In this GDC 2018 talk, Freehold Games’ Jason Grinblat goes over the approach he used to generate histories for fantasy RPG roguelike Caves of Qud. 

Grinbalt lays out some commonalities across games that generate histories, demonstrating how he avoided building a full historical simulation by generating historical events and rationalizing them after the fact.

Tying in a discussion about the power of replacement grammars, he explains how to produce rich, convincing histories on a tight scope budget. 

It was an informative talk that’s definitely worth watching, so developers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so now that it’s freely available on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.

The Steam Intergalactic Summer Sale continues! For the next twelve days, take advantage of huge savings throughout our store on over ten thousand games. You can also help unlock free games by playing our Summer Saliens Game.

Today’s Featured Deals include:

Kingdom Come Deliverance – 30% off
Darkest Dungeon – 70% off
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt – 60% off
Far Cry Franchise – Up to 66% off
Bayonetta – 66% off
Project Cars 2 – 60% off
Nioh: Complete Edition – 40% off
and many more

Along with the sale is the Summer Saliens Game. Team up with other Saliens to fight The Duldrumz on different planets and free the abducted games. Gain XP as you battle, level up, unlock new abilities, and win cosmetic items to deck out your Salien. Plus, get Summer Sale Trading Cards just for playing.

Choose to battle on a planet that piques your interest and you’ll automatically be entered for a chance to win one of its rewards when it’s conquered. The longer your Salien spends on a planet the higher your chances of winning! The groups with the most tiles when a planet is taken will get to plant their flag as conquerors, undoubtedly gaining Saliverse-wide fame in the process.

The Steam Intergalactic Summer Sale will run until 10 AM Pacific, July 5th. Complete information can be found HERE.

Welcome to Next Week on Xbox, where we cover all the new games coming soon to Xbox One! Every week the team at Xbox aims to deliver quality gaming content for you to enjoy on your favorite gaming console. Read on below and click on each of the game profiles for pre-order details (dates are subject to change).

Games

June 19, 2018

A third-person action-RPG that tells the story of a man without a name, an immortal being cursed to walk the world until the end of time. When a shadow of his past rises again in his path, he will be forced to take part in a conflict in which our very existence is in question.

Games

June 19, 2018

In this unique action adventure game, play as Haimrik, a young writer trying to make a living in a medieval town full of warriors, sorcerers, and dragons. With the help of Masamba, a hungry lioness, he’ll venture out to take on the evil king and his elite generals, the Word Warriors as you make words come to life in this humorous action adventure game.

Games

June 20, 2018

Xbox One X Enhanced – Solve puzzles by stretching an infinitely stretchy arm through various levels and obstacles, grabbing and dropping objects along the way. To make things trickier, Grab the Bottle brings physics and puzzles to the mix as you must grab, pull, and drop objects in your path to get to the bottle… so go get it!

Games

June 22, 2018

A dynamic, fast-paced platforming with a unique dash, morphing and time mechanics including three campaigns spread across 150 normal and New Game+ levels introducing new hazards at each corner. Are you ready to face Mama Worm, Blackbird’s Kraken and Sheeple all at once?! Happy sliming!

Games

June 22, 2018

Battle Knights is a retro-inspired, challenging platformer. Play as the blue knight, Wonder, who is on a quest to unite the colored realms through a series of challenges as he attacks, blocks, and jumps his way across a variety of game modes. Features a co-op story mode and a number of versus mode competitive challenges.

Games

June 22, 2018

Yet Another Zombie Defense HD is a top-down arcade zombie shooter with tactical/strategy elements. Prepare yourself before the night falls, build defensive barricades, buy guns and ammo, set up turrets and stay alive if you can as each successive night increasing in challenge to put your skills to the test.

Capcom and SNK’s rivalry actually began a number of years before Street Fighter II and Fatal Fury arrived in the arcades. The “Look, we can do it too!” back-and-forth exchange translated into several classic hits from both sides, including Capcom’s 1985 Senjō no Ōkami (better known in the West as Commando) and SNK’s Ikari Warriors in the following year. While both titles went on to become revered run-and-gun classics, there was a small yet brilliant twist that failed to be translated to the home conversions of SNK’s title: The rotary joysticks!

While in Capcom’s Commando you were always forced to fire in the direction you were moving (often into an incoming line of enemy fire), on Ikari Warriors (and a few other games that will be a part of the upcoming SNK 40th Anniversary Collection) the cabinets came with rotary joysticks which allowed the players to move and aim in distinct directions simply by twisting the handle left or right.

As you probably have figured out by now, since the sticks on your Joy-Cons and Pro Controllers can’t be twisted, this particular aspect has always been a bit of a hassle to properly emulate in the past. However, Digital Eclipse has now found a solution around this issue. The news were delivered by The Video Game History Foundation owner, Frank Cifaldi, on Twitter:

I wanted to show off something I’m incredibly proud of: we managed to force all the rotary games to work as twin stick. Let me explain how cool this is: pic.twitter.com/GnzwhVgYRH— Frank Cifaldi (@frankcifaldi) June 21, 2018

By mapping firing directions to the right analog stick, the classic SNK titles that used rotary sticks will now become full-fledged twin-stick shooters. This will surely make them an easier experience than the original arcade counterparts. It’s a far better option than simply assigning extra digital buttons to twist your avatar left and right.

What do you think about this modernised take on classic SNK games? Are you looking forward to picking up SNK’s 40th Anniversary Collection when it releases on the Switch later this year? Leave your twisted replies below.

Nintendo’s 2018 E3 presentation left a lot of unanswered questions regarding games that were expected to be explored; with a huge focus on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and a little on Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!, no time was left over for any news on the likes of Metroid Prime 4, the upcoming Pokémon RPG, or Yoshi for Nintendo Switch.

Soon after the E3 Direct, the upcoming Yoshi title’s game page on Nintendo’s website hinted at a delay to 2019, with Nintendo of America’s Bill Trinen going on to confirm that this is indeed the case. Trinen has now gone into a little more detail surrounding the game’s delay and non-appearance at the show, telling IGN that it’s been making some good progress behind the scenes.

“It’s actually been making really good progress. They decided they wanted to make some improvements, so they’re going to take just a little bit more time on it and that’s why we’re not showing it this year at the show, but I think you can look forward to some updates on it later in 2018.”

As always, all that’s left for us to do is play the waiting game, hoping to see more of Yoshi later this year as suggested. Despite delays being upsetting at first, having additional time for a major project such as this is almost always a good thing; if the wait means we’ll see a higher quality end result, we’re all for it.

Are you looking forward to the next Yoshi adventure? Let us know if you plan to keep an eye out for this one with a comment below.

The popular Open Source Guides for the Enterprise, developed by The Linux Foundation in collaboration with the TODO Group, are now available in Chinese. This set of guides provides industry-proven best practices to help organizations successfully leverage open source.

“Making these resources available to Chinese audiences in their native language will encourage even greater adoption of and participation with open source projects,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of Cloud Native Computing Foundation and co-founder of the TODO Group. The guides span various stages of the open source project lifecycle, from initial planning and formation to winding down a project.

The 10 guides now available in Mandarin include topics such as:

• Creating an Open Source Program by Chris Aniszczyk, Cloud Native Computing Foundation; Jeff McAffer, Microsoft; Will Norris, Google; and Andrew Spyker, Netflix
• Using Open Source Code by Ibrahim Haddad, Samsung Research America
• Participating in Open Source Communities by Stormy Peters, Red Hat; and Nithya Ruff, Comcast
• Recruiting Open Source Developers by Guy Martin, Autodesk; Jeff Osier-Mixon, Intel Corporation; Nithya Ruff; and Gil Yehuda, Oath
• Measuring Your Open Source Program’s Success by Christine Abernathy, Facebook; Chris Aniszczyk; Joe Beda, Heptio; Sarah Novotny, Google; and Gil Yehuda

The translated guides were launched at the LinuxCon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen China conference in Beijing, where The Linux Foundation also welcomed Chinese Internet giant Tencent as a Platinum Member.

This post originally appeared at The Linux Foundation.