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[jonaz.dk]

Ghost Ship Games ønsker at fylde tomrummet: Overskuddet fra spilsuccessen Deep Rock Galactic investeres nu i den danske spilbranche

Med tre investeringer i danske spilstudioer på ét år er Ghost Ship Games blevet den mest aktive seed-investor i den danske spilbranche. Spilstudioet håber, det kan åbne andre investorers øjne for branchens enorme potentiale.

https://techsavvy.media/ghost-ship-game ... ilbranche/

[jonaz.dk]

Pretty crazy VR tech at Meta Research!

Meta Research: Prototype Photoreal Avatars 2.0

[jonaz.dk]

(DK) Trophy Games first step into publishing! With 'The Ranchers'.

Trophy Games to publish The Ranchers from RedPilz Studio
Trophy Games today announced that it has signed the publishing rights to the 62nd most anticipated new game worldwide on Steam “The Ranchers” from RedPilz Studio, expected to release in 2023 on PC followed by console and mobile. The game is a premium title expected to list at €39.95.



Full press release on
https://trophygames.newsroom.cision.com ... 10B92A47A4

[jonaz.dk]

Happy liberation day! From one of the current games I'm working on.

[jonaz.dk]

This is "Ravenholm" - The Cancelled Half-Life Game from Arkane Studios


The Making of Among Us - Documentary

[jonaz.dk]

Oh my goodness!
VR headsets could really shrink a whole lot in size by using a holographic displays. Something Nvidia is working on.
Obviously we all knew things would shrink over time. But it's just nice to see the actual steps and technologies enabling this.

Also this would certainly enable a potential era of hybrid AR/VR glasses with a much wider audience appeal.
Sooner or later shrinking to contact lenses and eventually it will probably be small nanothingies directly implemented in the brain (or perhaps even non-invasive!?) with the scary scenarios that implies. Some of these things are already being worked on. But until then there will be smaller glasses for doing VR things.

Holographic Glasses for Virtual Reality


More on
https://vrscout.com/news/nvidia-uses-ho ... ixFI7-4G3Q

[jonaz.dk]

Nice little sunny sunday cosy thing. A Ukranian cover of 'The Dragonborne Comes', Skyrim theme performed by the enchanting Eileen.

[jonaz.dk]

** Adding: Actually with the optics of the Danish games industry I would CERTAINLY recommend anybody to start getting serious about looking into Unreal Engine. Not that Unity is going anywhere. But a current and future trend and with a general level of not so public knowledge. I can only see that Unreal Engine is a fast growing factor in the Danish games industry.

So it would very much be in your own self interest if you are experienced in Unreal Engine as well as Unity. If you want to have the widest job opportunities available to you, now and in the future. (Besides it being fun and pretty awesome to work with for the most part).

Just a friendly tip from yours truly.


Nice! But less talked about Unreal Engine 5 features.


Nice intro to UE5 (Watch on YouTube)

[jonaz.dk]

Supposedly leaked material from the unreleased version of Duke Nukem Forever (2001) (Let's just call it Fornever)

Looks like it had excellent potential to be a great boomer shooter of the times if the leak is legit. (Looks like it actually is)

**ADDING** Some PURE speculation!
It 'COULD' be that since Gearbox (owner of the Duke Nukem IP) and 3DRealms is now under the same roof at Embracer group.
That ends has finally met and Frederik Schriber @fresch will finally be able to make his dream Duke Nukem game.
And they (being all in on it) have purposefully "leaked" the video and screen shots to stir up some hype and test the waters. With a possible release of the playable demo in June. And possibly find more dedicated people who would love to work on such a project.

So my complete speculative thoughts is that they will just finish the game as it was originally intended in the 2001 version. Same engine (Unreal Engine 1 I think) with the vintage art style and just lean into that. And not go down a route of making a highly polished 202x version. That could come later though. Not really sure why Gearbox has been sitting on the IP for ages doing nothing (public at least) with it.

This would be a very 3DRealms thing to do! And bloody smart as well.

Also Fred has been awfully quite on the leak. The Fred 'I know' (well just met him twice) Would have a nuclear meltdown of excitement if actual Duke Nukem stuff like this would hit the web.
Hmmm. Makes you wonder....

Well let's see! Very possibly I am wrong! But could be fun to be right of cause.
** Adding note: Oh bugger.. the speculation >WAS INCORRECT<. Also....... (oh well can't talk about it)


**Adding: If it is not all a setup by the companies. To the very least the leak could serve as a talking point to actually finish and release the 2001 version. Confident it would be well received by the fans if the game was good. Also they could do it in UE 5 no problem! Where modern rendering would meet old school low poly graphics. That would obviously steer a bit away from the original and towards a hybrid solution. But it would look awesome and not break the budget on AAA. Think how cool Minecraft looks with raytracing. Obviously the game should come with options to disable all the modern rendering stuff like lumen so there is really nothing to loose there.
A full hi end UE5 version like Scott Miller suggests is really not needed in my book. It's even what brought the project down in the first place. Changing engines and art pipeline constantly.



Leaked Gameplay of Duke Nukem Forever (2001) Build 4chan 9/5/2022


More movies and shots over at: (And yes it's an ancient project)
https://duke4.net/duke-nukem-forever-20 ... chan-leak/

Update 1:
Oh the game files was leaked much sooner than June apparantly. It was out yesterday according to this tweet.


Update 2:
A few words from Scott Miller.

THE TRUTH ABOUT DNF
Looks like someone leaked a build of Duke Nukem Forever from 2001. Anyone expecting much of a playable game will be disappointed. The game's brilliant trailer from that period definitely over-represented what was actually playable in the game.
https://www.apogeeent.com/devblog/dnf-truth

[jonaz.dk]

The free monthly Unreal Marketplace stuff is out.. if you like pines and horses this is the month for you!

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/store

[jonaz.dk]

New articles (In Danish) on Techsavvy on Games as a business

Games as a Business 2022
https://techsavvy.media/games-as-a-business-2022-dk/

[jonaz.dk]

Nordic Game Conference in Malmö is kicking off soon.

Planning on dropping by for at least a day or two in Malmö. Hope I can make it! See you maybe!
And don't be a stranger. Just say hi if you spot me in the crowd. Always fun talk to fellow gamedev nerds.

Program etc on:
https://conf.nordicgame.com/dates-times-venue/
https://conf.nordicgame.com/schedule/

[jonaz.dk]

Also Dino did get a large investment of 55 mil DKK in his newer venture at coherence.io in Malmö. Making online multiplayer easy for devs!
Seems to be a shift away from the sort of originally communicated about doing some sort of singleplayer but with multiplayer thing on top. At least I found it confusing.
And now there is a clear focus doing multiplayer easy! So that's just great! And it actually looks like it will be super easy to set up without coding.

Just like this.. and you get MP set up. pretty damn cool! Hope it works as advertised and everything will be a great success!. Currently it's Unity focused but Unreal/custom engine support is also in the works to my understanding.


More on
https://coherence.io/about

Not super new but the investment news finally made it to Børsen (Danish and pay walled)
https://borsen.dk/nyheder/virksomheder/ ... l-spilsats

Earlier article from 14th April on the $8M investment round. (No pay walls)
https://venturebeat.com/2022/04/14/cohe ... echnology/

[jonaz.dk]

Making Hitman 3's Best Level

[jonaz.dk]

Now everything makes complete sense!
This is a brilliant move by Epic! They will turn Fortnite into a Roblox like platform where creators can monetize their creations. (The thought has been boiling a bit in the back of my head)
Also I am fairly confident they will provide a much better deal for developers than Roblox. Who knows maybe your company will be making Fortnite games in the future.

Also it is VERY easy to imagine the LEGO universe will be integrated into a new "metaverse-Fortnite". And their investment in Epic is an absolute no brainer.

Also countless young hopeful developers will start using some Fortnite integrated version of UE5 to power their game dreams. Epic wins and inherits the Earth! (And LEGO is part of it)

Epic to Release an Unreal Engine 5 Editor Just for Fortnite This Year
And people will be able to monetize their creations.
https://www.ign.com/articles/epic-games ... r-fortnite

[jonaz.dk]

SteamDeck meets VitureOne.
There is an ongoing kickstarter currently.

Seems pretty cool! I might see something like this working for me in the future on the go. Would have to be more development oriented though for me needs. But as long as there is bluetooth I can connect a mouse+keyboard it should be good to go. But of cause this makes everything more fiddley and device heavy. So yeah.. might not work very well for gamedev productivity. Laptops will still be the optimal for quite some years still. On screen keyboard and touch might work just fine on the SteamDeck though (But the glasses turns off the screen. Don't know if there are settings to avoid this). But it's not physical keys then. I like physical keys. And mouse with multiple buttons is a minimum for any real work.
One thing I got working was on the train when bluetoothing my wireless keyboard to my phone (It pairs up to 3 switchable devices). That was just awesome when strictly doing text editing in GoogleDocs. Yes you can just type on the on-screen keyboard on your phone. But having a full size keyboard is just super nice! (While might being labeled as a super nerd dragging a full size keyboard around.. cool with that trade off) And not as cumbersome as dragging a large heavy battery consuming gaming laptop around.
So if I also had "screen glasses" of sorts connected to the phone ... might be pretty cool! An expensive luxury but cool and hopefully not draining the battery too quickly.
Of cause we will also see real stand alone AR glasses in the wider market soon'ish. But in general anything you have to put in front of your face will still have to compete with something as simple as your phone for general casual use of apps or web browsing. The convenience of a phone in your pocket is still hard to beat in many cases. And they will probably not be well suited for popping up your regular gamedev tools.



Youtuber 'ThePhaux' also has consumer critical look on the tech hilighting some of the issues surrounding the setup. (Lower battery life and outside use being the main issues)


Also it's far from the first display glasses of this type. The label of AR/XR is not really deserved in my book. It's just "screen glasses". Which is cool and all! But just call it was it is, no marketing BS please.

Give it a few years and the concept will even more refined. Would be interesting to give it a whirl at some point. But such glasses do come at a price!

[jonaz.dk]

Spatial Communication in Level Design

[jonaz.dk]

'Cyberpunk: Edgerunners' is a Cyberpunk 2077 anim coming to Netflix.. Well ok! I'll give it a watch then!
Not expecting Ghost in the Shell level of awesomeness. But well well let's see!
Oh man... first time I watched the original Ghost In The Shell anime movie.. I was sold!
And let's not talk about the live action adoptation of Ghost in The Shell.

Btw. Their upcoming Resident Evil series kinda looks like a skip. Hmmm.. Resident Evil only in name. The movies was also not really hitting anything. But they have been pumping them out so I guess it's working for them.

[jonaz.dk]

4D Miner.. Minecraft'ish in 4 dimensions. Also there is a demo on Steam!




Still waiting for this project.. Looks like things are going very slow (dead?) there. Or they are working in a spacial dimension we others don't have access to.

[jonaz.dk]

Stig Christensens side project. The pixelarted zombie shooting STROLL has finally gotten a first public playable prototype.

Update: Just gave it a whirl. Great stuff! I like! Obviously still early days.



Prototype on Itch
https://strollplay.itch.io/prototype

On Steam

[jonaz.dk]

The next project from Chop Chop Games (DK) seems to be an deck building auto battler named Clockwork Heroes and it has a Steam page and a possible release year in 2023.

They are also looking for a game programmer
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5161

Clockwork Heroes on Steam

[jonaz.dk]

Solo Development: Myths, Reality and Survival Strategies

[jonaz.dk]

The former CryEngine turned Lumberyard (but completely rewritten) turned free open source engine O3DE has added motion matching to it's feature set. It's a pretty cool indication they are going for the more of the hi-end features. And hopefully over time the engine might leave it's mark and have a real place in the industry. Still far from widespread adaptation in the current state. Let's see if that changes over time.. hmmm.. not super optimistic though in the near future. I have so far not spotted any DK projects jumping on O3DE just yet. And only one game in my immediate memory released on CryEngine, Aporia: Beyond The Valley by Investigate North (Now the Invisible Walls team).

More on:
https://www.o3de.org/blog/posts/blog-motionmatching/

[jonaz.dk]

Unity 2022.1 Released

[jonaz.dk]

DK indie updates!

Demo and Steam page for Troldkarlens Hat's game Mutant Karate Canary


Steam page and new demo for Rytmos by Floppy Club.