Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

MLB to Implement Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System in 2026

2025-09-24

Major League Baseball (MLB) will introduce an automated ball-strike challenge system in the 2026 season. Following years of testing in the minor leagues, the system will allow each team two challenges per game. Hitters, pitchers, and catchers can initiate challenges by tapping their head. Successful challenges, shown on stadium videoboards, allow teams to retain their challenge. The technology is similar to tennis' line-calling system, using 12 cameras to track the ball. While not unanimously supported, the system passed with the backing of MLB owners who hold a majority on the committee. The aim is to reduce disputes and ejections related to ball-strike calls while maintaining the umpire's role.

(www.espn.com)

Game robot umpire

Baldur's Gate 3 Native Steam Deck Build: Save & Mod Migration Guide

2025-09-24

The Baldur's Gate 3 update on Steam Deck brings a native version, improving performance. However, save game and mod locations change. Steam Cloud saves will automatically migrate; otherwise, manually copy saves to `/home/deck/.local/share/Larian Studios/Baldur's Gate 3/PlayerProfiles/Public`. Mod migration depends on your Larian account and mod.io connection; manually copy mods if not connected.

(larian.com)

Game Native Build

Analyzing Lone Wolf Gamebooks with Graph Theory

2025-09-23

The author encoded the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks as directed graph networks and used graph theory algorithms to analyze their properties. The Dawn of the Darklords was excluded from the analysis as it wasn't officially released as a gamebook. The analysis covered 28 books across four series, calculating the shortest path to the ending, the shortest path to death, the path with the most fights, and other statistics for each series. Results showed a decrease in difficulty and an increase in adventure and story focus over time. Technical details like handling disconnected graphs and cycle removal were also discussed.

(notes.atomutek.org)

Game Lone Wolf

Dissecting Pokémon Emerald: A Commentary on its Decompiled Source Code

2025-09-22

This book, "The Emerald Source Code Commentary," meticulously examines the source code of Pokémon Emerald, drawing inspiration from "A Commentary on the Sixth Edition Unix Operating System." Leveraging the decompilation work of PRET, it offers a unique perspective on the game's structure and implementation. While the original source code is unauthorized, the project created a new, decompiled codebase that perfectly recompiles to the official English ROM. This detailed analysis provides invaluable insights into the development of a classic game.

(0xabad1dea.github.io)

Game

Run 35-Year-Old SGI Demos in Your Browser

2025-09-22

This project brings classic demos from 35-year-old SGI workstations to modern browsers. The original C/C++ source code is compiled to WebAssembly using Emscripten and SDL2, with rendering handled by an IRIS GL software rasterizer from the Alice 4 project. Currently, Flight, Newave, and Arena demos are supported, with plans to add more, along with features like a virtual mouse and keyboard, popup menus, and more, for a truly authentic SGI experience.

(github.com)

Game

SimCity 2000: A Retro-Futuristic City Builder Still Holds Charm

2025-09-21

This article revisits the classic city-building simulation game, SimCity 2000. The author contrasts it with the original SimCity, highlighting SimCity 2000's vibrant SVGA colors, angular hills, flowing waterfalls, and isometric skyscrapers as embodying a 'futuristic' feel for its time. While the UI now feels somewhat outdated, the charm of its pixel art buildings and the joy of city building persist, offering players a sense of responsibility and childlike wonder. The article concludes with a recommendation for the DOSBox-powered Special Edition available on GOG for $5.99.

(arstechnica.com)

Game City Builder

Insanely Difficult Color Puzzle Game

2025-09-21

This puzzle game, called 'Color Game', boasts an insane difficulty level. Players must click on numbers to change the color of cells, aiming to have at least one green cell in each row. The game cleverly uses positive and negative numbers and incorporates a warning system that highlights rows at risk. The hardest difficulty, however, is truly punishing, warning the player of entirely red rows, testing strategy and patience to the limit.

(www.cril.univ-artois.fr)

Game color game

Steam to Drop Support for 32-bit Windows in 2026

2025-09-19

Valve announced that Steam will end support for 32-bit versions of Windows on January 1st, 2026. While only 0.01% of Steam users remain on 32-bit Windows, the move signals the end of an era for PC gaming. Valve cites incompatibility issues with drivers and libraries as the reason for dropping support. They urge users to upgrade to 64-bit Windows to continue receiving security updates and technical assistance.

(www.tomshardware.com)

Game 32-bit

Roblox Grow A Garden Optimizer: The GAG Calculator

2025-09-19

The Grow A Garden Calculator (GAG Calculator) is a powerful tool for maximizing profits in Roblox's Grow A Garden. It analyzes crop mutations, multipliers, and market trends to help players make informed trading decisions. Boasting a database of 100+ crops with details on rare mutations and multipliers up to 150x, the GAG Calculator also accounts for growth mutations, temperature, and other environmental factors. Real-time market data ensures players optimize their garden strategy for maximum profit.

(grow-a-garden-calculator.xyz)

Game

Play Minecraft Without Minecraft: A Guide to Open-Source Alternatives

2025-09-19

Tired of the official Minecraft? This guide shows you how to play a Minecraft-like experience without running any Mojang code. Using Cuberite server (C++), ViaProxy protocol translator (Java), and Minosoft client (Kotlin), you can set up a 1.12.2 compatible Minecraft server and client on your own machine. The guide details the installation and configuration of each software, including troubleshooting tips, for a unique Minecraft experience.

(lenowo.org)

Game

Roblox's Lua Engine Evolution

2025-09-18

Since 2006, Roblox has used Lua 5.1 for game scripting. However, growing game complexity, team size, and internal codebase (over 1M lines of code by 2020) necessitated significant improvements to Lua's implementation and the language itself. These improvements focused on performance, ease of use, tooling, and the gradual introduction of a type system.

(luau.org)

Game

Crafting Immersive Text Adventures

2025-09-18

Welcome to the world of text adventures! This channel explores the creation of interactive stories where player choices shape the narrative. Whether you're a developer, a retro gaming enthusiast, or simply curious, join the journey. Learn tips and tricks, follow updates on the latest text games, and discover how to craft compelling worlds and mysteries, one line of code at a time. Get ready to build your own text adventure!

(the-ventureweaver.itch.io)

Game

Procedural Generation of Realistic Terrain: Multi-scale Noise and Mountain Modeling

2025-09-17

This post, part III of a procedural terrain generation series, builds upon the paint map and mountain ridge system established in previous parts. It details the addition of multi-scale noise layers and distance-based mountain peaks, culminating in a final terrain elevation map through blending techniques. The author explains using Simplex noise to add detail at varying frequencies, and coastal noise enhancement to control coastline variation. A distance field is calculated using Delaunay triangulation and a breadth-first search (BFS) algorithm for more natural mountain shapes. Finally, the different terrain components are blended to create a realistic result.

(brashandplucky.com)

Game terrain

DOOM Engine Overflow Experiment: Game Crashes After Two and a Half Years

2025-09-17

Two and a half years ago, the author started an experiment to predict when a DOOM game would crash due to a variable overflow in the engine. He ran DOOM on a PDA powered by a DIY UPS, leaving it running continuously. After two and a half years, the game crashed exactly as predicted, demonstrating a fascinating long-term experiment and meticulous observation.

(lenowo.org)

Game software experiment

A Scavenging Trip: Low-Spec Planet Exploration Game Built with Rust

2025-09-17

A Scavenging Trip is a short, challenging simulation game where you explore an unknown planet, collect samples, and escape in time. Three missions are included, each with three difficulty levels. A speedrun takes 10-15 minutes, while a first playthrough might take 1-2 hours, especially on the hardest difficulty. There's no save feature; missions are unlocked and played without progression. Controls are minimal and rebindable (default WASDQE), with no mouse input needed. System requirements are incredibly low; any modern browser and a Pentium M processor or better will suffice. The game utilizes a custom software renderer and engine written in Rust, with the CPU handling all graphics calculations and the GPU only displaying the final image.

(totenarctanz.itch.io)

Game

Unearthing the Legacy of Amiga and LucasArts Artist Avril Harrison

2025-09-16

This article unearths the story of Avril Harrison, a largely forgotten artist crucial to the Amiga and LucasArts scenes. Initially resistant to computers, she became a key figure at Electronic Arts and Lucasfilm Games, creating iconic artwork for games like *Prince of Persia* and *The Secret of Monkey Island*. Known for her masterful computer art, especially *Tutankhamun's Mask*, she remained largely unacknowledged until recently, with scattered information piecing together her remarkable life. A 2025 update sadly confirmed her passing in 2019 at the age of 61.

(scanlineartifacts.co.uk)

Game

Hollow Knight: Silksong's $20 Price Tag Sparks Controversy in Indie Dev World

2025-09-14

Hollow Knight: Silksong's surprisingly low price of $19.99 has been a massive success, but it's also stirred up controversy within the indie game development community. While players rejoice at the value, many developers worry it will skew player expectations, making it harder to price their own games. Team Cherry's ability to set such a low price is attributed to their established IP and the success of the previous game. Other indie devs lack this luxury, facing challenges in justifying similar prices for their shorter, less-hyped titles. However, this low price point could have a positive ripple effect, potentially influencing the pricing strategy of major titles like GTA 6, encouraging a lower price point to increase overall sales.

(screenrant.com)

Game hollow knight

Sega's Illegal Raid: The Bizarre Case of the Seized Game Prototypes

2025-09-12

A non-profit game preservation museum attempted to save a collection of valuable undumped GBA, DS, DSi, and 3DS games, including prototypes of titles like Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. However, the seller was raided by British police, and the games were seized with Sega's involvement. The seller claims to have legally purchased the games and provides evidence, but Sega refuses to respond, and even the police warrant is questionable. This incident raises questions about the UK's warrant system and highlights the challenges of game preservation.

(www.timeextension.com)

Game police raid

HBO Max Price Hike and Password Sharing Crackdown Imminent

2025-09-12

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav believes HBO Max's high-quality content justifies a price increase, stating the current pricing is too low. HBO Max currently ranges from $9.99 to $20.99 per month, comparable to competitors. Zaslav also promised a more aggressive crackdown on password sharing starting in September.

(www.theverge.com)

Game

Farting MacBook: Introducing FartScrollLid

2025-09-12

Meet FartScrollLid, a hilarious macOS app that transforms your MacBook's lid into a fart machine! Leveraging the built-in lid angle sensor, it plays dynamic fart sounds whose pitch and volume change based on how quickly and how far you open or close the lid. Open-source and easy to build, it's a fun project showcasing creative use of MacBook sensors. Get ready for some laughs!

(github.com)

Game

PICO-8 Palette and Pixel Mapping Algorithm

2025-09-11

This code defines the 16-color palette of the PICO-8 game console and provides several color distance calculation methods (Euclidean distance, weighted RGB distance, HyAB distance and its variants), along with a function that maps image pixels to the closest palette color. It leverages NumPy for efficient color data handling and allows users to customize the distance function for different color matching strategies. This is highly useful for pixel art game development and image color quantization.

(30fps.net)

Game

Doomscrolling: The Game

2025-09-11

A non-programmer used AI (GPT-5) to build a browser-based game, 'Doomscrolling,' in just two hours. The game is played solely by scrolling up and down, dodging monsters, collecting power-ups, and encountering news headlines from the New York Times RSS feed. The author cleverly leveraged AI to design game assets like background textures, monsters, and news plaques, using interactive 'lab' pages to fine-tune visuals. The result is a surprisingly fun and unique gaming experience.

(ironicsans.ghost.io)

Game creative game

DOOMQL: A Multiplayer DOOM Clone Written Entirely in SQL

2025-09-10

A developer built DOOMQL, a multiplayer DOOM-like shooter, entirely in SQL using the CedarDB database. The game stores all game data—maps, players, enemies—in the database, leveraging SQL views for raycasting and sprite projection. A simple shell script drives the game loop. Surprisingly, this approach works remarkably well, achieving a smooth 30 FPS and effortless multiplayer functionality thanks to the database's inherent concurrency handling. While maintenance and debugging might be challenging, the experiment showcases SQL's potential in game development and CedarDB's impressive performance.

(cedardb.com)

Game

Hacking GameCube Memory: Replacing Animal Crossing Dialogue with a Live LLM

2025-09-10

This project details how the author successfully integrated a large language model (LLM) into the 2001 GameCube game Animal Crossing without modifying the game's code. By leveraging shared memory and reverse engineering techniques, the author bypassed the lack of internet connectivity and created a real-time AI dialogue system. Challenges included finding stable memory addresses, decoding the game's internal text encoding, and architecting the AI pipeline (a 'Writer' and 'Director' LLM). The result? Villagers now discuss current events and even develop their own political opinions, transforming the classic game experience.

(joshfonseca.com)

Game

Preservation Project Completes: All 54 iPod Clickwheel Games Saved

2025-09-09

A community project dedicated to preserving classic iPod clickwheel games has finally reached its goal after over a year of effort. By coordinating multiple iPod users' iTunes accounts, the project overcame Apple's FairPlay DRM and successfully collected and preserved all 54 official games. The project faced numerous technical challenges and setbacks, but the final piece, Real Soccer 2009, was eventually provided by a user, completing the archive.

(arstechnica.com)

Game Game Preservation Digital Legacy

Silksong: A Masochist's Delight

2025-09-09

Silksong's brutal difficulty pushes the definition of 'game,' yet its buttery-smooth movement and intensely challenging boss fights create an addictive experience. The author recounts their own struggles and triumphs, highlighting the tangible sense of progress and the unparalleled satisfaction of overcoming seemingly impossible odds. While its difficulty may deter many, it's precisely this that defines its appeal: Silksong is a love letter to perfectionists who thrive on challenge and embrace the pain.

(theahura.substack.com)

Game Metroidvania High Difficulty

Unreleased Indiana Jones C64 Prototype Surfaces!

2025-09-08

Games That Weren't has unearthed a playable prototype of a cancelled Commodore 64 version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This unofficial conversion, while ultimately unreleased, showcased a promising adaptation of the Lucasfilm Games classic for the C64.

(www.gamesthatwerent.com)

Game Indiana Jones Game Prototype

Veena Chromatic Tuner: Precise Tuning for Musicians

2025-09-08

Veena Chromatic Tuner is a powerful tuning app for musicians needing precise control across various musical traditions. It features Equal Temperament and Just Intonation tuning, a unique oscilloscope-like waveform display for visual feedback, and support for multiple note naming systems (including Indian classical). Users can customize the reference pitch, transpose notes, and create custom tuning profiles. A dedicated Veena instrument mode assists in fretting and tuning, making it ideal for instrument makers and players alike. While ad-supported and compatibility may vary, it offers a versatile solution for precise tuning.

(play.google.com)

Game tuning app music software instrument tuning

Argentina's 80s Computing Scene and the Birth of Truco

2025-09-08

This article chronicles the rise and fall of Argentina's computing industry in the 1980s and the creation of its first commercial game, Truco. Starting with the early computer project 'Clementina' led by Manuel Sadosky, Argentina's computing journey faced political turmoil and economic policy shifts. Despite a native computer, the MS101, it couldn't compete with foreign imports after import restrictions eased. The mid-80s saw a boom in home computing with the rise of clones (like ZX81 and Commodore 64 clones) and government support. However, the game market was dominated by pirated titles. Against this backdrop, Enrique and Ariel Arbiser developed Argentina's first commercial game, Truco, a computer game based on a popular Argentinian card game, which was released on TI-99/4A and DOS platforms, becoming a milestone in Argentinian gaming history.

(zeitgame.net)

Game Argentinian gaming history 80s computing Truco game

The Demise of the Demo Scene: A Graceful Exit

2025-09-07

The demo scene, recently recognized as a UNESCO Living Cultural Heritage in Sweden, is slowly fading away. This isn't due to a lack of appeal, but rather its unique cultural attributes resisting commodification and replication. Born in the early days of affordable home computers in the 80s and 90s, it thrived on limited resources and communication, fostering a community of passionate programmers and creative individuals. The internet and powerful modern computers have since opened up new creative avenues, offering younger generations a plethora of alternatives. The author argues that the scene's decline is natural, and its essence lies not in perpetuation, but in the joy of creation and preserving its unique charm.

(www.datagubbe.se)

Game demo scene subculture

Category: Game