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No Man’s Sky has had one hell of a development ride. With disputes over the use of the word “Sky” in the UK to game delays leading to actual death threats, it seemed when the game was finally completed and put to disc that Hello Games’ journey had finally been worth it.
Then a few days ago, Dutch company Genicap threw another spanner into the works. They claimed that No Man’s Sky made use of a superformula to generate rank 3D shapes – and this type of use of said formula is one that Genicap have patented.
Of course, people have been worried that this is going to lead to another delay, but the lead developer of No Man’s Sky Sean Murray took to Twitter to lay to rest speculation. In it he basically says that Genicap are wrong – they never used this superformula in the first place and therefore the claims don’t have a leg to stand on.
I wish Johan Gielis, the author, all the best in future. We’re going to meet and chat maths once the game is out
However, some people have noticed that the official site’s date of release has been slightly changed if only just for the PC version. While previously it was coming out on August 9th, the date now reads August 12th. Not too bad but there’s been no official word on the changed date or why.
At least it’s not that much more time for something else to go pear-shaped for Hello Games…
A few Reddit users have datamined the Overwatch PTR and found some very interesting sound files. They seem to hint at a few new maps and possibly a new game mode, as well as some interesting seasonal things.
Ubisoft’s team up with Red Lynx for Trials of the Blood Dragon gave us a very unexpected game, mashing the popular bike track game with one of Far Cry’s more fabulous spin-offs. Your opinions may vary on how well it works, but now Ubisoft are putting out quite the offer.
There’s a demo for the game available and Ubisoft have laid down the challenge: beat the demo and you get the entire game. 30-missions worth of $15 game. For free.
Of course, there is a slight catch – you need to complete the demo in less than 15 faults and if you’ve ever played a Trials game you know that the game’s tracks and those created by the community love to trip you up by having something move that you don’t expect. So you’d better be good if you wish to own the 80s neon-filled experience without paying out for it. Thank god that the respawn mechanic in Trials is actually pretty quick and uncomplicated.
If you want to take up the mantle and attempt this challenge, you’ve until July 31st to beat the demo and bag a copy. So you’d better get practicing.
It seems that people never learn. Commonplace is the death threat online (sadly), but one gamer who made such threats to Blizzard has found himself facing five years in prison for it.
Stephen Cebula, 28, was a player in the Silver bracket of Heroes of the Storm’s ranked ladder system who unfortunately became known for his aggressive harassment of other players. Sending several message’s worth of things such as racial epithets and threats to “bomb the new york twin towers”. Not surprisingly he was reported to Blizz who quickly silenced Cebula to stop his hateful messaging habits. To say Cebula did not take this well would be an understatement.
Sending messages through Facebook, one such message from Cebula’s Facebook threatened the company’s California headquarters saying “You keep silencing me in Heroes of the Storm and I may or may not pay you a visit with an AK 47 amongst some other ‘fun’ tools.”
The messages were reported to the feds and Cebula was arrested after the FBI found several other social media accounts in his control that concerned them, including one apparently named “tedbundyismygod1” – referring to one of America’s most notorious serial killers.
According to court documents from the trial Cebula had admitted that he made the message with the intent to “scare those whom he had threatened”. He is now being held without bail due to having been judged to have ‘significant’ mental issues by the state. Cebula had previously faced psychiatric evaluation before in March of last year when he confessed to Sacramento Sherriff’s Department that had had intentions to kill someone at a local park.
His plea is expected to be entered on the 26th of the month, and right now he is facing a maximum of five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
Just a lesson for you. Death threats – they’re not funny or cool. Don’t make ’em.
Gears of War 4 is going to be the first game that will supposedly benefit from Microsoft’s newly announced Xbox Play Anywhere initiative, allowing for the ability to cross-buy and cross-play the game on either Xbox or PC. However, to be sure that the PC version doesn’t lose out, it’ll come with a few extra options to make us of the greater option of graphical power and processing speed a PC could offer the game.
Speaking in an interview, The Coalition’s technical director Mike Rayner explained the benefits of Gears on PC for players.
“Support for v-sync tearing has recently come to UWP and we will be able to offer proper unlocked frame-rate support that gamers expect on day one. With Unreal Engine 4 and our own custom modifications, we can take much better advantage of multiple CPU cores, alleviating the game from being CPU-bound and allowing more room for the GPU to shine with enhanced visual quality or higher framerates. Single-player will not be locked to 30fps on PC.”
This means that with the range of tasty settings on offer, you might even be able to fit 60FPS provided everything with UWP works properly with the new support for various options players have been asking for. Among things offered will be a benchmarking tool to help measure FPS, higher resolution textures that could go up to 4K if your machine can handle it and dynamic resolution support and scaling.
Gears of War 4 is planned to release on October 11th of this year, with a beta planned to happen some time before that.
