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  Welcome back to Albion. [credit: 22cans ]

If you're a gamer of a certain age, you probably have fond memories of Peter Molyneux as the mind behind ambitious games like Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and the Fable series. If you're of a slightly younger age, you probably remember him as the serial overpromiser behind Project Godus and a recent NFT game that somehow attracted $54 million in player pre-investment (it did actually launch in some form last year).

I bring up this history because, after years of keeping his head down, Molyneux made a surprise appearance at Gamescom's Opening Night Live event. He was there to introduce Masters of Albion, a title that host Geoff Keighley said Molyneux has "secretly been working on for the past three years" and which Molyneux himself describes as "an open-world god game full of combat, choices, mysteries, and story."

A short, early trailer for the game takes us back to Fable's "familiar vast world of Albion, packed with stories, quests, treasures, and monsters." There, the residents of the town of Oakridge have to work to gather and process resources by day and then defend themselves from hordes of creatures by night.

Enlarge / A time traveler with a flashlight would blow Indiana Jones' mind.

At first glance, Wolfenstein: The New Order developer MachineGames might seem like an awkward fit for the first (non-Lego) Indiana Jones video game since the Wii era. While there's some overlap in the over-the-top Nazi villain department, the "shoot your way through every obstacle" nature of the new Wolfenstein games doesn't seem to lend itself well to Indy's more free-wheeling, adventurous exploration style.

For the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, director Jerk Gustafsson said that going from first-person shooter to a "MachineGames adventure" style change has been a difficult tightrope walk for the developers. While the team never wanted to prevent the player from using their revolver during action scenes, there was the potential that giving a player that freedom would allow them to "just shoot their way through" in a way that's antithetical to Jones' character.

To help avoid this problem, Creative Director Alex Torvenius said most of the game has been balanced so that "it's dangerous to shoot your gun and it's dangerous to be shot at." Guns-blazing action will be a winning strategy in some in-game situations, but "[there are] many scenarios where you can go through the environment without using guns at all," he continued.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Id | GDC)

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.

Enlarge / Apple Senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi announces "Private Cloud Compute" at WWDC 2024. (credit: Apple)

With most large language models being run on remote, cloud-based server farms, some users have been reluctant to share personally identifiable and/or private data with AI companies. In its WWDC keynote today, Apple stressed that the new "Apple Intelligence" system it's integrating into its products will use a new "Private Cloud Compute" to ensure any data processed on its cloud servers is protected in a transparent and verifiable way.

"You should not have to hand over all the details of your life to be warehoused and analyzed in someone's AI cloud," Apple Senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said.

Trust, but verify

Part of what Apple calls "a brand new standard for privacy and AI" is achieved through on-device processing. Federighi said "many" of Apple's generative AI models can run entirely on a device powered by an A17+ or M-series chips, eliminating the risk of sending your personal data to a remote server.

Enlarge / The "Xbox Series V" was a social media hoax, but the idea of a portable Xbox seems to still have legs inside Microsoft. (credit: Reddit)

The extremely long-standing rumors regarding Microsoft making a portable game console got a strong shot in the arm over the weekend from none other than Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. Speaking on stage as part of an IGN Live interview, Spencer said directly that "I think we should have a handheld, too."

The comment stops just short of an official announcement that Microsoft is actively working on portable gaming hardware for the first time. But if anyone is in a position to make an "I think we should..." into an operational reality, it's Spencer.

"The future for us in hardware is pretty awesome," Spencer continued during the IGN presentation. "And the work that the team is doing around different form factors, different ways to play, I'm incredibly excited about it."

Enlarge / "N-tel (64) Inside" (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

In recent years, we've reported on multiple efforts to reverse-engineer Nintendo 64 games into fully decompiled, human-readable C code that can then become the basis for full-fledged PC ports. While the results can be impressive, the decompilation process can take years of painstaking manual effort, meaning only the most popular N64 games are likely to get the requisite attention from reverse engineers.

Now, a newly released tool promises to vastly reduce the amount of human effort needed to get basic PC ports of most (if not all) N64 games. The N64 Recompiled project uses a process known as static recompilation to automate huge swaths of the labor-intensive process of drawing C code out of N64 binaries.

While human coding work is still needed to smooth out the edges, project lead Mr-Wiseguy told Ars that his recompilation tool is "the difference between weeks of work and years of work" when it comes to making a PC version of a classic N64 title. And parallel work on a powerful N64 graphic renderer means PC-enabled upgrades like smoother frame rates, resolution upscaling, and widescreen aspect ratios can be added with little effort.

Enlarge / This peaceful, pastoral scene actually represents a ton of hard work! (credit: Slavic Magic)

Do you ever look around at modern civilization and boggle at the sheer complexity of it all? Do you ever think about the generations of backbreaking labor needed to turn acres and acres of untamed wilderness into the layers of interconnected systems needed to provide basic necessities—much less luxuries—to both early settlers and their generations of descendants?

All that infrastructure work is much harder to take for granted after playing Manor Lords. The Early Access version of the game—which netted a million Steam sales in its first 24 hours last month—forces you to do a lot of the heavy lifting that many other city builders tend to gloss over. And while there are still a lot of Early Access rough spots, what's already there can make you appreciate just how hard it is to build a functioning society from nothing but raw materials and hard labor.

Let go of my hand

In many other city builders, you act as something of a detached, bureaucratic god. Lay down some roads, set aside some zoning, and watch as the microscopic masses automatically fill in the details of the housing, commerce, and industry needed to create a functional society.

Enlarge / A big erdtree casts a big shadow. (credit: Namco Bandai)

The good news for Elden Ring fans is that the two-plus-year wait for the game's first DLC, "Shadow of the Erdtree," will end in just a couple of months. The bad news is that "Shadow of the Erdtree" will also be the last bit of DLC for FromSoftware's multimillion-selling action RPG.

In a wide-ranging interview with Chinese site Zhihu (machine translation), Elden Ring producer Hidetaka Miyazaki said "Shadow of the Erdtree" contains a lot of existing lore and content that was created for the original game but couldn't fit into the final package. Miyazaki said the team decided to release all of that unused content as one large DLC expansion, rather than multiple smaller bits, because "if they were sold separately, the freedom of exploration and sense of adventure would be reduced."

As for just how big the DLC will be, Miyazaki balked when the interviewer asked how long it would take players to complete. Miyazaki brought up memories of being called a liar after estimating in an earlier interview that the original game would only take about 30 hours of play to complete—crowdsourced game-length database HowLongToBeat puts the "main story" estimate closer to 60 hours.

Enlarge / New gods, same old drama. (credit: Supergiant)

Here at Ars, we were obviously excited by the late 2022 announcement of Hades II as a follow-up to our favorite game of 2020. But when early coverage of that sequel suggested major changes to the game's core combat, we were a bit worried that the developers at Supergiant risked messing up the core gameplay loop that made the original game so satisfying.

So far, it seems like those worries were unfounded. After spending a few hours playing through the game's recent technical test—which covers content up through the game's first major "boss" character—we found a confident sequel that keeps the original games familiar flow while adding just enough changes to avoid feeling like a rehash. If anything, the new systems in Hades II make the original game's positional combat more satisfying than ever.

Spoiler warning: The rest of this piece offers minor spoilers for the early parts of Hades II.

Enlarge / Don't expect to see this on the iOS App Store any time soon. (credit: OatmealDome)

Last week's release of the Delta emulation suite finally gave iOS users easy, no-sideloading-required access to classic Nintendo game emulation up through the Nintendo 64 era. When it comes to emulating Nintendo's subsequent home consoles on iOS, though, some technical restrictions imposed by Apple are making it difficult to get a functional emulator on the App Store.

In a recent blog post, DolphiniOS developer (and longtime Switch hacker) OatmealDome explains how a Dolphin code fork—which ports the popular GameCube and Wii emulator to Apple's smartphone OS—uses just-in-time (JIT) compilation to translate the PowerPC instructions from those retro consoles into ARM-compatible iOS code. But Apple's App Store regulations against apps that "install executable code" (Section 3.3.1B) generally prevent JIT recompilation on iOS, with very limited exceptions such as web browsers. That restriction may have some valid security reasoning behind it, but it can also get in the way for developers of tools like third-party browser engines (except recently in the EU).

While MacOS developers can make use of an explicit entitlement to allow JIT recompilation in an app, that exception doesn't apply to iOS developers. And while alternative App Stores and sideloaded apps (including DolphiniOS) have discovered various ways to enable JIT compilation on both jailbroken and stock iOS devices, these workarounds can get quite arcane and occasionally break with new iOS releases.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Epic Games celebrating their impending return to iOS in Europe. (credit: Epic Games)

Apple has agreed to reinstate Epic Game's Swedish iOS developer account just days after Epic publicized Apple's decision to rescind that account. The move once again paves the way for Epic's plans to release a sideloadable version of the Epic Games Store and Fortnite on iOS devices in Europe.

"Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies," Apple said in a statement provided to Ars Technica. "As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program."

Apple's new statement is in stark contrast to its position earlier this week when it cited "Epic’s egregious breach of its contractual obligations to Apple" as a reason why it couldn't trust Epic's commitments to stand by any new developer agreement. In correspondence with Epic shared by the Fortnite maker Wednesday, Apple executive Phil Schiller put an even finer point on it:

Enlarge / Power (glove) to the people. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Nintendo's recent lawsuit against Switch emulator-maker Yuzu seems written like it was designed to strike fear into the heart of the entire emulation community. But despite legal arguments that sometimes cut at the very idea of emulation itself, members of the emulation development community I talked to didn't seem very worried about coming under a Yuzu-style legal threat from Nintendo or other console makers. Indeed, those developers told me they've long taken numerous precautions against that very outcome and said they feel they have good reasons to believe they can avoid Yuzu's fate.

Protect yourself

"I can assure [you], experienced emulator developers are very aware of copyright issues," said Lycoder, who has worked on emulators for consoles ranging from the NES to the Dreamcast. "I've personally always maintained strict rules about how I deal with copyrighted content in my projects, and most other people I know from the emulation scene do the same thing."

"This lawsuit is not introducing any new element that people in the emulation community have not known of for a long time," said Parsifal, a hobbyist developer who has written emulators for the Apple II, Space Invaders, and the CHIP-8 virtual machine. "Emulation is fine as long as you don't infringe on copyright and trademarks."

Enlarge / Four Xbox console exclusives will soon be exclusive no more. (credit: Microsoft)

During a "business update" video podcast last week, Microsoft addressed widespread rumors of Xbox software going multiplatform by saying that four of its legacy titles would be going "to the other consoles" in the future. But the company waited until today to confirm the names of the four soon-to-be-multiplatform titles.

The Xbox games coming to other consoles in the coming months are (multiplatform launch date in parentheses):

• Pentiment (February 22, Switch, PS4/5): Obsidian's historical murder mystery has a sprawling narrative that reacts strongly to player choices.
• Hi-Fi Rush (March 9, PS5): A rhythm-action game from Bethesda Softworks where you have to match your attacks and movements to the beat to maximize your impact.
• Grounded (April 16, Switch, PS4/5): Obsidian's co-op survival adventure will be fully cross-play compatible across all platforms.
• Sea of Thieves (April 30, PS5): Despite what we considered a poor first impression, Rare's pirate-themed multiplayer simulation has attracted 35 million players, according to Microsoft. This title will also be cross-play compatible across platforms.

Microsoft's announcement comes just after Grounded and Pentiment were announced for Switch as part of the morning's Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase video stream, the timing of which likely prevented Microsoft from announcing its plans for those titles last week. There wasn't a lot of drama to today's announcement, though; The Verge and independent journalist Stephen Totilo cited anonymous sources in accurately naming all four games just after Microsoft's presentation last week.

Enlarge / Important note: You (probably) will not look this good when using the C-Infinity. (credit: Neurosync)

Anyone who has spent significant time trying to traverse large spaces in virtual reality knows that it can sometimes be a nauseating experience. The mismatch between a vestibular system telling your body it's standing still and a VR headset telling your eyes that you're moving often causes an almost instant upset stomach for many VR users.

For years, VR games and experiences have tried to mitigate this problem with software tricks, such as movement by "teleportation" and "snap" turning that jumps in sharp, discrete angles. But these solutions come with their own problems for games in which smoother walking motion and free rotation are important.

Rather than focusing on software, Neurosync has decided to use hardware to try to solve this problem. The company's C-Infinity "VR Locomotion Platform" (which is currently wrapping up a successful Kickstarter campaign) promises to "effectively reduc[e] motion sickness while delivering an unparalleled true sense of movement... while also reducing fatigue."