An anonymous reader shares a report: In a private school where tuition is high, students can bicker about clothes, shoe brands, cellphones, or video games. At Paul Towler's middle school, where he teaches English to seventh and eighth graders, some kids "have enough money to be comfortable and others' parents are owners of giant nationwide restaurant chains," he says. Towler is used to seeing such disparities play out in the real world through objects that you can physically hold. But after battle royale sensation Fortnite exploded, the fights between students took an unexpected turn. Fortnite's virtual clothes became a status symbol, and some of Towler's pupils started policing what their classmates wore in-game.

The confrontations could get ugly. One student in Towler's class "begged his parents for [money] to buy a skin because no one would play with him" because he wore basic virtual clothes. While the bullying wasn't always Fortnite-specific, Towler recalls that it seemed "vicious for [the student] to have another avenue for the meaner kids to attack him." Things got better for that kid, but when your social scene begins and ends with Fortnite, having nobody to play with is like a mark of death.

EA Access -- Electronic Arts' unlimited game subscription service that lets players access a massive library of EA games -- is finally coming to the PlayStation 4 this July, almost five years after it launched on the Xbox One. From a report: Like the current Xbox offering, EA Access for the PS4 costs either $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year. In addition to unlimited access to EA's vault of games, Access also comes with other perks, including a 10 percent discount on full-priced EA game purchases as well as early trials of upcoming EA games. EA Access for PS4 will be a separate account from EA Access for Xbox One. So if you're already paying for Access on your Xbox, you will have to pay a second monthly fee to play those games on your PS4.

Microsoft Solitaire, bundled with the Windows operating system since 1990, has been inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame for its popularity and influence on other video games and society in general. It joins classic titles like Doom, Tetris, World of Warcraft, and Halo: Combat Evolved. The Verge reports: The World Video Game Hall of Fame is a relatively new institution, created in 2015 and overseen by educational institute The Strong. Its official home is in The National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, and each year it selects a handful of new inductees. Solitaire may be a video game for the ages, but its inclusion in Windows had a higher purpose. The developers of the operating system felt that the familiar game was the perfect way to introduce users to relatively new computing concepts, like using a mouse and drag-and-drop. By playing Solitaire, users honed more than their card skills: a win-win for all.

Solitaire was first bundled with Windows 3.0 and appeared in every subsequent version of the software up until Windows 8.1. It was removed from the base level operating system, but was returned in Windows 10 after Microsoft admitted that Solitaire, along with Minesweeper and Hearts, still have "devoted followings." Because of its inclusion in the world's most popular PC operating system, lowly Solitaire has likely been installed on more than one billion devices, says the Strong Museum, making it one of the most popular video games of all time. "Microsoft Solitaire demonstrated that there existed a vast market for games that appeal to people of all types, paving the way for the growth of the casual game market," said the institute in a press statement. "We are humbly honored to have the opportunity to work on a game that has such broad appeal, is localized into 65 languages, and played in over 200 markets around the world, including Antarctica," said Microsoft's Paul Jensen, studio manager for Microsoft Casual Games.

New submitter Schnapple writes: Back in 2009, id Software put Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM on the App Store, but once iOS 11 started phasing out 32-bit apps, they stopped working. Since their source code was published under the GPL, I went in and fixed them up so they would run on modern devices, and also added game controller support and ported them to tvOS so they could run on Apple TV. Then over the last year I did the same for DOOM II and Final DOOM, Quake, Quake II, Quake III: Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and finally DOOM 3. I've chronicled the adventures on my blog. I can't publish them to the App Store for obvious reasons and you'll need to provide your own copy of the game data, but if anyone's interested in trying them out on Apple devices I've posted the sources to GitHub.

Days after Mortal Kombat was inducted into the World Videogame Hall of Fame, multiple sources at its creator (Warner Bros Interactive studio NetherRealm) are alleging a toxic workplace with 100-hour workweeks, Variety reports, citing seven current and former full-time employees and contractors: Reports of low pay and the crunch of extreme overtime as workers tried to finish the game on time initially surfaced about NetherRealm Studios on social media earlier in April, but those issues appear to be symptomatic of a long-term poisonous work culture at the studio, according to seven people who spoke to Variety -- five of whom asked that their names not be used for fear of reprisals... The common thread among all the sources was that they said they felt the pressure to work long hours came with the threat of being replaced or denied a chance at a more... One current employee said that he and others at the studio have been working 60 to 70 hours per week, seven days a week since January. While he said various factors are to blame for the crunch, such as poor communication and mismanagement, he cited a January marketing event for "Mortal Kombat 11," called MK Day, which put the studio behind significantly...

The catch-up still persists, even though "Mortal Kombat 11" was released on April 23. Problems with in-game currency and exploits have the studio working on its third patch to fix glitches, and it already has two more patches planned. When asked how the studio higher-ups are positioning this "catch-up" work, the current employee said that they phrase it very carefully. "I think they walk that fine line really well," he said. "So it's a lot of implying, not up-front. They don't tell us, 'You have to work these hours.' They also don't tell that to any of the temporary/contract employees. When we interviewed all of our contractor/temporary employees, my direct manager would tell them, 'Overtime isn't mandatory, but everyone is expected to do their fair share.' Meaning when we have it -- because even before we started interviewing and building up our temp team, we already knew there's going to come a point where we're going to start crunching because we've been doing this since time immemorial, [on] every project."

Some full-timers have taken to living at the studio when working the most intense periods of crunch, he said, sleeping in their office or on an inflatable sofa in their cubicle. One employee has even been spotted wearing a bathrobe while in the studio. One source said that for some of the temporary positions, it's easy enough to replace those who don't crunch with a new batch of eager contractors. Many temporary employees are recruited from DePaul University, the person said, and are students who are willing to work a nine-month contract for $14 an hour in exchange for the chance to work on a triple-A franchise.
In a statement to Variety, NetherRealm Studios said they were "actively looking into all allegations" as "we take these matters very seriously and are always working to improve our company environment." But last week James Longstreet, a developer who worked on 2011's "Mortal Kombat," posted on Twitter that "The [Mortal Kombat] team's stance is that crunch works, and MK games are always profitable, so it's clearly the right thing to do.

"It's wrong -- crunch doesn't work, the workers don't see the profit (bonuses at WB games are capped to a small percentage of salary), and it ruins lives."

"Looking for some new sick burns to throw out at other players on Xbox Live? Microsoft's got you covered," reports Motherboard: In its new community standards, published this week, the company's got some examples of acceptable trash talk, including gems like:

- Get destroyed. Can't believe you thought you were on my level.

- That was some serious potato aim. Get wrecked.

- Only reason you went positive was you spent all game camping. Try again, kid.

- Cheap win. Come at me when you can actually drive without running cars off the road.

- That sucked. Get good and then come back when your k/d's over 1....

"We get it -- gaming can be competitive and interactions with other players can get heated," the community standards state. "A little trash talk is an expected part of compe titive multiplayer action, and that's not a bad thing. But hate has no place here, and what's not okay is when that trash talk turns into harassment." Microsoft defines acceptable trash talk as "light-hearted banter or bragging" that's focused directly on the game and "encourages healthy competition." Harassment is "negative behavior that's personalized, disruptive, or likely to make someone feel unwelcome or unsafe..."

For breaking the rules, players can expect consequences, but Microsoft is hesitant to call it a punishment "We're not out to punish, but rather to protect everyone's experience," the standards note. For every "corrective action" -- which the standards state could be a suspension, or a restriction on the ability to send messages or stream live -- Microsoft wants its players to learn from their mistakes; players will be welcomed back to the community to prove they've changed their ways, the company says. But that doesn't mean every abusive gamer will be welcomed back into the fold. Repeat offenders or particularly severe abuse will garner a permanent suspension, the standards state, which requires the profile owner to "forfeit all licenses for games and other content, Gold membership time, and Microsoft account balances."

The classic Windows game Solitaire has joined such landmarks as Doom, Tetris, and World of Warcraft in being inducted into the Strong Museum of Play's World Video Game Hall of Fame. The award recognizes Solitaire's role as a significant part of gaming's history. From a report: Solitaire was first bundled with Windows 3.0. Much like the other notable bundled game, Minesweeper, Solitaire was there to serve as a secret tutorial: in a time when the mouse was still regarded as a new and exotic piece of computer hardware, Solitaire honed clicking, double clicking, and drag-and-drop skills. As a computerized version of a familiar card game, it was instantly recognizable. It was bundled with every subsequent Windows version, up to Windows 7. Windows 8 replaced it with a much more varied set of card games. The combination of approachability and bundling means that the game has been installed on more than a billion PCs, and it has likely been played by many billions of people.

You expect to lose money gambling, but you don't really expect to lose it abstaining from gambling. But if you're a FanDuel user who hasn't made any bets or deposits for two years, the site will now deduct $3 per month until you put some money on the table. You have to play to win, it seems, but not to lose. From a report: In an email sent to such lapsed (or perhaps recovering) users, FanDuel wrote: "It appears your account has been inactive for over two years, which means you have neither deposited nor entered a contest during that time. We've recently updated our Terms of Use to impose a monthly inactivity fee of $2.99 for any accounts that have no play or deposit activity for a period of 24+ months. Per our terms, we are providing you with 30 days notice prior to imposing this fee."

Minecraft creator Marcus 'Notch' Persson, who sold the title to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, won't be part of 10-year anniversary plans for the game because of his "comments and opinions," Microsoft said in a statement. From a report: Minecraft's creator Marcus Notch Persson has recently made some seemingly controversial white supremacist and transphobic comments via Twitter that have all but forced Microsoft to put some space between itself and the games creator. "His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of 'Minecraft'," a Microsoft spokesperson said. Fortunately, Persson's has had little to no involvement with Minecraft since its sale to Microsoft for $2.5 billion back in 2014, so it's been easier for the company to remove loading screen text that referenced Notch as well as uninviting him from future Minecraft events such as the 10-year anniversary shindig coming up soon.

dryriver writes: A lot of people seem to believe that computers somehow need polygons, NURBS surfaces, voxels or point clouds "to be able to define and render 3D models to the screen at all." This isn't really true. All a computer needs to light, shade, and display a 3D model is to know the answer to the question "is there a surface point at coordinate XYZ or not." Many different mathematical structures or descriptors can be dreamed up that can tell a computer whether there is indeed a 3D model surface point at coordinate XYZ or behind a given screen pixel XY. Polygons/triangles are a very old approach to 3D graphics that was primarily designed not to overstress the very limited CPU and RAM resources of the first computers capable of displaying raster 3D graphics. The brains who invented the technique back in the late 1960s probably figured that by the 1990s at the latest, their method would be replaced by something better and more clever. Yet here we are in 2019 buying pricey Nvidia, AMD, and other GPUs that are primarily polygon/triangle accelerators.

Why is this? Creating good-looking polygon models is still a slow, difficult, iterative and money intensive task in 2019. A good chunk of the $60 you pay for an AAA PC or console game is the sheer amount of time, manpower and effort required to make everything in a 15-hour-long game experience using unwieldy triangles and polygons. So why still use polygons at all? Why not dream up a completely new "there is a surface point here" technique that makes good 3D models easier to create and may render much, much faster than polygons/triangles on modern hardware to boot? Why use a 50-year-old approach to 3D graphics when new, better approaches can be pioneered?

thegarbz writes: Epic games is no stranger to controversy recently. The Fortnight developer late last year launched its own games store in direct competition with Steam. Unlike Steam, however, Epic only claims a 12% fee for hosting a game on their store vs Steam's 30%. What has angered many is not the competition but rather Epic's strategy of nabbing up last minute Epic store exclusives sometimes right before launch even after customers already pre-ordered the game on other platforms. Last night Epic CEO Tim Sweeney tweeted that he will end exclusive agreements if Steam price matched the Epic store. From Kotaku: "If Steam committed to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached," Sweeney wrote, "Epic would hastily organize a retreat from exclusives (while honoring our partner commitments) and consider putting our own games on Steam." thegarbz adds: While initially this looks like Epic is playing a good guy, there are many reasons to be skeptical. As covered previously Sweeney has aspirations for Epic to become the next Google or Facebook and it is unlikely that the practice of drawing people to your platform through exclusive agreements would be dropped, especially if Steam drops prices to increase competition. More likely the CEO is attempting to improve his company's image in a gaming community which has seen every Epic store exclusive game review bombed across other platforms, positively in the case of Metro Exodus, and negatively in the case of games like Borderlands 2, the squeal of which will be an Epic store exclusive.

Cox Cable is testing a new "Elite Gamer Service" a form of fast lane service for gamers that would prioritize internet use for those willing to pay an extra $15 a month. From a report: The service is currently being tested in Arizona and only works with Windows PCs. Cox Elite Gamer "automatically finds a faster path for your PC game data, reducing the lag, ping spikes, and jitter that stand in the way of winning," according to the official site for the service. The site also notes that compared to standard Cox Internet, users will experience up to 34% less lag, 55% fewer ping spikes, and 45% less jitter. The $15 a month service includes access for two computer users and requires Cox Internet Preferred 100 Internet service or above. In the terms of service on the website, Cox notes that membership to the Cox Elite Gamer Service permits users to route their game activity for select games through a dedicated gaming network.

Last week, after seven years of work, Nintendo fan ZeroPaige finally released a working port of Super Mario Bros. for the Commodore 64. The achievement -- and hard graft behind it -- caught the eye of C64 fans, who praised the effort of recreating one of gaming's greatest masterpieces for the much loved home computer. But then -- of course -- Nintendo swung into action. From a report: Four days after its release, Nintendo began taking it down. The file has been removed from the its most prominent hosting sites -- and from the Commodore Computer Club website, where it was hosted.

"Epic Games gave bans to more than 1,200 Fortnite accounts and revoked cash prizes that more than 200 players had won following Epic's investigations of cheating in the first week of Fortnite's World Cup Online Open," reports Polygon: That cheater (whom Epic did not name) used the cheat software during the tournament's semifinals. The account involved had played "for less than five minutes" before being discovered and banned, Epic said.

The great majority of the other accounts sanctioned received two-week bans for their misconduct. Of them, 196 players forfeited their winnings after they were caught circumventing region locks to play in several regions. Epic said that will change the prize payouts for others in the tournament, but their improved finishes won't be reflected on Fortnite's in-game leaderboard. Nine prize winners lost their money for sharing accounts, and one winner's earnings were vacated for teaming.

Epic Games said it has added a "real-time teaming detection algorithm" to its competitive play. Teaming, in which players in a solo mode work cooperatively and create a competitive disadvantage for others, can get players banned even in competitive non-tournament play.

eatmorekix quotes Vice: In 2012, Paragon Studios announced it was shutting down City of Heroes, a massively multiplayer online game where a community of players created their own superheroes, went on adventures together, and formed lasting friendships.

The news was crushing to the game's devoted community because they could no longer play and hang out in the virtual space they loved, and today, years after the game's shutdown, the community is in an uproar again. As Massivelyop first reported, a group of City of Heroes players called the Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers (SCORE) had created their own, private server where they could continue to play the game for the last six years, but kept it relatively secret.

"I like the rest of you have been lied to," Reddit user avoca wrote in a thread titled "BE ANGRY" on the City of Heroes subreddit. "I have been told City of Heroes has been shutdown. Today, I learn I have been mistaken. For all of these years, City of Heroes has lived on. In secret. For every passing day and every withdrawal symptom, a person is playing on this secret server, and they are gaining xp, leveling up, performing task forces and forming supergroups."
In 2004 the game's lead designer answered questions from Slashdot's reader.

15 years, a member of the emulator team tells Massivelyop that they'd tried to keep their City of Heroes server a secret for over six years because they were worried about getting a cease and desist notice from the game's publishers.

Classic video games are getting a makeover. But it's not big-name game developers making the improvements: it's independent modders. From a report: The technique being used is known as "AI upscaling." In essence, you feed an algorithm a low-resolution image, and, based on training data it's seen, it spits out a version that looks the same but has more pixels in it. Upscaling, as a general technique, has been around for a long time, but the use of AI has drastically improved the speed and quality of results. "It was like witchcraft," says Daniel Trolie, a teacher and student from Norway who used AI to update the visuals of 2002 RPG classic The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. "[It] looked like I just downloaded a hi-res texture pack from [game developers] Bethesda themselves."

Trolie is a moderator at the r/GameUpscale subreddit where, along with specialist forums and chat apps like Discord, fans share tips and tricks on how to best use these AI tools. Browsing these forums, it's apparent that the modding process is a lot like restoring old furniture or works of art. It's a job for skilled craftspeople, requiring patience and knowledge. Not every game is a good fit for upscaling, and not every upscaling algorithm produces similar results. Modders have to pick the right tool for the job before putting in hundreds of hours of work to polish the final results. It's a labor of love, not a quick fix.

You can now download the source code of every Infocom text adventure game, thanks to archivist Jason Scott who uploaded the code to GitHub. "There are numerous repositories under the name historicalsource, each for a different game," reports Ars Technica. "Titles include, but are not limited to, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Planetfall, Shogun, and several Zork games -- plus some more unusual inclusions like an incomplete version of Hitchhiker's sequel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Infocom samplers, and an unreleased adaptation of James Cameron's The Abyss." From the report: The code was uploaded by Jason Scott, an archivist who is the proprietor of textfiles.com. His website describes itself as "a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them" -- in particular those of the 1980s. He announced the GitHub uploads on Twitter earlier this week. The games were written in the LISP-esque "Zork Implementation Language," or ZIL, which you could be forgiven for not being intimately familiar with already. Fortunately, Scott also tweeted a link to a helpful manual for the language on archive.org. Gamasutra, which first reported the news, notes that Activision still owns the rights to Infocom games and could request a takedown if it wanted.

Slashdot reader xavdeman writes: Hot on the heels of its announcement of the specifications of the next PlayStation, Sony has revealed a new crackdown on explicit content. Citing "the rise of the #MeToo movement" and a concern of "legal and social action" in the USA, Sony has said it wants to address concerns about the depiction of women in video games playable on its platform as well as protect children's "sound growth and development." The new rules were reportedly already responsible for puritan cutscene alterations in the Western PS4 release of the multi-platform title Devil May Cry 5, where lens flares were used to cover up partial nudity.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Gamers of a certain age probably remember being wowed by the quick, smooth scaling and rotation effects of the Super Nintendo's much-ballyhooed "Mode 7" graphics. Looking back, though, those gamers might also notice how chunky and pixelated those background transformations could end up looking, especially when viewed on today's high-end screens. Emulation to the rescue. A modder going by the handle DerKoun has released an "HD Mode 7" patch for the accuracy-focused SNES emulator bsnes. In their own words, the patch "performs Mode 7 transformations... at up to 4 times the horizontal and vertical resolution" of the original hardware.

The results, as you can see in the above gallery and the below YouTube video, are practically miraculous. Pieces of Mode 7 maps that used to be boxy smears of color far in the distance are now sharp, straight lines with distinct borders and distinguishable features. It's like looking at a brand-new game. Perhaps the most impressive thing about these effects is that they take place on original SNES ROM and graphics files; DerKoun has said that "no artwork has been modified" in the games since the project was just a proof of concept a month ago. That makes this project different from upscaling emulation efforts for the N64 and other retro consoles, which often require hand-drawn HD texture packs to make old art look good at higher resolutions.

Daetrin writes: Sony is unwilling to confirm "Playstation 5" as the name, but their next console is "no mere upgrade" according to a report from Wired, which cites Sony executives -- who spoke on the record:

"PlayStation's next-generation console ticks all those boxes, starting with an AMD chip at the heart of the device. (Warning: some alphabet soup follows.) The CPU is based on the third generation of AMD's Ryzen line and contains eight cores of the company's new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. The GPU, a custom variant of Radeon's Navi family, will support ray tracing, a technique that models the travel of light to simulate complex interactions in 3D environments. While ray tracing is a staple of Hollywood visual effects and is beginning to worm its way into $10,000 high-end processors, no game console has been able to manage it. Yet."

The console will also have a solid-state drive and is currently planned to be backward-compatible with both PS4 games and PSVR.