development
Latest
Infinite Crisis refocuses development on new player experience
The dev team behind DC-Comics-based Infinite Crisis has come to a realization: there are a lot of MOBAs out there. So to set themselves apart from the rest, Creative Director Cardel "Annuvin" Kerr has penned a post on the official forums detailing how the devs will be putting some new content on hold to focus on revamping the new player experience. Luckily for us, the major tasks have been bullet-pointed: We will be holding back new Champions until the September Update -- We're still building Champions behind the scenes, and will resume their normal release schedule starting in September. Balance patches will be released as we iterate on design improvements -- You can expect these updates about once a month. We will continue to focus on the iterative cycle that is the foundation of good balance. Technical patches will be released with balance updates to make the game more stable and less prone to crashes. Crashes lead to more AFKs, and that quite frankly, sucks – so we'll continue to push out fixes. Credit -- err, Bug Stomping -- We will continue to fix bugs that you file, and that we find on our own. Expect an even larger presence on the Forums -- We're working on a lot of stuff, and much of it is based on what we've seen you all doing and saying. As a result, you can expect even more posts from developers asking and answering questions! Be sure to check out the entire post for more details on the team's plans with Infinite Crisis over the next few months.
Roberts' latest post peeks behind the Star Citizen development curtain
Star Citizen has opened another window on the world of game development, this time courtesy of a Chris Roberts post that details the investigative process behind Arena Commander's lag and rubber-banding issues. In a nutshell, the problems surfaced with patch 12.4 as Cloud Imperium expanded the pool of AC participants past the initial 60,000-player threshold. "Like doctors trying to identify a mysterious illness, we looked for common environmental factors," Roberts writes. "Was there a significant geographic distance between players? Surprisingly, no: in many cases, players with almost no latency between them were still having issues. The team moved on to examining our own code." He goes on to explain how CIG translates potential problems into JIRA tasks and assigns them to engineers who are responsible for repairs prior to the next patch. [Thanks Cardboard!]
Gears of War's Bleszinski teaming with Nexon America for arena shooter
It looks as if Cliff Bleszinski is getting exactly what he wanted, as the former Epic Games design director is partnering with Nexon America to create a PC arena shooter. Just one week after Bleszinski announced his return to game development following a 21-month absence, the designer now has a studio by the name of Boss Key Productions and a new game to go along with it, codenamed BlueStreak. No, the game won't star Martin Lawrence (as far as we know). Rather, BlueStreak is a free-to-play, sci-fi FPS that will offer a "new take on an old favorite," according to Bleszinski. It's the latest in a string of strategic publishing partnerships by Nexon America, who recently agreed to publish an as-yet-unannounced game from Sleeping Dogs developer United Front Games and will also distribute Splash Damage's Dirty Bomb. [Image: Boss Key Productions]
GameStop may seek exclusive content during a game's development
GameStop is contemplating taking a greater interest in games during their development in order to secure exclusive content. Colin Sebastian of investment firm R.W. Baird recently discussed GameStop's future with the retailer, then told investors in a note that GameStop "indicated that software publishers are more enthusiastic about partnering with it." For example, publishers may offer "exclusive content on each major game release," and in longer terms, "future models may include GameStop offering exclusive gameplay" for games. While GameStop already secures exclusive content for some major releases, this means the retailer may involve itself earlier in the development process than usual. As Sebastian clarified to GamesBeat, the retailer would be "getting involved at the time of game development where there could be some content exclusive to [the retailer] included in the game." GameStop spokesperson Jackie Smith also added that the company is working with development partners "to get both physical and digital exclusives for our customers." [Image: GameStop]
Next batch of Oculus Rift development kits shipping
The next prototype development kits for Oculus Rift are now shipping, the virtual reality headset manufacturer announced this week. Sales of the $350 second kit have reached 45,000, an increase of 20,000 headsets since April. Pre-orders for the second kit started in March, just before Oculus VR was purchased by Facebook for $2 billion. The kits are expected to reach developers by the week of July 14. Oculus VR has been busy these last few months. It acquired the Xbox 360 controller design team Carbon Design last week, Steam pioneer Jason Holtman in early June, former Valve VR head Atman Binstock in March and ID Software Co-Founder John Carmack in August. [Image: Oculus VR]
Neojac is looking to put Atavism MMO creator on Steam
Raise your hand if you've ever thought you could do better than a professional MMO dev. Good, now, all of you go and click the link at the bottom of this article that leads to something called Atavism Online. Atavism is billed as an "MMO creator" on its preliminary Steam Greenlight page, and it's essentially a Unity game development environment that handles all the pesky programming, networking, and server administration tasks while enabling creative types to jump in and start developing the actual game. You might recognize the company behind Atavism, as Neojac is also building an MMO called Neo's Land using this very toolset. [Thanks omedon666!]
Nexon working with Sleeping Dogs dev on free game
Nexon America is partnering with Sleeping Dogs developer United Front Games to publish a free-to-play game, the publisher announced this week. No details on the game are yet known, though it is expected to arrive in 2015. This isn't the only project in progress at the studio, as United Front Games revealed in October that it is working on another game set in the same universe as Sleeping Dogs, which will be published by Square Enix. As for Nexon America, it is publishing Dirty Bomb, an Unreal Engine-based shooter from Brink developer Splash Damage. The game was momentarily known as Extraction before Splash Damage changed the name back to Dirty Bomb in May. [Image: Square Enix]
Monster Hunter reaches new heights with bug-shooting pogo stick
To some, each subsequent version in Capcom's Monster Hunter series only adds a few new beasts, weapons and gear while maintaining one core concept: Slaying large, ferocious creatures in lengthy quests. As series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto told Joystiq at E3 last week, "you have to keep the key elements intact but you also want to innovate, you also want to add some freshness." "Freshness" means more than just Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate's four new monsters and weapons (two apiece), but indicates Capcom's drive to improve the ways players explore and interact with the game's environment. "We tend to, on the design side, just think of things that we as players want to do in these worlds but are unable to do in the current state," Tsujimoto said. Looking back at the last game to launch in the west, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, the developer opened up the game to underwater sequences, introducing beasts like Gobul to spotlight submerged battles.
After 54 years as vaporware, the web's oldest ancestor is released
In 1960 Ted Nelson, the man who coined the term "hypertext", began work on his magnum opus -- Xanadu. In late April, after 54 years of development, the complex document builder and viewer was finally released with little to no fanfare at a Chapman University event. The concept behind the software should seem pretty familiar: documents could be embedded with clickable links that led you to directly to the quote or referenced information within another document. Clicking wouldn't close the primary document though, instead all of the source material is displayed simultaneously, shrinking down to stay out of the way, or scaling up for side-by-side comparisons when you need it. Had it not been for an unfortunate series of setbacks, we could have been talking about Ted Nelson as the father of the World Wide Web, instead of Tim Berners-Lee. But a lack of resources, especially money, meant that development dragged on for decades. Nelson doesn't think Xanadu is dead on arrival, though. While it may be too late to conquer the web, he believes it could take on the mighty PDF. The color-coded links and direct connections to reference material could prove quite useful in legal or research documents. Not to mention a handy way to archive web sites.
Apple's Swift programming language has been in the works for 4 years
Of the many surprises Apple had in store for us this past Monday, the introduction of an entirely new programming language called Swift was particularly well received by developers. John Gruber's tweet in the wake of the announcement sums things up rather well: Media badge people are silent, attendees going nuts. This is huge huge news, the future of all Apple development. - John Gruber (@gruber) June 2, 2014 Huge news indeed. Swift is a high level programming language that promises to be more approachable than Objective-C, making it easier for developers to get their hands dirty and churn out incredible apps. Just as important, Swift can coexist peacefully alongside Objective-C code from within the same app. All in all, developers appear to be exceedingly excited about Swift. Now it's fair to say that absolutely no one was predicting that Apple would introduce an entirely new programming language this week, which tends to make the story behind Swift all the more intriguing. To that end, Apple's Chris Lattner -- who was the original mind behind Swift's development -- provides us with a few details regarding the timeframe surrounding Swift's development. I started work on the Swift Programming Language in July of 2010. I implemented much of the basic language structure, with only a few people knowing of its existence. A few other (amazing) people started contributing in earnest late in 2011, and it became a major focus for the Apple Developer Tools group in July 2013. The Swift language is the product of tireless effort from a team of language experts, documentation gurus, compiler optimization ninjas, and an incredibly important internal dogfooding group who provided feedback to help refine and battle-test ideas. Of course, it also greatly benefited from the experiences hard-won by many other languages in the field, drawing ideas from Objective-C, Rust, Haskell, Ruby, Python, C#, CLU, and far too many others to list. The Xcode Playgrounds feature and REPL were a personal passion of mine, to make programming more interactive and approachable. The Xcode and LLDB teams have done a phenomenal job turning crazy ideas into something truly great. Playgrounds were heavily influenced by Bret Victor's ideas, by Light Table and by many other interactive systems. I hope that by making programming more approachable and fun, we'll appeal to the next generation of programmers and to help redefine how Computer Science is taught. Remember, you can check out Apple's book on the Swift programming language for free from the iBookstore. Video of the the Swift announcement from WWDC can be seen below courtesy of The Verge. The audience applause really speaks volumes. And as a final point of interest, Lattner initially began working at Apple in 2005 when he joined the Developer Tools Group.
Full CryEngine now available through Steam
Did you know that Crytek has launched a CryEngine subscription service on Steam? Yup, it's true. So if you're a budding game developer, a modder, or someone who is curious about game dev tools, you can now play around with the tech behind MMOs like Aion, ArcheAge, and Star Citizen as well as a boatload of popular single-player games. Steam customers get full use of the engine for a $9.90 monthly fee. The "announcement means we are adding the first complete game development engine to Steam, with access to enough source code to allow the creation of any kind of PC game," Crytek director of business development Carl Jones explained. "We're also giving indie developers state-of-the-art tools that live within the same eco-system that they can choose to publish their games."
CryEngine license subscriptions now available on Steam
Developers and hobbyists alike can now purchase a license to use Crytek's CryEngine PC software via Steam to create their own video games. The software is available on a subscription basis, which Crytek revealed back in March as its "Engine as a service" plan, which doesn't affect the free, non-commercial software development kit it also offers. The engine added next-gen console support in August, and powers games like Crysis 3, Ryse: Son of Rome, and more recently, Crytek's upcoming free-to-play MOBA Arena of Fate. CryEngine comes in three tiers: one month at a rate of $9.90 per month, three months at nine percent off ($9.00) and six months at 16 percent off ($8.33). Crytek announced the plans one day after Epic revealed its own subscription model for Unreal Engine 4. Prospective developers can alternatively turn to software like GameMaker for casual and social games, which is also available on Steam. Sony announced partnerships in March to offer PS4 exporting tools for GameMaker: Studio in addition to MonoGame for free to licensed SCE developers. [Image: Crytek]
Vehicles, blueprints, more join Unreal Engine in 4.2 update
Epic Games has unveiled a list of additions aimed at the developer's latest incarnation of the Unreal Engine, and among a host of bug fixes, camera tweaks and animation changes, Unreal Engine 4.2 also brings with it support for vehicles and blueprints for developer-created content. To celebrate the inclusion of vehicles in Unreal Engine 4.2, Epic has granted developers a free tutorial on how these virtual rides function in the form of a short, off-road racing game. Not only does Unreal Engine 4.2 support your typical four-wheeled conveyances, it also allows developers to design a vehicle with any number of wheels and any number of gears. Further, Unreal Engine 4.2 supports numerous drivetrains, from rear-wheel drive to front-wheel drive to four-wheel drive, with either manual or automatic transmission. The blueprints mentioned above may not be of much concern to players, but they should greatly aid those hoping to build anything complex within Unreal Engine 4.2. Think of Epic's blueprints as similar to those found in the real-world. Once you've constructed an object in the Engine, you can then save the thing in its entirety to a blueprint, which can later be retrieved and used to clone your original creation or make tweaks to the design without damaging the original prototype. For a full list of what's included in Unreal Engine 4.2, visit the Unreal Engine developer's blog. There, those interested in working with Unreal Engine will also find everything they need to subscribe to Epic's nascent licensing scheme. [Image: Epic Games]
Fallen Earth posts its update on development in May
If you're a Fallen Earth player eagerly awaiting the release of the Outpost (the player-built town originally meant for live implementation this month) you're going to have to wait a little longer. But you're not being forgotten, either. The latest development update states that while it's taken a while to even bring the new feature to the test server, the team is still hard at work testing all of the ways it interacts with other systems in the game, and it's still on its way. Additionally, this update reveals that another developer has joined the team. The Scapegoat is a systems developer who will be responsible for tweaking the game's skills and mutations, with a build and patch notes due to arrive on the test server very shortly. While it's still largely quiet for the post-apocalyptic game, players should be happy that there are still signs of life.
Remember Unreal Tournament? Epic's making a new one and it's free
Epic Games is known for a lot of things, the Gears of War game franchise and development tool Unreal Engine prime among them. But old-school game fans might know Epic Games for another classic franchise: Unreal Tournament. The long-dormant series is making its return starting today! Sort of. Epic announced this afternoon that the next Unreal Tournament game begins development starting today with "a small team of UT veterans" focused on development for Windows, Mac and Linux. The entire development is open source, which Epic characterizes as, "a collaboration between Epic, UT fans and UE4 developers." As that line infers, the game's being created using Unreal Engine 4. Best of all? When the game's ready to play, it will be free. As Epic puts it: "Not free to play, just free."
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen restarting with volunteer team
The last major update posted regarding Brad McQuaid's dream MMO, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, didn't leave a lot of ambiguity. The game had no prototypes to be shown off, it had failed at its Kickstarter campaign, and the funding raised by fans had completely worn out. So you'd think that would mean it was the end of the road, but instead McQuaid has posted an update on the state of the game's development, and according to the post, the team is being rebuilt and progress will be made. McQuaid explains that the new development team will be working as volunteers for three main reasons: There's no money to pay this new team, McQuaid doesn't want to go through the same stresses that were involved in putting together the last remote team, and as the team will also be remote, it will require a certain amount of adjustment and uncertainty. If you're still hoping for the game's eventual release, you should take a look at McQuaid's full update on the official site. [With thanks to Cederhill for the tip.]
World of Warcraft continues its raid retrospective
The launch of Warlords of Draenor is going to shake up the raiding experience in World of Warcraft, and if raiding is what you like to do in the game, that's pretty important. But rather than just explain how raiding will be in the new expansion, Blizzard has opted to look past through the previous expansions and examine how revisions have affected the game over the years. Yesterday's blog covered launch through Wrath of the Lich King, while this entry focuses on Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria. Cataclysm removed the difficulty gap between 10-person and 25-person raids, but the side effect was a pressure to produce smaller raid groups rather than grow to bigger groups. It also introduced the raid finder as a mechanic, encouraging more people to experience the content. Mists of Pandaria, on the other hand, suffered from bottlenecks that prevented non-raiding groups from making any progress, although flex raiding was deemed a better way to get groups in and playing. Take a look at the full article for more details on the ups and downs, with part 3 set to address the future of raiding in Warlords of Draenor.
City of Titans nears the end of pre-production
Producing a game means doing a lot of things, and sometimes that means choosing not to do things. Missing Worlds Media is wrapping up pre-production on City of Titans, the upcoming spiritual successor to City of Heroes, and one of the things that's been mandatory is keeping a realistic perspective on what can and cannot be achieved on a limited production schedule. The latest development blog talks about exactly that, focusing on something very familiar to everyone who has played an MMO: respawns. One of the elements included in the Unreal Engine powering the game is a respawn system. The development team had originally thought about creating an entirely new set of systems, but developing all of that would substantially add to the amount of development time needed in the game. As such, it was deemed as not mandatory for launch. It's a bit of a disappointment, but as the blog entry explains, it's a choice that needed to be made as the game approaches the full production stage.
Behind-the-scenes 'Final Hours of Titanfall' app now available
The Final Hours of Titanfall, an in-depth look at the development of Respawn Entertainment's first game, is now available to download on iPad, Windows Surface as well as PC and Mac via Origin for $1.99. Versions of the app are also planned for Android and iPhone, and both a text-only version for Kindle as well as an audiobook version are being considered. Created over a four-year span by Geoff Keighley, the app is a 25,000-word deep-dive on Titanfall's development and the legal issues that Respawn co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella settled with Activision in May 2012 pryor to West's departure from the developer in March 2013. Keighley conducted interviews with over 80 people to chronicle Respawn's beginnings, which cover the "toxic mix of office politics and creative struggles the build the next great videogame franchise." It also features concept art and videos from the early days of the game's development. This isn't Keighley's first foray into longform app development, as the behind-the-scenes "Final Hours" series includes an episodic webseries on Square Enix's Tomb Raider reboot, an app for Portal 2 and one detailing the creation of Mass Effect 3. [Image: EA Games]
PAX East 2014: Erin Roberts on Star Citizen's development
Star Citizen's backers have been waiting to see the game's dogfighting module in action for quite some time now, and it finally happened just before PAX East 2014. Unfortunately, it also wound up having some technical difficulties right at the beginning, which wasn't exactly what anyone had in mind when showing off the whole thing in action. It wasn't quite as bad as having the computer running the module burst into flames and die, but it was bad. Do the developers regret it? Not a chance. We got a chance to sit down and talk to Squadron 42 producer Erin Roberts and were told, in no uncertain terms, that even hitting technical hiccups like that don't make a more private development cycle feel better. In a way, having the development cycle be so public actually makes technical hurdles less problematic for the company when they're encountered because the language is in place to keep a meaningful dialogue going with the fans.
