gaming

patent-document-showcases-the-cloud-only-streaming-xbox-console-that-never-was

Patent document showcases the cloud-only streaming Xbox console that never was

cloud gaming, gaming, keystone, microsoft, Tech, xbox, xbox cloud gaming, xbox series s / /

keystone revealed —

Microsoft couldn’t get the price of its streaming Xbox low enough to release it.

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  • The streaming-only Xbox would have looked like a smaller, squarer relative of the Series S.

    Microsoft

  • The console had cutouts on the bottom and back, presumably for air cooling.

    Microsoft

  • Front-mounted Xbox button and USB port, much like the Series S.

    Microsoft

  • Rear-mounted Ethernet, HDMI, and power. The console would likely have worked over Wi-Fi, too, but wired Ethernet does help with latency and consistency when streaming games.

    Microsoft

  • Controller sync button on the side.

    Microsoft

  • There was a logo and a Series S-ish circle on the top of the Keystone Xbox, but there are no cutouts depicted, so this may have been a stylistic choice rather than a place for the console to vent hot air.

    Microsoft

Microsoft’s mid-generation plans for the Xbox Series S and X consoles looked a whole lot different a couple of years ago than it does now. A leaked slide deck from the FTC v. Microsoft case last year outlined detailed plans for a spruced up Series S, an overhauled Series X, and even a redesigned controller. Another part of that roadmap included a streaming-only version of the Xbox, codenamed Keystone, that was designed to connect to Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming servers rather than rendering games locally.

Microsoft has talked openly about this version of the Xbox before. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer told The Verge that the Keystone console was designed and fully functional, but that it wasn’t launched because Microsoft had a hard time getting the price down low enough that it made sense next to the $299 Series S (which already occasionally goes on sale in the $200 to $250 range).

We’ve already seen glimpses of Keystone—once on Spencer’s shelf, and again in the FTC v. Microsoft documents. Both of those depictions were partial, or seen from a distance. But a new design patent document (PDF) unearthed by Windows Central shows even more detailed renderings of what the cloud Xbox would have looked like.

Series S meets Apple TV

Keystone’s styling was strongly reminiscent of the disc-drive-less Series S, with the same boxy white design and front-mounted Xbox button and USB port. There’s also a similar circular cutout on top, though it may not be an air vent as it is in the Series S—all of the holes depicted in the patent are on the back and bottom, and a streaming box certainly wouldn’t have needed the same cooling capacity as the AMD-designed CPU and GPU in the Series S.

The console also would have been square-shaped and considerably smaller than a Series S—not quite as small as a dedicated video-streaming box like an Apple TV or Roku Ultra, but not too far off either (the patent document doesn’t list dimensions, but we’ve done a rough size comparison using the HDMI and Ethernet ports on the Keystone box and an Apple TV 4K). The console’s controller sync button would have been mounted on its side, rather than in front, as it is on the Series S.

The cloud Xbox compared to a current-generation Apple TV 4K, with sizes roughly normalized based on the sizes of the HDMI and Ethernet ports. The Xbox console would have been a bit larger, but not dramatically so.

Enlarge / The cloud Xbox compared to a current-generation Apple TV 4K, with sizes roughly normalized based on the sizes of the HDMI and Ethernet ports. The Xbox console would have been a bit larger, but not dramatically so.

Apple/Microsoft/Andrew Cunningham

In the alternate reality of the FTC v. Microsoft slide deck, all of these new consoles and the new controller would have been announced or launched by now. But as Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said shortly after those documents leaked, the company’s plans have changed substantially in the interim. A disc-less version of the Series X is coming, but it looks exactly like the current version of the console without a disc drive; Microsoft is also pursuing a strategy where it takes more of its internally developed games multi-platform, rather than restricting them to the Xbox and to Windows PCs. These moves are at least partially in response to sliding revenue from Microsoft’s console business, which has seen its revenue decline by double digits year over year for the last couple of years.

Neither Spencer nor Microsoft has ever said never about the Keystone console, leaving the door open to an eventual release if and when the price of manufacturing the console comes down. In the meantime, the streaming-only Xbox lives on as an app for newer Samsung smart TVs.

Listing image by Microsoft

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apple-rejects-pc-emulators-on-the-ios-app-store

Apple rejects PC emulators on the iOS App Store

Apple, DOS, Emulation, gaming, iOS / /

I need my portable Number Munchers fix —

New iOS emulation rules only apply to “retro game consoles,” not retro computers.

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Don't get your hopes up—this iOS version of <em>Doom</em> was <a href=ported from open source code, not run via a classic PC emulator.” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/doomios-800×703.jpg”>

Enlarge / Don’t get your hopes up—this iOS version of Doom was ported from open source code, not run via a classic PC emulator.

Earlier this year, Apple started officially allowing “retro game emulators” on the iOS App Store without the need for cumbersome jailbreaking or sideloading. But if you want to emulate retro PC games on your iOS device, you are apparently still out of luck.

In a recent blog update, iDOS developer Chaoji Li said that the latest version of the DOSBox-based MS-DOS emulator was finally rejected from the iOS App Store this month after a lengthy, two-month review process:

They have decided that iDOS is not a retro game console, so the new rule is not applicable. They suggested I make changes and resubmit for review, but when I asked what changes I should make to be compliant, they had no idea, nor when I asked what a retro game console is. It’s still the same old unreasonable answer along the line of “we know it when we see it.”

The developer of iOS Virtual Machine app UTM told a similar tale of App Store rejection on social media. The reported two-month review process for the UTM app ended with “the App Store review board determin[ing] that ‘PC is not a console’ regardless of the fact that there are retro Windows/DOS games fo[r] the PC that UTM SE can be useful in running,” the developer said.

The April revision of Rule 4.7 in Apple’s App Review Guidelines is very specifically worded so that “retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games [emphasis added].” Emulating a more generalized PC operating system falls outside the letter of this regulation, even for users interested in emulating retro PC games using these apps.

Since that narrow exception doesn’t apply to classic PC emulators, they end up falling afoul of Apple’s Rule 2.5.2, which states that iOS Apps may not “download, install, or execute code which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app, including other apps.” That rule also applies to third-party iOS App Stores that were recently allowed under new European Union rules, meaning even so-called “alternative app marketplaces” don’t offer a useful alternative in this case.

What’s the difference?

While the specific language of Apple’s App Review Guidelines is clear enough, the reasoning behind the distinction here is a bit more mystifying. Why does Apple treat the idea of a DOSBox-style emulator running an ancient copy of Microsoft Excel differently than the idea of Delta running a copy of NES Tetris on the same device? Is loading the Windows 95 Version of KidPix Studio Deluxe on your iPhone really all that different from playing an emulated copy of Mario Paint on that same iPhone?

Mario Paint on iOS, why would I buy Photoshop?” height=”498″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/mariopaint-640×498.jpg” width=”640″>

Enlarge / Now that I can emulate Mario Paint on iOS, why would I buy Photoshop?

A virtual machine or emulator running a modern PC operating system under iOS could theoretically offer some generalized competition for the apps Apple offers in its official App Store. But surely there’s a limit to how much that applies when we’re talking about emulating older computing environments and defunct operating systems. Just as Apple’s iOS game emulation rules only apply to “retro” game consoles, a rule for PC emulation could easily be limited to “retro” operating systems (say, those that are no longer officially supported by their original developers, as a rule of thumb).

Alas, iOS users and App makers are currently stuck abiding by this distinction without a difference when it comes to PC game emulation on iOS. Those looking for a workaround could potentially use an iOS Remote Desktop App to access games running on a physical desktop PC they actually own. The Internet Archive’s collection of thousands of MS-DOS games will also run in an iOS web browser, though you may have to struggle a bit to get controls and sound working correctly.

Apple rejects PC emulators on the iOS App Store Read More »

the-math-on-unplayed-steam-“shame”-is-way-off—and-no-cause-for-guilt

The math on unplayed Steam “shame” is way off—and no cause for guilt

gaming, PC Gaming, steam, steam backlog, steam gauge, steam sale, Unplayed games / /

Steam Backlog Simulator 2024 —

It’s fun to speculate, but sales and library quirks make it impossible to know.

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Person holding a Steam Deck and playing PowerWash Simulator

Enlarge / Blast away all the guilt you want in PowerWash Simulator, but there’s no need to feel dirty in the real world about your backlog.

Getty Images

Gaming news site PCGamesN has a web tool, SteamIDFinder, that can do a neat trick. If you buy PC games on Steam and have your user profile set to make your gaming details public, you can enter your numeric user ID into it and see a bunch of stats. One set of stats is dedicated to the total value of the games listed as unplayed; you can share this page as an image linking to your “Pile of Shame,” which includes the total “Value” of your Steam collection and unplayed games.

Example findings from SteamIDFinder, from someone who likely has hundreds of games from Humble Bundles and other deals in their library.

Example findings from SteamIDFinder, from someone who likely has hundreds of games from Humble Bundles and other deals in their library.

SteamIDFinder

Using data from what it claims are the roughly 10 percent of 73 million Steam accounts in its database set to Public, PCGamesN extrapolates $1.9 billion in unplayed games, multiplies it by 10, and casually suggests that there are $19 billion in unplayed games hanging around. That is “more than the gross national product of Nicaragua, Niger, Chad, or Mauritius,” the site notes.

That is a very loose “$19 billion”

“Multiply by 10” is already a pretty soft science, but the numbers are worth digging into further. For starters, SteamIDFinder is using the current sale price of every game in your unplayed library, as confirmed by looking at a half-dozen “Pile of Shame” profiles. An informal poll of Ars Technica co-workers and friends with notable Steam libraries suggests that games purchased at full price make up a tiny fraction of the games in our backlogs. Games acquired through package deals, like the Humble Bundle, or during one of Steam’s annual or one-time sales, are a big part of most people’s Steam catalogs, I’d reckon.

  • Step 1 to seeing your unplayed collection: Click the three-vertical-bar icon next to your Steam library to filter, choose “Games,” then “Group by Collection” …

    Andrew Cunningham

  • … And pick “Unplayed” as a Play State filter.

    Andrew Cunningham

Then there’s what counts as “Unplayed.” Clicking on the filtering tool next to my Steam library and choosing “Unplayed” suggests that I have 54 titles out of 173 total that I have never cracked open. My own manual count of my library is closer to 45. Steam and I disagree on whether I’ve launched and played Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition (I definitely did and was definitely overwhelmed), Mountain, and SteamWorld Dig. And Steam is definitely not counting games that you buy through Steam, mod in some way, and then launch directly through a Windows executable. I’m certain I’ve played some TIE Fighter: Total Conversion, just not through Valve’s channels. One Ars editor played Half-Life 2 multiple times from 2004–2007, but Steam says they’ve never played it, because it didn’t start counting gameplay hours until March 2009.

Even if they’re not dedicated tools, Steam libraries sometimes end up with little bits of game that you didn’t ask for and might never play, like Half-Life Deathmatch: Source. I have quite a few Star Wars games that I never intend to launch, because they were part of a bundle that got me Jedi Knight and Jedi Outcast for cheaper than either game cost on its own.

What “shame” really looks like

Curious as to what people’s backlogs look like, I asked friends and co-workers to run their own numbers after checking them for errors and oddities. Here’s the Ars list:

  • Kevin Purdy: 173 games, 45 unplayed (26 percent)
  • Lee Hutchinson: 361 games, 109 unplayed (30 percent)
  • Benj Edwards: 404 games, 148 unplayed (36.6 percent)
  • Andrew Cunningham: 172 games, 79 unplayed (46 percent)

Friends who did a check ended up at 25 percent, 40 percent, and 52 percent. So nobody I could easily poll had fewer than 25 percent of their games unplayed, and those with higher numbers tended to have bought into bundles, sales, add-ons, and other entry generators. And nobody thought their dollar value total made any sense at all, given the full-price math.

Back in 2014, Kyle Orland went deep on Steam statistics. Among games released since Steam started tracking hour counts in March 2009, 26 percent had never been played at that point, while another 19 percent had only been played for an hour or less. That’s roughly 45 percent of games having been played for an essentially token amount of time.

There is a much larger point to argue here, too: You do not have to feel “shame” about giving too much money to people making games, especially smaller games, if you do not want to. This applies to even broader understandings of “Unplayed,” like checking out an intro level or two. Sometimes playing a game for a little bit and deciding it’s not something you want to put dozens more hours into is worth it, whether or not you go for the refund.

If you’ve looked up your own stats and feel surprised, you can keep your unplayed games as a dedicated collection in Steam, and it might inspire you to check out the most intriguing left-behinds. Or, like me, filter that list further by the games that are Steam Deck Verified and bring them on your next trip.

You can usually make additional money more easily than additional life. Nobody is going to inherit your Steam library (probably), so it’s not really worth anything anyway. Play what interests you when you have the time, and if your unplayed count helps you stave off your worst sale impulse buys or rediscover lost gems, so be it. There are neat tricks, but there is no real math—and no real shame.

The math on unplayed Steam “shame” is way off—and no cause for guilt Read More »

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Decades later, John Romero looks back at the birth of the first-person shooter

Doom, Features, gaming, id, id Software, john romero, romero, Wolfenstein, wolfenstein 3d / /

Daikatana didn’t come up —

Id Software co-founder talks to Ars about everything from Catacomb 3-D to “boomer shooters.”

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Decades later, John Romero looks back at the birth of the first-person shooter

John Romero remembers the moment he realized what the future of gaming would look like.

In late 1991, Romero and his colleagues at id Software had just released Catacomb 3-D, a crude-looking, EGA-colored first-person shooter that was nonetheless revolutionary compared to other first-person games of the time. “When we started making our 3D games, the only 3D games out there were nothing like ours,” Romero told Ars in a recent interview. “They were lockstep, going through a maze, do a 90-degree turn, that kind of thing.”

Despite Catacomb 3-D‘s technological advances in first-person perspective, though, Romero remembers the team at id followed its release by going to work on the next entry in the long-running Commander Keen series of 2D platform games. But as that process moved forward, Romero told Ars that something didn’t feel right.

Catacombs 3-D is less widely remembered than its successor, Wolfenstein 3D.

“Within two weeks, [I was up] at one in the morning and I’m just like, ‘Guys we need to not make this game [Keen],'” he said. “‘This is not the future. The future is getting better at what we just did with Catacomb.’ … And everyone was immediately was like, ‘Yeah, you know, you’re right. That is the new thing, and we haven’t seen it, and we can do it, so why aren’t we doing it?'”

The team started working on Wolfenstein 3D that very night, Romero said. And the rest is history.

Going for speed

What set Catacomb 3-D and its successors apart from other first-person gaming experiments of the time, Romero said, “was our speed—the speed of the game was critical to us having that massive differentiation. Everyone else was trying to do a world that was proper 3D—six degrees of freedom or representation that was really detailed. And for us, the way that we were going to go was a simple rendering at a high speed with good gameplay. Those were our pillars, and we stuck with them, and that’s what really differentiated them from everyone else.”

That focus on speed extended to id’s development process, which Romero said was unrecognizable compared to even low-budget indie games of today. The team didn’t bother writing out design documents laying out crucial ideas beforehand, for instance, because Romero said “the design doc was next to us; it was the creative director… The games weren’t that big back then, so it was easy for us to say, ‘this is what we’re making’ and ‘things are going to be like this.’ And then we all just work on our own thing.”

John Carmack (left) and John Romero (second from right) pose with their id Software colleagues in the early '90s.

Enlarge / John Carmack (left) and John Romero (second from right) pose with their id Software colleagues in the early ’90s.

The early id designers didn’t even use basic development tools like version control systems, Romero said. Instead, development was highly compartmentalized between different developers; “the files that I’m going to work on, he doesn’t touch, and I don’t touch his files,” Romero remembered of programming games alongside John Carmack. “I only put the files on my transfer floppy disk that he needs, and it’s OK for him to copy everything off of there and overwrite what he has because it’s only my files, and vice versa. If for some reason the hard drive crashed, we could rebuild the source from anyone’s copies of what they’ve got.”

Decades later, John Romero looks back at the birth of the first-person shooter Read More »

apple-intelligence-and-other-features-won’t-launch-in-the-eu-this-year

Apple Intelligence and other features won’t launch in the EU this year

AI, Apple, apple intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, dma, EU, European Commission, European Union, gaming, generative ai, ios 18, macos sequoia, privacy, Tech / /

DMA —

iPhone Mirroring and SharePlay screen sharing will also skip the EU for now.

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A photo of a hand holding an iPhone running the Image Playground experience in iOS 18

Enlarge / Features like Image Playground won’t arrive in Europe at the same time as other regions.

Apple

Three major features in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia will not be available to European users this fall, Apple says. They include iPhone screen mirroring on the Mac, SharePlay screen sharing, and the entire Apple Intelligence suite of generative AI features.

In a statement sent to Financial Times, The Verge, and others, Apple says this decision is related to the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Here’s the full statement, which was attributed to Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz:

Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly motivated to make these technologies accessible to all users. However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.

Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security. We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.

It is unclear from Apple’s statement precisely which aspects of the DMA may have led to this decision. It could be that Apple is concerned that it would be required to give competitors like Microsoft or Google access to user data collected for Apple Intelligence features and beyond, but we’re not sure.

This is not the first recent and major divergence between functionality and features for Apple devices in the EU versus other regions. Because of EU regulations, Apple opened up iOS to third-party app stores in Europe, but not in other regions. However, critics argued its compliance with that requirement was lukewarm at best, as it came with a set of restrictions and changes to how app developers could monetize their apps on the platform should they use those other storefronts.

While Apple says in the statement it’s open to finding a solution, no timeline is given. All we know is that the features won’t be available on devices in the EU this year. They’re expected to launch in other regions in the fall.

Apple Intelligence and other features won’t launch in the EU this year Read More »

why-interplay’s-original-fallout-3-was-canceled-20+-years-ago

Why Interplay’s original Fallout 3 was canceled 20+ years ago

Fallout 3, gaming, Interplay, project van buren / /

The path untaken —

OG Fallout producer says “Project Van Buren” ran out of time and money.

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What could have been.

Enlarge / What could have been.

PC gamers of a certain vintage will remember tales of Project Van Buren, a title that early ’00s Interplay intended as the sequel to 1998’s hit Fallout 2. Now, original Fallout producer Timothy Cain is sharing some behind-the-scenes details about how he contributed to the project’s cancellation during a particularly difficult time for publisher Interplay.

Cain famously left Interplay during Fallout 2‘s development in the late ’90s to help form short-lived RPG house Troika Games. After his departure, though, he was still in touch with some people from his former employer, including an unnamed Interplay vice president looking for some outside opinions on the troubled Van Buren project.

“Would you mind coming over and playing one of my game prototypes?” Cain recalls this vice president asking him sometime in mid-2003. “We’re making a Fallout game and I’m going to have to cancel it. I don’t think they can get it done… but if you could come over and look at it and give me an estimate, there’s a chance I wouldn’t cancel it.”

Cain discusses his memories of testing “Project Van Buren.”

Cain recalls walking “across the street” from Troika to the Interplay offices, motivated to help because, as he remembers it, “if you don’t do it, bad things will happen to other people.” There, he got to see the latest build of Project Van Buren, running on the 3D Jefferson Engine that was intended to replace the sprite-based isometric view of the first two Fallout games. Cain said the version he played was similar or identical to a tech demo obtained by fan site No Mutants Allowed in 2007 and featured in a recent YouTube documentary about the failed project.

After playing for about two hours and talking to the team behind the project, Cain said the VP asked him directly how long the demo needed to become a shippable game. The answer Cain reportedly gave—18 months of standard development for “a really good game” or 12 months of “death march” crunch time for an unbalanced, buggy mess—was too long for the financially strapped publisher to devote to funding the project.

“He could not afford a development period of more than six months,” Cain said. “To me, that time frame was out of the question… He thought it couldn’t be done in six months; I just confirmed that.”

Show me the money

Looking back today, Cain said it’s hard to pinpoint a single “villain” responsible for Van Buren’s failure. Even reusing the engine from the first Fallout game—as the Fallout 2 team did for that title’s quick 12-month development process—wouldn’t have necessarily helped, Cain said. “Would that engine have been acceptable five years later [after Fallout 2]?” he asked rhetorically. “Had anyone really looked at it? I started the engine in 1994… it’s creaky.”

Real “Van Buren”-heads will enjoy this in-depth look at the game’s development, including details of Interplay’s troubled financial situation in the early ’00s.

In the end, Van Buren’s cancellation (and that of a planned Interplay Fallout MMO years later) simply “comes down to money,” Cain said. “I do not believe that [with] the money they had left, the game in the state it was in, and the people who were working on it could have completed it within six months,” he said. “And [if they did], I don’t think it would have been a game you would have liked playing.”

Luckily, the all-but-name shuttering of Interplay in the years after Van Buren’s cancellation wouldn’t spell the end of the Fallout series. Bethesda acquired the license in 2007, leading to a completely reimagined Fallout 3 that has become the cornerstone of a fan-favorite franchise many years later. But for those still wondering what Interplay’s original “Fallout 3” could have been, a group of fans is trying to rebuild the Project Van Buren demo from the ground up for modern audiences.

Why Interplay’s original Fallout 3 was canceled 20+ years ago Read More »

from-infocom-to-80-days:-an-oral-history-of-text-games-and-interactive-fiction

From Infocom to 80 Days: An oral history of text games and interactive fiction

adventure, colossal cave adventure, culture, Features, gaming, if, Infocom, Ink, Inkle Studios, interactive fiction, MUDs, Narrascope, Oral history, text games, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Twine, zork / /
Zork running on an Amiga at the Computerspielemuseum in Berlin, Germany.

Enlarge / Zork running on an Amiga at the Computerspielemuseum in Berlin, Germany.

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.

That simple sentence first appeared on a PDP-10 mainframe in the 1970s, and the words marked the beginning of what we now know as interactive fiction.

From the bare-bones text adventures of the 1980s to the heartfelt hypertext works of Twine creators, interactive fiction is an art form that continues to inspire a loyal audience. The community for interactive fiction, or IF, attracts readers and players alongside developers and creators. It champions an open source ethos and a punk-like individuality.

But whatever its production value or artistic merit, at heart, interactive fiction is simply words on a screen. In this time of AAA video games, prestige television, and contemporary novels and poetry, how does interactive fiction continue to endure?

To understand the history of IF, the best place to turn for insight is the authors themselves. Not just the authors of notable text games—although many of the people I interviewed for this article do have that claim to fame—but the authors of the communities and the tools that have kept the torch burning. Here’s what they had to say about IF and its legacy.

Examine roots: Adventure and Infocom

The interactive fiction story began in the 1970s. The first widely played game in the genre was Colossal Cave Adventure, also known simply as Adventure. The text game was made by Will Crowther in 1976, based on his experiences spelunking in Kentucky’s aptly named Mammoth Cave. Descriptions of the different spaces would appear on the terminal, then players would type in two-word commands—a verb followed by a noun—to solve puzzles and navigate the sprawling in-game caverns.

During the 1970s, getting the chance to interact with a computer was a rare and special thing for most people.

“My father’s office had an open house in about 1978,” IF author and tool creator Andrew Plotkin recalled. “We all went in and looked at the computers—computers were very exciting in 1978—and he fired up Adventure on one of the terminals. And I, being eight years old, realized this was the best thing in the universe and immediately wanted to do that forever.”

“It is hard to overstate how potent the effect of this game was,” said Graham Nelson, creator of the Inform language and author of the landmark IF Curses, of his introduction to the field. “Partly that was because the behemoth-like machine controlling the story was itself beyond ordinary human experience.”

Perhaps that extraordinary factor is what sparked the curiosity of people like Plotkin and Nelson to play Adventure and the other text games that followed. The roots of interactive fiction are entangled with the roots of the computing industry. “I think it’s always been a focus on the written word as an engine for what we consider a game,” said software developer and tech entrepreneur Liza Daly. “Originally, that was born out of necessity of primitive computers of the ’70s and ’80s, but people discovered that there was a lot to mine there.”

Home computers were just beginning to gain traction as Stanford University student Don Woods released his own version of Adventure in 1977, based on Crowther’s original Fortran work. Without wider access to comparatively pint-sized machines like the Apple 2 and the Vic-20, Scott Adams might not have found an audience for his own text adventure games, released under his company Adventure International, in another homage to Crowther. As computers spread to more people around the world, interactive fiction was able to reach more and more readers.

From Infocom to 80 Days: An oral history of text games and interactive fiction Read More »

shadow-of-the-erdtree-has-ground-me-into-dust,-which-is-why-i-recommend-it

Shadow of the Erdtree has ground me into dust, which is why I recommend it

Dark Souls, difficulty, DLC, elden ring, FromSoftware, gaming, shadow of the erdtree, souls-like / /

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC —

Souls fans seeking real challenge should love it. Casuals like me might wait.

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Image of a fight from Shadow of the Erdtree

Bandai

Elden Ring was my first leap into FromSoftware titles (and Dark-Souls-like games generally), and I fell in deep. Over more than 200 hours, I ate up the cryptic lore, learned lots of timings, and came to appreciate the feeling of achievement through perseverance.

Months ago, in preparation for Elden Ring’s expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree (also on PlayStation and Xbox, arriving June 21), I ditched the save file with which I had beaten the game and started over. I wanted to try out big swords and magic casting. I wanted to try a few new side quests. And I wanted to have a fresh experience with the game before Shadow arrived.

I have had a very fresh experience, in that this DLC has made me feel like I’m still in the first hour of my first game. Reader, this expansion is mopping the floor with me. It looked at my resume, which has “Elden Lord” as its most recent job title, and has tossed it into the slush pile. If you’re wondering whether Shadow would, like Elden Ring, provide a different kind of challenge and offer, like the base game, easier paths for Souls newcomers: No, not really. At least not until you’re already far along. This DLC is for people who beat Elden Ring, or all but beat it, and want capital-M More.

That should be great news for longtime Souls devotees, who fondly recall the difficulty spikes of some of earlier games’ DLC or those who want a slightly more linear, dungeon-by-dungeon, boss-by-boss experience. For everybody else, I’d suggest waiting until you’re confidently through most of the main game—and for the giant wiki/YouTube apparatus around the game to catch up and provide some guidance.

What “ready for the DLC” really means

Technically, you can play Shadow of the Erdtree once you’ve done two things in Elden Ring: beaten Starscourge Radahn and Mohg, Lord of Blood. Radahn is a mid-game boss, and Mohg is generally encountered in the later stages. But, perhaps anticipating the DLC, the game allows you to get to Mohg relatively early by using a specific item.

Just getting to a level where you’re reasonably ready to tackle Mohg will be a lot. As of a week ago, more than 60 percent of players on Steam (PC) had not yet beaten Mohg; that number is even higher on consoles. On my replay, I got to about level 105 at around 50 hours, but I remembered a lot about both the mechanics and the map. I had the item to travel to Mohg and the other item that makes him easier to beat. Maybe it’s strange to avoid spoilers for a game that came out more than two years ago, but, again, most players have not gotten this far.

I took down Mohg in one try; I’m not bragging, just setting expectations. I had a fully upgraded Moonlight Greatsword, a host of spells, a fully upgraded Mimic Tear spirit helper, and a build focused on Intelligence (for the sword and spell casting), but I could also wear decent armor while still adequately rolling. Up until this point, I was surprised by how much easier the bosses and dungeons I revisited had felt (except the Valiant Gargoyle, which was just as hard).

I stepped into the DLC, wandered around a bit, killed a few shambling souls (“Shadows of the Dead”), and found a sealed chasm (“Blackgaol”) in the first area. The knight inside took me out, repeatedly, usually in two quick sword flicks. Sometimes he would change it up and perforate me with gatling-speed flaming crossbow bolts or a wave emanating from his sword. Most of the time, he didn’t even touch his healing flask before I saw “YOU DIED.”

Ah, but most Elden Ring players will remember that the game put an intentionally way-too-hard enemy in the very first open area, almost as a lesson about leveling up and coming back. So I hauled my character and bruised ego toward a nearby ruin, filled mostly with more dead Shadows. The first big “legacy dungeon,” Belurat, Tower Settlement, was just around the corner. I headed in and started compiling my first of what must be 100 deaths by now.

There are the lumbering Shadows, yes, but there are also their bigger brothers, who love to ambush with a leaping strike and take me down in two hits. There are Man-Flies, which unsurprisingly swarmed and latched onto my head, killing me if I wasn’t at full health (40 Vigor, if you must know). There are Gravebirds, which, like all birds in Elden Ring, are absolute jerks that mess with your camera angles. And there are Horned Warriors, who are big, fast, relentless, and responsible for maybe a dozen each of my deaths.

At level 105, with a known build strategy centered around a weapon often regarded as overpowered and all the knowledge I had of the game’s systems and strategies, I was barely hanging on, occasionally inching forward. What gives?

Shadow of the Erdtree has ground me into dust, which is why I recommend it Read More »

seven-years-later,-nintendo-proves-metroid-prime-4-still-exists

Seven years later, Nintendo proves Metroid Prime 4 still exists

gaming, Metroid, Nintendo, Switch, switch 2, trailer / /

A wait that was “beyond” long —

2025 release could launch on the still-mysterious “Switch 2.”

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It has now been almost exactly seven years since Nintendo first announced Metroid Prime 4 and over five years since the company said it was restarting work on the game with series mainstay Retro Studios. Now, Nintendo has finally shared the first glimpse of gameplay for the renamed Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which is now planned for a 2025 release.

“After a very long time, we are finally able to share more information about this title,” Nintendo executive Shinya Takahashi said during today’s livestreamed Nintendo Direct presentation, showing a remarkable talent for understatement. Takahashi went on to also ask that fans “please wait a little bit longer” for additional information before the game’s planned release next year.

That “additional information” should include whether the highly anticipated game will launch for the Switch—as was promised in 2017—or for Nintendo’s next console, which the company recently teased via a pre-announcement announcement. Nintendo kept its promise that “there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor” during today’s Nintendo Direct presentation, but a major first-party franchise game launching in 2025 definitely seems well-positioned to serve as a showcase for new hardware that Nintendo seems to be planning for around the same time frame.

Metroid Prime 4 also seems like a prime candidate to be the kind of “bridge game” that Nintendo sometimes launches across an aging console and its replacement hardware simultaneously. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild served as such a bridge game during the transition from the Wii U to the Switch in 2017, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess did so during the GameCube to Wii transition in 2006.

In 2019, Takahashi admitted that “the current development status of [Metroid Prime 4] is very challenged,” leading to the “difficult decision” to “essentially restart development” with a new internal structure under Retro Studios. “It will be a long road until the next time we will be able to update you on the development progress,” Takahashi said at the time, presaging the five-year wait for today’s trailer.

The world of 20X9

  • A familiar head emerges from a familiar ship.

  • Samus has mastered the cool three-point landing by now.

  • If you look in the background, you’ll notice Samus is getting some help from one of those Space Pirates (yes, that’s their official name).

  • No one will notice me if I transform into a tiny sphere!

  • Come meet my pets. Don’t worry, they don’t bite.

  • This cruise excursion was definitely worth the extra money.

The two-minute teaser footage for Metroid Prime 4 Nintendo released today features series protagonist Samus landing on a “Galactic Federation Research Facility” in the suitably cheesy, sci-fi-ish “Cosmic Year 20X9” (hey, maybe she’ll run into Stinkoman). Background details in the trailer point to Samus intruding on some sort of alien civil war, with familiar-looking Space Pirates firing on each other amid a barrage of anti-aircraft lasers.

The brief glimpse of gameplay we got features plenty of elements that will be familiar to anyone who has played the first three Metroid Prime games, including scanning objects for additional information, transforming into a morph ball to traverse narrow tunnels, and locking on to foes to easily circle them while firing away. The action-heavy portion concludes with the entrance of a mysterious figure in a strange, light-stripped mask breaking through an outer wall flanked by two seemingly docile metroids.

As the trailer concludes, we get a sweeping shot of a more tranquil, open area full of flowing waterfalls and giant trees, suggesting more of the exploration-heavy and combat-light puzzle-platforming sections the series is known for.

Listing image by Nintendo

Seven years later, Nintendo proves Metroid Prime 4 still exists Read More »

star-citizen-still-hasn’t-launched,-but-it’s-already-banning-cheaters

Star Citizen still hasn’t launched, but it’s already banning cheaters

Development, gaming, roberts space industries, star citizen / /

pre-cheating —

Developer bans “over 600” players for exploiting an item duplication glitch.

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For an unreleased game, <em>Star Citizen</em> still has some really pretty ships…” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/star-citizen-update-800×343.jpg”></img><figcaption> <p><a data-height=Enlarge / For an unreleased game, Star Citizen still has some really pretty ships…

RSI

At this point in Star Citizen‘s drawn-out, 11-plus-year development cycle, we’re usually reminded of the game when it hits some crowdfunding microtransaction milestone or updates its increasingly convoluted alpha development roadmap. So last week’s announcement that developer Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) has banned over 600 cheaters from its servers is a notable reminder that some people are actually enjoying—and exploiting—the unpolished alpha version of the game.

Shortly after the May release of Star Citizen’s Alpha 2.23.1 update, players started noticing that they could easily make extra money by storing a freight ship, selling their cargo, and then returning to the ship to find the cargo ready to be sold a second time. As knowledge of this “money doubling” exploit spread, players reported that the price of basic in-game resources saw significant inflation in a matter of days.

Now, Cloud Imperium Games Senior Director of Player Relations Will Leverett has written that the developer has investigated “multiple exploits within Star Citizen that compromised stability and negatively impacted the in-game economy.” In doing so, CIG says it “identified and suspended over 600 accounts involved in exploitative behaviors while also removing the illicitly gained aUEC [in-game currency] from the Star Citizen ecosystem.”

A ban for “over 600” players may not seem that notable when games like Dota 2 and World of Warcraft routinely announce ban waves that include tens of thousands of players. Still, it’s a reminder that at least a small portion of the game’s more than 5.2 million backers are actively playing the alpha so much that they’re willing to cheat to see more of what the game has to offer.

“From zero, in two evenings, I did make about [200 million aUEC] just to buy ships that [are] unavailable for me, to try it in full!” user ZeroInsideOut wrote on the game’s forums. “There [are] many things in Star Citizen [which] I would like to try and test, but I am short of money.”

It’s getting late for “early access” bugs

Leverett wrote that exploits like these should be expected in Star Citizen “at this stage of development”—a stage that we hasten to once again point out is now part of well over a decade of active development. Finding and squashing these kinds of bugs “early” is all part of the game’s crowdfunded development plan and “one of the benefits of open development and working closely with our community,” Leverett wrote.

“We’ve gained valuable insights through your issue council reports, and we thank you for that,” he continued. “However, once an exploit is identified and confirmed, continued abuse for personal gain will not be tolerated and will result in action on our part.”

However, some players feel that the “open development” process failed to find this significant issue quickly enough. Commenter Nitebird took CIG to task for “allow[ing] exploits reported during [Public Test Universe] to go to live despite many people confirming the issue in [the Issue Council] and urging CIG to pause to fix it. The patch is ruined regardless for many people… What is IC good for than to prevent this?”

Star Citizen development roadmap summary, posted in early 2023.” height=”481″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/rsiroadmap-640×481.jpg” width=”640″>

Enlarge / A fan-designed Star Citizen development roadmap summary, posted in early 2023.

CIG launched an important “Persistent Universe” update for Star Citizen over a year ago and announced late last year that spin-off Squadron 42 had reached “feature complete” status. Despite those signs of progress, though, there’s still no target date for Star Citizen to finally transition from its extended alpha to that fabled “Version 1.0” release.

CIG founder and CEO Chris Roberts said in a March update that the development team “is hard at work, heads down, driving toward the finish line” and that the leadership team has now “spent significant time looking at what Star Citizen 1.0 means and what it would take to get there.” That includes the planned introduction of long-sought key features like base building and crafting that were apparently not a priority during the game’s first 11-plus years of development work.

“As that roadmap [for a 1.0 release] comes together and becomes validated, we look forward to sharing with you both its vision and executional plan later this year,” Roberts wrote.

Star Citizen still hasn’t launched, but it’s already banning cheaters Read More »

retired-engineer-discovers-55-year-old-bug-in-lunar-lander-computer-game-code

Retired engineer discovers 55-year-old bug in Lunar Lander computer game code

apollo, Biz & IT, FOCAL, gaming, Jim Storer, lunar lander, Martin C. Martin, NASA, PDP-8, Space, Tech / /

The world’s oldest feature —

A physics simulation flaw in text-based 1969 computer game went unnoticed until today.

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Illustration of the Apollo lunar lander Eagle over the Moon.

Enlarge / Illustration of the Apollo lunar lander Eagle over the Moon.

On Friday, a retired software engineer named Martin C. Martin announced that he recently discovered a bug in the original Lunar Lander computer game’s physics code while tinkering with the software. Created by a 17-year-old high school student named Jim Storer in 1969, this primordial game rendered the action only as text status updates on a teletype, but it set the stage for future versions to come.

The legendary game—which Storer developed on a PDP-8 minicomputer in a programming language called FOCAL just months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their historic moonwalks—allows players to control a lunar module’s descent onto the Moon’s surface. Players must carefully manage their fuel usage to achieve a gentle landing, making critical decisions every ten seconds to burn the right amount of fuel.

In 2009, just short of the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I set out to find the author of the original Lunar Lander game, which was then primarily known as a graphical game, thanks to the graphical version from 1974 and a 1979 Atari arcade title. When I discovered that Storer created the oldest known version as a teletype game, I interviewed him and wrote up a history of the game. Storer later released the source code to the original game, written in FOCAL, on his website.

Lunar Lander game, provided by Jim Storer.” height=”524″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/lunar_lander_teletype_output-640×524.jpg” width=”640″>

Enlarge / A scan of printed teletype output from the original Lunar Lander game, provided by Jim Storer.

Jim Storer

Fast forward to 2024, when Martin—an AI expert, game developer, and former postdoctoral associate at MIT—stumbled upon a bug in Storer’s high school code while exploring what he believed was the optimal strategy for landing the module with maximum fuel efficiency—a technique known among Kerbal Space Program enthusiasts as the “suicide burn.” This method involves falling freely to build up speed and then igniting the engines at the last possible moment to slow down just enough to touch down safely. He also tried another approach—a more gentle landing.

“I recently explored the optimal fuel burn schedule to land as gently as possible and with maximum remaining fuel,” Martin wrote on his blog. “Surprisingly, the theoretical best strategy didn’t work. The game falsely thinks the lander doesn’t touch down on the surface when in fact it does. Digging in, I was amazed by the sophisticated physics and numerical computing in the game. Eventually I found a bug: a missing ‘divide by two’ that had seemingly gone unnoticed for nearly 55 years.”

A matter of division

Diagram of launch escape system on top of the Apollo capsule.

Enlarge / Diagram of launch escape system on top of the Apollo capsule.

NASA

Despite applying what should have been a textbook landing strategy, Martin found that the game inconsistently reported that the lander had missed the Moon’s surface entirely. Intrigued by the anomaly, Martin dug into the game’s source code and discovered that the landing algorithm was based on highly sophisticated physics for its time, including the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation and a Taylor series expansion.

As mentioned in the quote above, the root of the problem was a simple computational oversight—a missing division by two in the formula used to calculate the lander’s trajectory. This seemingly minor error had big consequences, causing the simulation to underestimate the time until the lander reached its lowest trajectory point and miscalculate the landing.

Despite the bug, Martin was impressed that Storer, then a high school senior, managed to incorporate advanced mathematical concepts into his game, a feat that remains impressive even by today’s standards. Martin reached out to Storer himself, and the Lunar Lander author told Martin that his father was a physicist who helped him derive the equations used in the game simulation.

While people played and enjoyed Storer’s game for years with the bug in place, it goes to show that realism isn’t always the most important part of a compelling interactive experience. And thankfully for Aldrin and Armstrong, the real Apollo lunar landing experience didn’t suffer from the same issue.

You can read more about Martin’s exciting debugging adventure over on his blog.

Retired engineer discovers 55-year-old bug in Lunar Lander computer game code Read More »

are-diablo-fans-getting-too-old-for-the-old-school-item-grind?

Are Diablo fans getting too old for the old-school item grind?

Blizzard, Diablo, gaming, grind, items, loot / /

Time is money —

Devs say players no longer want the “very long chase” for rare drops.

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Do you have a few hundred hours to hear the good news about our lord and savior, <em>Diablo</em>?” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/d4-800×450.png”></img><figcaption> <p><a data-height=Enlarge / Do you have a few hundred hours to hear the good news about our lord and savior, Diablo?

Blizzard

Longtime fans of Diablo II are deeply familiar with the extreme timesink that is the late-game grind for the very best loot. But when the creators of Diablo IV tried to re-create that style of grinding for the latest game in the series, they found that their players’ tastes had changed quite a bit in the intervening years.

In a wide-ranging interview with Windows Central, Blizzard’s general manager of Diablo, Rod Fergusson, said that they launched Diablo IV under “the assumption that D4 was meant to be more D2-like.” That meant, in part, increasing the length of time required to discover the game’s most valuable items after post-Auction-House Diablo 3 made rare item drops much more common.

“One of the assumptions was that people were going to be okay with the long grind for the Unique or an Uber Unique in particular, because in Diablo II, it can go years,” Fergusson said. “You can go three years before you find the Uber you’re looking for… and so we were like, okay, this is what people love about the progression of D2, that idea of that very long chase.”

Once the game launched, though, Fergusson said the development team was surprised to find players complaining of how long it took to get some items—our own review expressed concern about the “‘loot treadmill’ approach to the endgame” and “loot drops [that] seem tuned a bit low for my taste.”

“We found out very quickly that if you don’t give me my Uber in my [months-long] season, then I’m upset,” Fergusson said. “And so we’re like, oh, wow, okay.”

Changing with the players

To help calm those upset players, subsequent Diablo IV updates have made it easier to earn Resplendent Sparks, which those players can use to craft high-end Uber Unique items they’ve been unable to find from random item drops. Having that option to skip the randomized item search helped satisfy the desires of modern players, Fergusson said.

“It’s just a kind of recognition of how much players have changed in 20 years,” he said. “You know… that consumptive nature of a live service and that time is money and I don’t have much time, so let’s go, right? And so that idea of like, oh, you’re going to get a unique every six months.”

Ah, the old-fashioned joy of finding an item with a wall of ability text.

Enlarge / Ah, the old-fashioned joy of finding an item with a wall of ability text.

That recognition of “how much players have changed” reflects how much the mere passage of time has changed the Diablo audience over the years. A 16-year-old who was sinking all their free time into Diablo II when it launched in 2000 is pushing 40 these days. That means the core, nostalgic audience for the series is now very likely to have a career, family, and/or other responsibilities eating into their playtime. There’s nothing like a few decades of aging to make the prospect of sinking hundreds of hours into a loot grind seem less appealing.

With Diablo III, Blizzard initially assumed that players with more money than time would simply bid up the game’s best items in the game’s real-money auction house, where players who had more time to grind would benefit from selling their rarest random finds. Instead, Blizzard soon acknowledged that the auction system “short-circuited [the] core reward loop” of the game, making it trivial to buy high-level loot that quickly made the entire late-game feel kind of irrelevant.

With Diablo IV, Blizzard seems to have struck a better balance for players who simply want a more reliable reward for any time investment they can make. With Resplendent Sparks, players willing to put in the in-game work can be confident that they’ll eventually get the top-level items they’re seeking. That consistency can be much more appealing for time-limited players than simply crossing your fingers for a low-odds virtual dice roll or opening your wallet to skip the gameplay grind process entirely.

The evolution of Diablo‘s item progression system is an important reminder of how the relative value of a player’s time can change as those players move between different stages of life. Who knows, maybe in 25 years Diablo VI will find success with ultra-rare item drops that soak up all the free time for a core audience of retirement-age players with nothing better to do than spend 500 hours grinding for a digital sword.

Are Diablo fans getting too old for the old-school item grind? Read More »