21st July 2020 – Team17 has today announced a partnership with Tencent Games’ NExT Studios that will see its adventure RPG roguelike, Crown Trick, on Nintendo Switch™ and PC in Q3 2020. Set in a procedurally generated maze-like dungeon, Crown Trick is steeped in strategic, synchronous, turn-based gameplay where enemy decisions and actions are only revealed when players make their moves, and features hundreds of weapons, skills, and items on hand to customise and evolve the combat style as the quest progresses.
A finalist in the Indie Prize (Asia) 2019 Awards, Crown Trick is set in the daunting Nightmare Realm, a labyrinthine, underground world filled with monsters and traps. Players will have to master the elements and combine dozens of skills, while planning the best strategy, to overcome deadly enemies that stand still until their plan of attack is executed. As the quest continues, players will have the opportunity to gain access to high-level skills – Familiars – secured from the elite monsters that roam the dungeon, increasing the chances of both success and survival.
“As we prepared Crown Trick for its release, we wanted to ensure we found a partner that could maximise its success outside of mainland China. With its strong sense of spirit and track record of success, we could not think of any better than Team17. Crown Trick’s imaginatively unique synchronous gameplay, coupled with roguelike action, is a compelling and strategic experience, and we’re looking forward to launching it in the West with the support of Team17.”
“Crown Trick is roguelike royalty, a beautifully realised and unique experience thanks to its mix of gameplay features, and fits perfectly with our portfolio of titles. The Nightmare Realm, its traps and monsters, and its procedurally generated maze provides a deadly and compelling environment for strategy and RPG fans alike.”
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NExT Studios aims to make differentiated, high quality and reputable games via multiple approaches including but not limited to original idea incubation, advanced technology application as well as external collaboration. We experiment with new designs, create new experiences, research new technologies, work across platforms and game genres, to explore future possibilities in gaming as a unique media and keep pushing the boundaries. Visit www.nextstudios.com for more info.
Founded in 1990, Team17 Group plc is a leading developer, video games label, and creative partner for developers around the world. Floated on AIM in 2018, Team17, with its extensive portfolio of over 100 titles, embodies the spirit of independent games. In addition to the award-winning Overcooked!, Yoku’s Island Express, and the iconic Worms, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2020, Team17 has helped bring critically acclaimed titles including Moving Out, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, and The Escapists to gamers everywhere. Visit www.team17.com for more info.
The joint research paper on cloth simulation from NExT Studios and Professor Xiaogang Jin’s team of Zhejiang University State Key Lab of CAD & CG, “Predicting Loose-Fitting Garment Deformations Using Bone-Driven Motion Networks”, will be presented in the SIGGRAPH 2022 conference, and the demonstration has also been selected by the Technical Paper Preview collection of the conference. Fast forward to 3:10 to have a look!
Clothing plays an important part in a digital character’s appearance. The dynamic deformation of loose clothing can help express a character’s emotions and show their personality, such as the floating, swirling, and falling of a dancing character's skirt. Cloth animation is an important subject in computer graphics. Tight clothes usually fit snugly to the surface muscles of the body and can be approximately driven based on the skeleton’s movement. However, loose clothes usually have a certain distance from the body, and the combined actions of external forces and various body movements will result in complex deformation and collision. Consequently, there have been no good real-time solutions.
This research improves upon the current real-time cloth simulation method of loose clothing based on deep learning, which helps to improve the real-time animation quality and artistic expression of digital human and in-game characters. In the upcoming SIGGRAPH 2022 online conference, which will be held in early August, we will introduce this cloth simulation technology in detail. See you then and look forward to its coming!
Zhejiang University State Key Lab of CAD & CG
Founded in 1992, it is a world-class computer graphics laboratory established as part of the National Seventh Five-Year Plan. This institution is mainly engaged in the basic theory, algorithms, and related application research of computer-aided design and computer graphics. Over the past two decades, relying on the disciplines of computer, mathematics, and machinery of Zhejiang University, the laboratory has undertaken and led a number of major national scientific research projects and international cooperation projects, and in doing so, it has made a number of important achievements in the basic research and system integration of computer-aided design and graphics.
Professor Xiaogang Jin
Professor and doctoral supervisor of Zhejiang University’s College of Computer Science and Technology. He is a chief scientist of the "13th Five-Year Plan" national key research and development program, the director of the ZJU-Tencent Game Joint Lab for Intelligent Graphics Innovation Technology, the chairman of the Zhejiang Virtual Reality Industry Alliance, the vice chairman of the Virtual Reality and Visualization Special Committee of the Chinese Computer Federation, and a distinguished expert from Qianjiang, Hangzhou. He has published more than 140 articles in ACM TOG (Proc. of Siggraph), IEEE TVCG, and other key international academic journals, and has been awarded many accolades both in China and abroad.