Welcome to another NewsFromScratch game development news round-up. Today we have 3 different game engine releases, Phaser, Defold and Verge3D.

Phaser 3.23 Released

This release of the Phaser open source HTML5 game framework brings an important milestone in reaching 100% coverage of the entire API, including private members. This task also resulted in better Typescript bindings as well. New features were also added to the framework, including a new Rope object for deformation effects.

Defold 1.2.168 Released

The Defold game engine is a free and cross platform Lua powered game engine. It just received a minor update in the form of the 1.2.168 release, which includes the ability to run the engine while iconified, as well as finer tune control over URL handling. If you want to learn more about Defold, be sure to check out our Defold Crash Course tutorial hosted over on DevGa.me.

Verge3D 3.1 For Blender Released

Verge3D is an engine for exporting Blender scenes to the web, while adding logic using their simple Puzzle system. This release adds support for VR Controllers, new Vector logic blocks, an improved physics engine including a new lighter and faster WebAssembly version and more. You can check out Verge3D for Blender in action here.

You can learn more about all three releases in the video below.

GameDev News Blender Phaser Defold

Fedora 32 is available now. You’ll likely want to upgrade your system to get the latest features available in Fedora. Fedora Workstation has a graphical upgrade method. Alternatively, Fedora offers a command-line method for upgrading Fedora 30 to Fedora 31.

Before upgrading, visit the wiki page of common Fedora 32 bugs to see if there’s an issue that might affect your upgrade. Although the Fedora community tries to ensure upgrades work well, there’s no way to guarantee this for every combination of hardware and software that users might have.

Upgrading Fedora 31 Workstation to Fedora 32

Soon after release time, a notification appears to tell you an upgrade is available. You can click the notification to launch the GNOME Software app. Or you can choose Software from GNOME Shell.

Choose the Updates tab in GNOME Software and you should see a screen informing you that Fedora 32 is Now Available.

If you don’t see anything on this screen, try using the reload button at the top left. It may take some time after release for all systems to be able to see an upgrade available.

Choose Download to fetch the upgrade packages. You can continue working until you reach a stopping point, and the download is complete. Then use GNOME Software to restart your system and apply the upgrade. Upgrading takes time, so you may want to grab a coffee and come back to the system later.

Using the command line

If you’ve upgraded from past Fedora releases, you are likely familiar with the dnf upgrade plugin. This method is the recommended and supported way to upgrade from Fedora 31 to Fedora 32. Using this plugin will make your upgrade to Fedora 32 simple and easy.

1. Update software and back up your system

Before you do start the upgrade process, make sure you have the latest software for Fedora 31. This is particularly important if you have modular software installed; the latest versions of dnf and GNOME Software include improvements to the upgrade process for some modular streams. To update your software, use GNOME Software or enter the following command in a terminal.

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Additionally, make sure you back up your system before proceeding. For help with taking a backup, see the backup series on the Fedora Magazine.

2. Install the DNF plugin

Next, open a terminal and type the following command to install the plugin:

sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

3. Start the update with DNF

Now that your system is up-to-date, backed up, and you have the DNF plugin installed, you can begin the upgrade by using the following command in a terminal:

sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=32

This command will begin downloading all of the upgrades for your machine locally to prepare for the upgrade. If you have issues when upgrading because of packages without updates, broken dependencies, or retired packages, add the ‐‐allowerasing flag when typing the above command. This will allow DNF to remove packages that may be blocking your system upgrade.

4. Reboot and upgrade

Once the previous command finishes downloading all of the upgrades, your system will be ready for rebooting. To boot your system into the upgrade process, type the following command in a terminal:

sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot

Your system will restart after this. Many releases ago, the fedup tool would create a new option on the kernel selection / boot screen. With the dnf-plugin-system-upgrade package, your system reboots into the current kernel installed for Fedora 31; this is normal. Shortly after the kernel selection screen, your system begins the upgrade process.

Now might be a good time for a coffee break! Once it finishes, your system will restart and you’ll be able to log in to your newly upgraded Fedora 32 system.

Resolving upgrade problems

On occasion, there may be unexpected issues when you upgrade your system. If you experience any issues, please visit the DNF system upgrade quick docs for more information on troubleshooting.

If you are having issues upgrading and have third-party repositories installed on your system, you may need to disable these repositories while you are upgrading. For support with repositories not provided by Fedora, please contact the providers of the repositories.

Remember Indivisible? Originally pitched as a potential Wii U release, this RPG adventure from the creators of Skullgirls raised over $2 million in its Indiegogo campaign back in 2015 and would eventually launch on PS4, Xbox One and PC in 2019.

Switch owners have had to endure an even longer wait, but the good news is that, out of the blue, the game is now available on the Switch eShop.

The bad news? Mike Zaimont, one of the original developers, isn’t too happy about the version that has arrived on the eShop, nor was he informed it would be launching this week.

Zaimont explains that the Switch port was not handled in-house, but he has nothing but praise for it in terms of performance, stating that:

The Switch version of Indivisible itself is great, the porting group did seriously excellent work! Runs at a stable framerate, even handheld.

His issue is that the port is based on the old build of the game which lacks co-op, NG+ or “anything else recent.” We’ll be reviewing Indivisible as it stands right now and will be asking when Nintendo players can expected the most recent build, but for the time being, keep in mind that this isn’t the game that Lab Zero wants to offer Switch owners.

In their Indivisible PS4 review, our pals over at Push Square said:

Despite running into one too many difficulty spikes, Indivisible successfully blends the RPG and Metroidvania genres into one stunning experience. Its plot may be simple and some characters bothersome, but the 2D platforming that bridges the gap between those narrative beats is a dream. Indivisible is a little bit too forgettable in a couple of aspects, but it makes up for that when the tough gets going.

I patched Bloodborne to run at 60fps. It works alright (about as good as the Dark Souls 3 PS4 Pro patch does) except for the fact that the game doesn't have proper timing and the entire game basically runs in fast-forward. This is running on a base PS4. pic.twitter.com/vfdjjWxpp5

— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) April 28, 2020

Ah, I did it! Bloodborne running with a 60fps frame cap (no v-sync so lots of screen tearing) with proper frame timing and game logic timing. This is running on a base PS4 pro, will try to get an actual FPS counter to display tomorrow and test on PS4 Pro with boost mode. pic.twitter.com/V6uxQ4bT9k

— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) April 28, 2020

Here's the opening area on a PS4 Pro running in boost mode. pic.twitter.com/bYut1Ak6DL

— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) April 28, 2020

This Wednesday, April 29, we’re planning to release Destiny
2 Hotfix 2.8.1.1. This patch will have fixes for bugs that have popped recently,
and also has a quick tuning pass for a weapon that’s been shining a little too
bright in the Crucible since Season of the Worthy began.

Hard Light, a name that may either strike fear or pure joy
in your heart, will be the subject of today’s article. Here are some notes from
the team on how this weapon will be tuned come tomorrow morning:

Dev Team: Hard Light has been at the forefront due to a combination
of recent adjustments to improve its usability and the adjustments to Auto
Rifles that came with patch 2.8.0.

Most of the adjustments coming on Wednesday
are to address its usage for mouse and keyboard users since the ability to
precisely aim regardless of range allows you to use the weapon at longer
distances, on top of being able to use ricochets more effectively.

Although weapons like the Fighting
Lion can also do what Hard Light does for indirect fire, they are generally
less effective during a direct confrontation. Hard Light boasts a lot of great
stats, and its impact grows with more players using it – eventually no cover is
safe. As such, we’re reducing some of the aspects that allow for indirect fire
and unexpected lethality in odd scenarios, while still retaining some of the
bonuses to keep the flavor.

• Hard Light
• Hard Light’s damage falloff now floors at 0.7x
  (Auto Rifles use 0.5x standard).
• Split ricochet bonus damage between PvE and PvP.
• PvE damage remains at 2.0x damage.
• PvP damage is now 1.35x damage.
• Removed a hidden recoil adjustment that made the
  weapon more stable than intended.

Its been a while and we have two snapshots to catch up on.  I hope everyone is well and healthy and enjoying the new features and changes.  I don’t know about you guys, but I’ll be playing Pigstep in my house nonstop.  You should listen for yourself!

• Added bastion remnants
• Added ruined portals
• Added chain blocks
• Added a new music disc titled “Pigstep” by Lena Raine which can only be found in bastions

BASTION REMNANTS

What’s made of blackstone and full of Piglins and Hoglins? Bastion remnants!

• ​Added 4 separate bastion remnant types: bridge, Hoglin stable, housing units, and treasure room
• You can find these sizable structures in all biomes in the Nether except the treacherous ash-dusted towers of basalt deltas
• Explore, loot, and conquer a bastion remnant to call it your home… but beware, Piglins don’t take kindly to intruders stealing their things

RUINED PORTALS

Shattered remains of ancient nether portals. Wonder who built them?​

• They can be found in any overworld or nether biome
• Some are hidden underground, under the sea, or buried in sand

• Increased the amount of lava pools to make the deltas more “deltary”
• The Piglin banner pattern can now be found in bastions

• Added a button in the GUI that generates a jigsaw structure starting from the jigsaw block, using given generation depth.
• Expanded the max size per axis of Structure Blocks from 32 to 48
• Added a JMX MBean to monitor dedicated server tick times

JMX MONITORING

It is now possible to monitor the server tick times though JMX.
The rationale for this is that JMX is a well known and supported monitoring technology with existing integrations and tools.

This enables server admins to hook alerts and graphing tools using ordinary JMX clients and dashboards.

ENABLING JMX MONITORING

• A new flag enable-jmx-monitoring has been added to the server.properties file which if set to true will expose an MBean with the Object name net.minecraft.server:type=Server and two attributes averageTickTime and tickTimes exposing the tick times in milliseconds.
• In order for enabling JMX on the Java runtime you also need to add a couple of JVM flags to the startup as documented here.

• MC-37557 – Sometimes a minecart sound plays/subtitle shown when loading a world
• MC-91163 – Certain subtitles show up when the player is too far away to hear the sound
• MC-154617 – Server hangs on stop due to rcon
• MC-171020 – New nether biomes don’t work properly in buffet worlds
• MC-175919 – Villagers sometimes stop farming
• MC-177136 – All compasses and lodestone compasses point to the same target, regardless of what type of compass it is
• MC-177238 – Windows symbolic link in saves/ is no longer followed as of 20w14a
• MC-177253 – Running a set_attributes function throws java.lang.NullPointerException if it contains an undefined attribute
• MC-177316 – Lodestone compass in item frame does not update after turning
• MC-178368 – When rotating a lodestone compass is put in the item frame the compass don’t work

• Added an Entity Distance scale option ranging from 50% to 500%
• Difficulty and game rules can now be changed from “Create World” screen

• Improved Smithing Table UI
• Ruined Portals now spawn less frequently
• Renamed “Soul Fire Torch” and “Soul Fire Lantern” to “Soul Torch” and “Soul Lantern”
• Tweaked Bastion Remnant loot
• Walls now create posts under more things, like pressure plates and banners
• The “Singleplayer” button will jump directly to “Create World” screen if there are no worlds to select

• Chat component style can now select font
• Block storage format in chunks slightly changed to speed up various tasks (rendering, pathfinding, world generation, etc)
• Full range of Unicode characters is supported (some may know what that means ?)
• Added the attribute command

WORLD SAVE FORMAT

• Saving level.dat now uses randomly-named temporary files (instead of using level.dat_new every time)
• player/*.dat are now saved in a way similar to level.dat (including leaving .dat_old files)

BLOCK STORAGE

BlockStates in Sections elements no longer contain values stretching over multiple 64-bit fields. If number of bits per block is not power of two (i.e. single 64-bit value can’t fill whole number of blockstates) some bits will not be used.

For example, if single block state takes 5 bits, highest 4 bits of every 64-bit field will be unused. That also means slight increase in storage size (in case of 5 bits, from 320 to 342 64-bit fields).

ATTRIBUTE

Adds modifies attribute on single entity. Possible syntax:
Parameters:

• attribute <target> <attribute> get [<scale>] – get total value of attribute
• attribute <target> <attribute> base set <value> – sets base valye
• attribute <target> <attribute> base get [<scale>] – get base value
• attribute <target> <attribute> modifier add <uuid> <name> <value> add|multiply|multiply_base – adds modifier (fails if modifier is already present)
• attribute <target> <attribute> modifier remove <uuid> – removes modifier
• attribute <target> <attribute> modifier value get <uuid> [<scale>] – get value of modifier
• target – single entity (note: only players, armor stands and mobs have attributes)
• attribute – name of attribute (like minecraft:generic.max_health)
• name – string (in optional quotes) describing human-readable name of modifier
• value – floating point value (note: certain attributes have limits on final value, so your change might not be noticeable)

CHAT COMPONENTS

HOVER EVENT ARGUMENT

• style.hoverEvent parameter now has parameter contents, with contents depending on type:
• For show_text – chat component
• For show_item – either item id or object with fields id, count and tag (with last one being serialized NBT)
• For show_entity – object with fields: id (UUID), name (chat component) and type (entity type resource location)
• Old style value argument is now deprecated (but still supported)

COLORS

color property can now contain RGB value prefixed by #. For example #55ff55 will result in the same color as green.

CUSTOM FONTS

Chat component style now supports font property, which is resource location for font in resource pack. No entry is equivalent to minecraft:default.

FONTS

• Force Unicode option now switches between normal and alternative font (called uniform.json) – no reload needed

• MC-1601 – Breaking a Furnace will not give you the experience for the smelted things inside
• MC-5410 – In creative mode, flying down is stopped when brushing up against ladders or vines.
• MC-31032 – Using only one empty map doesn’t increase minecraft.used:minecraft.map
• MC-46417 – Sprint particles are generated in spectator mode
• MC-56373 – Selector and score text components don’t work on hoverEvents
• MC-94535 – Flying and holding CTRL really close to the ground, emits walking particles
• MC-96319 – Mob pathfinding AI does not regard some blocks as obstructions and is unable to pathfind on top of them
• MC-100195 – Player retains 1-block hitbox if entering a minecart/boat while swimming or when flying with elytra or a riptide trident
• MC-114544 – Kicked by “Flying is not enabled on this server” while sleeping
• MC-120572 – /recipe crashes the game
• MC-126244 – ‘/locate’, explorer maps, and treasure maps can cause extreme TPS lag, even leading to a complete server freeze if structure generation is turned off
• MC-149704 – Sneaking / crouching twice makes player sprint
• MC-169514 – Tamed parrots cannot be renamed unless they are flying
• MC-171561 – Only one player can access shulker box at a time
• MC-174359 – Piglins prefer using an unenchanted gold item instead of an enchanted gold item
• MC-175113 – Rain prevents entities from burning in fire
• MC-175186 – Respawning doesn’t check if the “respawn block” is the correct one for the dimension
• MC-175998 – Striders are moving very fast between two blocks or when diagonally running into blocks
• MC-176029 – Right clicking a lodestone with a stack of compasses converts the whole stack
• MC-176060 – Recipe book doesn’t load the entire empty map recipe anymore
• MC-176104 – Dropped compasses always point up
• MC-176116 – Saddle texture on Strider is backwards
• MC-176521 – Pressing space while the recipe book button is highlighted in crafting interfaces doesn’t toggle the recipe book
• MC-177346 – Compass in a mob’s hand does not point to correct location if mob turns
• MC-177776 – Netherite ingots are not sorted properly with other ingots
• MC-177780 – Shulkers cannot be opened while playing closing animation anymore
• MC-177796 – Blackstone walls are in the “Building Blocks” category instead of “decoration Blocks” category, unlike all other walls
• MC-177862 – Polished blackstone button and pressure plate in incorrect area in creative inventory
• MC-177885 – Invisible Horses show patterns
• MC-177997 – Baby zoglins still use the same attack damage as an adult
• MC-178086 – Flying close to the ground with soul speed over soul blocks speeds up player and generates soul particles
• MC-178093 – Piglins with full inventories won’t pick up gold ingots to barter even though you can still right-click to barter with them
• MC-178259 – Game crashes when an iron golem with the attack damage attribute set to 0.5d
• MC-178316 – Dispenser plays “dispensed item” sound when attempting to charge a full respawn anchor instead of “dispenser fails”
• MC-178630 – TNT eyeheight changed
• MC-178797 – Barrier blocks generate in bastion remnant
• MC-178955 – Badlands are viewed as a mountainous biome for Ruined Portals
• MC-179542 – Basalt Delta Blocks Override Nether Bricks in Fortresses

HYPERCHARGE: Unboxed is Now Available on Steam and is 25% off!*

4 Player Cooperative First-Person Shooter. Play as a team of Action Figures or fight against each other in PvP. Build defenses, earn XP, unlock new levels and protect the HYPER-CORE!

*Offer ends May 4th at 10AM Pacific Time

Wooga CEO and founder Jens Begemann is departing the company at the end of June after 11 years at its head.

Begemann founded the studio back in 2009 alongside Patrick Paulisch and current CTO Philipp Moeser. The German developer has since made its name as a developer of free-to-play, and recently story-driven, mobile games.

The company was ultimately acquired by Playtika (reportedly for over $100 million) in late 2018, and Begemann notes in an interview with PocketGamer that the stability and success Wooga has seen since that acquisition is part of the reason he’s announced plans to exit.

“I’m an entrepreneur at heart. Wooga is strategically set in the right direction and I miss the early days. I had that realization. I wanted to be more involved with that. Secondly, I wanted to have more time for my family,” says Begemann. “As a founder, I think it’s best to leave when things are going better than ever.”

Nai Chang, Google’s previous global head of games on growth consulting, is set to take over as Wooga CEO following Begemann’s departure in June.