DYNASTY WARRIORS 9/真・三國無双８ is Now Available on Steam and is 10% off!*

Experience the thrill of one versus thousands in an all new open world setting with DYNASTY WARRIORS 9! Travel through Ancient China depicted on a single, vast, open-world map, master the new State Combo System, and watch the Three Kingdoms story unfold through a cast of 90 playable characters!

*Offer ends February 20 at 10AM Pacific Time

In the metaphorical game development gold rush, there are the devs out hunting for gold, and there are the people making shovels for them.

If you are such a shovel-maker, you know that your task is a sometimes obscure one. Instead of developing software to be used by hundreds of thousands, you’re trying to use precision-engineering to keep your developers in the zone and at their best game-making capabilities. 

Fortunately for you shovel-makers, there’s a champion for you in the halls of Ubisoft (and at GDC). He is, of course, the talented David Lightbown, and lately he’s been talking to the people who developed some of the game industry’s classic tools on Gamasutra.

Back in December, we were lucky enough to be joined by Lightbown for a conversation about the history of the Unreal Engine and the tools that influenced its creation. During our chat (which you can see up above), he also shared some useful thoughts about the work of tool development that we’ve transcribed for you down below. 

Stream Participants:

Bryant Francis, Editor at Gamasutra

David Lightbown, UX Director at Ubisoft Technology Group

Why We Study Game UX History

“I think that understanding the history of game development tools is really helpful as a designer, as a tools developer, to help you understand why certain decisions were made. And to also not try to not repeat those same mistakes.”

Lightbown: I think that knowing the history of something is super important; if you don’t know the history of something you’re doomed to repeat it. I think that understanding the history of game development tools is really helpful as a designer, as a tools developer, to help you understand why certain decisions were made. And to also not try to not repeat those same mistakes.

The reason why I got into this actually is that two of my other favorite books, Blood Sweat, and Pixels and Dealers of Lightning, about the history of Xerox PARC, and again, talking about the history, we’re going back to the 1950-60s, when Xerox PARC was founded, and as some of you may know it was the research facility that came up with the GUI, with Ethernet, and networked printers and all this crazy stuff.

The framebuffer, some of the first computer graphics, editing an image was first done at PARC. And this is the GUI that was famously ripped off, so to speak, by Steve Jobs, then by Bill Gates. So knowing the history of this is super interesting and important, and looking at back at some of the GDC postmortems, just during the past two years, look at some of these amazing classic game postmortems. Deus Ex, Oregon Trail, Seaman, Civilization, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Diablo, Rez — and this year, I’m really looking forward to the Bard’s Tale postmortem as well — and I was looking at this and I was saying, “This is really cool, but nobody’s doing one of these postmortems on game tools, that’s never really been done before.”

So that was where the idea came from. And I did one just a couple of months ago, the article’s released on Gamasutra as an interview I did with John Romero about TED, which was the tile editor that he used, which he created, and all the influences that were behind it, and how that led to the editor that was used to do everything from Dangerous Dave to Wolfenstein 3D, and how it was used and the history behind it. If you look it up on the Gamasutra blogs you can see the article there.

So it’s the same thing as trying to retain this history and learn more about it and not making the same mistakes. My next step that I wanted to do was to contact a bunch of other people and see if they wanted to talk about their stuff, and that got me a connection to Tim Sweeney, which is how I was able to sit down with him at GamesCon this year in Cologne, Germany, and talk with him about the origins of UnrealEd 1.0.

Taking Personal Research Into Day Job at Ubisoft

Francis: I’m going to quiz you about your work at Ubisoft for a moment. We were talking earlier about the Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed Origins cinematic tools. I’m curious, you’ve spent all this free time diving into the tool’s history, we’ve looked at these four tools today on Unreal Engine… what, in your work on that specific tool, how have you linked your research with your work? 

Lightbown: You know, it’s funny actually, I can’t really necessarily talk in too much detail, but I can say, if you are going to build a cinematics tool for a game engine, it is, I think, imperative that instead of sitting down and starting to write code right away, that you familiarize yourself with how these problems are solved in other software as much as possible.

So, in the case of a cinematics editor, go and look at Adobe Premiere, go and look at After Effects, any other non-linear editor. Even audio software. Ableton, Sonar, yes, they’re for editing audio files, but the way in which they represent a timeline and how they let you drag and drop your elements and how you manipulate them. There is a consistency in some elements, of how you do that. I think it’s so important to figure out what those consistent elements are, and to try to make your tool resemble those consistent interactions as much as possible, because if someone’s used Premiere or any other non-linear editor, and they open up your tool, they’ll be very familiar with how it works right off the bat.

Especially in my work, one of the things that I spend a lot of time doing is just research, being familiar with the tools that are out there, with their history obviously, but being familiar with how they work, and why they do things the way they do. Just because somebody does something a certain way doesn’t mean that you should, you have to question some of those things sometimes.

“It’s imperative that, instead of sitting down and starting to write code right away, that you familiarize yourself with how these problems are solved in other software as much as possible.”

I kind of think about it as like, natural evolution. There are some species that have evolved a certain way, in a certain environment, and they’ve died off. And the same thing goes with certain types of software and interactions. If many interactions are difficult to use, that software might not have as much success being adopted and used by people, and then it dies off and the ones that have easier interactions are going to survive, and other people are going to look at those and evolve themselves off of those.

So it’s sort of like survival-of-the-fittest, to a certain degree. It’s not necessarily our job to reinvent the way that we use this software. Go out and look at how other people have solved these same problems, spend some time and I think it really saves you time in the long run, because instead of coming up your own idea, look at how other people do it, implement it that way. Your users will find it more familiar and also you’re going to save time, as opposed of designing yourself. You have a great example right there that you can play with an understand how it works.

Developing Tools For Other Cultures

Francis: You were working under the Ubisoft Technology group. You’re working, at least to my understanding, in the middle of a company that has studios around the globe. There are people who speak different languages. I think, as game development gets more global and grows, we’re also dealing with the fact that different languages literally have different ways that words are structured. So as a person who makes tools for other professionals’ use, if those professions come from another language do you have any thoughts about interactions for other languages and cultures, looking towards the future?

Lightbown: That’s a great question. It’s certainly something that I’ve thought about, that I’ve been asked before and I’ve done some research on this. My understand, again it goes back to what you’re familiar with. There was a time when something like Windows was not made to adapt to other cultures. It was made with a specific set of cultures in mind, a specific set of languages. But it was used outside of those cultures, and the people who used it have adapted to it, and it has become what they are familiar with, it has become their “normal,” so to speak.

My understanding is, you can have certain cultures where colors have a different meaning as opposed to what they mean here. But based on the research that I have read, my understand is that, in the context of a computer software application, people understand that this is different, that red, for example, might mean error. They understand that it doesn’t necessarily mean something that is more applicable to their culture.

They are able to separate the two, and they understand that, in this context, these icons and colors mean this, and in my cultural context it’s different. However, there is something to be said about developers understanding those people that is so key. Understand the people using your tools, understand what’s natural to them, and try to adapt your tool to make it familiar to them. It’ll make it all the easier and comfortable to use, they’ll use it more and more, they’ll tell their friends about it, and it can have a snowball effect from there.

For more developer interviews, editor roundtables, and gameplay commentary, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.

Hi there! My name is Thomas Brush, and I’m the developer, artist, game designer, and musician for Pinstripe. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to launch my game about a minister in Hell on Xbox One… to say it’s been a long road getting here is kind of an understatement, but what a journey it’s been.

On the tin, Pinstripe is a game about Ted, an ex-minister whose daughter, Bo, is kidnapped by a shadowy figure, and the lengths Ted goes to both get her back and confront… well, you’ll see. It’s a little bit action, a little bit puzzle, and a lot bit adventure-filled passion project that I threw half a decade of my life into making. It’s inspired by a lot of things, from growing up in the South to the works of the creators who have inspired me, and every inch of it was a learning process I relished, allowing me to explore the topics that interested me the most.

Every level of Hell in Ted’s strange adventure was meticulously designed over the course of five years. Ted’s Tim Burton-esque character design all started in Clemson University’s library and lecture halls. I’d often spend more time brainstorming the hellish world of Pinstripe instead of paying attention during lectures. It’s funny to think the final pieces of artwork in Pinstripe were dreamed up in the middle of my economics class, and even funnier to see just how much the final designs changed from the initial scrawl in the margin of my class notes.

During the illustration process, I had a blast writing a soundtrack that reflected the visuals. Instead of doing the obvious – writing fantasy music like that of Tim Burton’s films – I found inspiration in the works of Debussy and Chopin. The result was an eclectic, piano-centric soundtrack with a silly, bouncy vibe while also remaining haunting and cold. To ensure the music always reflected the chilling atmosphere of Pinstripe’s Hell, I made sure to always write my music with Pinstripe’s snowy scenery playing on my laptop across from my piano.

A couple years ago, being an indie game auteur came with bragging rights, but now, it’s becoming more and more of a necessity for indie devs across the world. With technologies like Unity, Logic Pro, Audacity, and Photoshop now a daily tool for most game developers, learning every aspect of game development is, in my opinion, absolutely crucial to making great games. For me, it ensures Ted’s strange adventure through Hell is unique, beautiful, and cohesive. Cohesiveness was always the goal with Pinstripe, and one of the reasons I decided to build the game from scratch, completely alone.

To me, the concept of fatherhood has always been a frightening one. My three older brothers used to hog the Xbox when we were growing up, but suddenly I was watching in awe as they became fathers while I was still in college. It was a topic I wanted to explore… that fear and responsibility, and how far you can be driven to go. Now, Ted’s deeply personal story of fatherhood is something I can fully appreciate, with the birth of my daughter just one month before Pinstripe’s Xbox One launch. It feels strange to relate to my game five years later more than I did while I was making it.

I’ve spent so many years working on handcrafting every aspect of Pinstripe by myself that letting it out into the wild, and sharing it with so many people, is both scary and wonderful. From the peaks of The Hangly Pass, to the depths of the fiery red lake of Red Wash, I like to think that Pinstripe has more to offer than enemies to shoot and puzzles to solve. I’ve been making games very nearly for all my life, and Pinstripe might be surreal, and maybe a little creepy, but it’s also something very heartfelt. It’s a story about death, family, and forgiveness that I hope resonates with you, even if just a little.

Having already been released on PS4 and Xbox One, publisher THQ Nordic is planning to bring the remastered version of de Blob to Nintendo Switch in 2018. It originally appeared on Wii in 2008, and reviewed pretty well here at Nintendo Life at the time.

The new version will feature new and updated textures that take advantage of Switch’s more robust hardware, but it’ll still feature the same colour-coded platforming gameplay that made the original version so enjoyable back on Wii. If you’ve never played it before, you’re tasked with saving Chroma City from a black and white fate by painting this urbanised locale in all manner of colours. There’s a story mode as well as support for four-player split screen local multiplayer with eight different modes.

We expected the remastered de Blob was going to make an appearance on Switch this year, and while we don’t know exactly when it’ll drop, it’s good to see an underrated platformer getting a second chance at success on a Nintendo platform. Let us know what you make of the news below…

Planetoid Pioneers is Now Available on Steam and is up to 25% off!*

Welcome to Planetoid Pioneers, a cooperative sci-fi Physicsvania where kooky old astronauts fall over themselves with QWOP-like action to explore the Asteroid Belt beyond Mars. It’s been built on the unique Crush2D physics engine and can be played on your couch with or against your friends in seamless pick-up-and-play Co-Op and PvP action.

To celebrate the launch from Steam Early Access, the Contributor Edition is 25% off*. Owners of Cortex Command receive an additional 25% off the Contributor Edition.*

*Offers end February 15 at 9AM Pacific Time

Mojang have shared a change on the plan for the forthcoming Minecraft: Java Edition 1.13 update and the Update Aquatic (Minecraft 1.14).

We’re going to hold back the official launch of 1.13 and merge that release with all the features we’d planned for the Update Aquatic. […] we were planning on releasing the rather technical 1.13 update, which includes equally exciting-sounding things like a new world format, a new command parser, data packs and the elusive rewrite of world generation. […]  However, because our world generation overhaul is taking a little longer to get ready, we’re going to hold back the big 1.13 release and put it out at the same time as the Update Aquatic. In fact, the Update Aquatic will become 1.13!

There’s not all bad news though, as a consequence of this change you will be playing the Update Aquatic sooner than previously planned:

As a result, however, this means we can actually start snapshotting Update Aquatic features much earlier than previously planned! Lucky you! So, get ready to take a dip… soon… ish!

You can expect the first Update Aquatic snapshot in the coming weeks, Dinnerbone tweets…

There will not be a snapshot today. As I said in last weeks snapshot blog post, we’re moving offices and aren’t in a very good position to do snapshots for a little while. *maybe* next week, but not guaranteed.

— Nathan Adams (@Dinnerbone) January 24, 2018