Epic have released a Unreal Engine 4.8, with a massive number of new features and fixes.  Without further ado, lets jump into the list of changes.

• Volumetric Lightmaps
• Improved Static Skylight Directionality
• Multi-bounce Indirect Lighting from Skylights
• Apple ARKit iOS 11 Support
• Google ARCore Developer Preview Support
• Clothing Tools
• Media Framework Improvements
• Sequencer Improvements
• Improved Physics Asset Editor
• Multi-Convex Generation for Physics Asset Bodies
• RigidBody Anim Node Improvements
• Blendspace Editor Improvements
• Global Find In BluePrints
• Improved Cross-Level Actor References
• In-Editor Localization Preview
• Array Reordering
• Advanced Material Preview Viewport
• Platform SDK Upgrades including:

• IDE Version the Build farm compiles against

  • Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2015 Update 3
  • Xcode: XCode 9.0
• Android:
  • NDK 12b
  • Installer 1r6u1
• HTML5: emscripten toolchain to 1.37.19
• Linux: v10_clang-5.0.0-centos7
• Steam: 1.39
• Oculus Runtime: 1.17
• SteamVR: 1.39
• Switch: 1.7.0, 3.5.1 + NEX 4.2.0; Firmware Version 3.0.1-1.0
• PS4:
  • 4.508.111
  • Firmware Version 4.730.001
  • Supported IDE: Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio 2013
• Xbox One:
  • XDK: June 2017 QFE3 for all all Xbox consoles (XB, XB1-S, XB1-X)
  • Firmware Version: October 2017 Preview 3 (versuib 16291.1000.170913-1900)
  • Supported IDE: Visual Studio 2015
• macOS: Support for macOS 10.13 High Sierra has been added as a fully supported platform!
• iOS: SDK 11
• tvOS: SDK 11
• Visual Studio Code Supported on Windows, Mac and Linux
• Simplified iOS Certification Signing
• Desktop Class Forward Renderer on iOS
• Gradle Enabled by Default on Android
• Android Camera Plugin
• HTML5 Optimized  Browser WebAssembly is now default
• LLM Low Level Memory Tracker
• Improved XGE (Incredibuild) Shader Compiler Support
• Unreal Audio Engine (Preview)
• Audio Plugin Architecture Improvements
• Source Bus and Submix Effects ( Unreal Audio Engine )
• Improved Attenuation Settings

For a great deal more details on this release, be sure to read the Unreal Engine blog post on the subject.  As always this release is available via the Epic Game Launcher.

Leadwerks just announced the release of enterprise edition of the Leadwerks Game Engine.  This release is targeted primarily towards “non-game” customers, seemingly being the same functionality wise as the Professional edition, but removing Steam client requirements.  The Enterprise Edition retails for $499 on the Leadwerks Website.

From the announcement:

Today we are pleased to announce the release of Leadwerks Game Engine: Enterprise Edition, a standalone version of our popular 3D development software. The Enterprise Edition allows business users to install and use Leadwerks without the need for the Steam client. The new product joins the existing Standard Edition with Lua scripting and the Professional Edition with C++ and Visual Studio support, both sold on Steam.

The Enterprise Edition has already been approved for sale through NASA’s ACES approval program for software, and NASA has joined a lineup of business customers using Leadwerks products that includes Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and the British Royal Navy.

In the near future the capabilities of our software will continue to expand to support the needs of business customers in the VR and simulation spaces. The development of Leadwerks Game Engine 5 is being directed with a focus on performance, hyperrealism, and improved ease of use.

Leadwerks Game Engine: Enterprise Edition is available to purchase for $499 on our website.

One more step on the road to the release of Godot 3.0, today we have the release of Godot 3.0 Alpha 2.   The biggest feature of this release is of course the long awaited C# support, although be sure to install the correct binaries as there are now two options, classic and mono.  You will also need to have the most recent version of Mono installed should you chose the mono binaries.  There have of course been several other fixes and improvements since Alpha 1, unfortunately there isn’t a change log available.

Excerpt from the release announcement:

A little treat (or is it a trick?) for our community on this Halloween eve: Godot 3.0 alpha 2 is out, ready for your testing! It's already been 3 months since our previous official development snapshot, and lots of bugs have been fixed, making us one big step closer to the final 3.0 stable release.

It's also the first build to include the long awaited support for the C# programming language using Mono! This is of course still pretty rough, though usable, and we are looking forward to your feedback and bug reports. Some caveats are documented below as well as in the introduction blog post, so make sure to read them before filing issues.

THE FEATURES

Since the previous alpha build, there have been hundreds of bugs fixed, as well as many usability enhancements to make the new features as easy to use as possible.

There was also a strong focus on the documentation, with the Class Reference close to 70% complete now (which is already much higher than the completion level of the 2.x API documentation).

Again, keep in mind this is a pre-beta release and it is not meant for production development!

Google have just launched Poly, a giant repository of mostly free 3D models, aimed at AR and VR content creation.  The site is available at https://poly.google.com/ with most models downloadable in OBJ format, a file format compatible with the vast majority of 3D applications including Max, Maya and Blender.  This service is very similar to Microsoft’s Remix3D, launched along side the Windows 10 Creator Update.  The majority of models in Poly are licensed under the CC-BY open source license, a very game developer friendly license simply requiring attribution. 

You can see Poly in action (and a bit of Remix3D) in this video.

With the upcoming Godot 3.0 release, there is a pretty major change to the physics system within the engine.  They have decided to replace the in-house physics engine with the open source Bullet physics engine.  Bullet is a well established open source project and has been used in such games as Rocket League, Grand Theft Auto 4 and DiRT as well as powering applications such as Blender and Cinema4D.  This change will not affect 2D physics in the Godot engine.

From the Godot announcement:

Introducing Bullet

Godot always supported an abstract physics interface, so Andrea Catania (Odino) volunteered to add Bullet support as a backend. I initially though it would not be possible to replicate Godot's API in Bullet faithfully, but Andrea proved me wrong and did a fantastic job. He also finished before the Beta deadline, so his work was just merged and will be present in Godot 3.0.

Physics should work just like before, and no code should change, except Bullet is being used internally. Godot's old physics engine is provided for compatibility and can be selected in the project settings, but will likely be removed by the time 3.1 is out.

In an unrelated but similarly timed announcement VR support was also added to Godot in the recently released Alpha 2.  You can read more about VR support here.  I did a hands-on video about both physics and VR in Godot available here or embedded below.

YoyoGames, the creators of GameMaker Studio, just announced a new cheaper “Creator” edition.  Creator edition is available for $39 per year on Windows and Mac ( each being a separate purchase per platform ).

Currently available on the store, Creator edition offers the following functionality:

Creator Windows

GameMaker Studio 2 Creator Windows lets you create games for Windows. Get unlimited resources and release your games to stores such as Steam and itch.io.

Creator Windows features are only available on Windows PCs.

• Unlimited Resources
• Integrated Source Control
• Texture Management
• SWF / Spine Support
• Extensions
• Marketplace
• Windows Export

So, what’s the catch?  Why buy this instead of the $99 developer edition?  Here are the details of the Creator edition from the FAQ:

With the Creator Licence you unlock the power of GameMaker Studio 2 and get access to unlimited resources as well as the possibility to create a final executable of any project you make. You can buy either a Windows or a macOS licence, meaning that you will only be able to compile a final executable for one or the other depending on which you bought, although you can use the IDE on both Windows and macOS (just download which ever one is appropriate from the Downloads section of your YoYo Account).

It is worth noting that the Creator Licence will not permit you to change the Splash Screen of your projects, nor can you disable anonymous game analytics, and your executables will be compiled using the VM with no YYC option. You do, however, get access to the Marketplace where you can find assets of all kinds, or even make and sell your own.

The Creator licence is a 12 month non-renewing licence, and at the end of the 12 month period you will need to buy another licence to continue using GMS2 fully. The Licence is designed for hobby developers or for people that just want to have fun making small projects for themselves, as well as those people that want to learn to use the product without having to pay a larger initial amount.

Essentially the catch is a required splash screen, while only being able to compile for the platform your purchased a license for (Windows or Mac).

articy:draft is unique product for game developers to design and implement game details such as application flow, game inventory and character dialog trees.  They have recently released a plugin enabling you to use your articy:draft data directly in Unreal engine.  It is available for download here on Github.  Keep in mind this is a work in progress release, so not all features may be implemented, or you may encounter bugs.

From the github page:

Goals

We release our current progress for the plugin as a github open source project in the hopes that this will give you a substantial headstart into incorporating your articy:draft data into your unreal project while still give you enough flexibility to adjust the plugin to your needs. We also would love to hear about suggestions or even better for you to directly contribute to the development of the plugin.

Features

While this is not meant as a full product release, it is still considered a working foundation for integrating your articy:draft content into your unreal engine project. So you can expect the following features including but not limited to:

• Everything accessible via C++ and Blueprint
• Flow player for automatic configurable flow traversal as an actor component
• Automatic import
• Database with your project data. Excluding Journeys, Settings, Template constraints
• Uses of unreal engines localization

If you are interested in learning more about articy:draft, we previously featured it in our ongoing GameDev Toolbox series.  The video is available here and embedded below.

Today Amazon announced the preview release of their new AR/VR engine “Sumerian”.  Sumerian consists of a web based editor for composing AR/VR scenes as well as a programming environment, either using a visual interface or scripted via JavaScript.  Sumerian currently supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and iOS devices with Android ARCore coming soon.  The editor enables you to import and then position 3D objects authored in either OBJ or FBX format, with Unity scene format coming soon.

You can preview a Sumerian authored scene in a WebGL 2 capable web browser by clicking here.  Advanced warning, this scene caused Chrome to freeze up on my computer, so your mileage may vary.

Sumerian in Amazon’s own words:

Amazon Sumerian lets you create and run virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 3D applications quickly and easily without requiring any specialized programming or 3D graphics expertise. With Sumerian, you can build highly immersive and interactive scenes that run on popular hardware such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and iOS mobile devices (support for Android ARCore coming soon). For example, you can build a virtual classroom that lets you train new employees around the world, or you can build a virtual environment that enables people to tour a building remotely. Sumerian makes it easy to create all the building blocks needed to build highly immersive and interactive 3D experiences including adding objects (e.g. characters, furniture, and landscape), and designing, animating, and scripting environments. Sumerian does not require specialized expertise and you can design scenes directly from your browser.

While this may sound like a new game engine, unfortunately it really doesn’t seem to be aimed at that demographic.  Instead Amazon seem to be targeting Sumerian towards sales and education markets.  Sumerian use cases given by Amazon are:

• Employee education
• Training Simulations
• Field Service Productivity
• Virtual Concierge
• Design and Creative
• Retail and Sales

So, while something can look like a game engine, walk like a game engine and talk like a game engine, that doesn’t make it a game engine unfortunately.  While Sumerian tools are free to use, at least while in preview, the generated results are meant to run on AWS and have a price tag attached:

Pricing Details

---

Scene Storage

You are charged for the total storage size of the 3D assets you upload and store in Sumerian at the rate of $0.06 per GB per month.

Scene Traffic

You are charged for the total volume of traffic generated by your scene each month at a rate of $0.38 per GB per month. The total cost is the number of views your scene receives in a month multiplied by the published project size and the cost of $0.38 per GB transferred.

Sumerian Hosts (optional)

If your Host uses Amazon Lex or Amazon Polly, then you are charged for what you use. Each offers a free tier for the first 12 months using the service. Visit the Lex pricing page and Polly pricing page for pricing details.

You can learn more about Amazon Sumerian here.  It is currently in preview, requiring an Amazon account number to sign up.  If you are interested, the application form is available here.

Today marks the release of Cocos Creator 1.7.  Cocos Creator is a full suite 2D game engine built on top of the Cocos2d-x open source project.  It provides a complete game editor and SDK for creating cross platform 2D games.  If you are interested in learning more, be sure to check out our recent hands-on video with Cocos Creator.

Cocos Creator 1.7 brings several new features to the engine.  Details from the developer forums:

Performance Improvements

• [Engine] JSB 2.0 officially launched, greatly optimizing the native platform operating efficiency. Support debugging, if you use manual bindings, be sure to bind the code to be upgraded. For more information, read the [JSB Binding and Debugging Tutorials] (https://github.com/cocos-creator/cocos2d-x-lite/blob/develop/cocos/scripting/js-bindings/docs/JSB2.0-learning-en.md34)
• [Engine] Separate culling and transform calculation steps to improve performance
• [Engine] Fixed bug where the width of the rung would change to 0 after adding the Camera component to the node
• [Animation] Optimize animation components
• [Engine] Optimize native platform camera cropping performance

What Is Different

• [Editor] The plug-in script “Allow Editor Load” is disabled, the internal display is not checked
• [Build] iPhone X Screen Resolution Support
• [Build] Projects can now exclude un-needed modules for native engine projects. (Project Settings -> Module Config)
• [Build] Allow native scripts to disable script encryption (support choose whether encrypt js files in builder panel)
• [ProjectSettings] Add CocosAnalytics to the Services tab.
• [ProjectSettings] Increase data validation when saving project settings
• [TypeScript] Upgrade the TypeScript compiler to 2.4.2
• [Editor] Improve the template of the new script
• [Editor] Optimize Explorer file sorting
• [Editor] Explorer to create a new node immediately change the file name state
• [Console] supports setting line height and font size to change log display
• [Engine] Give detailed hints when a user has erroneously released a resource that may still be used
• [Engine] Support mouse event bubbling
• [Engine] Support and WebView interoperability
• [Engine] supports dynamic modification of cc.macro.ENABLE_CULLING
• [Engine] Provides the native platform RenderTexture’s saveToFile interface

Downloads:

• Creator for Mac
• Creator for Windows

Following on the heels of Alpha 2 released the end of October, we are one step closer to a full Godot 3.0 release with today’s release of Godot 3 Beta 1.  The major difference between beta and the earlier alpha releases is beta is now feature complete.  No new functionality will be added between now and Godot 3.0, only bug fixes and refinements.  This is important to me as it means I can get to work on new tutorials and content targeting Godot!

The beta release also contains several new features since the last alpha including Bullet as the new physics engine for 3D physics, onion skinning support for animations, improved remote debugging and auto tiling for tilemaps.

Details of the release from the Godot blog:

Godot 3.0's development officially entered the beta stage last week, which coincides for us with what we name the feature freeze: from now on, no new features will be merged in the master branch, as the focus will be fully on fixing existing issues to stabilize the current feature set. Don't worry though, Godot 3.1 will arrive soon after the 3.0 release to bring all the nice features that contributors are already working on.

To get broader testing of the feature-frozen branch, we're releasing an official build, Godot 3.0 beta 1, just one month after the previous alpha 2.

It notably includes Bullet as the new 3D physics engine, onion skinning, autotiling for 2D tilemaps, an enhanced debugger with remote SceneTree edit, and nice usability improvements such as code folding in the script editor, PascalCase builtins for C#, and many others.

But more importantly, it also brings tons of bug fixes compared to alpha 2, and we will continue to hunt down the remaining issues to guarantee a nice experience with Godot 3.0 stable. The documentation and translation have also been updated thanks to the work of our many contributors.

Downloads are not on the download page, instead available via the following links:

• Classical version: [HTTPS mirror] [HTTP mirror]
• Mono version (requires the Mono SDK): [HTTPS mirror] [HTTP mirror]

Visual Studio 2017 15.5 has just been released with several new features and improvements.  Performance optimizations were a big part of this release including a halving of the time required to open C# or VB.net project.  The biggest feature of interest for many mobile developers is the Xamarin Live Player, enabling you to develop using just Visual Studio plus an iOS or Android application.

Details of the release from the MSDN blog:

Performance. In this update we continued to improve performance. Solution load times for large C# and Visual Basic projects is nearly cut by half. The time to switch between debug and release is significantly reduced. It is faster to add, remove, and rename files and folders in .NET Core projects. Project templates should now unfold much faster than before. In the most exceptional cases, you can see up to a 40x improvement in unfold time. There are multiple performance improvements in F# tooling. We’ve added an “Only analyze projects which contain files opened in the editor” checkbox under the JavaScript/TypeScript Text Editor Project Options page. This option will improve performance and reliability in large solutions. Note that when this box is checked, you will need to perform a Solution build to see a complete list of TypeScript errors in all files.

Most notably, we have cut the solution load times for large C# and VB projects by half. The primary way we achieved this was by starting the design-time build process earlier and by batching the design-time build operations for all projects and executing them in parallel with other solution load operations. To see this in action, watch this video comparison loading the Orchard Content Management System solution before and after optimization.

Check out our detailed post to learn how we achieved this performance in large C# and VB projects. For those who missed the similar performance improvement we made for C++ projects in an earlier update check out this blog post on C++ solution load and build performance improvements.

Diagnostics. The Visual Studio debugger got considerably more powerful with the addition of step-back debugging, also known as historical debugging. Step-back debugging automatically takes a snapshot of your application on each breakpoint and debugger step you take, enabling you to go back to a previous breakpoint to view its state. Check out this post from Deborah that details out this capability and how to make the most of it – step-back while debugging with IntelliTrace. For more on diagnostics and debugging, also look at our post on lesser known debugging features.

Docker and Continuous Deployment. Visual Studio has featured good Docker support for a while. With this release we have taken it further. Docker containers now support multi-stage Dockerfiles. The continuous delivery features make it easy to configure Visual Studio Team Services to set up CD for ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core projects to Azure App Service

Secrets management. Visual Studio has added features to help identify and manage secrets like database connection strings and web service keys. We have a preview of support for credential scanning that can easily read through your source files to ensure you don’t unintentionally publish key secrets into your source repo. And the integrated support for Azure KeyVault gives you an easy place to publish those secrets (and get them out of your source code). Check out this post to learn how to manage secrets securely in the cloud.

Azure functions. The Visual Studio tools for Azure functions has gotten a notable improvement, with the ability to use .NET Core. Learn about added support for creating .NET Core Azure Functions apps, as well as improving the experience for creating new Function app projects.

Mobile development with Xamarin. A major milestone in this release for mobile development was the addition of the Xamarin Live Player, which enables developers to continuously deploy, test, and debug their apps using just Visual Studio and an iOS or Android device. This release adds support for Android emulators, enabling developers to preview real-time XAML changes directly in the Android emulator without requiring a re-compile and re-deploy.

We have also added the ability to File → New → Mobile App with Xamarin.Forms and .NET Standard, and migrated all project templates to use PackageReference for easy NuGet package management.

Unit Testing. We’ve improved the unit testing experience for both managed languages and for C++. C++ developers will notice integrated support for Google Test and Boost.test (add them through the Visual Studio installer in the desktop development workload). We already mentioned feature behind a feature flag called source-based test discovery that hugely improves test discovery performance. And the Live Unit Testing (LUT) is better integrated with the task notification center and now supports .NET Core (starting in Visual Studio 2017 15.3) as well as MSTest v1. Be sure to check out this post for an overview of the various text experience improvements in Visual Studio 2017 version 15.5.

Web development. If you are an Angular 2 developer you will now see errors, completions, and code navigation in inline templates and .ngml template files. See the sample repo for an overview and instructions. Other updates in the web space include improvements to Razor syntax formatting and improvements in the workflow for publishing ASP.NET applications to Azure Virtual Machines.

Visual C#. VS 15.5 adds support for C# 7.2 features like Span<T>, the readonly struct modifier And the private protected access modifier.

Visual C++. We already talked about the support for Google Test and Boost.test, and C++ developers will also see improvements to the Standard Template Library for C++ 17 standards. Check out the Open Standards website. The VC++ compiler supports 75% of the C++ 17 features. In addition, the team has added new optimizations to the compiler.

Visual F#. We added .NET Core SDK project support to the F# tooling so you can now create new .NET Core console apps, .NET Standard libraries, and .NET Core unit test projects from File > New Project, for example, and we added support for project-to-project references. You can also you can now right-click Publish tooling with Web SDK projects and the continuous delivery features will now autogenerate a CI/CD pipeline with Visual Studio Team Services tooling.

Source control. You can now work with Git submodules and worktrees, and configure fetch.prune and pull.rebase in Team Explorer. Visual Studio now treats Git submodules and worktrees like normal repos. Just add them to your list of Local Repositories and get coding!

Reliability. The Visual Studio Installer now supports modification and uninstallation of each entry, improving the installer experience. On the note of the crashes caused by the PenIMC.dll that some of you may have run into, Windows is currently working on a root fix. Meanwhile, we wanted to ensure we helped those of you still running into crashes when trying to scroll, click, or interact via touch in Visual Studio. To activate the workaround, disable touch scrolling by checking the “Disable Touch Scrolling” under Tools > Options > Environment > General and restart Visual Studio.

For even greater details on this release be sure to check out the full release notes.

A year ago Microsoft acquired Simplygon, a polygon optimization tool.  Back in May they announced that Simplygon connect was now free.  Simplygon Connect is a web service you can use to upload your assets to their servers for processing.  Today however Microsoft has released Simplygon Cloud on the Azure Marketplace.

If you were looking for a more dedicated service, Simplygon could be a good fit for you.  Description from the getting started guide:

Simplygon Cloud is an optimization service that runs on Microsoft Azure.

Simplygon is not a public service hosted on the Internet; it is a service acquired in the Azure Marketplace. This means that when you acquire a Simplygon instance in the Azure Portal, that Simplygon instance will only be used by you and whoever you provide access to.

If you need an on-premise solution, Simplygon is also available on Azure Stack, the on-prem version of Azure.

Simplygon Cloud is capable of processing the following formats:

Asset

Of course, to utilize Simplygon Cloud you need a 3D asset. In this version of Simplygon Cloud (1.0), the following asset formats are supported:

• GLTF
• FBX
• OBJ
• SSF (Simplygon Scene Format)

If you asset uses non-embedded textures or consists of multiple files (like for example GLTF), you will need to provide all files to Simplygon Cloud to be able to correctly process a file.

AppGameKit is a very beginner friendly game engine with a secondary C++ tier for those that want to get a bit more advanced.  Today they announced the release of version 2017.12.12.  For the record, I really like chronological naming conventions for releases, it is immediately obvious what the most current version is at a glance.  Back to the release…  this release greatly expands Box2D physics support, adds a new template with free assets, adds C++ support for Visual Studio 2017 and much more.  We featured AppGameKit in the closer look series if you are interested in learning more about this engine.  Keep in mind, that review is now a couple of years old.

Details from the release:

What's new in Version 2017.12.12?

Box 2D

• Updated Box2D to version 2.3.2, but without the auto convex hull code, polygon vertices must still be convex
• Multiple 2D collision shapes can now be assigned to an object without it being set up for physics
• Shape properties like friction, restitution, and collision filters can now be modified on a per shape basis instead of one value for all shapes
• The SetSpriteShape commands can now change previously added shapes on a per shape basis
• Added GetSpriteNumShapes command to return the number of shapes currently assigned to a sprite
• Added GetSpriteShapeNumVertices command to return the number of vertices in a polygon shape
• Added GetSpriteShapeVertexX/Y commands to return the X/Y coordinates of a polygon vertex
• Added SetSpritePhysicsDensity to set the density of a shape
• Added SetJointMouseMaxForce command to limit the amount of force the mouse joint can use
• Added SetJointDamping command to set the softness parameters for distance, line/wheel, weld, and mouse joints
• Added CreateRopeJoint to limit the max distance between two sprites
• Added GetSpritePhysicsCOMX/Y to get the current center of mass for the physics shape
• Added SetSpriteShapeChain and AddSpriteShapeChain to create 2D chain shapes, these are the most suitable shape for 2D terrain
• Added ChainShape example to the Physics folder to demonstrate a simple 2D terrain

Text To Speech

• Added TextToSpeech commands for iOS and Android
• Added TextToSpeech example project to the Sounds folder

iWatch

• Added commands to communicate with an Apple smart watch, the smart watch app must be created outside of AGK

Sprites

• Added GetSpriteTransparency to return the current transparency mode of a sprite
• Added SetObjectBlendModes to set the transparency blend modes manually, also added SetObjectTransparency mode 3 to use these manual values

Skeletons & Tweening

• Added new commands to pause and resume tweens
• Fixed SetSkelton2DFlip causing an incorrect animation if the root bone has a positional offset

Shaders

• Added DeleteShader command and GetShaderExists commands
• The GetTweenPlaying commands will now return 1 if the tween is currently playing as part of a tween chain

3D

• Fixed shadows disappearing or causing a crash on Android when the app goes to the background
• Fixed shadow artifacts on some Android devices when the scene has large polygons
• Fixed animated objects causing incorrect shadows if an object with more bones was loaded after an object with less bones

Screen Recording

• Increased audio quality on Android when using StartScreenRecording

JSON

• Improved the speed of to JSON for both arrays and types when using large data structures

Windows

• Fixed XInput1_3.dll missing error when running the 64-bit version of the player on Windows 8 or above
• Fixed GetDeivceID on Windows returning different values on the same machine in some cases

Edit Boxes

• Tapping outside an editbox to stop editing will now record a touch press with the GetPointer commands
• Fixed editbox text shifting slightly after using SetEditBoxText and then editing the text
• Fixed arrow keys adding characters to editboxes on Mac
• Fixed SetEditBoxCursorPosition not working on iOS until the editbox regains focus
• Fixed GetEditBoxLines not counting a new line unless a character existed on it, the line will now be counted as soon as the return key is pressed

Networking

• Added GetNetworkExists command
• Fixed calling CloseNetwork whilst a connection was still in progress causing the app to freeze

Arrays

• Array .sort() now accepts an optional parameter to ignore case when sorting strings, e.g. sort(1) to ignore case

Linux

• Fixed SetWindowAllowResize being called after SetWindowSize on Linux causing the window to revert to its original size

Android

• Fixed Android apps closing when a hardware keyboard is attached or removed

Images

• Fixed GetImageChosen returning the last valid image choice when the user chooses cancel

iOS Export

• Please note that the iOS export now requires XCode to be installed on your Mac due to iOS 11 changes, and the app icon must now be 1024x1024 pixels in size

Tier 2

• Added VS2017 template project and AGK lib to the Tier 2 folder on Windows

Version 2.1.3 of the GameMaker game engine was released today.  GameMaker is a long running and popular cross platform 2D game engine recently featured in our Closer Look game engine series.  This release contains several new bug fixes as well as new features such as a Variables section in the object editor, improved access to parent events and more.

Details of the release from the release notes:

Object Variables

• The object editor now has a new 'Variables' section
• This editor allows you to define variables and their default values, and these will be automatically set upon creation
• These default values can then be overridden for specific instances by opening the same variables window when in the room editor

Inherited Parent Events

• The object editor's Events list now shows "ghosted" events inherited from a parent object
• This makes it easy to view all events available to an object in one place
• You can quickly open, inherit or override a parent event via its right-click context menu

Amazon Fire

• Fixed an issue where some users got "Unable to obtain permission to execute" when running projects
• Fixed Device Manager's Test Connection button appeared to do nothing if you had the above issue

iOS

• Added support for required new iOS icons, fixes game submission fails
• NOTE: You will be prompted (once) on opening an out-of-date project to update its iOS images
• Fixed an issue which meant Push Notification support was always being included in builds

Ubuntu and Mac 64bit games

• Ubuntu support has now shifted to 64bit, rather than 32bit
• NOTE: You need to clean your project cache for Ubuntu if you get an error about already being connected when trying to build
• Mac now includes 64bit and 32bit binaries in its packages in order to comply with submission requirements, so builds will take a little longer now

Misc IDE Changes

• Code Editor: Now uses "standard" text editor behaviour for home/end keys
• Debugger: Graph now shows more accurate fps_real values rather than a mean of a few frames
• Preferences: Android/Amazon keystore Import, Generate, and Show Hash buttons will show the output Window so you can see messages
• Resource Tree: Optimisations to speed up the IDE when large projects are open
• Target Manager: Currently-selected target is saved per-project when you close your projects

Fixed Bugs

• 0027455: Extension Editor: Removing proxy files with matching name can cause extension files to be deleted
• 0027991: Code Editor: Multi select gets removed if you backspace more than once
• 0028186: Code Editor: display_set_gui_maximise() should allow support for the US equivalent display_set_gui_maximize()
• 0025608: Code Editor: Reopening projects with open code editors, not all of the code is coloured correctly until editor is focused
• 0027983: Code Editor: Autocomplete suggests previously used incomplete variable
• 0027980: Code Editor: Unstable error if you do a replace whilst selection only is enabled, delete some text then type in the search field
• 0028034: Sound Editor: Short sounds are not played completely in preview
• 0028216: DnD Editor: Missing a context menu entry for Expand All
• 0026596: DnD Editor: Live Preview doesn't get focused if already open and contents have changed
• 0028192: DnD Editor: Context menu is missing the entries for Go To Object and Add/Open Event
• 0028197: DnD Editor: Context menu is missing keyboard shortcuts
• 0028196: DnD Editor: Can't Cut/Copy/Paste using keyboard shortcuts using macOS IDE
• 0028150: Image Editor: Shift selecting frames can cause Shift key to become locked
• 0028114: Image Editor: Blend Mode 'Multiply' will not use destination alpha
• 0027385: Image Editor: Dropping any non-image file on top of an open Image Editor gives incorrect prompt
• 0028093: Tile Set Editor: Changing 'Auto tile background colour' appears to change nothing
• 0027994: Sprite Editor: Texture Settings -> Edge Filtering will cause GameMaker Studio 2 to close when using a 4K sprite size (3840x2160)
• 0028170: Physics shape fixture not generated unless Modify Collision Shape has been opened
• 0028185: Importing Projects: Dragging gmez onto start page occasionally orders rooms incorrectly
• 0028208: General: "GMS2 has become unstable" when dismissing Ctrl+T via spamming Escape
• 0028157: Source Control: 'Import Project to Repo' creates local repo if the import fails, preventing further imports
• 0028300: Preferences: Android keystore import / generate / show hash buttons should force showing their output
• 0028299: Preferences: Android keystore alias should check for spaces and block with a description of how to fix
• 0028258: Debugger: DS_Map key output in instances tab does not show bitshifted integers
• 0028100: Debugger: Always uses the IP for the last Mac in device manager, which might not be the targeted Mac
• 0028003: Debugger: GMS2 Runner.exe creates new inbound rule each time you debug
• 0028026: Resource Tree: Pressing Enter after searching for a resource does not open the resource
• 0027882: My Library: DPI scaling removes refresh button and squashes Search
• 0028117: Search + Replace: Can't resize window
• 0027940: Game Options: Mac is missing 'Enable Retina' option
• 0027624: Game Options: UWP Publisher Name is missing from the UWP Game Options
• 0027839: Tutorials: Crash when clicking 'Get More Tutorials'
• 0027989: Licensing: Buying GMS2 products will require log out/in to properly update your licence
• 0026770: Build Android: Cannot build for Android VM if the path to the NDK has not been set
• 0027362: Build UWP: Certificate install not prompted / isn't performed as part of pfx install, causes builds to fail to install on phone

Known Issues

• If you have cached Ubuntu build output for projects you will need to clean these to avoid a "already connected" error (just need to do this once)
• Explorer file dialogs can sometimes fail to open. This is a Windows 10 Creators Update issue and has been seen failing in other applications
• Welcome Page is still disabled during start-up - it can still be accessed via the Help menu, so new users can still get to these videos and links
• Runtime download/activation has been seen to crash the IDE occasionally during subsequent startup
• Closing and reopening the Marketplace tab can cause issues downloading some assets thereafter, need to restart GMS2 to fix
• Dead instances of Window's RuntimeBroker application can block attempts to use the manual in the IDE - just get a white page
• UWP requires you to have the older SDK tools installed as well as the current ones, not just the current ones

A new version of the popular GIMP open source art package was released today.  Version 2.9.8 contains several fixes and improvements, but the most visible to end users are the improved gradient tools.  Now it is possible to work with gradients directly on the main canvas.

Details of the release from the release notes:

Core:

- The default brush is now "Hardness 050".

- Verbose version (command line: gimp -v) now displays C compiler

information.

- Transform tools don't commit identity transformation anymore.

- Manual language can now be selected amongst all installed manuals,

which is particularly interesting when no GIMP manuals are available

in your GUI language. This will be proposed by default when a manual

is not installed for the GUI language (alongside the possibility to

read online) and the choice can be edited in preferences.

- The statusbar now blinks on warnings and errors.

- Paste in Place, available for regular clipboard and named buffers,

allows pasting contents of either the clipboard a named buffer at the

exact coordinates it was copied from.

- Color Picker should now work on KDE/Wayland.

- Color Picker now reads values under cursor in local windows making

it work at least inside GIMP Windows on Wayland platforms with no

color-picking capabilities (for instance GNOME/Wayland) yet.

- OpenCL is now disabled by default. Depending on graphics cards and

drivers, OpenCL acceleration is often slower than multi-threaded

implementation, and can also sometimes be "glitchy".

- Now possible to open a locally-installed manual different from the

GUI localization. The manual language choice can be customized

through preferences when several manuals are installed. If no manual

language has been selected already and no manual for current GUI

localization is available, choice of help language will be proposed

at first call to the manual.

Configurability:

- Keybindings now possible for previous/next/top/bottom channel.

Usability:

- The spinscale widget now highlights vertical parts of the slider

section differently to hint that position of cursor above the widget

matters. When changing values in the lower step section, the pointer

will be wrapped around the screen so that you could continue adjusting

the value without interruptions.

- Canvas rotation and flip information is now visible in the status

bar (as angle value and flip icon). Clicking on these canvas status

will respectively raise the "Select Rotation Angle" dialog or unflip

the canvas.

- Use abbreviated versions for long layer mode names. In particular,

replace the "(legacy)" suffixes with "(l)" in the abbreviated

versions, still showing the unabbreviated names in the full list.

Tools:

- Blend tool now features on-canvas gradient editing: adding, shifting,

removing color stops, shifting midpoints and converting them to color

stops, assignging colors to color stops, changing blending type

for midpoints. Additional options: 'Instant mode' (active before you

start blending) to support the old workflow where you can't edit color

stops before applying the gradient fill, and 'Modify active gradient'

which allows changing user-writable gradients directly rather than

creating copies of them. Moreover, custom gradient is now saved

and restored across sessions.

- All transform tools: it makes no difference now whether a modifier is

pressed before of after mouse button press/release.

- Free Select tool selection can now be committed with double click as

well (only through Enter key before). This allows smoother workflows

on some setups, and in particular when no keyboard is available

(e.g. tablet-like computers).

- Layer group children now inherit the color tags of the parent by

default, unless specific color tags are assigned. Inherited color

tags show in a less saturated color than assigned ones.

Painting:

- When copying a generated brush, GIMP now copies its 'Spacing' property.

- Rename "Wheel" dynamics labels as "Wheel/Rotation". It turns out

that Wacom Art Pen and Airbrush pen use the same axis for barrel rotation

and wheel scrolling respectively. Therefore they already work in GIMP.

"Unhide" the feature with more obvious labels.

Color management:

- Use babl to convert between profiles if possible.

Display filters:

- New 'Clip Warning' display filter to show underexposed and overexposed

values. Target values below 0 and above 1.0, hence it only works on

16/32 bit per channel float images (such as EXR and TIFF).

- Display filters now operate in unbounded sRGB rather than in monitor

color space.

Plug-ins:

- Fix finding raw loaders on Windows/macOS.

- Screenshot for KDE/Wayland has been implemented (full-screen and

window screenshots only; rectangular area screenshots need

implementation on the KDE side).

- Screenshot can now add a delay between window pick/rectangular

area selection and the actual shot, but only in platforms supporting

the feature.

File formats:

- PSD:

- Fix mask position when opening/exporting.

- Fix active layer selection during loading.

- Fix potential group-layer naming conflict during loading.

- Fix missing some attributes loading empty layers.

- Fix reading files with deeply nested layer groups.

- Load and save layer group expanded state.

- Improve layer opacity loading/saving.

- PDF: password-protected files can now be imported.

- HGT: Digital Elevation Model data from NASA/NIMA can now be loaded,

both SRTM-1 (1 arc-second) and SRTM-3 (3 arc-seconds).

Filters:

- Update GEGL-based filter Wavelet Decompose:

- Add an option to keep the decomposition in a layer group.

- Add an option to add layer mask to each scales layers.

- Do not use 'New from visible' because it produces unexpected

results; replaced by succession of layer copy and merge down.

PDB:

- Add file-pdf-load2 API to load password-protected and/or multi-page

PDF files.

- Add file-hgt-load to load HGT files, with an argument to select between

SRTM-1 and SRTM-3 types.

Translations:

- Updated: Catalan, Croatian, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian,

Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish.

Building:

- Require LittleCMS >= 2.8.

- Initial docker-based build environment for GIMP now available.

- Warn against use of GCC 7.2 which has a bug breaking GIMP.

- An official flatpak stable package is now available on flathub.

More details about this release are available here.

OctaneRender is a GPU based renderer with plugins available for just about every popular 3D content creation package.  Yesterday, they released a plugin for Unity.  This enables you to renderer incredibly detailed movies and cut scenes directly from Unity or export to work directly in Octane Render or another supported application.  The plugin is available on a subscription basis, with a free option available but confined to a single GPU.  For additional GPU support, as well as access to Octane Cloud servers as well as After Effects and Nuke plugins, it will cost $20 a month.  Finally for all of that as well as up to 20 GPU support you pay $60 a month.

You can get started completely free by downloading and installing this scene in Unity.  Installation documentation is available here.

I did a video showcasing Octane Render in action available here and embedded below.

Google have just released the second preview version of ARCore, their augment reality SDK.  Augmented reality is really nothing new, it’s just bringing together camera, GPS, gyroscope and similar libraries in a single location, enabling developers to overlay information on real world images.

Details of this new release:

Today, we’re releasing an update to our ARCore Developer Preview with several technical improvements to the SDK, including:

• A new C API for use with the Android NDK that complements our existing Java, Unity, and Unreal SDKs;

• Functionality that lets AR apps pause and resume AR sessions, for example to let a user return to an AR app after taking a phone call;

• Improved accuracy and runtime efficiency across our anchor, plane finding, and point cloud APIs.

To learn more about the SDK updates, check out the Android, Unity, and Unreal Github pages.

Along with the updated preview for Android, they also released updated Unity and Unreal Engine implementations.

Related to the ARCore announcement, Google also killed off Project Tango a competing AR project at Google.

The Tango project will be deprecated on March 1st, 2018.
Google is continuing AR development with ARCore, a new platform designed for building augmented reality apps for a broad range of devices without the requirement for specialized hardware.

You may recall Google Poly, a large free repository of 3D models released earlier in November.  Now Google have released a REST based API for programmatic access to the Poly database of models.  You can play around with the API using the Google API Explorer interactive tool available here.  You can learn more about the API here.

In addition to the REST api, they have created plugins for the following technologies:

• Unity
• Unreal Engine

You can download everything here.

If you’ve never heard of Google Poly, be sure to watch the following hands-on video.

The next major release of the Unity game engine is here, 2017.3.  New features of this release include 360 degree video skybox support, new code organization functionally via assembly definition, transform gizmo improvements, XBox One X support, many graphics improvements and more.

New features in this release include:

• 360 video
• Cloth improvements
• Cinemachine Improvements
• New Transform Tool
• Particle System improvements
• Standard Particle Shaders
• Assembly Definition Files
• 32 bit Mesh Index Buffers
• GPU Instancing improvements
• Dynamic Resolution
• Async Compute Runtime
• Crunch Compression Library Update
• Xbox One X Support
• Recorder
• Standard Events
• Progressive Lightmapper improvements (Preview)

You can learn more about the release here, view the full release notes here and Unity can be downloaded here.

Apple recently required all developers on the App Store submit their apps in 64-bit or be subject to removal.  Google have just announced similar, but less draconian measure for their own Google Play store.  Details of the new requirements from the Android Developer Blog:

• In the second half of 2018, Play will require that new apps and app updates target a recent Android API level. This will be required for new apps in August 2018, and for updates to existing apps in November 2018. This is to ensure apps are built on the latest APIs optimized for security and performance.
• In August 2019, Play will require that new apps and app updates with native libraries provide 64-bit versions in addition to their 32-bit versions.
• Additionally, in early 2018, Play will start adding a small amount of security metadata on top of each APK to further verify app authenticity. You do not need to take any action for this change.

We discuss the change in this video in more detail.