The easiest way to think about procedural generation is by imagining a huge grid of square cells, where each cell has a chance to become black or white. A set of simple rules are put in place to set the scene: If a white cell has less than two black cells neighbouring it, it becomes a black cell. If a white cell has two or three white cell neighbours, it stays unchanged. If a white cell has more than three white celled neighbours, it becomes a black cell. If a black cell has exactly three white celled neighbours, it becomes a white cell too.
These simple rules can lead to strange outcomes. From infinite loops, to geometric shapes, to two-dimensional cave systems in video games, each mimicking the equally simple behavior of cellular automata. Like cellular automata, through procedural generation things are built not authorially by hand but by algorithm. The results are often random, and can be infinite and varied.
So if you're building levels of meandering caverns or creating vast landscapes or a digital topology, then it makes sense to generate endless variations of matter. But it's a lot harder when you're dealing with a concept like personality. Because, what are the parts of a person that can be made into procedural traits? In other words, how do you turn a person into an algorithm?
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford and the Borderlands studio's former general counsel are currently embroiled in a messy legal dispute, accusing each other of, among other things, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duties, resulting in some extraordinary allegations being made.
Callender, for instance, claims that Pitchford struck a "side-deal" with 2K Games to secure a "personal, secretive 'Executive Bonus'" of $12 million USD. He also alleges Pitchford agreed to have his private "bonuses" (whether these are one and the same is unclear) counted as advances upon the royalties owed to Gearbox employees. As such, he says, employees "wont receive any of their accrued royalty or 'profit' shares until their work repays Randy's bonuses".
According to Kotaku, which broke the story, the fracas began when Gearbox sued Callender (a close friend of Pitchford's for over 40-years) for allegedly failing to repay money borrowed toward personal legal fees, as well as a $300,000 USD cash loan intended to help finance a new home purchase. On the latter point, Gearbox claims that Callender "knowingly and intentionally destroyed the written and executed Home Loan Agreement, which would prove to be evidence that would be harmful to his potential defenses in the case".
Bethesda seems to have something of a war on its hands over Fallout 76's most powerful items. After several weeks of problems with players creating copies of items through duplication glitches, some have now figured out how to access a secret "developer room" in Fallout 76.
This developer room contains plans for every item in the game, including top-tier weapons and unreleased goodies which are supposed to arrive in upcoming updates. Oh, and there's an NPC in there sat all by itself. That's got to be the holy grail for game glitchers.
Reports of this room's existence began to surface on Reddit about four days ago, but some of my sources have told me it has been known about on Discord servers for several weeks. A video showing the room was posted on YouTube - although the original by "Mr. X" has since been removed. You can take a peep at a reupload here:
Capcom has delved deep into its number bag, tossing out release dates for a selection of upcoming Monster Hunter World events, including its Witcher crossover collaboration, and its Appreciation Fest first birthday celebrations.
Monster Hunter World's Witcher collaboration, which was announced at the tail-end of last year, will be coming to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in a free update on Friday, February 8th. Capcom says the crossover will be making it way to PC "at a later date".
The Witcher event will (unsurprisingly) feature Geralt of Rivia in some capacity, with the character's English voice actor, Doug Cockle, already confirmed to be recording new lines for the occasion. Capcom also previously revealed that it would feature "brand new quests with a unique flavour, blending the RPG mechanics of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt with Monster Hunter: World's game systems to present a whole new gameplay experience to fans of both series."
PC users are spoiled for choice in the current Humble Bundle sale, with thousands of titles marked down in price. Here's a guide to the latest games reduced in the winter season sales, featuring wild discounts aplenty and numerous top-notch titles going for less than 2!
It's not just indie darlings that have been levelled price-wise - a vast array of games from the likes of Capcom, THQ Nordic and Square Enix have also been reduced. Without further ado, let's take a look at the best games in the Humble Bundle sale, split up by genre.
First up, on the RPG/action front we have dino-dragon hunting sim Monster Hunter World, down to 32.99 - a significant improvement on its Steam 49.99 asking price. Fans of more narrative-driven titles can also enjoy 60 per cent off the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Game of the Year edition, which is going for 13.99.
It's only recently I've discovered the fun of Jackbox - the mini-game compilations designed for parties, controlled using your phone in one hand, and preferably while holding a can of something in the other.
Some Jackbox mini-games are better than others, sure, but the ones which are good are absolute bangers.
So it's great to see the original Jackbox as the next Epic Games Store freebie, coming on 24th January and available to claim until 7th February. Just sign up for a free Epic account (if you don't already have one to play Fortnite) and it'll be yours.
Earlier this week, we reviewed Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2060. Priced at 330/€370/$350, it's the first mainstream graphics card to hit the market with hardware ray tracing support. Right now, it's early days for RT technology and initial demos suggested that even the top-end RTX 2080 Ti could only run ray tracing with a big resolution or performance hit - so what chance would the significantly cut-down RTX 2060 have? The good news is that BF5's RT performance has improved dramatically, and initial tests produced some promising results on the RTX 2060 at full ultra settings. Frame-rates were still highly variable though, and what we wanted was something more ambitious - a fully locked 1080p60 experience with RT features enabled. The good news is, it can be done.
Before we go on, it's worth pointing out that we're actually testing the RTX 2060 on the current version of Battlefield 5, not the updated version due soon, which includes support for Nvidia's DLSS (deep-learning super-sampling) and perhaps further ray tracing optimisations. Indeed, what makes testing on the current build so intriguing is that there's every chance that DICE may not have even had the chance to test the cut-down RTX 2060 at all - after all, the current BF5 runtime dates back to December 5th 2018. This may explain some of the challenges I faced running the game on the new Nvidia card.
During the review period, I tested the game running at 1080p on full ultra settings, including ultra quality DXR ray tracing, with a ballpark 50fps delivered across the campaign. However, intrusive stutter mars the experience, while performance can vary from a recorded 35fps minimum right up to the 80s. My aim in returning to Battlefield 5 with the RTX 2060 was to bring up those minimums to 60fps, while maintaining as much of the fidelity of the fully enabled experience as possible. You can see the full process in achieving this on the video embedded on this page, but suffice to say, the tweaks required upended some of the preconceptions I had in tuning for performance on PC titles - and it's indicative of the added challenges that ray tracing may bring to game development.
Earlier today, I drove to a place in North Dublin called Tower Bay, which is about five minutes from my house in Donabate - a small seaside town in Ireland.
Breathtaking cliffs leave you mesmerised as you walk down the path that has been carved into the cliff-face. It terminates at a gorgeous sandy beach. Along the way, you can view thundering waves lapping and locking, crashing together and falling apart, over and over again. Rocks jut upwards from unseeable depths, around which white foam shimmers. This is the landscape the archipelago of The Witcher 3's Skellige was based upon.
Skellige, named after real-life Irish islands Sceilg Mhic l and Sceilg Bheag - collectively known as the Skellig Islands - depicts a wild beauty that is truly Irish. From the familial clans to the rain-soaked hills painted a striking green, the rugged and treacherous landscape recalls the otherworldly presence of places like Connemara, the Cliffs of Moher and of course, the Skellig Islands themselves. In fact, Skellige has its own pair of Skellig Islands in The Witcher 3: Ard Skellig and An Skellig. The former means High Skellig in Irish, whereas the latter simply means The Skellig, resembling the Greater and Lesser Skelligs in reality.
THQ Nordic has started the new year in much the same way as it finished the last one, and has announced that it's acquired the IP rights to yet another classic franchise - this time those of much-loved sci-fi action-adventure Outcast.
Outcast (not to be confused with Red Barrels' horror series Outlast, but watch me go and mistype that at least once here) originally released in 1999. It featured an ambitious proto-open-world structure, and told the tale of the absurdly named Cutter Slade - a former US Navy Seal who finds himself on an alien planet known as Adelpha. A tastefully modernised remake, known as Outcast: Second Contact, was released on PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2017.
THQ Nordic hasn't offered any indication of what it intends to do with the Outcast IP just yet - who knows if this might eventually lead to an Outcast 2 - but it does note that the deal "has been finalized with the three original creators of the game".
Bungie has announced that it's parting ways with Activision, eight years after the companies began working together. The move will see Bungie assuming "full publishing rights and responsibilities for the Destiny franchise".
Bungie and Activision initially joined forces in April 2010, when the two companies announced a 10-year publishing deal. That would eventually lead to the release of Destiny in 2014, and its sequel, Destiny 2, in 2017.
The terms of its deal with Activision saw Bungie keeping ownership of the Destiny IP, while Activision owned full publishing rights. In a statement released today, however, Activision confirmed that, "we're announcing plans for Bungie to assume full publishing rights and responsibilities for the Destiny franchise. Going forward, Bungie will own and develop the franchise, and Activision will increase its focus on owned IP and other projects."