Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

OpenAI's o1 Model Aces Codenames

2025-01-25

OpenAI's o1 model played Codenames against itself, and the results were surprisingly impressive. Over 20 games, o1 consistently demonstrated strong reasoning and a vast knowledge base, both as clue-giver and guesser. Researchers noted o1's superior general knowledge compared to humans, cleverly connecting seemingly unrelated words. Examples included using "007" as a clue, and linking "mail," "lawyer," "line," and "log" with the single word "paper." This showcases the potential of large language models in strategic games, hinting at future applications in diverse game environments.

(suveenellawela.com)

Game

Cheap AI Enables 'Stupid' Ideas: The Birth of Gongzilla

2025-01-25

The author used ChatGPT's o1 and v0 functionalities to create a small game called Gongzilla in under an hour, without writing a single line of code, through multiple iterations. While the game itself isn't perfect, it showcases the possibilities of rapid prototyping and creative realization in the age of cheap AI. This post explores the ease of AI-assisted creation and the value of exploring 'stupid' ideas at low cost—even if those ideas ultimately aren't perfect, the fun of learning and creating is invaluable.

(everything.intellectronica.net)

Game AI creation low-cost prototyping

EA Origin Shutdown: Secure Your Games!

2025-01-25

EA is shutting down its Origin platform on April 17, 2025. All Origin users must migrate to the EA app to keep playing and preserve their game data. While the transition is relatively straightforward, it requires a 64-bit system, potentially necessitating an upgrade for some users. Alternatively, players can add their games to their Steam library to avoid using the EA app entirely.

(www.pcworld.com)

Game

VIC-20 Elite: A Retro Space Trading Adventure Reborn

2025-01-24

Programmer Aleksi Eeben has brought the classic space trading game Elite to the VIC-20 in 2025 with an unofficial port. Despite the VIC-20's limited memory, VIC-20 Elite boasts 30 unique ships, Coriolis and Dodo space stations, and core gameplay elements like exploration, combat, and a dynamic economy. While some features were trimmed to fit the hardware constraints, it's a remarkable feat of 8-bit programming and a testament to the enduring appeal of the original.

(vic20elite.wordpress.com)

Game

Netflix's Cloud Gaming Push: Co-op and Party Games on the Way

2025-01-24

Netflix is expanding its cloud gaming efforts, planning to launch a service featuring co-op and party games streamed directly to TVs. Co-CEO Greg Peters described this as a successor to family board game nights or an evolution of TV game shows. While a release date hasn't been announced, Netflix has been beta testing cloud gaming since 2023 and plans to continue investment. The company will also focus on narrative games based on Netflix IP.

(www.theverge.com)

Game multiplayer games

Epic Games Subsidizes Developers to Bypass Apple's App Store Fees

2025-01-24

Epic Games is expanding its mobile game store by subsidizing iOS developers' fees for using third-party marketplaces, directly challenging Apple's App Store dominance. This move aims to attract more games to its store and combat Apple's high fees. Epic will pay the Apple Core Technology Fee (CTF) for developers in its free games program, but this is not a long-term solution. Epic hopes the EU will enforce the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to break Apple's monopoly. This is the latest maneuver in Epic's long-running battle against Apple and Google, who Epic argues create unfair restrictions and fees for developers, stifling competition in the mobile gaming market. Despite a delayed launch due to technical issues, Epic is determined to push for greater competition in the mobile app store landscape.

(www.theverge.com)

Game Apple App Store

Decoding the Mario Logo: A Surprisingly Deep Dive into Color Schemes

2025-01-23

Blogger Louie Mantia embarked on a fascinating analysis of the color usage in Mario game logos. He discovered patterns in the seemingly random color choices across the franchise's various logo styles. By meticulously examining 40 game logos, he found green to be the most frequently used color, while red dominated the letter 'M'. His analysis culminated in a proposed 'most Mario' color scheme, sparking intriguing correlations with release dates, game genres, and even box art characters.

(lmnt.me)

Game Mario

Tokyo Xtreme Racer: A Technical Deep Dive into the UE5 Powered Reboot

2025-01-23

After an 18-year hiatus, the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series roars back with a new entry in Steam Early Access. This technical review delves into the game's Unreal Engine 5.4 implementation. Surprisingly, even a GTX 1070 can run the game smoothly at 1080p with high settings. The author provides detailed comparisons of visual quality and performance across different presets, exploring the impact of Lumen lighting technology. Steam Deck performance and future update expectations are also discussed. The game proves surprisingly scalable and visually appealing, even on older hardware.

(cookieplmonster.github.io)

Game Unreal Engine 5

AI-Generated Minecraft: A Glitchy Pixel Wonderland

2025-01-23

Oasis Minecraft, an AI-generated Minecraft game, is notable for its unique 'lack of object permanence.' In this game, mountains vanish in a blink, buildings disintegrate instantly, and creatures morph into sand. The author recounts bizarre glitches encountered: shifting terrain, morphing blocks, and erratic health fluctuations. These aren't bugs, but rather odd occurrences stemming from the AI's attempt to predict the next frame, illustrating limitations in generative AI training while inadvertently creating a surreal, dreamlike experience.

(www.aiweirdness.com)

Game AI game

Multiplayer Shooter Game in Lisp: A Solo Dev's Odyssey

2025-01-22

A solo developer built a web-based multiplayer third-person shooter, Wizard Masters, using Clojure, a Lisp dialect. Leveraging Clojure's REPL for rapid iteration and Babylon.js for graphics, the article details the game's rule system, networking architecture, and area-of-effect damage calculations. Challenges faced include state management, the lack of a strong Clojure game development community, and web platform limitations. The author concludes by weighing the pros and cons of web game development and emphasizes the crucial role of tooling, hinting at a potential shift to a mainstream engine like Unity or Unreal in the future.

(ertu.dev)

Game

Pitfall! Reimagined: A Modern Take on a Classic Platformer

2025-01-22

The 1982 Atari 2600 classic, Pitfall!, returns as a browser-based experience! This isn't a mere emulation; it's a TypeScript rebuild meticulously crafted from the original's 6507 assembly language source code. While faithfully preserving the sounds and graphics, the remake introduces side-scrolling, mid-air control, refined trap mechanics, and more. Easy, Normal, and Hard modes cater to all skill levels. Whether you're a nostalgic gamer or a newcomer, prepare for a thrilling jungle adventure!

(meatfighter.com)

Game platformer

Castle Game Engine Web Target: First 3 Demos!

2025-01-21

Castle Game Engine proudly announces the release of its first 3 working web applications! Experience 3D scenes and a 2D game directly in your browser (Firefox, Chrome, etc.)—no installation needed. Powered by WebAssembly and WebGL, the cross-platform code offers a glimpse into future features like data loading, currently under development. Comprehensive documentation is available, even though the web target is still on a development branch.

(castle-engine.io)

Game

Game Devs Revolt Against Boss's AI Schemes

2025-01-21

A survey reveals growing unease among game developers concerning AI's impact on the industry. Nearly half of the 3,000 respondents expressed concern about AI's negative effects, with 30% voicing outright negativity. While AI offers potential benefits in coding, art, and 3D modeling, many developers see limited practical applications and report increased workloads and job insecurity. Long hours and layoffs are rampant, leading to widespread frustration. Developers attribute these problems to post-pandemic overexpansion, unrealistic expectations, and poor management.

(www.wired.com)

Game Industry Crisis

Sudoku Variants: Play and Create Unique Sudoku Puzzles

2025-01-21

SudokuVariants is an online platform where users can play and create various Sudoku variants. The site boasts a wide selection of Sudoku types, including Killer Sudoku, Arrow Sudoku, and Thermo Sudoku, allowing users to filter and select puzzles based on preference. Furthermore, it supports saving and importing Sudoku grids for convenient gameplay.

(sudokuvariants.com)

Game Sudoku Online Game

Reverse Engineering Call of Duty's User-Mode Anti-Cheat

2025-01-21

This post details a deep dive into TAC, the user-mode anti-cheat in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. The author meticulously reverse-engineered TAC, revealing its sophisticated techniques. These include runtime API lookups, anti-debugging measures (detecting debug registers and test signing mode), API hook detection, external overlay detection, and innovative encrypted custom syscall stubs. The analysis covers TAC's process termination methods, anti-signature scanning, and other anti-debugging tricks. The integration with Arxan code protection further enhances TAC's robustness. This research provides valuable insights into anti-cheat mechanisms and reverse engineering.

(ssno.cc)

Game anti-cheat game security

Play Brick Breaker with Your Hands!

2025-01-20

Forget controllers! 'Manual Brick Breaker' lets you play the classic game using only your hands. The game uses your webcam to track your palm movements, controlling the paddle to break bricks. Difficulty increases with each level, speeding up the ball and shrinking the paddle, testing your reflexes. All processing happens directly in your browser, ensuring privacy. The game's code is open-source, built with JavaScript, HTML canvas, and MediaPipe hand tracking. The creator also offers other fun open-source projects, such as video-to-ASCII art converters.

(collidingscopes.github.io)

Game hand tracking web game

Voxel Slugs on a Cube: An Interactive Animation

2025-01-20

Artist Japhy Riddle created a captivating animation featuring three colored slugs navigating the edges of an invisible cube, never quite touching. Inspired by this, developer Matt Sephton built an interactive version using Love2D, allowing users to manipulate cube parameters and slug behavior. This interactive version not only replicates the charm of the original but expands its possibilities, such as increasing the number of slugs. Users can download and explore the possibilities themselves.

(blog.gingerbeardman.com)

Game gamedev

Mixxx: Unleash Your Inner DJ with Free, Open-Source Software

2025-01-20

Mixxx is a free and open-source DJ mixing software application available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Boasting powerful features such as BPM and key detection, sync lock, DJ controller support, effects, and even vinyl record control, Mixxx caters to DJs of all skill levels. Driven by a passionate international community of DJs and programmers, Mixxx is constantly updated and improved. The latest release, Mixxx 2.5, promises an even more exciting DJ experience.

(mixxx.org)

Game DJ software music production

Alligator Eggs: A Game That Teaches Lambda Calculus

2025-01-20

In 2007, Bret Victor created "Alligator Eggs," a puzzle game that ingeniously translates the abstract concepts of lambda calculus into a playful game mechanic. Hungry alligators represent lambda abstractions, old alligators represent parentheses, and eggs represent variables. The process of alligators eating other alligator families corresponds to beta-reduction, the color rule corresponds to alpha-conversion, and the old alligator death rule corresponds to parenthesis elimination. Players solve a series of puzzles to gradually understand the core concepts of lambda calculus, such as beta-reduction and alpha-conversion. The game not only provides a fun way for children to learn lambda calculus but also offers an intuitive tool for understanding and calculating lambda calculus.

(worrydream.com)

Game gamified learning

Indie Dev Uses C for a 2025 Commercial Game: A Postmortem

2025-01-20

Cowleyfornia Studios released their train management game, *Iron Roads*, in 2025, surprisingly written in pure C (C99) instead of C++. The choice stemmed from a desire for portability, simplicity, and most importantly, code clarity to manage memory allocation and performance. Prototypes in Haskell, Go, and Rust were explored, but ultimately C (approx. 40,000 lines of code) and Lua (approx. 8,000 lines for higher-level logic) were chosen. The developer found C's fast compilation and ease of optimization beneficial to the workflow, but admitted to challenges with serialization and boilerplate. While happy with the outcome, they are unlikely to repeat the process, leaning towards modern, higher-level languages that compile to C, like Nim, for future projects.

(www.cowleyforniastudios.com)

Game

Deconstructing Zork: A Deep Dive into 15,000 Lines of 80s Game Dev

2025-01-20

Rok Ajdnik, in a whimsical quest to test a Kubernetes cluster, embarked on a journey through the 15,000 lines of code that comprise the classic text adventure game, Zork. This article details Zork's evolution across different versions, its ZIL programming language, and its ingenious architecture, including the parser, game objects, syntax, and object tree. Hidden gems are unearthed, such as easter eggs (XYZZY), questionable commands (RAPE), and intentionally trollish mechanics. The author also shares progress on porting Zork to Go.

(medium.com)

Game Game History

Online Nostalgia Trip: A Retro Gaming Paradise

2025-01-20

Relive your childhood gaming memories with this website! It boasts a massive collection of online DOS games, Atari 2600 titles, and other classic retro games. A powerful search function and multiple sorting options (by developer, publisher, genre, etc.) make finding your favorites a breeze. Whether you're craving a game of Oregon Trail or another timeless classic, this site is your portal to instant retro gaming fun.

(playclassic.games)

Game retro games DOS games online gaming

Running DOOM in Microsoft Word: A VBA Hack That's Actually Impressive

2025-01-20

A developer has ported the classic game DOOM into a Microsoft Word document! Using VBA macros and base64 encoding, they embedded the DOOM engine and game data within a Word document, rendering the game in real-time by reading keyboard input. While lacking sound, this unusual project showcases the power of VBA and the developer's creativity, prompting reflection on security and the exploration of software boundaries.

(github.com)

Game

Shakespeare in GTA V: A Lockdown Hamlet

2025-01-20

Two unemployed British actors recreated Shakespeare's Hamlet within the online world of Grand Theft Auto V during the COVID-19 lockdown. The resulting documentary, "Grand Theft Hamlet," follows their hilarious and challenging journey in recreating the play in virtual Los Santos. Facing in-game obstacles and unexpected player interactions, they improvise and persevere, culminating in a unique performance. The film showcases the creative potential of gaming as a medium while highlighting artists' resilience in the face of adversity.

(www.yahoo.com)

Game Documentary Shakespeare

Toshiba Visicom COM-100: A Colorful Twist on a 70s Console

2025-01-19

In 1977, Toshiba seized the burgeoning home video game market, releasing the Visicom COM-100 based on RCA's Studio II technology. This console not only included the five built-in games of the Studio II but innovatively added color, using a unique four-color system. The article details the Visicom COM-100's hardware architecture, memory map, and two game cartridges (CAS-130 and CAS-141), featuring games like baseball, sumo wrestling, and a slot machine. Despite its high price, the Visicom COM-100's technical improvements and influence on the Japanese gaming market are noteworthy, particularly its pioneering color display technology for its time.

(nicole.express)

Game retro gaming console hardware development

Pharaoh's Tomb HD: A Classic Adventure Reimagined

2025-01-18

Pharaoh's Tomb HD is a remastered adventure game that takes players back to the mysterious land of ancient Egypt to explore the secrets of a pharaoh's tomb. The game boasts significantly improved graphics, with more realistic environments and detailed models for an immersive experience. Players must solve ancient puzzles, avoid deadly traps, and ultimately uncover the pharaoh's treasure. This game is perfect for fans of puzzle and adventure games, offering a chance to revisit a classic while enjoying enhanced visuals.

(pt-hd.iocaihost.me)

Game adventure game HD remaster

Aus Open Uses Cartoons to Bypass Broadcast Restrictions

2025-01-18

To circumvent international broadcasting rights, the Australian Open is streaming a cartoon version of matches on its official YouTube channel. Using animated avatars instead of real players, and employing a time delay, the innovative approach cleverly sidesteps overseas broadcasting contracts. This novel solution has attracted increased viewership and sparked discussion about the future of sports broadcasting rights.

(www.crikey.com.au)

Game sports broadcasting rights Australian Open

Rule-Based Programming: Revolutionizing Interactive Fiction Development

2025-01-18

This article explores a rule-based programming model for interactive fiction (text adventure game) development. The author traces the evolution from early FORTRAN and LISP-based games to object-oriented programming, highlighting the limitations of the object-oriented approach in handling complex game logic, especially numerous exceptions and dynamic changes. A more flexible rule-based model is proposed, breaking down game logic into a series of rules triggered by conditions, resulting in cleaner, more maintainable code. This allows for easier handling of exceptions and dynamic changes, improving reusability and scalability. While acknowledging challenges like resolving rule conflicts, the author believes this approach holds promise for revolutionizing interactive fiction development.

(eblong.com)

Game Interactive Fiction Rule Engine

Mini Golf Game: MVPJoy.com's New Casual Game

2025-01-18

MVPJoy.com features a new mini golf game called Mini Gold, created by @heyarviind. The game is simple to play, aiming to complete the holes with a few strokes. It's a casual, easy-to-learn game with a clean interface.

(paper-golf.netlify.app)

Game minigolf

Infinite World Generation: An Improved Wave Function Collapse Algorithm

2025-01-18

This article details a fast, deterministic, parallelizable, and reliable method for generating infinite cities using an improved Wave Function Collapse (WFC) algorithm. The author addresses previous limitations such as non-determinism, memory leaks, and single-threadedness. The new approach generates infinite worlds by pre-generating tiled maps and replacing blocks at runtime, adapting to arbitrary heightmaps, resulting in stunning visuals.

(marian42.de)

Game Wave Function Collapse Infinite World Generation

Category: Game