This week, after hearing Sony confirm, and then describe, the next PlayStation under development, you may be wondering what exactly “ray tracing” is and why it’s such a differentiator when it comes to high performance video game hardware. Here is a surprisingly watchable technical demonstration from Digital Foundry — using Minecraft of all things — to point out its applications — like your username casting a shadow.
Minecraft, using the mod Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shadows, makes for a surprisingly good test space. It’s not just because Digital Foundry’s Alex Battaglia and John Linneman can build rooms that call attention to concepts like “specularity,” and “bounce lighting” and “differentiated reflective surfaces.” Its because the voxelized world is optimal for the real-time demands of ray tracing.
“To have the entire world always be known [by the CPU] as being made of blocks is what mes this so performant,” Battaglia explains.
“Because these objects are non-moving and in a binary, present-or-deleted situation, that makes the calculations easier,” Linneman adds.
The rooms they’ve built show off not just those highly coveted godrays of sunshine, and indirect lighting, but also how a room can be indirectly lit off multiple reflections of a light source, and how colored surfaces’ reflections, will also mix and change when they bounce onto another colored surface. It is a highly technical discussion, of course, but the visuals are always there to fall back on, to illustrate what kind of a load the hardware has to carry to pull it off.
“It honestly just looks like an architectural rendering,” Battaglia says at one point.
“This is how light functions in the real world,” Linneman says simply. “Many games have a way of faking this effect, but this is generated in real time.”
Battaglia’s hardware for this technical demonstration is more powerful than an Xbox One X, and yet with this path-tracing* mod installed, it’s running at 720p locked to 30 frames per second — if that gives you a sense of how much this kind of rendering asks. Or as one joker put it in the YouTube comments: “2007: But can it run Crysis? 2019: But can it run Minecraft? Oh how the times have changed.”
A video game like Minecraft in schools might trouble some parents. As a Canada research chair in technologies and education, my hope is both parents and educators take the time to learn about how using Minecraft at school could be beneficial.
Firstly, parents and teachers are right to ask questions about video gaming, particularly given sometimes conflicting messages about its impact. Some researchers caution about the possible impacts of child and youth exposure to violence or problems of gaming addiction or screen saturation, while others say fears may be exaggeratedand it's a matter of balance.
But I've learned through my research that many are largely unaware of the enormous educational potential of Minecraft. Many people also don't know Minecraft Education Edition was released in the fall of 2016 and this version has been rapidly catching on at schools.
Since 2013, American and Swedish schools have been systematically integrating Minecraft into their schools, and it is being used around the world to teach science, urban planningand foreign languages. Masses of educational applications and experiences using Minecraft are available on online sites and forums.
In Montréal, a number of schools joined a contest in which students use Minecraft to reproduce historic sites and events in celebration of the city's 375th anniversary, called Mission 375. With my team at the University of Montréal, we felt it important to investigate the educational potential of Minecraft in order to provide a deeper understanding of the impacts on young learners.
When players are fully engaged in a gaming task, they enter what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the “flow state,” also known as “the zone,” a state highly conducive to learning.
While becoming deeply engrossed in gaming is sometimes depicited in a negative light or only associated with addiction, in fact this state can be harnessed to support or advance learning goals. For example, in this task-focused state, players are highly receptive to learning embedded in the game scenario. Creativity, student engagement and collaboration between users are just some of the aptitudes that are known to be developed through gameplay.
In addition, video games can help today's youngsters cope with a future world requiring more and more digital literacy. In other words, they will need 21st century skills.
Minecraft to teach curriculum
My team and I adopted an exploratory research design to highlight the main uses of Minecraft in a school setting and to identify any benefits of using Minecraft at school. We developed a program called Minecraft Master where students had to complete more than 40 different tasks. Tasks were closely linked to the school curriculum; for example, students have to create a navigable map, making use of language, mathematics and spatial design, something we asked them to do with Minecraft.
We formed a partnership with one Montréal school. Participation was open to 118 Grade 3 to 6 students in an after-school program based on computers available. Registration took place during recess, on a first-come-first-served basis and parental consent was compulsory. Most of the students took four blocks of six weeks of Minecraft during the school year (an equivalent of about six months).
With the support of a program facilitator, students worked individually and in teams to digitally build structures such as impressive houses, a soccer stadium, a space ship, a railroad track to the Titanic and the Titanic itself.
Researchers also attended some sessions. We studied the main impacts on learning to investigate how gamified learning interventions may increase student engagement and enhance learning. We used a combination of data collected from surveys, interviews,”think aloud” protocols (where students speak their problem-solving strategies out loud), journals, tracking of studentprogress and digital footprints. Using these various methods allowed substantial data triangulation and validation.
The educational impacts we found were encouraging. The students showed a heightened motivation towards school, stronger computer skills, greater problem-solving skills, expanded reading and writing skills, a development in creativity and autonomy and increased collaboration with classmates.
However, it is important to understand that the use of Minecraft in our context was planned, supported and purposeful. This structure is crucial for a successful educational use of the game. Without such boundaries, students might not want to stop playing and learning advantages could be wasted.
Technologies, games and other “screen-related” activities can be a fun experience for students. But it is important to balance screen time with other activities that are essential for students' development such as physically active play, reading, etc. Both parents and teachers can help students find this balance by working together on some rules about technology use.
Therefore, it is incumbent on both parents and teachers to structure the use of video games such as Minecraft to ensure that they provide students with appropriate support for the use of educational technologies. Such supervision would allow them to fully benefit from the incredible potential of this game.
A demon and an angel need to kill lots of people to stop Armageddon. That’s the premise of God’s Trigger, a gory top-down shooter whose slick combat and interesting levels help make it more than just another Hotline Miami wannabe.
Out this week on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, God’s Trigger sees you play as Harry, an angel cast out of heaven, and Judy, a demon condemned to live out her days on earth, as they team up to take down the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Each of these villains plays the role of a mob boss, with chapters broken up into individual levels where you fight through bars, warehouse, and other grindhouse locales on your way to assassinate each one.Outstream Video
These levels can be quite expansive, spanning several checkpoints and offering a number of alternate paths through the chaos. You might decide to play it cautious, sneaking up on enemies to kill them from behind, which gives you bonus experience points and keeps you hidden from the rest of the enemies. Before bursting into a new room, you can also pre-select targets so that you’ll automatically aim at the next enemy as the previous one is killed. Or, as I quickly figured out, it’s often possible to dash into enemies, slice out their throats, and then quickly dash back out of the room and wait for the remaining mob to come through the door.
Rather than pushing you to find the best, most efficient route through each level, God’s Trigger encourages more experimentation. Both Harry and Judy, who you can swap between at any time, have a range of different abilities they unlock over the course of the game. Some, like the ability to teleport short distances, are basic and have rapid cooldowns. More powerful moves require you to first fill up a gauge by defeating enemies. These include slowing down time, turning invisible, or mind-controlling enemies to get them to fight one another.
It can be fun to take a few seconds, stare at a set of rooms, and then stitch together a set of quick plays to try and take everyone out as ruthlessly as possible. It’s also satisfying enough just to survive. It only takes one stray bullet or slash of a knife to kill you, so every mistake is fatal. After spending a few hours leveling up and upgrading the speed, cooldowns, or range of various abilities, it begins to feel somewhat like a more tense, fast-paced beat ‘em up. You’ll start to develop various short, go-to combos—two shots from a handgun, dash, slash, slash—that you can mix and match as needed to slowly make your way through each stage.
While the few hours I’ve spent with God’s Trigger have mostly been solo, I enjoyed the mission I played co-op the most. The game lets you swap between characters at any time when playing alone, but it’s only with both on the screen simultaneously that the true range of ruthless possibilities opens up. Many of the characters’ abilities synergize, like having one summon a wall of fire while the other shoots bullets through it, causing them to explode on the other side and kill multiple enemies at once. Occasionally, my co-op partner and I got in each other’s way, but more often than not our instincts synced up to create cool, unexpected new death traps. God’s Trigger can still be a delight on its own but, perhaps like the end of the world itself, better with company.
The fighting game extravaganza MIXUP returns for its third year this weekend in Lyon, France. While it’ll showcase tournaments in all the current major games like Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, and Dragon Ball FighterZ, it’ll also be home to a number of more niche side events, including one for the beloved Capcom arcade classic, Darkstalkers 3.
Despite all of the re-releases over the past two decades, there hasn’t actually been a new Darkstalkers game since Darkstalkers 3 was released on Capcom Play System II arcade cabinets in 1997. There have been numerous updates, console ports, and compilations released in the years since, including 2013'sDarkstalkers Resurrection, which put the second and third games in HD, but never anything that could be considered Darkstalkers 4.Outstream Video
While it’s easy to be disappointed that Capcom has allowed one of its cult classic series to languish for over a decade, the long life of Darkstalkers 3 has also allowed history to stay alive, with fans and veteran players continuing to compete at various fighting game events the world over even as the field becomes crowded with newer fighting games. MIXUP is one of those events. Though the main spotlight will be on recent releases like Soulcalibur IV, Darkstalkers 3 diehards will have the chance to duke it out on actual arcade cabinets.
The game’s top 32 bracket will get underway on Sunday, April 21, at 10:00 a.m. ET, with all of the action streamed live from the MIXUP arcade mainstage. You can find a full list of streams and times for the rest of the event’s tournaments at Smash.gg, with the festivities wrapping up Sunday at 1:00 p.m. ET with the top 8 for Tekken 7.
Meanwhile in the world of Smash Bros., Pound 2019 kicks off today in Maryland with tournaments for both Ultimate and Melee. Almost every top player of note, from Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma to to Eric “ESAM” Lew, will be in attendance, with a special Squad Strike battle going down Saturday evening starting at 5:00 p.m. ET. Everything will be streamed live on Twitch channels VGBoot Camp 1 through 3.
By the time Link wakes up in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Castle has already been partially destroyed, thanks to the work of Calamity Ganon a hundred years prior. Recently, players have set about restoring the castle in Minecraft.
Nintendo highlighted the project today over on the company’s Japanese website along with a video showing some of the incredible detail that went into creating the castle and a brief interview with one of the people behind it. While the exterior shots help show the scale of the castle, the interior shots demonstrate just how much painstaking work went into every little feature, from the grand arches of the central hall to the floating plants in the multi-floor library.
It was all done by members of the Minecraft Partner Program group Team Kyo, who told Nintendo that they began by first looking at promotional screenshots of the castle as it appeared prior to Calamity Ganon’s arrival. Based on those images, they laid out the entire design ahead of time in one-block increments. It then took 13 people working for approximately two months to realize that vision within the game.
It's no secret now that Nintendo and Microsoft are getting a bit chummy with one another. The two companies have advertised Minecraft together, former Xbox console exclusives have started popping up on Switch, and they never shy away from gloating about how players on either console can play with one another in some of the biggest games on the market. It's nice to be past the days of the idiotic and juvenile “console wars,” to be in a period where we can all focus on just having fun instead of arguing until we're blue in the face about which piece of hardware is better.
There are plenty of examples of this “Kum by yah” attitude out there, but this new video, being promoted by Nintendo of Japan, showcasing a magnificent Minecraft recreation of Hyrule Castle from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, may be my favorite. Take a look:
I am in awe. This spectacular piece of craftsmanship was created by Team Kyo, a 17-member Minecraftgroup that has produced recreations of real cities in the past. Thirteen of those team members participated in the construction of the castle over a period of about two months. The team used screenshots and promotion materials to help get every detail right.
If it's not obvious now, I'm simply dumbfounded by what Team Kyo was able to pull off here and can't wait to see what they create next. May I suggest sticking with Nintendo and giving us a recreation of Blackbelly Skatepark from Splatoon?
