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Codemasters and NetEase will launch the first open beta for Racing Master tonight
Only a few more hours to go
A NetEase developer known as Dahua Studios has just announced that it's working on an upcoming racing game for mobile in conjunction with Codemasters, and it will enter into open beta this month. The game is called Racing Master. It's a real-time simulation racer that's utilizing the Unreal 4 engine as well as some proprietary Codemasters tech, who just so happens to be a developer with a slew of famous racers under its belt, such as DiRT, GRID, and F1.
Back in the not-quite-dark-ages of Android, new services and APIs were launching seemingly every other week as Google and Apple engaged in an aggressive land grab to acquire users and tempt developers. Gaming became a popular battleground, and Google was investing in new features for Play Games like an API that gave developers the infrastructure to run real-time and turn-based multiplayer games for free. However, like many other older Play Games APIs, Google will be shutting this one down in about six months and it may render some older games unplayable.
Like to bike? Don't want to bother with owning and caring for one? For a growing number of people, bikeshare systems are their solution to personal urban transit. But when it comes to integrating this mode of movement into tasks such as navigation, you'd usually have to rely on the bikeshare system's proprietary app — that is, until now, as Google Maps is starting integrate richer bike availability data into its interface.
Welcome to the latest entry in our Bonus Round series, wherein we tell you all about the new Android games of the day that we couldn't get to during our regular news rounds. Consider this a quick update for the dedicated gamers who can't wait for our weekly roundups, and don't want to wade through a whole day's worth of news just to get their pixelated fix. Today we've got a timing-based arcade game, a stealthy action game, a pixel-based visual novel, a wave-based arcade game, a truck driving simulator, and a real-time multiplayer puzzle game. Without further ado:
Back at I/O in May, Google revealed a bunch of features for Lens—some of which were already being tested in some form, but all of which were pretty slick. Based on a mixture of recent reports, our own experiences, and Google's recent tweets, the new features Google described should have arrived on most compatible phones as of yesterday. The snazzy new functionality in Lens includes real-time detection, Smart Text selection, and a new white UI.
Google showed off some pretty incredible changes for Lens at I/O, but one of the cooler upcoming features had to be the real-time detection, which is able to identify and add interactive elements to objects you might want information about. By all appearances, the new feature appears to be rolling out now, alongside an updated white pull-up interface.
A new version of Google Maps hit the beta channel late Friday evening. At the same time, Google announced improvements to the step-by-step navigation features for moving through public transit. That announcement applies to v9.68 and above, but after poking around in 9.69, there are also a couple of new things to check out. You can now see your reviews on locations in your custom lists, and add comments to those places to add hints or recommendations. A teardown also provides some hints about upcoming features like a new option to share a location without having it track your movements.
A number of interesting upgrades for the Google Assistant were announced during the I/O developer conference last week, including the option to use the keyboard as the default input method instead of voice. Now that people have had a chance to play with the new setting it's become apparent that Assistant offers its own next-word suggestions, seemingly related to current events.
Normally an Android re-release of a decades-old RPG means we're talking about another Squaresoft or Enix port, but this one is digging deep into the annals of Japanese role-playing game history. The Ys series (pronounced... okay, I honestly have no idea how it's pronounced) is a collection of action-RPGs that stretches across four decades and dozens of platforms all the way back to 1987. Ys Chronicles 1, an updated port of the game that began the franchise, is now available on Android from DotEmu.
Excitement over products like the Ouya, nVidia's Shield line, and even numerous gamepads proves that gaming on Android has entered the mainstream. Developers have been jumping at the opportunity to build games that work across many of the different operating systems; and thanks to the Cross-Platform SDK, they're able to integrate most of the Play Games services into their products on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Until now, this SDK has lagged behind the SDKs for Android and iOS on one specific feature: real-time multiplayer support. As of today, Google is rectifying this oversight and making a number of other improvements with updates to the Play Games SDKs, along with some new features in the Google Play Developer Console.
If you use an anti-spyware/anti-malware client on your device, then there's little doubt that you've tried Lookout at one time or another. While it is definitely one of the most well-known and popular anti-malware clients for Android, it has always had one huge shortcoming, in my opinion: lack of SD card scanning and real-time application monitoring for side-loaded apps.
Gamevil released another treat to the Android Market today, introducing Arel Wars – a game that promises "RPG action and defense strategy," and doesn't disappoint.
If you have a Honeycomb tablet, you are probably aware that there is a very small subset of Android apps made specifically for the tablet OS. NBC Universal is here to fill this gap, starting with this excellent and beautiful finance app - CNBC Real-Time. It was built to utilize the large screen real estate of your tablet, with independent scrolling UI parts created using the ingenious Fragments API that was introduced with Honeycomb.