HeroQuest PC ⚔️, Godot 4.8 Beta 🚀, Mafia 3 City Plan 🗺️
Games and Announcements 🎮
Modern Warfare 4 combines open-world exploration with scripted campaign encounters
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 combines a campaign about South Korean marines facing a fictional North Korean invasion with an open-world mission containing linear stories and designed combat encounters. Infinity Ward’s Alex Norris and Justin Harris told GamesBeat that Stranded, inspired by Black Ops 6, allows more time to develop the squad’s characters and relationships. Military consultants informed characterization and infantry tactics. The developers also discussed resolving character arcs, particularly Price’s, without confirming whether this is the final Modern Warfare game.
HeroQuest: Digital Edition planned for PC in 2027
Nomad Games and Balor Games have announced HeroQuest: Digital Edition, an officially licensed adaptation of the tabletop adventure game planned for PC in 2027. Players can control a party solo or play as four heroes against a fifth player taking the role of Zargon, using dice-based, turn-based combat. A Quest Editor supports custom adventures, while built-in mod.io integration provides access to community creations. A closed beta playtest is planned, with no date specified.
Cabs of Chaos adds online multiplayer and expands its roster
Cabs of Chaos now has eight playable characters, one level and multiplayer combining local split-screen and peer-to-peer online play for up to four people, according to developer Matt of Game Dev Guide. The arcade driving game centers on stealing passengers from rival drivers, with local multiplayer remaining the focus. It is still in development and has a Steam page. Matt plans 16 characters and three levels, and is revising modular road and building tools, shaders and textures before creating the remaining levels.
Tools and Development 🛠️
Godot 4.8 enters beta and feature freeze
Godot 4.8 beta 1 is available for Linux, macOS and Windows, with development focused on regression fixes under a feature freeze. The 4.8 feature set includes mip-level texture streaming, visual shader node groups, runtime CanvasItem editing and automated Android and Java SDK setup; beta 1 adds no features beyond dev 7. macOS downloads now default to separate architecture builds, and .NET builds require .NET 10 or newer. The release remains prerelease software with known bugs and compatibility changes.
Fab supports editable UEFN source assets
Fab supports editable UEFN source assets that creators can import into projects and modify, extending its previous reference-only UEFN offering. Epic Games demonstrates the process using its free Verse UI Kit, which includes customizable buttons, tabs, dialogs, icons, materials and Verse code. The walkthrough covers styling widgets, importing assets through UEFN’s Fab panel and publishing source content through Fab’s listing and review process. Submissions must meet UEFN validation requirements and Fab’s technical and content guidelines.
Kenney Shape becomes permanently free, with no further updates planned
Kenney Vleugels has made Kenney Shape permanently free for Windows and Linux, with no further updates planned as they focus on other projects. The tool generates extruded 3D models from 2D pixel art using a depth value for each pixel and handles UV mapping automatically. It exports 3D and voxel models, bitmap images and vector images, with assets usable in tools including Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot and Blender.
Nathan Cheever explains city planning techniques behind Mafia 3’s New Bordeaux
World designer Nathan Cheever describes a three-stage workflow for open-world cities: establish the project vision, prototype the layout, then develop local details. Drawing on Mafia 3’s New Bordeaux, he explains projecting painted roads onto 3D blockouts, testing travel times, and using road hierarchies, landmarks and elevation to guide players. He says the city underwent more than 30 major designs, with production staggered across 10 districts. Trains were ultimately removed because of costly physics, traffic and NPC complications.
Game Technology 🔧
Glauber Costa Discusses Turso’s SQLite Rewrite and Reliability Testing
In an interview with Wookash Podcast, Turso co-founder Glauber Costa explains the company’s SQLite rewrite, designed to retain SQLite compatibility while adding features such as concurrent writes. He says the project is production-ready but has not reached general availability or version 1.0, with about 96% of SQLite’s TCL tests passing. Costa describes deterministic simulation testing, formal methods, differential testing and fuzzing, and outlines plans to expand a PostgreSQL-compatible interface.