Through the Google lens: Search trends January 23-29

Between a spookily resilient cat, and a new bunch of ghostbusters, there was a lot of (paranormal) activity in search this week:

“It’s a great day for a ball game…”
People across the country are gearing up for this weekend’s Super Bowl, starting with the basics: “When is the Super Bowl?” They’re also researching some of the major characters of Sunday’s face-off—namely Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch and Patriots coach Bill Belichick—and getting the jump on the ads on YouTube (you’ve already watched more than 100 million minutes’ worth!), including a controversial GoDaddy ad. Plus, no game day is complete without the food: top recipes searched this week include [easy chili], [fajitas], [baked chicken wings] and [barbacoa]. Don’t forget to tune in to @Google over the weekend for more trends!

With all the football hubbub, people still found time to search for other sports happenings. Last Friday, baseball fans mourned the death of Ernie Banks, a.k.a. Mr. Cub, a beloved shortstop and Hall of Famer. And that same night, Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors scored a record-breaking 37 points in one quarter.

Who you gonna call?
An all-female Ghostbusters, that’s who. Rumors about next year’s reboot of the 80’s classic have been looming over us like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man for a while now, but now it’s all but confirmed that the 2016 film will feature Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon. Searches for each of the actresses spiked faster than you could say “proton pack,” and Kate McKinnon was the #2 search overall on Tuesday. In other leading-lady casting news, Harry Potter alum Emma Watson announced that she’ll play Belle in Disney’s forthcoming live-action Beauty and the Beast.

Tempest in a teacup
Headed into this week, the weather was on everyone’s mind, at least on the East Coast. Searches for terms like [weather], [blizzard 2015], [juno], [National Weather Service] and [weather NYC] were all hot—or, cold, as the case may be. People were also looking for info on the [mta], [nj transit] and [school closings]. Though the storm in New York amounted to little more than an excuse for a snow day, it dumped up to three feet of snow in parts of New England. Definitely enough to merit all those pre-storm searches!

And moving from the blizzard to the desert, Michelle Obama made headlines when she appeared in Riyadh to mark the death of King Abdullah—without a veil or headscarf. Searches spiked as people tried to find out if the First Lady intended her attire as a political statement. Others noted that she’s certainly not the first to go bareheaded: Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, Laura Bush and Condoleezza Rice have, too.

One down, eight to go
File under “stranger than fiction”: [zombie cat] was trending in search this week after a 23-month old kitten in Florida seemingly came back from the dead. After being hit by a car and buried, Bart proved the old “nine lives” adage true when he reappeared in a neighbor’s yard five days later. We’d say that after his trials, Bart deserves a cozy new bed at home, like a Serenity Cat Pod from Skymall, but, well…

Tip of the week
Don’t show up empty-handed on Sunday: say “Ok Google, remind me to pick up guacamole when I’m at Safeway” and the Google app will help you be a good guest.

Posted by Emily Wood, Managing Editor, who searched this week for [garden district walking tour new orleans] and [kitten ducklings]

Earliest Post Ever

Friday is going to be a busy day so decided to post my blog in the morning instead, and this way ensure that something gets posted as I will be leaving the office at 3PM today to celebrate someones birthday and help myself to the local mead.

My task list is quite meager today with just three crash bugs to attend (and as I write this at 7:30AM I have already fixed two of them), and currently looking at a report that the Fantasy Characters (third party content) was crashing the new character animation system, so that has been dealt with though you can see from the shot above that the relative difference in size between these and the new Reloaded once are causing the chappies to float a little.  I dare say there will be a lot of work and tweaks to the engine as more custom content comes in and needs to be anticipated correctly when importing.

Given the 'seaming' abundance of time, I will be spending most of it building and testing versions, and of course uploading Steam editions as this will be our new testing ground in February in accordance with our plan to start testing the Steam infrastructure and the Multiplayer as part of the main experience.

The plan at the start of the year was to spend all January adding the remaining core functionalism and all of February testing it, with a release to Early Access in March in time for GDC.  It's great that this plan has worked so far, and I am looking forward to making lots of maps and testing every corner of the software, and it's very rare I get a WHOLE MONTH to test something prior to release so done correctly I think we can assure ourselves of a stable release.  Granted we still need to add lots of things, lots more optimization opportunities and increase the available content, but as 'core engine' products go, I think it will present as an interesting product to many Steam users who perhaps have had their fill of playing game after game, and would not mind making one for a change.

Exciting times ahead and looking forward to seeing how our 'very tentative' Steam pre-test goes this weekend with our alpha testers, as this will be the first time we have used Steam keys for a beta test!  Fingers crossed :)

Overtaker

Our new project management software Wrike has a pie chart and bar graph which shows the contrast between newly submitted tasks and tasks completed, and today we beat Week 2 in terms of completed items which was pretty cool!

My remaining tasks with a day to spare is to solve the Windows XP BSOD which relates to an issue with the engine crashing out on one of our alpha testers, and to make a build for the weekend and also transfer final files for a Steam build too, which is timely as I am pretty knackered from the last two days and looking forward to an early night's sleep for an early start Friday when I plan to start work at 7AM to get a little more done in the final day of 'functionality' development, from here on in it's all testing and minor tweaking.

Games Day - Three Done, Two Nearly There, More To Come

In addition to the various fixes afforded today, I took a serious look at the game levels we will be bundling with the core product and after I got the light-mapper to work again, the speed of the games where pretty good and I had a lot of fun running around as a player rather than a fixer, and aside from some AI and Performance tuning I think we're on our way to creating a great game play experience.

Also participated in a multi-player test this afternoon which successfully uploaded a new level to the Steam Workshop, hosted that game, joiners informed through the software that they need to subscribe to the item, which was then downloaded locally for them, and the game could be connected and run, complete with custom content in an encrypted package to protect the artists assets, and once again I see this as being one of the most fun and engaging features of the product, despite it being one of the last things we elected to add.

Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

It’s been nearly five years since we offered to build a fiber-optic network in one U.S. city as an experiment — and were met with overwhelming enthusiasm. Now, Google Fiber is live in Kansas City, Provo and Austin, and we've started to see how gigabit Internet, with speeds up to 100 times faster than today’s basic broadband, can transform cities. It can give them new platforms for economic development and new ways of using technology to improve life for their citizens. And, around the country, it seems to be catching on.

Check out the Kansas City Startup Village and Provo learn-how-to-code hub DevMountain. Take a look at the work of a geneticist whose speedy connection could one day help newborns in intensive care, or how one city's network is connecting a high school classroom to an underwater microscope so students can study oceanic life in the Pacific... from Chattanooga, Tenn. There are many more stories like this—stories about how people are using gigabit internet to spark innovation, inspire creativity, and collaborate in ways they simply couldn't before. And we want to see even more.

So, today, we’re happy to announce that Google Fiber is coming to 18 cities across four new metro areas: Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham. We can’t wait to see what people and businesses across the Southeast U.S. do with gigabit speeds.

Bringing Google Fiber to these cities is a long-term investment. We’ve been working closely with city leaders over the past year on a joint planning process to get their communities ready for Google Fiber—and now the really hard work begins. Our next step is to work with cities to create a detailed map of where we can put our thousands of miles of fiber, using existing infrastructure such as utility poles and underground conduit, and making sure to avoid things like gas and water lines. Then a team of surveyors and engineers will hit the streets to fill in missing details. Once we’re done designing the network (which we expect to wrap up in a few months), we’ll start construction.

We’re also continuing to explore bringing fiber to five additional metro areas—Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and San Jose, and will have updates on these potential Fiber cities later this year.

Today, we aren't the only ones talking about gigabit broadband. From the White House to main street, a chorus of new voices is standing up for speed. Just last week during the State of the Union, the President called for faster networks so that innovators and entrepreneurs can build the next big idea. New research from the Fiber to the Home Council shows gigabit networks are contributing billions of dollars in economic growth. Communities across America are demanding more speed for their own homes and businesses, and we’re going to keep doing our part to help.

Posted by Dennis Kish, Vice President, Google Fiber

Some Great New Sample Levels Joining The Build

Another great day of fixes, and following on from a 15 hour day yesterday I only had a handful of issues left to deal with before the next big build, which mainly includes taking new assets, testing them and adding them to the core asset collection to be part of the installer, and including the new (very cool) levels that will be provided as samples for new Reloaded users, and example shots provided below as a taste of what is to come.

One tip suggested by Rick to share is that when you lightmap your scenes, and have a dynamic shadow such an animating tree casting on the floor, and your entity is not being shadowed that sits under the tree, make sure you set the Entity Shader Technique to HIGHEST as this is the only one which supports shadow-shading.

Content And Sample Game Levels

With the bulk of the 'functionality' work concluded last week, this week, the third since the start of 2015 will be about adding content, game samples and testing everything as we layer on the final fixes and polish before a major build for some serious testing during February.

Many of the sample levels created for us by third parties either through competitions or directly as a contribution sometimes dipped into legacy or custom content, and so we are painstakingly bringing those into the core asset library, renaming them, putting them in the correct category folder and using a cool new hack I created, the old levels can be instructed through a .REPLACE feature, to swap in the location of the new entity to replace the old one, avoiding the need for the level artist to have to go in and manually replace anything, which I thought was a very nice time saver (and sanity saver).

Through the Google lens: Search trends January 16-22

Here’s a side of search trends to go along with your Friday. Read on to find out what got people talking–and searching–this week.

Deflate-gate and other scandals
Super Bowl drama is already here, and it’s not even February 1. After the New England Patriots dominated the Indianapolis Colts 45-7 to win the AFC Championship, news broke out that 11 out of the 12 balls used by New England quarterback Tom Brady were under inflated, which is a no-no in the NFL. The league has strict rules about the air pressure in game day balls since alterations could give one team an advantage. Both Brady and head coach Bill Belichick are singing Shaggy's greatest hit “It Wasn’t Me,” so we’ll all have to wait and see how the mystery unfolds.

On the other “football” field, U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team goalkeeper Hope Solo is back in trouble with the law after she and her husband, Jerramy Stevens, were pulled over for suspicions of driving under the influence. The kicker? This all happened while Stevens was driving the U.S. team van, which promptly resulted in a 30-day suspension for Solo. This event comes just seven days after charges of domestic violence were dropped against the athlete.

The last laugh
On Tuesday, President Obama delivered his sixth State of the Union address to outline his legislative agenda for the year ahead. Then, on Thursday, the President took questions about his remarks from YouTube Creators. While topics like education, the economy and foreign relations got people searching, the Internet had a field day after Obama dropped the proverbial mic at the expense of his Republican counterparts during his speech. In the midst of his talk, Obama stated “I have no more campaigns to run,” generating applause from some of his opponents. But Obama -- not one to be the butt of a joke -- responded as smooth as butter: “I know because I won both of them.” Burn.

Not what you expected
Search left people salivating after news that milk’s favorite cookie, the Oreo, was getting a new flavor inspired by Valentine’s Day. Confection-maker Nabisco decided to bring cupcake and cookie together in holy matrimony with the launch of a red velvet version of their snack on February 2. And as some people tried to satisfy their sweet tooth, it looks like Tiger Woods may have lost his...literally. The famed golfer made an appearance at his girlfriend Lindsey Vonn’s World Cup skiing race in Italy sporting a missing tooth, causing a stir on the web as people tried to find an explanation for his gap-toothed smile.

Meanwhile, things took a turn for the worse at the happiest place on earth. Disneyland was linked to an outbreak of more than 50 cases of the measles. Health officials are declaring the park safe for those who have their immunizations, but the situation has drummed up more controversy around the anti-vaccination movement.

Tip of the Week
Still sticking to your diet resolution? If you need a little help knowing the number of calories you’re eating just ask, “Ok Google, how many calories are in an avocado?” to stay in tip-top shape.

Posted by Jenise Araujo, Communications Associate, who searched for [hope for hope] and [all scandals that end in -gate]

Flea Swatting Stage

After the monster UBER Character work yesterday and last night, today was a little nicer with some opportunities to squash little bugs and tweaks, which has gone well so far, so the plan is to continue getting the list down to reasonable levels, and then make a test and build for the internal alpha testers for the weekend.

Finally finished at 3:30AM last night, but the Uber Character can now hold any weapon style, and when stood can pivot his upper body around to face and shoot you, and transition to normal animations, plus blend the two states together using a special frame override which can impose static frame poses onto a running model animations, which I thought was a nice touch!

Coding To Rocky Theme Tune

You just know no bug is safe when you're casually playing movie themes in the background, and then the Rocky theme tune comes on, so it is perhaps best for the bugs that all of today I was working on the Uber Character task, which involves adding Rocket, Shotgun, Uzi and Assault Rifle animation sets to the character animation system which was estimated at 6 hours and looks to be taking entirely that allocation.

I also added a sub-task to this goal, which was to use the new animation frames created to pose the upper body of the character for twisting and firing, and I was about to start writing new DBP commands to override an animation with fixed animation frame poses, when I discovered a SetFrameEx command that I must have written years ago that does exactly that, which I thought amusing and very very useful indeed, thanks TGC!

Crashes Be Gone

A crash that has been plaguing the software for sometime has now been squashed, and turned out to be the rather simple fact that the Steam API needed to be totally closed down when the executable was terminated, or modules would be left hanging and dire consequences ensued.

As Pool Night is 'Singles Knock-Out' I have decided to stay at home and have an evening of 'more work' which according to my task list on Wrike means I start the code which will allow the Uber Character to hold ANY weapon style (pistol, shotgun, uzi, rocket, none), partially to give this character template life in the first build to help future character artists but mainly to provide the necessary character for the multiplayer gaming where each player can naturally select and run around with any weapon, and you want to see that in a good way, so it's my mission for the evening and hopefully I can get another task knocked off before the final 'function' week is over and we move tentatively to internal testing of a near-final build that will eventually become the Early Access release on Steam.

Strategy Meeting Day

A good meeting today and one decision is that we will likely be releasing a build for all pledgers at the start of February so something for you to look forward to, and also as part of the meeting before we headed off for lunch was a funny rag doll pose as I was defeating characters in the new Get To The River level which will feature in the final Early Access build (thanks to our recent competition winner):

It was great fun winding my way around a brilliantly designed level, and then started to realize I was in the GTTR (Get To The River) level, just massively embellished, and sure the AI can be a little slow to react but the combination of pistol, shotgun, uzi and rocket men as I battled to get to the jetty and the river was pretty awesome and I look forward to sharing it in the next two weeks!

2015 - Week Three

With base line multiplayer sessions in the main IDE, finalized performance and visual settings abd a dwindling list of priority tasks, all that really remains is the Character Kit and Workshop functionality to be introduced, which are the goals for this week, and with a strategy meeting thrown in the week has been reduced by a fifth, but I am also skipping the Pool knock-out Wednesday night which gives me half a day back so all in all should be a good productive week.

Also tackled some left-over nags regarding the Zombie support in the engine with fixes to the ability for them to walk OVER dead zombies, use whole body detection (instead of half body shooting bug) and the last one which was the random vertex corrupt which turned out to be a head reset feature which the Zombies have no use for, and I wanted to post a second picture of something you do not see every day (not that you see Zombies every day), is our total dominance of the Android Educational Chart, perhaps the dream of every app developer and all thanks to the power and awesomeness of App Game Kit 2 now available on Steam (blatant plug):

http://store.steampowered.com/app/325180/

Through the Google lens: Search trends January 9-15

This time of year may be cold and dark, but there was plenty to brighten our days—and keep us searching—this week.

Top of the pack
El Capitan is a stunning sight on a normal day—the sheer granite face rising above the valley in Yosemite National Park is hard to miss. But this week, people around the world had an extra reason to keep their eyes on El Cap: two mountain climbers, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, made history on Wednesday when they completed the first ever free climb of the 3,000-foot wall. Searches for [el capitan climb] went up more than 1,000% as people looked to learn more about the feat.

Back on firm ground, Ohio State beat #2-ranked Oregon in an upset victory in the College Football Playoff championship. Though the Buckeyes may have won on the field, the Ducks still held the top of the search charts, with more than 2 million searches on Monday. People were also searching for the teams’ top players, especially Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones, who announced this week that he had decided to stay with the team for another year, passing on the NFL draft. (His Oregon counterpart in Monday’s game, Marcus Mariota, made the opposite call.)

Glitter and glamour
We’re officially in peak entertainment awards season. The “72nd and final” Golden Globes took place on Sunday with hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Of particular interest on search were Jane the Virgin and its star Gina Rodriguez, whose win was considered a surprise and whose speech was considered a win, and The Honourable Woman’s Maggie Gyllenhaal, who gave a quietly passionate speech about women in Hollywood. And Michael Keaton, who won best actor in a drama for the film Birdman, brought some company with him to search, as well as the ceremony: his son and “best friend,” Sean Douglas, who spiked in search after Keaton sang his praises in his acceptance speech.

Then just when we’d finished analyzing the Globes’ winners and losers, the Oscar nominations were announced, meaning we officially have just over a month to catch up on all the films before the ceremony on February 22. Top nominees include Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Boyhood. (Someone get Sean Douglas a tux rental for February.) Want help with your Oscar pool? There’s no telling which film will win, but over the past year, the title of top film in Search is a close race between Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Finally, in addition to all the glitz on the red carpet, there was a different kind of glitter in search this week. A start-up business that lets you “ship your enemies glitter” went viral, giving you a new way to show that special (un)loved one how you feel. Millions of clicks and a website crash later, the founder is now saying he wants to quit. All that glitters is, apparently, not gold.

Tip of the week
Time to catch up on all those movies you haven’t seen. Just say “Ok Google” then “movie times” or “Selma movies times” and you’ll get a list of theaters and films playing near you.

Posted by Emily Wood, Managing Editor, who searched for [lucy parks and rec] and [spanish homophones]

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. through community service

This Monday, January 19, we’re celebrating the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King and marking the national MLK Day of Service. It’s a holiday that’s especially meaningful this year: 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery March, and it’s a time when civil rights is at the forefront of our national conversation.

Next Monday, Googlers across the country are heeding the call to give back to their communities, and we hope you’ll join us. Take some time to honor Dr. King by volunteering in your community—you can find opportunities at All for Good. In the meantime, here’s a look at some of the projects Googlers will be participating in, and the reasons why they’ve made the commitment to serve this MLK Day.

Dona Bellow, a legal assistant, will be helping middle school students in New York with computer science and STEM activities. She says, "doing something to help further the goals of someone else is reclaiming power: power to choose love over conflict, power to recognize and celebrate our differences, power to achieve an equitable outcome for all.”

In California, Googlers will be volunteering with the Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation as it hosts a full day of festivities including the annual parade/march in San Francisco. Eliana Murillo, who is head of multicultural marketing and will be participating in Monday’s event, told us that “giving a hand to those in need helps build compassion and understanding of the diversity of life experiences.”

Leadership coordinator Aerica Banks says that she serves to ”break down barriers and build community. We are all able to serve, and we all stand to benefit.” She helped organize volunteers in our Atlanta office for the Atlanta Food Bank Kids In Need program event, which provides school supplies free of charge to teachers in low-income schools.

And Fabian Elliott, from our ads team in Chicago, helped organize Google volunteers in the Windy City to help middle school students practice compassion by writing letters to children struggling with terminal illnesses. He says, “Even the most obscure challenges of the world impact each of us at varying levels...It’s as simple as doing something that you love that supports a cause you believe in. What are you waiting for?”

Dr. King said: "Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'" Googler volunteers are joining in the national efforts to honor the legacy of Dr. King—and we know that a commitment to service goes well beyond Monday. So we also support projects throughout the year to help to deepen our connections with local communities. Together, let’s make Martin Luther King Jr. Day “a day on, not a day off!”

Posted by Johanne Sterling, on behalf of the Black Googlers Network and GooglersGive

Welcome To The Slightly Drunk More Than Two Sentences Blog Post

Well after only 2 hours sleep between THU and FRI, and then a solid stint through to 5PM I decided to play fair to my own body and start to shut down the serious stuff.  The new build for the internal alpha testers was uploaded, my own tests went well, a GREAT result from our first Reloaded multi-player mash-up through Steam and a fantastic end to the week.  Surely I deserved a 'blended bourbon' and Cherry Zero mixer (or four) :)  I write my blog post-JD so excuse the exaggerated arm waving but the two sentence tether has been removed for Friday and I am free-styling my way through this post!

A very VERY early snapshot of my Character Kit prototype which I am confining to a weekend (or three) development so it does not get in the way of the main engine work.  More uniforms have been created as well.

If I had to choose from music for this shot, it would be The Ecstasy Of Gold by Ennio Morricone.  Maybe one day I can get away with this on YouTube without getting sued..

Speaking about todays work, a HUGE pile of completed items lies in my wake, and for the first time we had a multi-user mashup in the engine which means each of us make a quick level, then hit the M button and played the level over Steam and had a blast!  It was SO COOL!

On other news, the children of AGK2 continues to blaze a trail on the popular app charts.

I'll give you a guess, we did not develop Toca Hair Salon 2 ;)  We also got a nice treat from the real world too, you know, the top selling and top paid iOS and Android charts that all developers dream of being on.  Not bad for a few weeks of work with the ultra powerful and cross-platform king App Game Kit 2!

If I said this app took just 'weeks' to develop from scratch, you would not believe me so I will not stretch your credulity, but I started it mid-Jan and handed over the project by early March to start the Reloaded project back in 2013 or 2014, so long I cannot recall :)

Now back to Reloaded, hurray!  With Friday a resounding success, the plan for next week is to finish off the multi-player (Ravey) while I continue to close the stability gaps in the product to produce something as close to solid as a rock for the Steam Early Access release.  It's already feeling pretty solid, but with weeks of functionality development and a whole month of testing ahead, I am pretty confident right now.

Not to mention by little weekend task of moving the Character Kit closer to completion, and if possible, inclusion into the main Early Access release. The plan is that characters can be created for both the single player games AND the multi-player games, and the ability to put your own faces on the characters will be especially cool in the multi-player side of things.  It's one thing to frag a friend in a death-match, but quite another to run up to them and see their own face staring back at you :)  It's gonna rock!!

That's slightly more than two sentences, but it's Friday so enjoy the rambling. Just got stuck into a bowl of pasta, Godfather sound track in the background, a bourbon mix by my side, a dog waiting for his walk and a time team in my future, the perfect Friday for a saddy-coder who's social life was tied to a tree and left for the wolves many many moons ago.  Until Monday, enjoy your weekend and be happy!

Short Two Sentence Blog For Busy People

Today was meant to be about adding the multi-player button to the main IDE, which has taken all of 45 minutes, with the real bulk of the day being work on shadows and using more DirectX 9 hacks to do things like making the shadow camera render target NULL, accessing the depth stencil surface directly from a render which increases performance, improving the PCF for HIGHEST REAL-TIME and ALL PRE-BAKE settings.

After last nights victory at Pool and the subsequent celebrations I am not really in the mood for chilling out this evening, so will be returning to Wrike and knocking off a few more items into the completed column, not least because some new issues have been reported from yesterdays build so plenty for me to be getting on with before the planet I am on blows away altogether.

YouTube Creators interview President Obama following the State of the Union

Every year since 2010, President Obama has turned to YouTube and Google after his State of the Union speech to answer questions that are top of mind for the American people. Asked through YouTube video submissions or live via Google+ Hangouts, these questions always bring an interesting perspective to the issues the president addresses in his speech. This year we’re doing something we’ve never done before: bringing a handful of YouTube creators directly to the White House to talk with the president in person in a live broadcast on Thursday, January 22.

YouTube creators Bethany Mota, GloZell Green and Hank Green will interview President Obama about the top concerns facing them and their audiences. Over the next few days, the creators will ask you to share the questions you have for the president, some of which may be asked during the interview. In years past, people across the United States have used this interview to ask important questions about jobs, immigration and even Valentine’s Day. Use #YouTubeAsksObama on social media to suggest issues that are important to you or any questions that are on your mind.

Finally, don’t forget to tune in on January 20 at 9 p.m. EST to watch the State of the Union address, as well as the Republican response, live on YouTube.

Posted by Steve Grove, Director, News Lab

All But One

Great day today, and solved a nightmare of a bug which had the power to wipe out whole chunks of level entities at a single stroke, so that will be in an emergency build going out to the internal alpha testers this evening, and my last item from the current urgent list is the issue of the LOWEST shadows looking rather crude, and I have a sneaky suspicion the shadow textures have been using debug 256x256 render targets all this time, instead of the intended 2048x2048 ones!

Apart from that, the software is looking very well with more progress on the skin tone part of the Character Kit (all asset generation right now) and the multiplayer hook which can now take advantage of the Workshop system on Steam so hopefully Thursday will see another rush of completed items and move us ever closer that stable solid release we are aiming for by the end of January.

Hallo, hola, olá to the new, more powerful Google Translate app

Often the hardest part of traveling is navigating the local language. If you've ever asked for "pain" in Paris and gotten funny looks, confused "embarazada" with "embarrassed" in Mexico, or stumbled over pronunciation pretty much anywhere, you know the feeling. Now Google Translate can be your guide in new ways. We’ve updated the Translate app on Android and iOS to transform your mobile device into an even more powerful translation tool.

Instant translation with Word Lens
The Translate app already lets you use camera mode to snap a photo of text and get a translation for it in 36 languages. Now, we’re taking it to the next level and letting you instantly translate text using your camera—so it’s way easier to navigate street signs in the Italian countryside or decide what to order off a Barcelona menu. While using the Translate app, just point your camera at a sign or text and you’ll see the translated text overlaid on your screen—even if you don't have an Internet or data connection.

This instant translation currently works for translation from English to and from French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and we’re working to expand to more languages.

Have an easier conversation using the Translate app
When talking with someone in an unfamiliar language, conversations can... get... realllllllly... sloowwww. While we’ve had real-time conversation mode on Android since 2013, our new update makes the conversation flow faster and more naturally.

Starting today, simply tap the mic to start speaking in a selected language, then tap the mic again, and the Google Translate app will automatically recognize which of the two languages are being spoken, letting you have a more fluid conversation. For the rest of the conversation, you won’t need to tap the mic again—it'll be ready as you need it. Asking for directions to the Rive Gauche, ordering bacalhau in Lisbon, or chatting with your grandmother in her native Spanish just got a lot faster.

These updates will be coming to both Android and iOS, rolling out over the next few days. This is the first time some of these advanced features, like camera translations and conversation mode, will be available for iOS users.

More than 500 million people use Google Translate every month, making more than 1 billion translations a day to more easily communicate and access information across languages. Today’s updates take us one step closer to turning your phone into a universal translator and to a world where language is no longer a barrier to discovering information or connecting with each other.

Posted by Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate

Another 10 Bugs Fixed

Slow and steady is the grind to eliminating the remaining small mountain of bugs and naggy issues, and they are dropping one by one which is great fun, and with each build the software gets stronger, such as the new ability for the static lights to really stand out and work very well in the new lighting process.

Also, new character skins emerge from our character artist as he juggles asset creation for the newly forming Character Kit, which will not only have the ability to play musical heads but also allow the user to choose from a wide variety of realistic skin tones with the slide of a mouse.

Many Fixes - Custom Media Happy

I had about ten items on my urgent list for today, and defeated all but one which I am likely to solve this evening as it's the zero rag-doll animation death issue which should be pretty simple to deal with, but in the main I am happy with the fixes including a serious one which prevented certain entities from the store from rendering properly, including off the shelf stuff as seen below.

I also started work on the Character Kit, which is a very simple tool which will allow you to assemble unique characters for your level, and although the first version will only contain a few bodies, heads and texture variations, it will be designed to be expandable both from the store and from your own custom contributions.

Through the Google lens: Search trends January 2-8

2015 may have just begun, but search is already full steam ahead. From a tragedy in Paris to buzz around the new Calvin Klein ads, read on to find out how the year got started on search.

“Je suis Charlie”
The world was left in a state of disbelief on Wednesday after three gunmen stormed into the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical news magazine, and killed 12 people, including the paper’s editor Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier. The shooters targeted the publication in response to satirical cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Interest in the outlet reached an all-time high on the web and people looked for more information about “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”), a slogan adopted by free speech supporters in the wake of the shootings. A manhunt for the suspects finally ended Friday in a standoff at a printing company just outside of Paris, in which the two brothers behind the attacks were killed. Meanwhile, France mourns what is being called the country’s “worst terrorist attack in generations.”

The goals we can’t promise to keep
You know what they say—new year, new you. Searchers took to the Internet this week to find out how they could turn their new year’s resolutions into reality. And the usual suspects of diet and weight loss were on everyone’s list. The Dash Diet made it onto the trends charts after it took the number one spot on The U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of the best diets. Created by physicians to help treat high blood pressure, DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) emphasizes fruits, veggies, whole grains and low sodium. So long, carbs; it was nice knowing you.

We’re working to get our bodies photo-shoot ready, but Justin Bieber has beaten us to the punch. “Beliebers” everywhere were left drooling over a new Calvin Klein underwear ad. Meanwhile, Justin’s campaign co-star, Dutch model Lara Stone, is getting some unwanted attention: she received several death threats from Bieber’s fans.

Looking ahead
The year’s not even two weeks old and people are already excited for what’s to come. If you blinked, you probably missed tickets for Coachella 2015, the star-studded desert music festival. The concert sold out after a mere 40 minutes! And comic book fans (and Paul Rudd loyalists) went into a frenzy when Marvel released the trailer for their latest superhero flick, Ant Man. Our take? This smells like a Millennial version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids.

Finally, while many were looking ahead to this year’s entertainment, others took the time to remember a legend. This week, searchers were feeling sentimental for Elvis Presley’s 80th birthday and revisited the King’s classic songs and memorable white suits.

Tip of the week
Don’t let this be another year of resolution failure: use Google to set reminders for all of your goals. Just say “Ok Google, remind me to go to the gym” when you’re ready to commit to 365 days of sweat.

Posted by Jenise Araujo, Communications Associate, who searched for [heartbreak hotel] and [gym discounts].

Seven Hours On One Task - But It Was Worth It

I started with about eight or so high critical tasks, and ended the first part of my day (9AM-7PM-No-Food) with seven left to do, but it was a great day though as I have increased the loading speed of the whole test game pipeline, largely by moving plenty of the 'load once' instructions to before the editor starts, and also making a 4 second improvement in the step that generates a mega texture for distant terrain rendering. On my system, an empty level used to take 16 seconds from clicking Test Game to starting the game, but in the new build it now only takes 9 seconds and I have identified a 1.5 second pause when generating water and 4 seconds when initializing physics, both of which I think I can shave down, but it might not make it into the priority list, moving on.

You will notice I am exceeding my two sentence barrier today as it's Friday and you will need some mind fuel for the weekend. Happy to provide!  Above is a cool new character skin from our artist Adam, who will no doubt be making an appearance as either a default character or a skin choice for the future Character Creation Kit.

It's now one week back, and 5 dev days into 2015 and I am still feeling very charged from my rest over the holidays.  I have booked my flight to San Francisco to attend GDC in March, and my all accounts looks to be a great show with Intel exhibiting outside the Expo hall for ALL FIVE DAYS (of which I may very well be part of), and Steam are preparing something pretty big it seems surrounding their mysterious Steam Machines device(s).  I will be blogging and tweeting there as per usual, so if you want to catch up for a drink of Guinness and a Pie, I'll be following the attendant crowds as we stumble from one drinking hole to another.

Work on the Steam side is also going very well, with our resident Steam-tech-head Ravey solving the various challenges that will allow you to create, share and play not only your stock asset levels, but also store and custom content too, in glorious multi-player.  I can't wait to see what the community does with THAT, exciting times and let's hope we cover enough bases for our Steam launch (early access build).

My Friday night plans are pretty typical of a bedroom coder, eat something quickly (as the body needs energy after 10 hours in the saddle), walk the dog, make some tea and continue my quest to knock all the high priority items off my list before I go to bed.  Rest assured there will be more on Monday, but I'll still get a buzz out of clearing my proverbial inbox.  As it is Friday, I might treat myself to a J.D & Coke, a recipe I have improved by substituting regular for something called Coke Zero Cherry, which makes an awesome mixer and is literally one calorie (could them, one).  Now if only they could distill a 1 calorie bourbon, fat gits like me can rejoice the world over and drink ourselves thin!

Coding To TV Theme Tunes

Having listened to the theme tune to Morse over the last two days, I decided to start listening to a collection of 50 TV theme tunes on YouTube, I continued to plug away, defeating all manner of high priority nasties from the ever-trying-to-grow-larger list of tweaks and fixes needed to make a solid piece of software, and doing quite well at it according to Wrike, our new project management software which gave my a scare earlier today when it refused to bring up my daily list of tasks for a good few minutes past 9AM.

It is quite rewarding to stick to existing functionality rather than invent new stuff to pile onto the creation, as it means I get more time to actually use what already exists, and iron out those rough edges that I have taken for granted but would be a jarring experience for any new user, which I am concluding would be the majority of Steam users coming to the product, and I can report a warm fussy feeling as the product becomes rounded every day I sit down to work on it :)

58 In 3

Yesterday (and the two previous days) saw the completion of 58 tasks, plus 19 deferred and 8 cancelled from the mega tweak list of 180 items, meaning we're well on our way to achieving our goal of a good candidate build by the end of the month.

In other news, the newsletter is out, so for more information beyond this miniblog, you can read this much better blog: https://twitter.com/TheGameCreators/status/552932215789981696

IDE Stability And Shadow Flicker Fixed

I've been informed that my comment about finishing in two months was a little erroneous in that it gave them impression that I would have the 'entire' product finished in two months, when in fact my intent was simply to highlight that I will have a stable early access build ready for a Steam launch at that time, and the final product will in reality be a work in progress as we continue to add features to the game maker.

Been trialing a new project management system over the last two days called Wrike which has proved to be very efficient at making me efficient, and as a result quite a lot of naggy little issues have already been eliminated from the engine making the internal build I have right now very cool, and it has been suggested that an early internal build can be made to our internal alpha testers in the not too distant future, lucky fellows!

First Official TGC Day Of 2015

Happy New Year fellow game creators, I will be spending the next two months in the deepest darkest cave I can find to finish the Reloaded project you've been following for the best part of two years now, and in order to do that I am redirecting all energies to a single point of focus to ensure I deliver. 

To this end my daily blog will be condensed into two sentences only (plus optional screenshot or video) to re-enforce my laser-like focus on the goal and to keep you informed about the project all be it in a highly compressed and efficient manner until such time as I can return to the surface and the sunshine and join you again in the wonderful world of game creation.