Claymation puzzler ‘Armikrog’ comes to the PS4 on August 23
There’s no rule that game animations must be done in a computer. The creators of Armikrog elected to use claymation, the painstaking stop-motion process beloved in such movies as Wallace and Grommit. The title raised $974,000 on Kickstarter and was released for PC, Mac and Linux last September, following several delays. The PS4 version was further held up, but we finally have a release date and price on the console: August 23rd for $9.99.
The delays are understandable, considering the painstaking process of creating the animations. “Every single level, every single character, and all of the things you will see in Armikrog actually existed in our tiny studio where we had to basically run through the game frame by frame — it was a major production,” wrote publisher Lance James. There’s still no release date for the Wii U and a physical version of the game, though the company said on Facebook that it’s “working away” on them.
When it first launched on the PC, reviewers loved how the game looked, but gave it tepid marks for the basic gameplay and lowbrow humor — and the $25 launch price probably didn’t help. However, the company has since issued numerous updates and created extra functionality for the PS4’s DualShock controllers. “You can use it as a standard pointer if you wish, allowing for a free range of motion, and you can also use it to solve some of our puzzles rather than using the joysticks or the d-pad,” said James. That, plus the $10 price, should make Armikrog interesting for PS4 owners.
Source: Sony
Listen to Groove Music while you play ‘Forza’ on Xbox One
One of the cooler features from the Anniversary Update for Xbox One is Background Music. As the name implies, you can use music from practically any source as your soundtrack for a lot of different activities on the console. If you’re a fan of Groove Music, there’s an update rolling out that adds the service to the list of Background Music sources. It’s a feature that’s been available to folks in the Dashboard Preview Program for awhile, but Xbox’s Mike Ybarra says that the update, version 3.6.2395, will be available for everyone today.
Xbox owners: Groove on Xbox should support background music tonight/tomorrow for all users. Look for version 3.6.2395.
— ♏️ike Ybarra (@XboxQwik) August 18, 2016
Source: Mike Ybarra (Twitter), Microsoft
The 2016 Pokemon World Championships kick off today
The 2016 Pokemon World Championships are being taken to the next level as they kick off today. This year, the event is to be closed to the general public, so if you’re not actually competing in the tournament, the only way you’re going to be able to watch it is via official online streams.
Players are competing for the title of Pokemon World Champion and more importantly a prize pool of over $500,000 in scholarships and travel awards. With competitors from over 30 countries around the world, the games will focus only on Pokemon Trading Card Game, Pokken Tournament and the Pokemon video games. It should go without saying, but there won’t be any Pokemon Go competitions.
The events kick off at 9 a.m. PDT on Twitch and the official Pokemon website for general event coverage, with the full streaming schedule listed at the Pokemon World Championships site. Get ready to root for your favorite competitors and get your Pokemon on in a big way.
Source: Pokemon
Kick Cancer’s ass and raise money for sick kids in ‘I, Hope’
Nazis, like zombies, are pretty much the perfect video game enemy because there are zero redeemable qualities about them. But those might have some competition now that there’s a game where you fight cancer. Not literally, but an enemy named “Cancer” an in the Xbox One’s forthcoming I, Hope from indie studio Arconyx. Lead developer Kenny Roy’s mission with the ID@Xbox project is to help kids who are actually battling cancer in hospitals around the world to have a cathartic, figurative way to do it as well. More than offering therapy to kids, when it goes on sale next year, 100 percent of the profits generated from the game will go toward helping kids with life-threatening illnesses and their families.
“As much as I love shoot ’em ups, big explosions and arcade experiences, I believe that games can be so much more,” Roy says in a post on Microsoft News Center. “There are real positive experiences to gain from gaming, and I wanted the public to experience that. With I, Hope, I want to move minds.” In the game, Cancer is an evil creature on the warpath of protagonist Hope’s home island. To defeat it, she has to travel through a quintet of floating islands gathering the tools she needs to defeat the foul beast.
Even by watching the work-in-progress trailer below, it’s pretty clear that /I, Hope/ is far different from another game the recently dealt with pediatric terminal illness, That Dragon Cancer. The latter is an autobiographical game about a family’s struggle with their child’s illness, whereas, as the name overtly suggests, I, Hope has a different perspective.
“I wanted to create a great game that was fun for everyone,” Roy says, “while still delivering a powerful, meaningful message to kids struggling in hospitals around the world.”
Source: Microsoft News Center
Tricking out your dragon in ‘Scalebound’
Scalebound is one of my most anticipated Xbox One games. It’s a classic Platinum title, mixing over-the-top, combo-heavy combat with a gargantuan dragon that’s willing to help you out in a pinch. Throw in a strange, luscious new world and some enormous, fantastical enemies, and you have a game that oozes both style and substance. Last year at Gamescom, Platinum founder Hideki Kamiya teased that players would be able to customize their dragons over the course of the campaign. Now, he’s explained exactly how that will work. And oh boy, am I excited.
For starters, there are three core dragon types to consider: the “rex,” a two-legged all-rounder that’s been shown in most of the trailers; a stout “tank” class that shuffles around on all fours; and a “wyvern” type that’s particularly agile in the air. As you battle through Draconis, you’ll pick up gems that can be spent on your dragon, Thuban, at designated shrines. You can pick a class and stick to a single track, accentuating its strengths and weakness, or choose to “morph” into one of the other two forms. As you upgrade and slowly shift toward the other two dragon type classes, you’ll build on Thuban’s existing stats with some vastly different attributes.
“The customization is so deep that you’re going to be able to create your own play style in a dragon.”
The idea is that you can fine-tune Thuban to fit your particular play style. You might want a tank-type dragon, but with a little more speed that’s usually reserved for the wyvern. Or a robust rex with some extra defensive capabilities pulled from the tank class. Each form has a trade-off — a thicker-skinned wyvern might be slower to attack, for instance — so the player is encouraged to continually adjust their build.
Video game designer Hideki Kamiya
“You’re welcome to go down one path and develop it in that way, but there are all these intermediary sort of states where you can create your own dragon,” Kamiya (speaking through an interpreter) told me at Gamescom. “That’s really where the fun lies. The customization is so deep that you’re going to be able to create your own play style in a dragon.”
The game’s human hero, Drew, shares his life force with Thuban. To inflict more damage, he can enter a “dragon form,” which covers his body in strange scales and a leathery, wing-like cape. Thuban has a similar “beserker” mode that can be activated periodically in combat. The nature of this form can be tweaked at the dragon shrine using unlockable “parts.” They’ll change the look of your dragon — Kamiya showed some examples that had sharper horns and claws. Most parts will inject your dragon with elemental qualities, allow you to deal more damage or inflict a temporary stun (an ice buff will freeze your opponent, for instance).
With your gems depleted, you’ll want to move onto armor. These sets are human-made and purchased with a currency that’s picked up from fleshy foes and completing side quests. Jean Pierre Kellams, creative producer at Platinum, said you’ll use these to “cover up” any remaining weaknesses that your dragon might have. Most are defense oriented, but a few will also have offensive capabilities, adding more complexity to your build.
More importantly, they look totally badass. The different armor styles include some samurai-inspired plates and a traditional, high-fantasy knight set. You can apply this armor to five different places on your dragon, and Platinum says you’re free to mix and match the parts. The downside is that armor will slowly degrade in combat. If you like a particular set, you’ll need to watch its durability and make repairs when necessary.
“We want to make a clean distinction,” Kellams explained. “Things that can break are human, and things that are permanent are this kind of organic dragon material.”
These customizations will be vital in combat. Platinum showed a new feature called “Dragon Link,” which allows Drew to temporarily control Thuban. The camera will stay behind Drew, however, with important commands linked to face-buttons. Knowing your dragon’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as its abilities in berserker mode, will allow you to stun and weaken enemies that would normally be too tough for Drew. To demonstrate, Kellams showed some gameplay footage of Thuban and Drew battling a large, gorilla-type enemy in a dungeon. The hero had to keep his distance and figure out when to activate Dragon Link — doing so leaves him vulnerable to attack, which can be devastating in later boss battles.
“The subtle, incremental shifts that you make between the three forms should ensure that your creature is unique.”
Dragon customizations will also play a role in co-op. At E3, the developer showed a trailer with four different heroes, flanked by their personal dragons, teaming up to take down a huge spider. Like a difficult raid in Destiny or World of Warcraft, your chances of success will improve if you have different dragon types. A wyvern can keep a boss occupied for instance, and aim for precise weak points, while a tank-type dragon takes the brunt of its most devastating attacks. Kellams says the game will ensure that you’re matched with players that have chosen a different path for their dragon. Even if you team up with friends, however, you should find variety in both your dragons and the way you play.
“It’s unlikely your three other friends are going to have the exact same dragon,” Kellams explained. The subtle, incremental shifts that you make between the three forms should ensure that your creature is unique. “If you happen to be identical twins with very similar interests — I suppose it’s possible to hit the scenario that you’re thinking of, but we want to make that a very, very rare case.”
There’s more to dragon customization, but Platinum is keeping the details a secret. That’s understandable, given Scalebound is still deep in development. (It was delayed in January and now has a tentative “2017” release date.) For now, I’m happy to dream about my perfect dragon, and envision myself flying into battle like Khaleesi from Game of Thrones.
We’re live all week from Cologne, Germany, for Gamescom 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
AIs fight to the death in ‘Doom’ contest next month
Google DeepMind took a leap forward last year when its artificial intelligence agent mastered 49 Atari 2600 games. The learning system, or “deep Q-network” (DQN), that DeepMind designed achieved this mastery through general experience, rather than specific programming for each game. This milestone is just one step along a grander path toward the general-purpose “smart machine”: an AI that can master any task with minimal input. DeepMind’s work in this field is groundbreaking, and it’s helping advance the field in ways you might not expect.
Wojciech Jaśkowski is an assistant professor for the Institute of Computing Science (ICS) at Poznan University of Technology, Poland. After reading about DeepMind’s feat in the scientific journal Nature, he began to think about the possibilities. If an agent could learn Atari 2600 with our current levels of knowledge, why not push the envelope further? Why not try a 3D game? Jaskowski settled on the 1993 first-person shooter Doom. It has low power requirements and, more important, it’s open source. He assembled a team of university students from ICS with the aim of building a platform that would facilitate testing AI agents.
The framework they created, called ViZDoom, allows for the development of bots that can play Doom. It’s intended primarily for research in machine visual learning, which means that bots only have access to the screen buffer. They play by “seeing” the images on-screen, and have no access to any information within the game’s code. That’s the key difference between ViZDoom bots and the regular “AI” characters that exist inside most first-person shooters.
Jaśkowski’s team was successful in its endeavor. They submitted a paper back in May proving not only that their creation was an effective research platform, but that neural networks were capable of learning visually in a 3D, first-person-perspective environment. Now, anyone can download the ViZDoom platform and test out their AI systems using it. The reaction from the AI community has been very positive. It’s been downloaded by several high-profile educational institutions, and Jaśkowski said that even DICE, the video game company best known for the Battlefield series, has been using VizDoom internally to research AI.
To drive usage of the platform forward, Jaśkowski is running a competition in collaboration with the IEEE Computational Intelligence in Games conference (CIG). Anyone can submit their creation to compete in an AI-only deathmatch, with the results being announced at CIG in late September. So far, three warm-up matches have taken place, and a number of entrants have pitted their creations against one another, while others have held their cards close to their chest, preferring to save their bots for the final contest. The purpose of it all, Jaśkowski told me, is really about seeing what is possible with the current crop of AI technology.
How exactly teams will solve the questions ViZDoom poses is up to them. So long as the only data being fed to the bots is the screen buffer, anything goes. They’ll have to understand what’s wall and what’s floor, what’s a character and what’s a power-up. And that’s without working out the shooting — bots can only use rocket launchers, which makes things harder, since if you fire a rocket next to a wall, you kill yourself. In footage of the first warm-up round, lots of bots struggled with the basics. It’s likely that many are building on DQN, the deep learning network built by DeepMind to conquer the Atari 2600.
Although the final lineup won’t be confirmed for a few weeks, individuals from educational institutions like MIT and Stanford University have been active in the competition’s official discussion group, as have employees from Intel, Google and other large corporations.
ViZDoom is emblematic of the AI and machine-learning community’s spirit of collaboration
That Google might be taking part in a competition that its research helped spawn is emblematic of the AI and machine-learning community’s spirit of collaboration. It’s a field in which Facebook, Google and Twitter, which in many ways compete with one another, work together. Take Torch, for example: It’s an open source library that’s hugely important for machine-learning projects. It also happens to be maintained by scientists and engineers from those three companies, and contributed to by many, many others. There’s an understanding that, although the products that come from AI research may compete with one another eventually, getting to the point where machine learning can power those products will be a lot easier working together than alone.
Jaśkowski’s team and ViZDoom might seem like a tiny part of what is an enormous field. But without the contributions of the many like-minded students and academics working on AI, we’d be years behind where we are today.
‘Star Trek: Bridge Crew’ hits VR headsets November 29th
Ubisoft has dropped the dates for three of its incoming VR games, including Star Trek: Bridge Crew. That title, set in JJ Abrams Star Trek universe, is available for pre-order and arrives on all three major platforms, the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony PlayStation VR on November 29th. It lets you take on the role of captain, engineer, tactical officer or helmsman on the Enterprise-style “Aegis” bridge. The aim is to work with your crew mates to help settle Vulcan’s remaining population after the planet was destroyed in the first Star Trek reboot.
Eagle Flight (above) is another intriguing title that we first saw (and fell for) at GDC 2016 in March. You pilot your very own eagle over the skies of a futuristic, overgrown Paris, playing either in teams or solo. The whimsical goal is to pick up a dead rabbit or other prey and bring it to your home nest ahead of rival birds. Engadget editor Nicole Lee called it ” immersive, fun and surprisingly social.” It’s now on pre-order and arrives October 18th to the Rift, November 8th on PlayStation VR, and to the HTC Vive on December 20th.
The last title is Werewolves Within, “a game of social deduction that brings the competitive fun of game night with friends to virtual reality,” according to Ubisoft’s PR. Every game is different — in one, you’re innocent, trying to convince others you’re a non-werewolf, in another, a legit half-lupus lying to avoid the villagers’ wrath. Also available on pre-order, it hits all three VR platforms December 6th. So, if you’re running out of activities for that pricey headset, you at least have something to look forward to.
‘Rez Infinite’ is getting a collector’s edition from iam8bit
Much like the game itself, Rez Infinite is being released in a very unorthodox manner. For example, iam8bit is publishing the game as part of a special collection with a vinyl soundtrack, special T-shirts, and collectible pins.
If you’re going to choose a game to make your publishing debut with, as iam8bit is doing here, you couldn’t do much better than Rez Infinite, a port of the cult classic Rez, originally released on the Dreamcast in 2001.
After being ported to the PlayStation 2 in 2002, it amassed followers with its unique mix of on-rails shooter action and thumping electronic beats. Rez Infinite is being remade for PlayStation VR, which should take an already unique experience and transform it into something positively transcendental, combining an excellent soundtrack with trippy visuals and audio that syncs up to your actions in-game.
The physical edition of Rez Infinite from iam8bit comes with the vinyl soundtrack mentioned above with the retrospective booklet sewn right into the two LPs and bonus 7″ cover. Complete with quotes and lore straight from creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi himself, it’s a custom-made tome that should offer a good amount of insight into the game and the history behind it.
Additionally, you’ll get two T-shirts, with one designed by Fez creator Phil Fish. A few collectible pins round things out. What this package is missing, however, is the Trance Vibrator peripheral that originally released as part of a special collector’s edition for Japanese audiences. We can dream, though.
Rez Infinite is coming out on October 13th alongside PlayStation VR. Fall can’t get here quickly enough.
Source: iam8bit
Facebook is launching its own PC gaming platform
Facebook’s gaming aspirations didn’t stop with Farmville and its $2 billion Oculus VR acquisition. Nope, the social network is also launching a dedicated PC gaming platform today. Said platform will lean heavily on developers using the ubiquitous Unity game engine, according to a release from the company. The partnership’s first project is admittedly developer-centric, but it has a direct impact on the folks playing games on Facebook. Zuckerberg and Co. describe it as a new export feature baked into Unity that allows a studio to publish directly to Facebook and the aforementioned Facebook PC gaming platform “with very little effort and few code changes.”
“Integrating tools that provide effortless access to Facebook’s network is a key part of helping developers find the success they deserve,” Unity’s VP of business development, Elliot Solomon, said in a canned statement from a press release.
This is big for a few reasons. For starters, Unity is a wildly popular, free-to-use tool employed across the industry by countless indie developers. You’ve probably played a few titles built with it and not even realized. Firewatch, Kerbal Space Program, Ori and the Blind Forest, Superhot, Monument Valley and Alto’s Adventure, just to name a few, were all developed using the Unity toolset. In theory, those could be ported to Facebook’s platform with very little extra work from their respective developers. And that’s to say nothing of the myriad VR apps Unity powers.
Which is where this makes the most sense: Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point, Facebook is going to need a way to sell Oculus VR games and its new platform will help that happen. Facebook says it paid out over $2.5 billion to web-game devs last year alone, and that there are over 650 million players on its gaming network. For context, in the past 48 hours, Steam reported 11 million concurrent users. What’s a curiosity now will very likely be a dominating force in the not too distant future.
Facebook is running a closed alpha test of the new work environment right now, and applications to join are open until August 31st. The social network promises “immediate access” to testing the engine’s latest build and the export function.
Source: Facebook
Smart glasses make hands-free ‘Pokémon Go’ a reality
Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm. It’s not uncommon to see dozens of people walking around parks and city streets with their heads buried in their phones, trying to catch cute cartoon monsters. Unfortunately, doing so means you’re not keeping your eyes on the road, which has already led to a few accidents. But what if you could somehow play Pokémon Go while also paying attention to the world around you? That’s exactly what Recon has attempted to do by porting the popular game over to the Jet, a pair of Android-based smart glasses the company released last year. The setup isn’t perfect and it doesn’t work completely just yet, but even what I’ve seen so far provides an exciting glimpse at the next wave of augmented reality.
At Intel’s Developer Forum in San Francisco this week, I had a chance to try on a Jet to see the app in action. Since the Jet already has GPS, WiFi and a fully baked operating system, a Recon software developer by the name of Patrick Cho was able to move Pokémon Go over to it as a standalone app. The caveat here is that the Jet doesn’t have LTE, so you’ll have to figure out how to get WiFi if you’re out and about — an important consideration when playing Pokémon Go. Mine used a hotspot connection to a phone for its internet connection, so we were good there. Cho also had to reorient the Pokémon Go screen from portrait to landscape mode to accommodate the Jet’s 428 x 240 resolution display.
Pokémon Go, as seen on the Recon Jet
It took a while to get the app going. Since this is an unofficial port, it isn’t optimized for the Jet and feels quite sluggish in action. The app was also prone to stalling, and even crashed on me a few times. But it did work eventually. After a long loading time, I saw the familiar Pokémon Go interface appear in the Jet’s bottom-right screen. I immediately saw a map representation of the area surrounding San Francisco’s Moscone Center dotted with a slew of Pokéstops imbued with sparkling pink lures. It was a sight that would make any Pokétrainer happy.
Unfortunately, I was unable to catch any Pokémon due to the uncooperative app. But the proof of concept is there. Even though there’s no touchscreen, I could theoretically throw a Pokéball by swiping the temple on the right. A side button could be remapped to trigger a Pokéstop. And if you were armed with the upcoming Pokémon Go wearable that lets you snag monsters by simply tapping a button, it’d make capturing that elusive Dragonite that much easier. At the very least, I could see myself using the Jet to hatch a Pokémon egg just by walking around.
The Pokémon Go app launcher, as seen on the Recon Jet
I particularly appreciated that the game only took up a small corner of my peripheral vision. I could still see and interact with the world as I played the game. This way, I was able to track monsters and still be aware of my surroundings. Of course, the potential downside here is that the Recon Jet’s battery life likely isn’t long enough to withstand hours of play. But being able to play Pokémon Go without having to stare at your phone still sounds like a pretty great proposition to me.
The Jet has so far been used mostly for fitness applications like running and cycling, but Recon recently announced an enterprise partner program that will open it up to other uses too. The idea here is that the AR glasses could be used for work like field service or manufacturing. For example, workers could talk to a remote engineer as they’re fixing a problem or look up a user manual on how to fix electrical wiring right as they’re doing it. But the real purpose of opening the Jet up is to show how flexible it is as a hardware and development platform. And as I’ve seen with Pokémon Go, it’s a pretty great way to play augmented reality games too.
It’s difficult to see here, but this is a shot of the Pokémon Go screen on the Recon Jet’s tiny display
A Recon spokesperson said that if more time was spent on it and if Niantic joined in to help optimize the app, there’s potential for the experience to be much better. Recon isn’t the only company to think of this collaboration either. Osterhaut Design Group (ODG) ported an unofficial version of the app over to its R7 headset a month ago, while CapitolaVR created a demo of how Pokémon Go would look through Microsoft’s HoloLens headset. Still, the R7 and the HoloLens both sell for upwards of $2,000, while the Jet is available today for $500. Plus, Recon’s hardware has already been repurposed to play paintball in the form of the Empire EVS mask, so it doesn’t take much imagination to see how it could be adapted to work with mobile AR games too.
In an email statement, a Recon spokesperson said: “With further optimization, Pokémon Go on Recon Jet could very well be brought to market in the future.” Let’s hope it is.
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