developers can now view project history, experiment in branches, craft a commit from their changes and push their code to GitHub without leaving Unity. A Git action bar for essential operations. Game developers will now get a notification within Unity whenever a new version is available. They can choose to download or skip the current update. Easy email sign in. Developers can sign in to their GitHub account with their GitHub username or the email address associated with their account. GitHub for Unity 1.0 is available for download at unity.github.com and from the Unity Asset Store. Lead developer at Unity, Andreia Gaita will conduct a GitHub for Unity talk on June 19 at Unite Berlin to explain how to incorporate Git into your game development workflow. Put your game face on! Unity 2018.1 is now available Unity announces a new automotive division and two-day Unity AutoTech Summit AI for Unity game developers: How to emulate real-world senses in your NPC agent behavior

Unity has announced a new learning platform for professionals and hobbyists to advance their Unity knowledge and skills within their industry. The Unity Learn Premium, builds upon the launch of the free Unity Learn platform. The Unity Learn, platform hosts hundreds of free projects and tutorials, including two new beginner projects. Users can search learning materials by topic, content type, and level of expertise. Tutorials comes with  how-to instructions, video clips, and code snippets, making it easier to switch between Unity Learn and the Unity Editor. The Unity Learn Premium service allows creators to get immediate answers, feedback, and guidance directly from experts with Learn Live, biweekly interactive sessions with Unity-certified instructors. Learners can also track progress on guided learning paths, work through shared challenges with peers, and access an exclusive library of resources updated every month with the latest Unity releases. The premium version will offer live access to Unity experts, and learning content across industries, including architecture, engineering, and construction, automotive, transportation, and manufacturing), media and entertainment, and gaming. The Unity Learn Premium announcement comes on the heels of the launch of the Unity Academic Alliance. With this membership program,  educators and institutions can incorporate Unity into their curriculum. Jessica Lindl, VP and Global Head of Education, Unity Technologies wrote to us in a statement, “Until now, there wasn’t a definitive learning resource for learning intermediate to advanced Unity skills, particularly for professionals in industries beyond gaming. The workplace of today and tomorrow is fast-paced and driven by innovation, meaning workers need to become lifelong learners, using new technologies to upskill and ultimately advance their careers. We hope that Unity Learn Premium will be the perfect tool for professionals to continue on this learning path.” She further wrote to us, "Through our work to enable the success of creators around the world, we discovered there is no definitive source for advancing from beginner to expert across all industries, which is why we're excited to launch the Unity Learn Platform. The workplace of today and tomorrow is fast-paced and driven by innovation, forcing professionals to constantly be reskilling and upskilling in order to succeed. We hope the Unity Learn Platform enables these professionals to excel in their respective industries." Unity Learn Premium will be available at no additional cost for Plus and Pro subscribers and offered as a standalone subscription for $15/month. You can access more information here. Related News Developers can now incorporate Unity features into native iOS and Android apps Unity Editor will now officially support Linux Obstacle Tower Environment 2.0: Unity announces Round 2 of its ‘Obstacle Tower Challenge’ to test AI game players.

Yesterday, Epic Games announced that it is awarding Blender Foundation $1.2 million in cash spanning three years, to accelerate the quality of their software development projects. Blender is a free and open-source 3D creation suite which supports a full range of tools to empower artists to create 3D graphics, animation, special effects or games. Ton Roosendaal, founder, and chairman of Blender Foundation thanked Epic Games in a statement. He said “Thanks to the grant we will make a significant investment in our project organization to improve on-boarding, coordination and best practices for code quality. As a result, we expect more contributors from the industry to join our projects.” https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1150793424536313862 The $1.2 million grant from Epic is part of their $100 million MegaGrants program which was announced this year in March. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games had announced that Epic will be offering $100 million in grants to game developers to boost the growth of the gaming industry by supporting enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing excellent work with Unreal Engine or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community. Sweeney believes that open tools, libraries, and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem. “Blender is an enduring resource within the artistic community, and we aim to ensure its advancement to the benefit of all creators”, he adds. This is the biggest award announced by Epic so far. Blender has no obligation to use or promote Epic Games’ storefront or engine considering this is a pure generous offer by Epic Games with “no strings attached”. In April, Magic Leap revealed that the company will provide 500 Magic Leap One Creator Edition spatial computing devices for giveaway as part of Epic MegaGrants program. Blender users are appreciative of the support and generosity of Epic Games. https://twitter.com/JeannotLandry/status/1150812155412963328 https://twitter.com/DomAnt2/status/1150798726379839488 A Redditor comments, “There's a reason Epic as a company has an extremely positive reputation with people in the industry. They've been doing this kind of thing for years, and a huge amount of money they're making from Fortnite is planned to be turned into grants as well.  Say what you want about them, they are without question the top company in gaming when it comes to actually using their profits to immediately reinvest/donate to the gaming industry itself. It doesn't hurt that every company who works with them consistently says that they're possibly the very best company in gaming to work with.” A comment on Hacker News read, “Epic are doing a great job improving fairness in the gaming industry, and the economic conditions for developers. I'm looking forward to their Epic Store opening up to more (high quality) Indie games.” In 2015, Epic had launched Unreal Dev Grants offering a pool of $5 million to independent developers with interesting projects in Unreal Engine 4 to fund the development of their projects. In December 2018, Epic had also launched an Epic game store where developers will get 88% of the earned revenue. The large sum donation of Epic to Blender holds more value considering the highly anticipated release of Blender 2.8 is around the corner. Though its release candidate is already out, users are quite excited for its stable release. Blender 2.8 will have new 3D viewport and UV editor tools to enhance users gaming experience. With Blender aiming to increase its quality of projects, such grants from major game publishers will only help them get bigger. https://twitter.com/ddiakopoulos/status/1150826388229726209 A user on Hacker News comments, “Awesome. Blender is on the cusp of releasing a major UI overhaul (2.8) that will make it more accessible to newcomers (left-click is now the default!). I'm excited to see it getting some major support from the gaming industry as well as the film industry.” What to expect in Unreal Engine 4.23? Epic releases Unreal Engine 4.22, focuses on adding “photorealism in real-time environments” Blender celebrates its 25th birthday!

Last week, the team at Minecraft introduced a new AR-based game called ‘Minecraft Earth’, which is free for Android and iOS users. The most striking feature about Minecraft Earth is that it builds on the real world with augmented reality, I am sure it will remind you of the game Pokémon Go. https://twitter.com/minecraftearth/status/1129372933565108224 Minecraft has around 91 million active players, and now Microsoft is looking forward to taking the Pokémon Go concept on the next level by letting Minecraft players create and share whatever they’ve made in the game with friends in the real world. Users can now build something in Minecraft on their phones and then drop it into their local park for all their friends to see it together at the same location. This game aims to transform single user AR gaming to multi-user gaming while letting users access the virtual world that’s shared by everyone. Read Also: Facebook launched new multiplayer AR games in Messenger Minecraft Earth will be available in beta on iOS and Android, this summer. This game brings modes like creative that has unlimited blocks and items; or survival where you lose all your items when you die. Torfi Olafsson, game director of Minecraft Earth, explains, “This is an adaptation, this is not a direct translation of Minecraft. While it’s an adaptation, it’s built on the existing Bedrock engine so it will be very familiar to existing Minecraft players. If you like building Redstone machines, or you’re used to how the water flows, or how sand falls down, it all works. Olafsson further added, “All of the mobs of animals and creatures in Minecraft are available, too, including a new pig that really loves mud. We have tried to stay very true to the kind of core design pillars of Minecraft, and we’ve worked with the design team in Stockholm to make sure that the spirit of the game is carried through.” Players have to venture out into the real world to collect things just like how it works in Pokemon Go! Minecraft Earth has something similar to pokéstops called “tapables”, which are randomly placed in the world around the player. They are designed to give players rewards that allow them to build things, and players need to collect as many of these as possible in order to get resources and items to build vast structures in the building mode. The maps in this game are based on OpenStreetMap that has allowed Microsoft to place Minecraft adventures into the world. On the Minecraft Earth map, these adventures spawn dynamically and are also designed for multiple people to get involved in. Players can play together while sitting side by side to experience similar adventures at the exact same time and spot. They can also fight monsters, break down structures for resources together, and even stand in front of a friend to block them from physically killing a virtual sheep. Players can even see the tools that fellow players have in their hands on your phone’s screen, alongside their username. Microsoft is also using its Azure Spatial Anchors technology in Minecraft Earth which uses machine vision algorithms so that real-world objects can be used as anchors for digital content. Niantic, a Pokémon Go developer had to recently settle a lawsuit with angry homeowners who had pokéstops placed near their houses. With what happened with Pokemon Go in the past could be a threat for games like Minecraft Earth too. As there are many challenges in bringing augmented reality within private spaces. Saxs Persson, creative director of Minecraft said, “There are lots of very real challenges around user-generated content. It’s a complicated problem at the scale we’re talking about, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tackle it.” https://twitter.com/Toadsanime/status/1129374278384795649 https://twitter.com/ExpnandBanana/status/1129419087216562177 https://twitter.com/flamnhotsadness/status/1129429075490160642 https://twitter.com/pixiebIush/status/1129455271833550848 To know more about Minecraft Earth, check out Minecraft’s page. Game rivals, Microsoft and Sony, form a surprising cloud gaming and AI partnership Obstacle Tower Environment 2.0: Unity announces Round 2 of its ‘Obstacle Tower Challenge’ to test AI game players OpenAI Five beats pro Dota 2 players; wins 2-1 against the gamers

Corona Labs announced yesterday that it’s making its free and cross-platform 2D game engine, Corona, available as open source under the GPLv3 license and commercial licenses. The license for builds and releases remains unchanged and the change applies only to the source code of the engine. Corona is a popular game engine for creating 2D games and apps for mobile, desktop systems, TV platforms, and the web. It is based on Lua language and makes use of over 1,000 built-in APIs and plugins, and Corona Native extensions (C/C++/Obj-C/Java). According to Vlad Sherban, product manager for Corona Labs, the Corona team had been discussing making Corona open source ever since it got acquired by Appodeal, back in 2017. “We believe that this move will bring transparency to the development process, and will allow users to contribute features or bug fixes to make the project better for everyone,” said Sherban. The team also mentions that transitioning to open source would help them respond quickly to market shifts and changes. It would also ensure that Corona stays relevant at all times for all mobile app developers. Moreover, now that Corona is open source, it will bring more visibility to the development process by letting users see what the engine team is working on and where the project is going. It will also offer extra benefits for businesses as they will be able to acquire a commercial license for source code and customize the engine for certain commercial projects. Additionally, Corona Labs won’t be collecting any statistics from apps built with daily build 2018.3454 or later. When Corona Labs was a closed source product, it used to collect basic app usage stats such as the number of sessions, daily average users, etc. With Corona available as open source now, there is no need to collect this data. “Powered by the new open source model and supported by the development of new features and bug fixes will make Corona more community driven — but not without our help and guidance --- going open source will provide confidence in the future of the engine and an opportunity to grow community involvement in engine development,” said Sherban. NVIDIA open sources its game physics simulation engine, PhysX, and unveils PhysX SDK 4.0 Microsoft open sources Trill, a streaming engine that employs algorithms to process “a trillion events per day” Facebook contributes to MLPerf and open sources Mask R-CNN2Go, its CV framework for embedded and mobile devices

Last week, Reinder Nijhoff, a computer vision researcher, created a project that does real-time ray tracing in WebGL1 using Nvidia’s RTX graphics card. This demo was inspired by Metro's real-time global illumination. https://twitter.com/ReinderNijhoff/status/1106193109376008193 This demo uses a hybrid rendering engine created using WebGL1. It renders all the polygons in a frame with the help of traditional rasterization technologies and then combines the result with ray traced shadows, diffuse GI, and reflections. Credits: Reinder Nijhoff What is the ray tracing technique? In computer graphics, ray tracing is a technique for rendering 3D graphics with very complex light interactions. Basically, in this technique, an algorithm traces the path of light and then simulates the way the light will interact with the virtual objects. There are three ways light interacts with the virtual objects: It can be reflected from one object to another causing reflection. It can be blocked by objects causing shadows. It can pass through transparent or semi-transparent objects causing refractions. All these interactions are then combined to determine the final color of a pixel. Ray tracing has been used for offline rendering due to its ability to accurately model the physical behavior of light in the real world. Due to its computationally intensive nature, ray tracing was often not the first choice for real-time rendering. However, this changed with the introduction of Nvidia RTX graphics card as it adds custom acceleration hardware and makes real-time ray tracing relatively straightforward. What was this demo about? The project’s prototype was based on a forward renderer that first draws all the geometry in the scene. Next, the shader used to rasterize (converting an image into pixels) the geometry, calculates the direct lighting. Additionally, the shader also casts random rays from the surface of the rendered geometry to collect the indirect light reflection due to non-shiny surfaces using a ray tracer. The author started with a very simple scene for the prototype that included a single light and rendered only a few spheres and cubes. This made the ray tracing code pretty much straightforward. Once the prototype was complete, he wanted to take the prototype to the next level by adding more geometry and a lot of lights to the scene. Despite the complexity of the environment, Nijhoff wanted to perform ray tracing of the scene in real-time. Generally, to speed up the ray trace process, a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) is used as an acceleration structure. However, when using WebGL1 shaders it is difficult to pre-calculate and use BVH. This is why Nijhoff decided to use a Wolfenstein 3D level for this demo. To know more in detail, check out the original post shared by Reinder Nijhoff. Unity switches to WebAssembly as the output format for the Unity WebGL build target NVIDIA shows off GeForce RTX, real-time raytracing GPUs, as the holy grail of computer graphics to gamers Introducing SCRIPT-8, an 8-bit JavaScript-based fantasy computer to make retro-looking games  

Xenko, a game engine owned by Silicon Studios has officially released its third version on August 2. The major change in Xenko 3.0 is the transition to being open-source. It also comes with changes made to the project system and added support for videos as well as hair, and skin rendering. Open-source and support Although Xenko won’t be supported officially anymore by Silicon Studios, the members of the Xenko development team will continue contributing to it. Virgile Bello, Lead Developer at Xenko Game Engine stated that he will personally work on it fulltime for the next couple of months in the official blog. The new version is released under the MIT License on Github. It is well received by the open source community. The Xenko repository has already gained almost 700 stars and a couple of issues showing active involvement. Changes in the Xenko 3.0 game engine Other than the open-source transition, there are a few other changes in the engine itself. Xenko 3.0 has made the switch to the new C# project system, which makes your game csproj as simple as a PackageReference to Xenko. This makes package management more convenient. It is now also possible to add video to your games with the latest release. This feature is not completely tested on all platforms so you may run into issues while implementing it. Hair and skin rendering support are also added, but like videos, this feature may need some improvements and tuning. The package names have also been changed since the move to open-source. The SiliconStudio.Xenko package is now Xenko. Also the SiliconStudio.Core and SiliconStudio.* packages are now Xenko.Core. Your earlier projects should automatically be updated but a backup before the upgrade is recommended. Virgile has set up a Patreon page if you’d like to support the project financially. The release notes state that the future plan is to split Xenko further into separate packages such as Xenko.Graphics, Xenko.Physics and Xenko.Editor. These are only the major changes. For the complete changelog and other minor updates in Xenko 3.0, you can see the Release Notes. Think Silicon open sources GLOVE: An OpenGL ES over Vulkan middleware Working with shaders in C++ to create 3D games Unity assets to create interactive 2D games [Tutorial]

On 12th February, Epic Games released a preview build of Unreal Engine 4.22, and a major upgrade among numerous other features and fixes is the support for real-time ray tracing and path tracing. The new build will extend its preliminary support for Microsoft's DirectX Ray-tracing (DXR) extensions to the DirectX 12 API. Developers can now try their hands at ray-traced games developed through Unreal Engine 4. There are very limited games that support raytracing. Currently, only  Battlefield V (Ray Traced Reflections) and Metro Exodus (Ray Traced Global Illumination) feature ray tracing effects, which are developed in the proprietary Frostbite 3 and 4A Game Engines. [box type="shadow" align="" class="" width=""]Fun Fact: Ray tracing is a much more advanced and lifelike way of rendering light and shadows in a scene. Movies and TV shows use this to create and blend in amazing CG work with real-life scenes leading to more life-like, interactive and immersive game worlds with more realistic lighting, shadows, and materials.[/box] The patch notes released by the team states that they have added low level support for ray tracing: Added ray tracing low-level support. Implemented a low-level layer on top of UE DirectX 12 that provides support for DXR and allows creating and using ray tracing shaders (ray generation shaders, hit shaders, etc) to add ray tracing effects. Added high-level ray tracing features Rect area lights Soft shadows Reflections Reflected shadows Ambient occlusion RTGI (ray traced global illumination) Translucency Clearcoat IBL Sky Geometry types Triangle meshes Static Skeletal (Morph targets & Skin cache) Niagara particles support Texture LOD Denoiser Shadows, Reflections, AO Path Tracert Unbiased, full GI path tracer for making ground truth reference renders inside UE4. According to HardOCP,  the feature isn't technically tied to Nvidia RTX but since turing cards are the only ones with driver support for DirectX Raytracing at the moment, developers need an RTX 2000 series GPU to test out Unreal's Raytracing. There has been much debate about the RTX offered by NVIDIA in the past. While the concept did sound interesting at the beginning, very few engines adopted the idea- simply because previous generation processors cannot support all the features of NVIDIA’s RTX. Now, with DXR in the picture, It will be interesting to see the outcome of games developed using ray tracing. Head over to Unreal Engine’s official post to know more about this news. Implementing an AI in Unreal Engine 4 with AI Perception components [Tutorial] Unreal Engine 4.20 released with focus on mobile and immersive (AR/VR/MR) devices Game Engine Wars: Unity vs Unreal Engine

Yesterday, the Unity team announced the release of Unity 2019.2. In this release, they have added more than 170 new features and enhancements for artists, designers, and programmers. They have updated ProBuilder, Shader Graph, 2D Animation, Burst Compiler, UI Elements, and many more. Major highlights for Unity 2019.2 ProBuilder 4.0 ships as verified with 2019.2. It is a unique hybrid of 3D modeling and level design tools, optimized for building simple geometry but capable of detailed editing and UV unwrapping as needed. Polybrush is now available via Package Manager as a Preview package. This versatile tool lets you sculpt complex shapes from any 3D model, position detail meshes, paint in custom lighting or coloring, and blend textures across meshes directly in the Editor. DSPGraph is the new audio rendering/mixing system, built on top of Unity’s C# Job System. It’s now available as a Preview package. They have improved on UI Elements, Unity’s new UI framework, which renders UI for graph-based tools such as Shader Graph, Visual Effect Graph, and Visual Scripting. To help you better organize your complex graphs, Unity has added subgraphs to Visual Effect Graph. You can share, combine, and reuse subgraphs for blocks and operators, and also embed complete VFX within VFX. There is an improvement in the integration between Visual Effect Graph and the High-Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), which pulls VFX Graph in by default, providing you with additional rendering features. With Shader Graph you can now use Color Modes to highlight nodes on your graph with colors based on various features or select your own colors to improve readability. This is especially useful in large graphs. The team has added swappable Sprites functionality to the 2D Animation tool. With this new feature, you can change a GameObject’s rendered Sprites while reusing the same skeleton rig and animation clips. This lets you quickly create multiple characters using different Sprite Libraries or customize parts of them with Sprite Resolvers. With this release Burst Compiler 1.1 includes several improvements to JIT compilation time and some C# improvements. Additionally, the Visual Studio Code and JetBrains Rider integrations are available as packages. Mobile developers will benefit from improved OpenGL support, as the team has added OpenGL multithreading support (iOS) to improve performance on low-end iOS devices that don’t support Metal. As with all releases, 2019.2 includes a large number of improvements and bug fixes. You can find the full list of features, improvements, and fixes in Unity 2019.2 Release Notes. How to use arrays, lists, and dictionaries in Unity for 3D game development OpenWrt 18.06.4 released with updated Linux kernel, security fixes Curl and the Linux kernel and much more! How to manage complex applications using Kubernetes-based Helm tool [Tutorial]

Last week, a team within Area 120, Google’s workshop for experimental products, introduced an experimental prototype of Game Builder. It is a “game building sandbox” that enables you to build and play 3D games in just a few minutes. It is currently in early access and is available on Steam. https://twitter.com/artofsully/status/1139230946492682240 Here’s how Game Builder makes “building a game feel like playing a game”: Source: Google Following are some of the features that Game Builder comes with: Everything is multiplayer Game Builder’s always-on multiplayer feature allows multiple users to build and play games simultaneously. Your friends can also play the game while you are working on it. Thousands of 3D models from Google Poly You can find thousands of free 3D models (such as rocket ship, synthesizer, ice cream cone) to use in your games from Google Poly. You can also “remix” most of the models using Tilt Brush and Google Blocks application integration to make it fit for your game. Once you find the right 3D model, you can easily and instantly use it in your game. No code, no compilation required This platform is designed for all skill levels, from enabling players to build their first game to providing game developers a faster way to realize their game ideas. Game Builder’s card-based visual programming allows you to bring your game to life with bare minimum knowledge of programming. You just need to drag and drop cards to answer questions like  “How do I move?.” You can also create your own cards with Game Builder’s extensive JavaScript API. It allows you to script almost everything in the game. As the code is live, you just need to save the changes and you are ready to play the game without any compilation. Apart from these features, you can also create levels with terrain blocks, edit the physics of objects, create lighting and particle effects, and more. Once the game is ready you can share your creations on Steam Workshop. Many people are commending this easy way of game building, but also think that this is nothing new. We have seen such platforms in the past, for instance, GameMaker by YoYo Games. “I just had a play with it. It seems very well thought out. It has a very nice tutorial that introduces all the basic concepts. I am looking forward to trying out the multiplayer aspect, as that seems to be the most compelling thing about it,”  a Hacker News user commented. You can read Google’s official announcement for more details. Google Research Football Environment: A Reinforcement Learning environment for AI agents to master football Google Walkout organizer, Claire Stapleton resigns after facing retaliation from management Ian Lance Taylor, Golang team member, adds another perspective to Go being Google’s language

Epic games released a new version of it’s flagship game engine, Unreal Engine 4.22. This release comes with a total of 174 improvements, focused on “pushing the boundaries of photorealism in real-time environments”. It also comes with improved build times, up to 3x faster, and new features such as real-time ray tracing. Unreal Engine 4.22 also adds support for Microsoft HoloLens remote streaming and Visual Studio 2019. What’s new in Unreal Engine 4.22? Real-Time Ray Tracing and Path Tracing (Early Access): The Ray Tracing features, first introduced in a preview in mid-february,  are composed of a series of ray tracing shaders and ray tracing effects. They help in achieving natural realistic looking lighting effects in real-time. The Path Tracer includes a full global illumination path for indirect lighting that creates ground truth reference renders right inside of the engine. This improves workflow content in a scene without needing to export to a third-party offline path tracer for comparison. New Mesh drawing pipeline: The new pipeline for Mesh drawing results in faster caching of information for static scene elements. Automatic instancing merges draw calls where possible, resulting in four to six time fewer lines of code. This change is a big one so backwards compatibility for Drawing Policies is not possible. Any Custom Drawing Policies will need to be rewritten as FMeshPassProcessors in the new architecture. Multi-user editing (Early Access): Simultaneous multi user editing allows multiple level designers and artists to connect multiple instances of Unreal Editor together to work collaboratively in a shared editing session. Faster C++ iterations: Unreal has licensed Molecular Matters' Live++ for all developers to use on their Unreal Engine projects, and integrated it as the new Live Coding feature. Developers can now make C++ code changes in their development environment and compile and patch it into a running editor or standalone game in a few seconds. UE 4.22 also optimizes UnrealBuildTool and UnrealHeaderTool, reducing build times and resulting in up to 3x faster iterations when making C++ code changes. Improved audio with TimeSynth (Early access): TimeSynth is a new audio component with features like sample accurate starting, stopping, and concatenation of audio clips. Also includes precise and synchronous audio event queuing. Enhanced Animation: Unreal Engine 4.22 comes with a new Animation Plugin which is based upon the Master-Pose Component system and adds blending and additive Animation States. It reduces the overall amount of animation work required for a crowd of actors. This release also features an Anim Budgeter tool to help developers set a fixed budget per platform (ms of work to perform on the gamethread). Improvements in the Virtual Production Pipeline: New Composure UI: Unreal’s built-in compositing tool Composure has an updated UI to achieve real time compositing capabilities to build images, video feeds, and CG elements directly within the Unreal Engine. OpenColorIO (OCIO) color profiles: Unreal Engine now supports the Open Color IO framework for transforming the color space of any Texture or Composure Element directly within the Unreal Engine. Hardware-accelerated video decoding (Experimental): On Windows platforms, UE 4.22 can use the GPU to speed up the processing of H.264 video streams to reduce the strain on the CPU when playing back video streams. New Media I/O Formats: UE 4.22 ships with new features for professional video I/O input formats and devices, including 4K UHD inputs for both AJA and Blackmagic and AJA Kona 5 devices. nDisplay improvements (Experimental): Several new features make the nDisplay multi-display rendering system more flexible, handling new kinds of hardware configurations and inputs. These were just a select few updates. To learn more about Unreal Engine 4.22 head on over to the Unreal Engine blog. Unreal Engine 4.22 update: support added for Microsoft’s DirectX Raytracing (DXR) Unreal Engine 4.20 released with focus on mobile and immersive (AR/VR/MR) devices Implementing an AI in Unreal Engine 4 with AI Perception components [Tutorial]