By Mike Wuerthele
Thursday, February 13, 2020, 07:21 pm PT (10:21 pm ET)

Linksys appears to be the first vendor to make available a HomeKit router, as the Velop line is scheduled for an imminent firmware update to enable the functionality.

Linksys MX10 Velop AX mesh router

After several false starts, firmware updates for routers to make them HomeKit Routers upgrades will start arriving soon. The first confirmed one, is for the Linksys Velop line.

“We’re rolling out a firmware update to your Velop system in the next several days. Once your system updates, the next time you open the Linksys app, it will invite you to link with Apple Home,” Linksys says in an update note. “All of your Velop nodes must be tri-band for this integration to work.”

“When your Velop system is linked with the Apple Home app, it can monitor HomeKit accessories and prevent them from communicating in ways that might be harmful in the event an external threat from the internet gets through,” Linksys added. “This can stop viruses and malware from spreading, or your data from being sent to the wrong places.”

The entire Velop line with not get the update. The update is limited to the following models.

• A03
• WHW0301 & WHW0301B
• WHW0302 & WHW0302B
• WHW0303 & WHW0303B

The update notification was first spotted by HomeKit News on Thursday evening.

AppleInsider reviewed the Velop router in December. At the time, we found that it delivered significant real-world speed on our iPhone 11 Pro Max because of Wi-Fi 6. Other devices show minor speed improvements as well because of the power of the router itself —but with the price still so high for Wi-Fi 6, it was hard to justify for the vast majority of people. HomeKit Router certification and compatibility may change that, however.

Although Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training for Nintendo Switch is still not available in North America, it’s been receiving updates since its Japanese release last December. It’s now up to Version 1.2.0 and surprisingly the latest patch adds new memory training.

Here are the full patch notes, courtesy of Perfectly Nintendo:

adds a new Training: Working Memory Training (only available for users with Brain Age = 20 years old)

As noted, this is only available to users who have a brain age of 20 years. This latest update follows on from a patch at launch which added the ability to send yourself and others your training and brain age results via email.

Have you picked up this game yet? Is it even available in your region? Leave a comment down below.

The time has come… for the reveal of the final addition to #DevilMayCry 3 Special Edition for #NintendoSwitch! Here’s producer Matt Walker (@retrootoko) again with the news: pic.twitter.com/Qj16uVW1oO

— Devil May Cry (@DevilMayCry) February 13, 2020

Humble are running a new bundle of interest to game developers, this one is the Humble Best of POLYGON Game Dev Bundle.  It’s a collection of 3D model packs from Synty, with projects in both Unreal and Unity formats.  As with all Humble Bundles this one is organized into tiers, where if you buy a higher dollar value tier you get all of the lower value tiers as well.

Bundle Tiers

$1 USD

• POLYGON Prototype
• POLYGON Adventure
• Simple Town

$15 USD

• POLYGON City Pack
• POLYGON Samurai Pack
• POLYGON Knight Pack
• Simple People
• Simple Dungeons

$20 USD

• POLYGON SCI-FI City Pack
• POLYGON  Western Pack
• POLYGON Heist Pack
• POLYGON Vikings Pack
• Simple Military
• Simple Apocalypse
• $10 Synty Discount Code

When you purchase a Humble Bundle you decide how your money is allocated between charity, the publisher, Humble and if you choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GFS if you use this link.  Learn more about the bundle in the video below.

As with any asset purchase, it’s important to read the license if you intend to use the assets in a commercial project.  The Synty Store license for Humble is available here.  It appears the Humble license is on a per seat basis and includes just a single seat license, so if you are working with a team, you may have to purchase multiple bundles.

GameDev News Art 3D Sale

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If SpellTower+ sounds eerily familiar to you, it’s because a version of this game exists already. The original SpellTower debuted on an archaic App Store back in 2011 to near universal praise. For all of the years since, SpellTower existed in an ever mutating form. New modes slowly grew from the sparse base design. With it, new jumbles of code that didn’t always play well with the lines before it. On top of that, necessary firmware upgrades from iOS to iOS didn’t always accommodate the new hardware coming out. Year over year, iPhones got bigger and the aspect ratio of SpellTower got weirder and weirder. Even after the Great 64-bit migration of 2017, SpellTower stood tall on the digital storefront.

After awhile, Zach Gage was faced with the same sort of dilemma a lot of mobile game devs are faced with. Do they continue to support and update a game broken by years and years of updates and hotfixes to barely accommodate new hardware? Do they just abandon support and move on?

Gage picked option 3: find a friend – Neonimo’s Jack Schlesinger in this case – and rebuild it from the ground up.

The new SpellTower+ sits on the shoulders of that early mobile game king and wears the crown well in it’s own right. Like any good remake, it is familiar enough to feel exactly how I remember it, with enough modern touches that make it feel like a game made in 2020. It’s a game that feels like three different games. It’s primary modes, Search, Puzzle, and Tower have different levels of intensity, and require different types of tactical play to succeed.

Puzzle mode is like taking a newspaper word search and turning it into a horror movie. A wall-shaped jumble of letters contains words to be tapped and scored on. Those letters vanish, dropping whatever was on top of them down. Every time you make a word, more letters are added to the bottom row, pushing everything to an encroaching top line. Your task is to score as high as you can before you break the line of no return. It’s a tense nightmare.

It’s also a great and interesting challenge. You don’t want just any words, you want the biggest words possible. Not just for the score, but for what nailing long words can do for the board, eliminating bonus letters and the like. How you make words, and what order you do them in becomes a second lane of thinking, too. You might make a nice 20 pt word with the four letters in front of you now, but if you can find a way to slide a particular letter down just two rows, maybe you can make use of this pesky X. Many people want to remove as much stress from their lives as possible. In SpellTower+, stress brings this tried and true bathroom distraction to a new level.

Search is a smaller, more cerebral endeavour. In a seven by seven grid of letters, you have to make the most valuable word you can that also includes a special starred letter. This is a real test of your word search skills, since there’s no margin for error. There’s also no time limit or encroaching fail state to push you over the edge. Take your time and strike when you’re ready.

In between is the Tower mode, which resembles Puzzle in size, but when you score words, new letters aren’t added to the bottom. Your goal here is to make the best words you can in this limited set of letters. There’s no encroaching game over screen, but you still need to think moves ahead, as the board will morph and change as you score and remove played words.

You’d have a damn fine mobile word game if these three core modes were all you got, but SpellTower+ packs so many more ways to play in such a simple package. Most of them just modify these basic modes in some way. For example, ExPuzzle adds longer minimum work requirements to the mix, while Double Puzzle adds two lines per score instead of one. Rush and Blitz are like Puzzle, but rows are added after a brief period of time, whether you’re making words or not. These are neat little takes on the standard rules that I don’t find myself playing very often because they seem way more masochistic and unbalanced than the core modes.

SpellTower+ is free to play, but that version only includes the basic modes that the original SpellTower had. To get access to things like those alternate Puzzle modes, Blitz, or Zen (the chillest of all modes) you’ll have to cough up a fiver. I don’t think you need to play the extra stuff to get a great experience, but access to things like Daily Search and Puzzle might be up your alley if you’re a bit of a score chaser.

It’s not shaking the visual and audio world up by any stretch. SpellTower+ is almost purposefully generic and low key. Colors and lines are simple and clean and look sterling on today’s smartphones. Lofi jazz gets the brain juice flowing, but doesn’t command a need to add the OST to the collection

If you’re a word game fan of any ilk, there’s almost absolutely no way to go wrong by picking up SpellTower+. Zach Gage fans already know the kind of wonders he can do to the average parlor game, and this mutant word search is no different. Updating this old classic returns it to the top of the “must-have” mountain for replayable, “dad-core” game enthusiasts and casual brain teaser fans alike.

By Mikey Campbell
Wednesday, February 12, 2020, 07:31 pm PT (10:31 pm ET)

Foxconn on Wednesday invalidated a report that claimed the company plans to reopen a significant portion of its Chinese production force in February, though the firm failed to set the record straight with an official timeline.

On Tuesday, Reuters said the Apple supplier would restart 50% of all Chinese operations by the end of the month, with an eye on bringing that figure up to 80% by March. The report cited sources familiar with the matter, including a person with knowledge of an internal timeline laid out by company chairman Liu Young-Way.

Foxconn denied Reuters’ claims in a statement to the Taipei stock exchange today. The contract manufacturer did not correct the publication, nor did it provide additional information on the current status of its production capabilities.

Companies across China, and especially those in the areas surrounding Wuhan, continue to feel the effects of the new coronavirus outbreak. Firms are running with barebones staffing or remain closed as employees are unable to return to work due to precautionary measures designed to stop the epidemic from spreading.

In late January, when the severity of the new coronavirus was largely unknown, Foxconn said customer orders would not be impacted by the threat and expected its facilities to return to full production by Feb. 10. That timeline is no longer viable after the Chinese government issued multiple extensions to the Lunar New Year holiday in an attempt to corral the virus.

According to a recent report, Foxconn has made preparations to fulfill Apple iPhone orders and is moving a slice of production to sites in India and Taiwan. The company’s Zhengzhou plant, which handles a bulk of iPhone 11 and 11 Pro assembly, is currently closed.

Apple is also taking steps to combat the spread of the virus and this month shut down all retail stores and offices in the country.

The coronavirus outbreak has so far killed more than 1,300 people and infected over 60,000 people around the world.

Photography has taken her all over the world – to six of the seven continents, from Western Australia to Sumatra to the Galapagos. It’s even brought her face to face with the wildlife she so loves to capture on camera – sometimes, too close, as when a bear charged her in Alaska.

One of her favorite places is Indonesia, where she had a close encounter – in a good way – with whale sharks.

“I was swimming alone with five or six of them at a time for hours. And it was just unbelievable,” she says. “It was really wonderful though, because I got this one shot. With my background in mathematics, I’ve always been really drawn to pattern and light. I noticed that light was defracting around my body. And I could control these lines and I wanted the lines to meet the spots of the whale sharks. And I got this one shot where everything lined up and I looked at it in my accommodation that night and I just started crying. I was like, ‘Yes, this is it.’”

That photo ended up winning a Nature’s Best Photography award and the Smithsonian exhibited it for a year starting October 2017.

“Here I am, this shy, introverted person that all of a sudden had an image that’s seen in a museum that has almost 10 million visitors a year,” Odom says.

Now the introvert goes to conferences and speaks in front of thousands. She leads conservation-focused workshops. (This year, those will be in Bolivia, Kenya and New Zealand). Besides the Smithsonian, she’s had an image up in Times Square, on display at conferences like CES and Photoplus, and in various publications including Forbes, Outside magazine, People.com, Rollingstone.com, ABC news and Nikon.com. She’s also received more than 60 international photography awards, including two Nature’s Best Photography awards, 26 Fearless Photography Awards and over 30 awards from Wedding and Portrait Photographers International, earning the title of Master of WPPI.

And now she’s expanded her skillset by opening a new branch of her company, thanks to faster processors and graphics cards in laptops.

“I’ve just started doing video work over the last year and a half, and that’s because of the technology that’s now available. Currently my workstation is the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo, and this laptop opens up so many possibilities,” she says. “I don’t need a big desktop to do my video editing. I can do it on the road, and I can have my timeline down at the bottom and yet have all this space to see the quality of my video. I can edit it and I don’t have to toggle back and forth between screens. Having a bigger area to be able to look at my photos and look at my videos and have everything else on this second monitor, it’s a game changer for creators on the road.”

For Odom, the second 4K monitor housed just above the keyboard makes video editing on the road “extremely accessible and doable.”