After being a Fedora user for a while, you may have come to enjoy it. And in fact you might want to encourage others to try Fedora. You don’t need any special privileges or to become a Fedora Ambassador to do that. As it turns out, anyone can help others get started with Fedora just by sharing information about it.

Having the conversation

For example, if you go out to lunch with a group of colleagues periodically, you might find it natural to talk about Fedora with them. If someone shows interest, you can suggest to get together with them for a Fedora show and tell. There isn’t any need for formal presentations or prepared talks. This is just having lunch and sharing information with people you know.

When you’re with friends, relatives, colleagues, or neighbors, conversation often turns to things computer related, and you can bring up Fedora. There are usually opportunities to point out how Fedora would partially if not completely address their concerns or provide something they want.

These are people you know so talking with them is easy and natural. You probably know the kind of things they use PCs for, so you know the features of Fedora that will be attractive to them. Such conversations can start anytime you see someone you know. You don’t need to steer conversations toward Fedora — that might be impolite, depending on the situation. But if they bring up computer related issues, you might find an opportunity to talk about Fedora.

Taking action

If a friend or colleague has an unused laptop, you could offer to show them how easy it is to load Fedora. You can also point out that there’s no charge and that the licenses are friendly to users. Sharing a USB key or a DVD is almost always helpful.

When you have someone setup to use Fedora, make sure they have the URLs for discussions, questions, and other related websites. Also, from time to time, let them know if you’ve seen an application they might find useful. (Hint: You might want to point them at a certain online magazine, too!)

The next time you’re with someone you know and they start talking about a computer related issue, tell them about Fedora and how it works for you. If they seem interested, give them some ideas on how Fedora could be helpful for them.

Open source may be big business nowadays, but it also remains a strong grassroots movement. You too can help grow open source through awareness and sharing!

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Unsplash.

This week at Bungie, we’re investing in solar energy.

We wrapped up Festival of the Lost this week, but cleaning up the decorations wasn’t the only thing that changed in the Tower. Ikora finished her construction project, closed out all the permits, and Guardians launched an attack on the Undying Mind.

The attack is ongoing and all Season Pass holders can join in on Vex Offensive and transmat the finished portal from the Tower to summon and defeat Undying Minds from different timelines.

The impact of your victory has not been made clear just yet, but in time, you will learn more about how this will further evolve the world as we transition into the next Season.

Solar Shifts

Next Season, we are shaking up the Solar subclasses. We are reworking several ability trees and the Destiny Dev Team has the details on what to expect when you praise the Sun next season.

Destiny Dev Team: Hey Guardians, it’s the Combat Systems team here, back again to talk about some updates we’re making to the abilities sandbox in the next Season. Previously we spent a Season focusing on subclasses of one specific element type such as Arc and Void. Up next, the Combat Systems team is tackling Solar subclasses as our focus for gameplay updates.

As we’ve mentioned in past TWABs, our goal with these subclass updates is to “revisit some older subclass paths and freshen them up a bit.” In execution, this means that older subclass paths will feel like viable choices in many of our activities and that players can find a home in any of them.

When we started working on sandbox updates to follow Season of the Undying, our team looked at the whole catalog of Solar subclasses by cross referencing data, feedback, and conversation to figure out which subclasses needed help, which are performing fine, and which ones were a bit too potent. During our investigations, it was pretty clear that three specific subclasses were underperforming and needed to be taken back into the shop for a rework.

It’s worth noting here that a rework doesn’t mean it’s a completely new subclass. It means that we took the root of the gameplay fantasies for those subclasses and either expanded on what was already there or shifted some of the existing attributes closer to their fantasy. In some cases, entire perks were changed to help further the gameplay role and fantasy of those subclasses.

Those three Solar subclasses are:

Gunslinger: Way of the Sharpshooter (Bottom Path)

Traditionally, Way of the Sharpshooter has mostly been used in specific PvE activities and almost exclusively paired with the Celestial Nighthawk helm. We wanted to move Way of the Sharpshooter to be something players want to choose more often and for a wider range of activities. To do that we needed to differentiate both Golden Gun paths and make Sharpshooter more versatile and interesting to use in PvE. In order to differentiate the 3-shot and 6-shot Golden Gun and better play into their fantasies, we’ve made the following changes:

For 3-shot we increased the auto-aim distance and reliability when aiming down sights, as it fulfills the role of long range accuracy. For 6-shot, we shortened the damage falloff range to emphasize the short range gunfighter role with a lot of kill potential. While it can still perform at longer ranges, it may take an extra shot to get the job done. We’ve made other changes to Way of the Outlaw to help keep its potency like adding a new Explosive Prox Knife that can stick to surfaces and detonate when enemies pass nearby.

All up – we want Way of the Sharpshooter to feel more active and rewarding for players who can fulfill the role of the sharpshooter by taking down enemies with accuracy and precision.

NEW Weighted Knife: High-damage knife throw with a long wind up. Travels at high speeds, bounces once, and does extra damage to the head. Precision shot final blows recharge the melee completely. One-hit precision final blow in PvP.

Practice Makes Perfect: (QoL):  Lasts longer but gives a bit less energy per second. Precision hits grant two stacks.

NEW Knock ’em Down: Precision final blows increase weapon stability and ADS speed. Timer starts at 10 seconds but any additional final blow/assists can increase it up to 25 seconds. Casting your Super with this buff above 20 seconds consumes the buff and grants extra damage. (Does not stack with Celestial Nighthawk).

Line ’em Up: (QoL): Old perks from Crowd Pleaser are now part of this perk. (Golden Gun can cause precision damage and precision shots generate orbs of light).

Sunbreaker: Code of the Devastator (Middle Path)

Titans who adhere to the Code of the Devastator want nothing more than to crush their foes with smoldering hammers, and we want to see them live their dreams. When our data indicated that this subclass was underperforming in PvP, we decided to make a few changes that should enable it to be more competitive.

The Roaring Flame perk has received a significant buff to its bonus damage, and the buff now lasts 25% longer, making it easier to build and retain stacks between encounters. The base damage of Throwing Hammer melee ability has increased—it’s now very lethal in PvP while you have Roaring Flames active. In addition, once you’ve thrown the hammer and it’s lying on the ground, you don’t have to get quite as close to it to pick it back up. Finally, we tuned the Super in a number of ways.

For starters, Burning Maul now lasts longer, giving you more time to use it strategically instead of simply spamming the slam button. (Titans. All we want to do is smash, right?) We also increased the height of the heavy-slam explosion, so this Super should feel much more potent against airborne enemies. That’s the gist of it, but here are more details:

Throwing Hammer: Increased impact damage from 100 to 120 and increased hammer pick-up radius from 2m to 3.5m. Adjusted hammer throw animations to fit a more damaging attack.

Roaring Flames: Increased damage bonus from 10% per stack to 25% per stack in PvP, and increased duration from 15 seconds to 20 seconds.

Burning Maul: Increased duration from 21.2 seconds to 28.5 seconds

• Light Attack: Reduced light attack energy cost from 5% to 3%. Adjusted the animation so that it flows seamlessly into chained light attacks without stopping.
• Heavy Attack: Ground Slam attack now detonates when it detects enemies above it. Detonation radius was increased to make landing attacks more consistent. Increased energy cost from 6% to 8%.

Dawnblade: Attunement of Sky (Top Path)

With Attunement of Sky we wanted to push its air superiority gameplay further. When we initially released this path, its movement capabilities were tuned around the original Destiny 2 gameplay experience, which was much slower and more deliberate about positioning. However, over time, this movement needed to adapt to the new sandbox. We want to give you the gameplay experience that the fantasy begs for: A flying angel who can maneuver with grace and destroy its foes below.

Now before we get started I wanted to touch on one thing: To accomplish our goals of reworking the air superiority role, we needed to differentiate the two Daybreak paths from one another. As such, we reduced the speed at which Burst Glide accelerates players in Daybreak. We know this is a controversial change but we wanted to reserve the air superiority gameplay with Attunement of Sky and the Burst Glide speed was blurring the lines between both Daybreak paths.

Icarus Dashes while in Daybreak have increased speed and thrust to recapture the burst glide gameplay for those running the air superiority path. We hope that, while this change is different, you still feel as fast as before—but with maybe a bit more expression behind that speed. The rest of the changes are below:

NEW Celestial Fire (Melee): Send a spiral of three explosive Solar projectiles.

Heat Rises: (Rework) Consume your grenade to extend Glide time and dramatically reduce the in-air accuracy penalties for weapons.

Winged Sun (Rework): Fire weapons, use Celestial Fire, and throw grenade while gliding. Airborne final blows grant melee energy and extend the duration of Heat Rises.

Icarus Dash (Rework): Tap (Crouch) twice to dodge in midair. Dodging in Daybreak accelerates players farther and costs less Super energy while under the effects of Heat Rises.

Added note: Due to the nature of these reworks, Wings of Sacred Dawn received a buff where it gains 15% damage resistance while Tome of Dawn is active.

There are a whole swath of changes we’re working on that extend beyond these three subclasses. Most Solar subclasses had some tuning and some non-Solar subclasses got a bit QoL love too. We hope that with these changes, you’ll feel energized playing any Solar subclass—regardless of activity. Thanks for having us!

---

Final Howl

Next week, Lord Saladin will return to the Tower for the final time during Season of Undying. This will be your final shot at earning pinnacle rewards from Iron Banner until next Season. If you haven’t finished up your Season Pursuit, make sure to do it before the end of the event on December 3.

Iron Banner Control

Starts: 9:00 a.m. PT on November 26

Ends: 9:00 a.m. PT on December 3

We’ll be featuring a reprised armor set next season, so if you still want to get some pieces from this set, grab them quick! Saladin is also offering enhanced mods and other items in exchange for Iron Banner tokens you may have collected. You can turn them in now or bank them for when Iron Banner returns next Season.

Gaming and Giving

We’re completely blown away by the generosity you all showed throughout the Game2Give fundraising campaign in support of the Bungie Foundation’s iPads for Kids Program and of Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

In just three weeks, you all raised $1,673,857.62! We reached this incredible amount of funding because of the 40,000+ donors and 5,500 streamers who supported the campaign across 104 countries. To say this was a true global Guardian initiative is an understatement!

For the Bungie Foundation, this will give us the capacity to expand into up to five new hospitals in 2020 and help over 250,000 more patients than we ever have before! We are so excited to continue our work of replacing fear with joy, boredom with entertainment, and uncertainty with a sense of normalcy for so many more kiddos.

And check out how this funding will help the work that Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals does every day.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for showing us once again how truly special the Bungie Community is through caring about each other and those in need.

Wanna Cook?

For those looking to add more Destiny books to their collection, we are very happy to announce Destiny: The Official Cookbook and Destiny Grimoire Anthology Vol. Three are coming in 2020.

In collaboration with Insight Editions and author Victoria Rosenthal, Destiny’s first official cookbook is filled with recipes inspired by the characters and locations seen throughout its expansive universe.

Destiny Grimoire Anthology Vol. Three is coming in late 2020 as the next edition of the popular Grimoire series.

These titles will be available at the Bungie Store and other booksellers. Stay tuned for more details. Be sure to visit the Bungie Store product pages linked above and click “Email When Available” to be among the first to know when the books are open for pre-order.

Tip of the Spear

Stay up to date on the latest from the Player Support team.

This is their report.

Destiny 2 on Stadia

This week, Destiny 2: The Collection launched on Google Stadia. Players who are looking to get set up with Stadia for the very first time should make sure they visit our Stadia Guide.

Furthermore, existing Destiny 2 players who wish to bring their characters over from other platforms can do so right now through our Cross Save page. As a refresher; Cross Save allows players to access their preferred set of Guardians, gear, and Season Passes on all (Stadia details below) platforms.

New players who are starting their Destiny 2 journey with Stadia can also enable Cross Save, so the Guardians they build and gear they earn travels with them to other platforms. However, players should know that Season Pass access granted on Stadia through Destiny 2: The Collection does not transfer to other platforms using Cross Save.

Destiny 2: The Collection on Stadia includes a Season Pass access at no additional charge. Players who have Cross Save enabled with their Stadia account who would like to access Seasonal content on other platforms (PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam) will need to purchase those Season Passes directly on one of those platforms.

As a final reminder, expansion licenses (Forsaken, Shadowkeep) do not transfer between platforms with Cross Save. Players who wish to access activities which rely on these expansion licenses will need to purchase them for every desired platform.

PC Migration and Forsaken Licenses

Since Destiny 2 launched on Steam last month, we’ve monitored posts from players who have provided feedback and reported issues regarding the PC Migration experience.

After thorough investigation, we believe that we have resolved an issue which was preventing a subset of PC players from transferring their Forsaken licenses from their Battle.net accounts to Steam. Players who previously encountered this issue should re-initiate migration at our PC Move page.

Destiny 2 Known Issues

Listed below are emergent issues being investigated in Destiny 2.

• The MIDA Multi-Tool catalyst will not drop for players who win a competitive Crucible match at the Legend rank if they are playing with clan mates and the “Catalyst Seeker” clan rank bonus is active. To mitigate this, we recommend that players seeking the catalyst play solo or team up with friends who are not in the same clan.
• Black Armory Keys cannot be used or deleted if the Mysterious Box quest has already been completed.
• Some players may experience an issue where blank items from Festival of the Lost are taking up slots at their Postmaster.

For the latest list of emergent issues, players should visit our Known Issues thread. Players who observe other issues should report them to the #Help forum.

Act III

Movie of the Week: Punch Stuff

Honorable Mention: Gunslinger

Next week is a short week for us with some US holidays. Good news is that means an early TWAB. DMG is already working on a short update next Tuesday. We’ll see you then.

<3 Cozmo

Buzzy Bees! What a delightful bit of alliteration. Someone should use that for when they add bees to their game. Unfortunately, we already promised marketing we’d call this Minecraft Java Edition presents: Disgusting Bugs.

What’s that? I’m hearing marketing have had a change of heart, and that we can confirm in this pre-release that we’ll be calling the actual release, on December 10, Buzzy Bees. Hooray!

You can find the full news article on https://www.minecraft.net

• Changed the button highlight to make it easier to distinguish which button is selected
• Optimized chunk rendering
• Optimized explosions
• Recipe changes to match Minecraft Bedrock
• Updates to the Resource pack format
• Dark prismarine is now crafted from black dye instead of ink sacs
• Increased scaffolding burn time when used as fuel in a furnace
• The resource pack version is now 5
• The game now tries to make out of date resource packs work as much as possible
• Fixed bugs

• MC-12211 – Comparator in subtraction mode does not update visually under certain conditions
• MC-14826 – Leads in unloaded chunks break, become invisible or connect to an invisible target far away
• MC-63669 – Comparator Timing Issue
• MC-90602 – Chunks don’t load correctly/not rendering
• MC-94838 – Comparator affected through gap
• MC-125495 – Owner tag of item entities is ignored if entity is destroyed in 200 ticks (Age >= 5800)
• MC-125511 – Item entity merging ignores Owner tag
• MC-135110 – Crash when using outdated resource pack: Non [a-z0-9/._-] character in path of location
• MC-152198 – Actual render distance is 2 chunks lower than render distance setting
• MC-161132 – Leaves are considered solid faces for block placement
• MC-161900 – Advancement menu background is rendered in front of toasts
• MC-163308 – Pillagers still spawning in trees in 1.14.4
• MC-163553 – Dragon texture flickering issue
• MC-163560 – Berry bushes no longer slow down the player
• MC-163745 – Dramatic speed up after falling through cobweb
• MC-163947 – When mobs sliding down honey blocks, the subtitles will show footsteps
• MC-163953 – /fill command doesn’t create block entities for all bocks
• MC-164076 – Transparent texture parts of invisible entities are rendered black when looking at them in spectator mode
• MC-164535 – /playsound uses wrong feedback message for multiple targets
• MC-165133 – Ignited TNT appears offset one block to the west
• MC-165134 – Entities are rendered too dark when in the ground
• MC-165154 – Entities riding boats, minecarts or other entities are rendered too dark when their hitbox intersects solid blocks
• MC-165155 – Block hitboxes no longer render behind transparent blocks
• MC-165156 – Transparent block items no longer render behind transparent blocks
• MC-165173 – Bees immediately enter their nests/hives after leaving them
• MC-165298 – Entities are rendered too dark when standing on soul sand or snow layers
• MC-165358 – Entities are sometimes rendered too dark when changing heights
• MC-165497 – Programmer art shield pattern textures have not been updated to the new resource pack format
• MC-165524 – Zombie pigman spawn eggs used on zombie pigmen do not spawn baby zombie pigmen
• MC-165527 – Item of advancement pop up is visible on text in the advancement menu
• MC-165550 – Ligthing of slimes and magma cubes becomes dark when they land to the ground
• MC-165605 – Command starting with / in command block shows error but still works
• MC-165606 – “Bee Our Guest” advancement is only triggered when more then one bottle is in the players hand while right clicking the hive
• MC-165627 – Falling blocks glitch through shulkers when the shulker is opening / closing
• MC-165676 – Aquatic mobs don’t move below sea level
• MC-165727 – Falling blocks on top of non-full block without block below do not break
• MC-165876 – Sand particles don’t have gravity anymore

Hmm. It’s almost like video games themselves are conspiring to make us feel our age recently. Earlier this week Super Smash Bros. turned 20 in the PAL region, and today we posted about Pokémon Gold and Silver reaching the same milestone. Well, what with November historically being lousy with video games releases and Mother Time refusing to stop rolling on and on, we just can’t get away from these anniversaries.

As devout DK fans (or, indeed, those of you that read the headlines before clicking on articles) will know, Rare’s Super Nintendo platformer Donkey Kong Country today celebrates 25 years on this planet. It may have turned up as the 16-bit era was winding down and new-fangled polygons were starting to catch gamers’ eyes, but its innovative use of sprites created from 3D models looked mind-blowing on a SNES back in the day, and kept many Nintendo fans happy as the nascent field of 3D gaming stumbled into existence on home console hardware.

Rare was on the cusp of a remarkable period that would see the UK developer produce some of the finest and best-selling games on Nintendo platforms. Visually, Donkey Kong County might not have aged as gracefully as some platformers of the era, but it was a landmark release and would go on to shape the big ape’s appearance and adventures for many years to come.

We’d tell you to fire up your Switch and give it a play for old times’ sake, but DKC isn’t yet available with the other Super NES games via your Switch Online subscription. Donkey Kong Country does feature on the SNES Classic Mini, though, and there are multiple other ways to play it if you’re feeling nostalgic. Failing that, you could always play Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and appreciate how far DK has come in two-and-a-half decades of platforming. Go on, go bananas.

Is that the end of the video gaming anniversaries for the day, then? Not on your life – consoles get released in November too, you know! If we didn’t stick to ‘significant’ five-year increments, the site would be filled with nothing but celebration posts marking the passage of time and our inexorable journey away from childhood and into the unknown abyss…

Black Future ’88 is Now Available on Steam and is 10% off!*

Black Future ’88 is a Synth-Punk roguelike 2D action Shooter. Vertically climb an always evolving procedural tower to reach the top and kill its insane owner…before your heart explodes. Shoot, slash, dash and upgrade yourself to survive the endless waves of Homicidal AI, Traps & Colossal Wardens.

*Offer ends November 28 at 10AM Pacific Time

Half-Life: Alyx is Now Available for Pre-Purchase on Steam and is 10% off!*

Valve’s return to the award-winning series in virtual reality takes place between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Alyx Vance and her father Eli mount an early resistance to the Combine’s brutal occupation of Earth.

As Alyx, players battle to save the future of humanity: engaging in visceral combat, solving puzzles, and exploring a world decimated by a mysterious alien race. VR was built for the kind of gameplay that sits at the heart of Half-Life.

*Offer ends when game is released.

Black Friday 2019 Deals & News

• Black Friday 2019 Start Times, Store Hours: GameStop, Best Buy, Target, And More
• Black Friday 2019: Best Nintendo Switch Deals So Far
• Black Friday 2019: The Best PS4 Deals So Far
• Black Friday 2019: The Best Xbox One Deals So Far
• Black Friday 2019: When Does It Start, Deals To Expect, And More

Only a few months after the massive Blender 2.80 release, the Blender foundation have just released Blender 2.81.  Blender is an open source 3D application that is gaining a ton of traction in both film and games media.  The 2.81 release brings several new features including several quality of life improvements such as outliner and file dialog modernization as well as excellent new features like vastly improved sculpting and grease pencil brushes.

Highlight features of interest for game developers in this release include:

• Massively improve sculpting with new brushes, masking support, better usability and more
• Poly Build tool for rapid polygon creation and editing, excellent for retopology
• Quadriflow and Voxel remeshing
• Improved and more powerful mirroring support
• UI improvements including:
• Outliner selection improvements, easy to select, multiselect and deselect objects
• Modern file browser that opens in a floating dialog window
• Powerful regex powered rename feature (F2 key)
• Grease pencil improvements including several new brushes
• Denoising improvements
• NVIDIA RTX support for realtime raytracing in Cycles
• and much, much more.

You can learn more about the release in the Blender 2.81 release notes available here.  Additionally CGCookie have put together a nice introduction to new features in this article.  Blender 2.81 is available for download here.

If you want to see Blender 2.81 in action, including the new Poly Build, sculpting tools, file dialog, outliner and more be sure to check out the video below.

Art GameDev News Blender

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By Joe Robinson 21 Nov 2019