Disney 16-bit classics including ‘Aladdin’ coming to GOG.com

Nothing says ’90s gaming like the Sega Genesis and 16-bit Disney classics like Aladdin. You can bathe in that nostalgia again thanks to GOG.com and Disney’s re-release of Aladdin, The Lion King and Jungle Book. Those titles, originally developed for the Super NES and Sega Genesis, were groundbreaking at the time for the hand drawn “Digicel” tech used. All were eventually ported to the NES, Amiga, PC and other systems, but GOG cheekily said that the Aladdin update is based on the “obviously superior” Sega/PC version.

The titles were “meticulously updated” and have never been officially available on PC or consoles before — despite numerous NES and Sega classic collections. The company adds that the “original graphics, sound and gameplay” have been preserved. Each DRM-free title is $10, or you can get all three for $20.

World’s largest game expo tightens security following violence

Germany has been hit by a string of mass violence as of late, and the effect of those tragedies is about to spill over to the gaming community. The organizers behind Gamescom, the world’s largest gaming trade show, have introduced tighter security measures that will definitely be noticeable if you make it out to Cologne for the event. They’re banning not only weapon replicas, but “weapon-like items” — like it or not, your Deadpool or Harley Quinn cosplay will have to go without armaments. Even exhibitors will have to label any vaguely threatening props to avoid raising alarm bells.

Gamescom is also calling on everyone, including exhibitors and the press, to avoid bringing any unnecessary bags to the show. The measures are there to avoid scaring not only sensitive guests, but Cologne residents who might not realize that you’re only depicting a Call of Duty soldier.

The stricter safeguards aren’t completely surprising, particularly in a country that’s already known for curbing depictions of violence inside video games. However, it shows that the game industry is still trying to walk a fine line between its dependence on violent content and respect for the dangers and effects of real-world violence.

Via: Gamasutra

Source: Gamescom

‘Chambara,’ the split-screen samurai game born in a dorm

College dorms are a strange microcosm of adult life, offering close-quarters friendship, intellectual stimulation and the kind of freedom that comes with a prepaid meal card. Dorm life fosters in-person interaction, usually in tight spaces and on a limited budget. Basically, it’s ideal for long multiplayer gaming sessions with a room full of good friends, loud music and fast food. It’s no wonder, then, that the idea for Chambara, a samurai-infused local-multiplayer slash-fest, was spawned in the dorms at the University of Southern California.

“As roommates and college students, we lived in very close proximity to other folks our age who had free time,” Chambara project lead Kevin Wong says. “There were always many opportunities for us to pick up a game like Smash Bros to play with folks we didn’t know particularly well and connect with them through the game. We were always fascinated by the community-forming potential of play.”

The wider gaming ecosystem may be dominated by online multiplayer experiences like Overwatch, League of Legends, Dota 2 and Hearthstone, but couch co-op and local competitive play are still alive and well. Games like TowerFall, Gang Beasts, Nidhogg, Starwhal and Samurai Gunn have kept the fire burning for in-person playtime, and Chambara proudly picks up their torch. Only this time, the flames are black and white with just a touch of orange when you look at them from the right angle.

This is the crux of Chambara’s gameplay: It’s set in a largely monochromatic, 3-D world. Splashes of color dot the landscape sparingly; even the characters themselves are either white or black, moving like bulbous shadows through urban sprawls, small towns, cramped buildings and a host of other stylized environments. Since the settings are just as colorless as the human-sized bird avatars, players are able to hide by simply standing against a wall.

However, since this is a 3-D world, angles are incredibly important. A giant, all-white bird with a samurai sword will blend into one white wall completely, but he can’t forget about the black wall jutting out directly to his left. A player entering the area from his right will see his outline as clear as day.

Chambara just landed on the PlayStation 4 on July 26th, but it’s already been recognized as an artistic feat by major organizations including the Independent Games Festival, IndieCade and BAFTA.

That’s wonderful early attention for an independent student project — and it didn’t happen by chance. USC’s game development program is renowned and highly productive, having turned out high-profile projects such as The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom, The Unfinished Swan and Flow, the predecessor to mainstream mega-hit Journey. In January, the school announced it would expand its support for student developers with the USC Games Publishing program. Professors and mentors wouldn’t just teach students how to make a game; they’d help get those games published on major platforms, too.

Chambara is the first title to emerge from the USC Games Publishing program. In addition to PS4, it will hit Xbox One in the near future.

“It would have been impossible for us to bring Chambara to consoles without USC Games’ support, which would have been a shame because this game belongs in the living room,” says lead designer Esteban Fajardo. “USC Games gave us the resources we needed to finish the game but also gave us total control over the development.”

A driving force of that development, the inspiration for Chambara itself, was sparked in the USC dorms. Couch-based multiplayer is central to Chambara’s design; it’s imbued in one of the game’s most unique mechanics.

“We have a button that closes your character’s eyes, thereby protecting you from screencheaters,” Wong says. “Games like Goldeneye present implicit rules where players informally consent not to screencheat. Chambara embraces screencheating by making it a central mechanic to create means of interaction that would only be possible with split-screen.”

Chambara combines stealth and action, challenging players to hide and attack with twitchy trigger fingers, throwing colored shurikens at potential targets to cover them in bright paint and make them easy prey for their samurai swords. Otherwise, the game is a study in black and white.

“Figuring out an art style that allows players to disappear while also making important aspects like the UI or horizon clear was tricky,” Fajardo says. “With the black-and-white style, everything wants to blend, so bringing in a third color to highlight important parts was a delicate balancing act.”

Wong and the rest of the developers with Team OK drew inspiration from the Samurai Jack cartoon and 20th-century Japanese art including Mono-ha and Metabolism architecture. These are heavily concerned with the interaction between industrial structures and organic growth.

Team OK took these design principles, added a cast of samurai bird warriors and turned out a local-only multiplayer game that supports two to four players at a time — with the full support of USC and its new publishing program.

USC Games Publishing’s approach — creatively hands-off but logistically involved — was one of the program’s goals from the beginning, and in Chambara’s case, it seems to have worked. Wong certainly thinks so.

“When we first started Chambara two years ago, we were a small team, but an entire village of colleagues have had a hand in carrying this game to its home release,” he says. “Chambara has seen the involvement of translators, lawyers, usability experts, event planners and filmmakers. Everyone, from the family of developers to our publishing support, to our fans and players that we’ve met at festivals, pushed this game forward to completion.”

Meeting strangers in the VR wilderness

I didn’t expect to see anyone. Not in the woods. I blink a few times and widen my stance, swiveling my head back and forth to see if there are others. No, just the one. A bearded face floating in midair, a pair of white gloves dangling underneath. “Was that…?” I whisper under my breath but before I can finish the question, the strange being has teleported a few meters toward me. Another split-second and he’s standing a stone’s throw away. “Hello,” he says with a wave and a grin.

The world I’m standing in doesn’t seem particularly dangerous. The sky is light blue, punctuated with sharp, angular mountains. Some birds are chirping in a nearby tree, and a basic campsite, complete with a tent and fire, is visible just behind me. Still, I’m tense. I was expecting a tranquil, solitary piece of escapism in VR — this stranger has caught me off guard. “Oh, hi,” I offer with a hint of trepidation. He’s not an NPC (non-player character), that’s for sure. The intonation in his voice, his body language — if you can call it body language — it’s too real. “Are you a member of the press? Or someone working on the game?” I probe, cautiously.

The bearded man, it turns out, is Dedric Reid, founder and CEO of Hello VR. His company built this virtual escape, called the “MetaWorld,” as a way for people to meet up and socialize. I’m jacking in from London, with an HTC Vive strapped to my face, while Reid is based in San Francisco. With some wand controllers and room-scale tracking, we can move our hands, pick up objects and walk around in a limited capacity.

Our impromptu meetup was, in fact, a cleverly orchestrated introduction to the game and its creator. I smile and shake my head as we exchange pleasantries, realizing how I was subtly duped. There was little explanation when I entered this virtual world, and that was intentional: The developers wanted to show me what it was like to meet a stranger in VR.

The MetaWorld feels vast but primitive. The ground is flat, a single shade of green stretching into the distance. I can see some trees, but they have simple textures and basic, circular shadows. Compared to a blockbuster video game like The Witcher 3, or even smaller titles such as Firewatch, it looks basic. But unlike those games, the MetaWorld is properly persistent. When you throw a rock or drop a stick, it stays in that exact spot until you or someone else decides to move it. The idea is that the space has its own ecology and history, changing over time as people interact with it.

“If I wasn’t conducting an interview, I think we would be bonding; remove the questions and we’re messing about, just killing time.”

The woods where we’re chatting measure a square mile. But this “place,” as the developer calls it, is only one thread in a tapestry that will eventually measure 80,000 square miles. Each will be molded by the community and allow for different types of activities. In this one, for instance, Hello VR wants to make a fishing mini-game and other camp-related tasks. Reid points to a table with a chessboard in the distance and explains how to teleport — the only way of moving beyond HTC’s room-scale body-tracking. By pressing the touchpad on the right controller, I can see a flight path and my projected position. Moving the wand changes the destination and tapping the trigger on the underside of the remote executes the jump.

The chess pieces are scattered across the board. As I pick up the rook and place it on the back row, I’m struck by the strangeness of the situation. I’m hanging out with Reid. It’s more than a conversation — that could be done on the telephone or over Skype. It’s the sense of presence and our physical interactions. If I weren’t conducting an interview, I think we would be bonding; remove the questions and we’re messing about, just killing time.

“We’re aiming for a very intimate experience,” Reid explains. “Something like this, we’ll limit to maybe 20 or 30 people. Anything beyond that will break the level of social immersion that we’re trying to achieve. But beyond this space, we’re looking at thousands of players that could coexist.”

Work to be done

The MetaWorld has been in development for six months though Reid says he’s been working on the idea for well over a year. Before Hello VR, he contributed to the Xbox One as part of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB) and then, under Comcast, the Xfinity X1 cable box. In 2014, Reid became head of design for a company called AltspaceVR, which is developing a virtual playground similar to the MetaWorld, where people can hang out, play games and watch movies together. The big difference is that the world isn’t persistent or as large as the one that Reid wants to build with Hello VR.

Future versions of the MetaWorld will have full character models and a backpack for managing your inventory. As you wander through the woods, you’ll be able to pick up items and store them in a 3D-modeled rucksack. You’ll swing it over your shoulder and use your hands to dig inside, compare and share your belongings. It’s a novel approach to inventory management and one that promotes exploration, social interaction and ownership over what can otherwise feel like virtual tat in video games.

Hello VR has a lot of work to do. Reid is keen for the community to shape the design and personality of each world. That means designing content-creation tools — a notoriously difficult problem in video games, especially if it involves freeform sculpting. Before that, however, Hello VR needs to build more objects and richness into the environment. Reid also wants “a sort of locomotion mechanic” that can supplement the game’s teleportation. “This is one square mile out of about 80,000, so how do we get to the other 79,999?” I give a half-hearted shrug in response, before realizing my character doesn’t have any shoulders. I raise my hands instead, palm-side up — the universal body language for “I don’t know” — which garners a quick chuckle from Reid.

Hello VR started with the HTC Vive, but it’s looking at other VR platforms too. Reid says the MetaWorld could theoretically support a variety of headsets, including the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR. The mechanics will need to be modified — Sony’s headset, for instance, doesn’t have room-scale body tracking — but he’s confident the controls can be adapted. In the end, he promises you won’t be able to tell which hardware people are using.

Meeting the founder of Hello VR online was exhilarating. But these sorts of public interactions won’t be for everyone. In fact, I can see the MetaWorld appealing to smaller groups of people that already know each other. I love the idea of kicking back with some friends after work, sitting around a campfire and exchanging stories. Or taking a virtual road trip and spending a day, if not more, pitching tents and playing hide-and-seek. Sure, it wouldn’t be the same as a real camping trip — the great outdoors is exactly that, outdoors — but it could serve as a decent substitute. Especially if you want to connect with friends who are scattered all over the world.

“That’s exactly what we’re thinking,” Reid says. “Honing in on the more intimate experiences, but also opening them up in a vast sort of way. It’s intimate, but it’s still vast; we’re not cooped up in a room together.”

We spent our last few minutes together trying to hit a rock with a stick. I was the pitcher; Reid was the batter. The results were terrible and also hilarious; it’s clear the game’s basic controls were never designed for such sportsmanship. Still, it was a fitting way to cap off our little meeting. We were doing nothing in particular — just goofing around like children. But doing that in VR, with the knowledge that thousands of miles separate us, felt special. Eventually, we shook hands and said goodbye.

Improbable, not impossible

The MetaWorld is a grand undertaking. To build such a space would, years ago, have required an enormous budget and technical knowhow. Hello VR, however, claims to be sidestepping the problems by using Spatial OS, a service developed by a little-known company called Improbable.

The team, which numbers around 100, has developed a way to better harness servers and their computational power. You may have noticed that in most MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft, the player base is split into different servers. The world might be large, but it’s effectively mirrored for these groups. The monsters are tightly regulated, both in number and where they can roam. Environmental damage disappears. These restrictions help the developer to control the game experience, and, more importantly, manage the load on its servers. Allowing every monster and player to fight in the same dungeon would cause the game to crash.

World of Warcraft, the most popular MMORPG. Credit: Blizzard

There are ways to get around this. CCP Games, which runs the spaceflight MMO EVE Online, has a feature called “time dilation,” which slows down particularly large battles so that its servers can keep up. Improbable thinks it can solve this problem by chaining servers together into a swarm-like platform. The technology means that data and problem-solving can be shared between them, enabling larger worlds and more complex ecosystems. “It’s like a giant game of musical chairs,” Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable says, “where servers and computational agents are moving between different machines in order to make the simulation possible.”

It’s a deep engineering problem, and one that few companies have been able to solve before now. “It’s not like a footnote or a little library or background detail,” Narula explains. “It’s a whole new science. A new approach to making large-scale distributed systems possible.”

Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable. Credit: Edge Magazine via Getty Images

The company is offering its capabilities through Spatial OS. Narula calls it a “distributed operating system,” referring to its ability to run a single application on a thousand different machines. Developers can log onto the Improbable website and download a console application that allows them to program a game or experience compatible with Spatial OS’ APIs. The final product can then be “pushed” to servers that Improbable is renting from the usual technology behemoths, such as Amazon and Google.

The system means that Spatial OS customers pay Improbable, not the server-farm owners, for the computational power that they need. Improbable acts as the middle man for both parties, charging developers a subscription based on their requirements.

Spatial OS can support many types of experiences: video games, such as the MetaWorld and the equally persistent Worlds Adrift, city simulations and medical research. The only requirement is that each project involves entities, with properties, in some kind of space. (Hence the name.) You wouldn’t use the platform to analyze language in a million books, for instance. That’s a problem that could be split up and handled by many servers working in isolation. Instead, Spatial OS is designed to deal with objects that interact and influence one another — animals in an MMORPG, or cars trying to weave their way through a traffic jam.

Keeping quiet

Improbable is working with a small group of developers right now. The company has been “deeply involved” with some of these early testers, but the plan is to build an interface that people can use entirely on their own. “The end game is that you rock up to the Spatial OS website, download the SDK and then you’re away,” Nurman says.

The company has been quiet for the last few years, beavering away at the algorithms that power Spatial OS. But slowly, it’s been expanding the pool of developers that have access to the platform. Worlds Adrift, a game developed by Bossa Studios, is one of the first projects to receive mainstream attention. And with good reason: It offers a large, persistent play space like the MetaWorld, which players can change and interact with in permanent, meaningful ways. “When a ship blows up, all of those little pieces fall to the ground, and they’re permanently there for thousands of other players to find,” Nurman says. “The ecology will then clean them up over time. All of this creates a whole new kind of experience.”

The promise of Spatial OS seems, at times, to be too good to be true. Maybe it is.

The promise of Spatial OS seems, at times, to be too good to be true. Maybe it is. But that’s why Improbable invited me in to see the MetaWorld and speak with Reid through VR. It’s a hint at the scale and social intimacy that can be achieved with a thousand servers working in harmony. “This is something tangible,” Nurman promises. “You put on a headset and you saw something today. That’s the beginning, the acorn of something interesting.”

Twitch lets viewers tip more broadcasters by ‘Cheering’

To entice top broadcasters to its streaming service (and make a cut from their tips), Twitch recently introduced “Cheering.” It lets viewers spend actual cash to purchase “Bits,” which they can then lavish on streamers by sending animated chat “emotes.” The streamer gets to keep that money, minus Twitch’s hefty 30 percent cut. Cheering has been in beta for just 100 broadcasters, but the Amazon-owned company announced that it’s now available to all 11,000 or so partner streamers in the US and UK.

As a refresher, Bits are a hard-currency version of third-party rewards like AmazeBalls, which lets streamers reward viewers the longer they watch. You can purchase Bits at the rate of $1.40 for a hundred, then tip by typing “cheer” followed by the number of bits. So entering “cheer200” nets your favorite broadcaster $2.00, while Twitch takes an 80 cent cut for a total of $2.80. Pledging higher amounts gets you “more vibrant Bits emotes” and special badges, Twitch says — so users also get a Candy Crush-style dopamine rush for pledging.

On the one hand, viewers can tip a streamer the instant they do something great, and broadcasters can give a shout-out back (via bots from Muxy and others), so everyone gets the warm-and-fuzzies. On the other, if you just tip with PayPal, the streamer gets to keep a lot more than 70 percent of the money. For that reason (and Twitch’s early lack of transparency on its fees) the initial user reaction was mostly negative. With the latest expansion, however, it seems that Cheering is here to stay.