Codex Bash Nominated For A MAZE Awards 2016

This is something I'm very excited about! Codex Bash has been nominated for the A MAZE Awards and will be on display at A MAZE 2016 in Berlin, from 20-23 April.

I'll also be giving a talk during the event, titled Inspiring Inventive Play with Social Installations. In the talk I'll be going through the motivations, design lessons and observations that have shaped my recent work with playable installations. In it I'll be talking about what creating Tap Happy Sabotage, Dash & Bash, Go! Button Power Team! and Codex Bash itself have taught me about getting people to communicate and play creatively.

Photo copyright Wellcome Collection, 2015

Incidentally, Codex Bash was the first festival I road-tested Codex Bash at, as part of the Open Screens. So being able to present it as part of the official selection feels very special indeed!

Google Mobile Developer Day At Game Developers Conference 2019

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play & Android

We're excited to host the Google Mobile Developer Day at Game Developers Conference 2019. We are taking this opportunity to share best practices and our plans to help your games businesses, which are fuelling incredible growth in the global mobile games market. According to Newzoo, mobile games revenue is projected to account for nearly 60% of global games revenue by 2021. The drivers of this growth come in many forms, including more developers building great games, new game styles blurring the lines of traditional genres, and the explosion of gaming in emerging markets - most notably in India.

Image Source: GamesIndustry.biz

To support your growth, Google is focused on improving the game development experience on Android. We are investing in tools to give you better insights into what is happening on devices, as well as in people and teams to address your feedback about the development process, graphics, multiplayer experiences, and more.

We have some great updates and new tools to improve game discovery and monetization on Google Play, which we also shared today during our Mobile Developer Day:

Pre-registration now in general availability

Starting today, we are launching pre-registration for general availability. Set up a pre-registration campaign in the Google Play Console and start marketing your games to build awareness before launch. Users who pre-register receive a notification at launch, which helps increase day one installs.

Google Play Instant gaining adoption

We have seen strong adoption of Google Play Instant with 3x growth in the number of instant games and 5x growth in the number of instant sessions over the last six months. Instant experiences allow players to tap the 'Try Now' button on your store listing page and go straight to a demo experience in a matter of seconds, without installing. Now, they're even easier to build with Cocos and Unity plug-ins and an expanded implementation partner program. Discover the latest updates on Google Play Instant.

Android App Bundles momentum and new large download size threshold

Over 60K apps and games on Google Play are now using the Android App Bundle publishing format, which is supported in Android Studio, Unity, and Cocos Creator. The app bundle uses Google Play's Dynamic Delivery to deliver a smaller, optimized APK containing only the resources needed for a specific device.

To better support high quality game experiences and reflect improved devices, we've also increased the size limit for APKs generated from app bundles to 150MB and raised the threshold for large download user warnings on the Google Play Store to 150MB, from 100MB.

Improved tools in the Google Play Console

Store listing experiments let you A/B test changes to your store listing on actual Play Store visitors. We recently rolled out improvements, introducing two new metrics - first time installers and D1 retained users - to more accurately reflect the performance of your store listings. These two new metrics are now reported with hourly intervals and are available via email notifications, letting you see results faster and track performance better.

Country targeted store listings allow you to tailor your app's store listing to appeal to users in different countries. You can customize the app title, icon, descriptions and graphic assets, allowing you to better appeal to users in specific target markets. For example, you can now tailor your store listing with different versions of the English language for users in India versus the United States.

Rewarded ads give players the choice to watch an advertisement in exchange for in-app items. With rewarded ads in Google Play, you can now create and manage rewarded ads through the Google Play Console. No additional SDK integrations are required.

We hope you try some of these new tools and keep sharing ideas so we can make Android and Google Play a better place to grow your business. We are committed to continue improving the platform and building tools that better serve the gaming community.

Get started today by visiting two new resources, a hub for developers interested in creating games on Android and games.withgoogle.com, for developers looking to connect and scale their business across Google. Many of these updates and resources come from community suggestions, so sign up for our monthly newsletter to stay informed.

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Warmaster Fantasy - Skaven Counter Set Revised

I've always been a 'ratman' fan since childhood. I've played them in every game that has them. In Legends of the Five Rings CCG, I had a Ratling deck that constantly recycled ratling cards from the graveyard. It was a blast! Anyway...  This set of Skaven counters replaces the set that I did way back in 2003 while I was active on the Warmaster Yahoo email list. Unlike the old set, which was slightly undersized, this set will print to the full 20mm x 40mm counters. I tried as best to give this set a horde look. For example, the Rat Swarms counter have several pack leader stands you can use any way you like. You could create a brigade of Rat Swarms and have one of the stands in the rear be the pack leader. This set can be used with any version of Warmaster along with other mass-combat fantasy rules. I you enjoy them.

"Skaven are neither rats nor humans but a vile combination of the two races. The origins of the Skaven are not known for certain. It is likely they were mutated at the dawn of the Age of Chaos when powerful waves of magic swamped the world. Millions of tons of magically energised material were hurled over the planet in the form of meteorites... Creatures that breathed the dust or strayed within the radiating power of the larger stones became mutated into the most horrible monsters. The Skaven may well have mutated from ordinary vermin as a result of consuming this corrupting material - or 'warpstone' as they call it. Even today the Skaven crave warpstone." -- the Warmaster rulebook


Printing the Counters
I hope some of you find these counter sets useful.You can print these at office printing places, like Staples, using heavy card stock paper printed at actual size. You can also print on regular paper and then glue the counters to wooden bases. (Check the older posts on how I did this with my Empire army.) Currently, I'm printing the counter sets at Staples using regular paper, spray gluing the back of each sheet with Super77, attaching each sheet to an old comic book backing board, and then cutting out the counters using a sharp Xacto knife with steel ruler. Using the backing boards makes for cheap, sturdy counters.

Click on the counter set image above to download the complete army counter set in PDF format. The set has enough counters to create many armies of 2000 points or less. Of course, if you need more counters simply print more copies!

Sample Skaven Army List

Total Points: 2,000
Break Point: 27/14
6x Clanrats
4x Jezzails
4x Plague Monks
6x Rat Swarms
2x Gutter Runners
1x Rat Ogres
1x Warp Lightning Cannon
2x Doom Wheel
1x Screaming Bell
1x Grey Seer
3x Hero
1x Warlock
1x Sword of Fate

Post-Octopalypse Week 3: The Coming Storm

   Well, it's the end of the third week of our Post-Octopalypse, and considering I was only expecting to get everybody to "table-ready", I am very pleased to report that I got enough figures to that stage to feel safe bringing you FIVE completely done minis this week, all for my "This is Not a Test" Tribals- which are called the Stormbringers, hence the article title, in case you were wondering.
  

 So, this first set here are all ones I snagged from our Reaper Bones tote, so I don't really know their names exactly, but you can always look through Reaper Bones to find them- there's only a couple hundred to check through ::lol:: No set of primitives would be complete, of course, without the Conan lookalike wearing nothing but a loin cloth. This guy adds a pretty badass helmet to protect his important parts, which is so obviously his brain ::sarcasm::. And, of course, a good battle ax is so much more impressive than a simple sword. Frankly, it's probably a more useful tool to boot. I think I would rather have an ax during an apocalypse than a sword. But now I'm getting too technical. It was really about going through the mountain of metal and going "Gee, what can I pull out that will reasonably fit with my theme?" And this guy definitely fits.
   Now, when I was growing up, the early Mad Max movies were big, so for me, a post-apoc set of characters is also not complete without a kid. Ok, sure, this isn't really a kid- she seems to have a rather developed chest for her height, but that's only because the figure itself was actually not supposed to be human. She's supposed to be some kind of halfling or something. but she has the small frame and large head of a child. I guess, with how easy Bones is to carve, I could have flattened the chest a little, but her torso is already so tiny, and I think you still get the idea. Anyway, she is really well equipped for a post-apoc tribal, and I just had to have her in there.
   Oh, yeah, and the third one is a big, scary spider. So begins the adding of rad-totems to my force, 'cause I am so maximizing the pets. And, you know, spiders are scary.

   The second set are a fun pair of metal ladies. The one on your left is Kali, from RAFM's USX: Modern Day Heroes. Yeah, ok, that's a big gun for a Tribal, but you use what you can find, and she's a Tribal Representative, so she's allowed to have some bigger stuff.
   Unfortunately, I have no idea who the second girl is. Stupid me threw out her package prematurely, and no one can remember. I thought she was an "Amazon with Spear," but that search did not turn up any matches, so I might be wrong, and without remembering the maker, odds of finding her name are slim, so if anyone remembers, please let me know. But she's cool, and I decided to go a counter-intuitive direction with her coloring, and made her the pasty-white blonde chick of the bunch, where most of my tribals are fairly well tanned. I kinda feel like she was some spoiled rich girl before the apocalypse, and now she's tied up her long blonde hair in war ponytails and "gone native", so to speak. Honestly, I'm not even sure I know what that expression means, but in TNT, it means that you became a Tribal ::lol::, because that's exactly the fluff of the faction.
  So, there you have it, my completed models for this week. I think that brings my total for the Post-Octopalypse to 5, and our club total to 7. Since I still have a lot of models half done, and have some nice, simple rats to do, I'm really hoping to blow that number out of the water next week, After all, this is America, and I get a day off this week! Nah, I don't need to visit or anything. I can paint ::lol::

Until next time, mortals!
-Ali

25 Years On A Roller Coaster / 25 Anni Sulle Montagne Russe

ENGLISH
Happy Anniversary Sonic! Thanks for making me spend 25 years on a roller coaster (I am referring to the quality of your games) and best wishes for a future where you'll be finally able to find your own way (the right way) in the world of platform games.

ITALIANO
Buon anniversario Sonic! Grazie per questi 25 anni passati sulle montagne russe (e mi riferisco alla qualità dei tuoi giochi) e auguri per un futuro in cui riuscirai, finalmente, a trovare la tua strada, quella giusta, nel mondo dei giochi di piattaforme.

Sonic was looking for the right way after 25 years.
Sonic sta ancora cercando la giusta strada dopo 25 anni.

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The British Council: STOP ENGLISH PROFICIENCY EXAMS FOR AFRICANS FROM COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES

Hello there,

I just signed the petition "The British Council: STOP ENGLISH PROFICIENCY EXAMS FOR AFRICANS FROM COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES" and wanted to see if you could help by adding your name.

Our goal is to reach 26,767 signatures and we need more support. You can read more and sign the petition here:

https://chn.ge/2yUTOBQ

Thanks!
Olorunfemi