Wild West FPS Call Of Juarez: Gunslinger Rated For Switch By The ESRB
Update – Sun 20th Oct, 2019 13:05 BST: Following a rating by the ESRB earlier this month, Techland has seemingly started teasing Call of Juarez: Gunslinger for Switch.
It recently sent out a postcard to select media (thanks, VG247), showing a picture of a gunslinger playing what appears to be the recently rated game on the Nintendo Switch. The back of this postcard says “more” will be revealed on 24th October. Take a look below:
Keep an eye out for a more official announcement next week.
Original Story – Wed 9th Oct, 2019 04:15 BST: A Nintendo Switch version of the western-themed first-person shooter Call of Juarez: Gunslinger has been rated by North America’s Entertainment Software Rating Board.
This game was first released in 2013 by publisher Ubisoft and was acquired by Techland in 2018. It’s the fourth entry in the Call of Juarez series and received positive reviews by critics when it was originally released.
There’s been no mention before now about Call of Juarez: Gunslinger coming to the Switch, so we’re guessing a more official announcement is on the way. In the meantime, take a look at one of the original trailers for the game:
Is this a game you’ve been wanting to see released on the Switch? Comment below.
Box Office Report: Maleficent 2 Is Disney's Worst Opening Of 2019
The latest box office numbers have arrived, and Disney's Maleficent sequel, Mistress of Evil, was a disappointment. Entertainment Weekly reports that the film made an estimated $36 million in the Friday-Sunday period in the US and Canada, which is below the $40 million it was predicted to make.
Additionally, that's just over half of the $69.4 million that the first Maleficent movie made over its first weekend back in 2014.
At $36 million, Mistress of Evil had the lowest opening weekend for for any Disney movie so far in 2019. The film pulled in a further $117 million from overseas markets over the weekend to push its total to $153 million. Still, the movie had a budget of $185 million (before marketing), so this shows "audiences weren't invested in a sequel," EW said.
Mistress of Evil has a very good A rating on Cinema Score, which is a measurement of audience scores. The movie stars Elle Fanning and Angelina Jolie. It was directed by Joachim Ronning, who previously made Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
Mistress of Evil did well enough to unseat Joker from the No. 1 position its held since it debuted on October 4. The Todd Phillips/Joaquin Phoenix movie made $29.2 million at the box office in the US/Canada this weekend. The movie has made more than $730 million globally so far, which makes it a huge success given it was made on a $55 million budget.
Another new movie that premiered this weekend was Zombieland 2: Double Tap. It earned $26.7 million in the domestic market, which is ahead of the $24.7 million that the first movie made over its opening weekend in 2009 (not adjusted for inflation).
Huawei To Help Create Nation’s First Open-Source Foundation
Huawei Technologies Co said it plans to partner with other companies to set up China’s first open-source software foundation, which is expected to begin to operate in a month or two to expand the nation’s software community. The plan for the software foundation came after GitHub, the world’s largest host of source code, prevented in July users in Iran and other nations sanctioned by the United States government from accessing portions of its service. The incident highlights increasing geopolitical interference with global open-source tech communities, which are supposed to be fair and open to all, analysts said. (Source: China.org)
Phaser 3.20 was released today. The open source 2D game framework gains a few new features including improved Spine support, a more consistent Pixel Art game mode configuration as well as support for video playback. Additionally the release contains several smaller new features, dozens of fixes and improvements.
Hey, it me – throwing more things at the wall to see what sticks. Reddit’s a great (also: terrifying) platform, and often an interesting source of news and insight into what people are interested in at any given moment. In the past I’ve used it as for a variety of things, but today I thought I’d take that a step further.
While browsing r/iOSGaming I happened to come across a thread talking about child-friendly games on Apple Arcade. As a new parent myself (even though I don’t use iOS specifically) these kinds of things interest me, as my daughter is already showing interest in phones and has some idea of how they work. Introducing her to games is the next logical step.
But where to start? That’s something I think I’ll tackle further down the line but for any parents out there wondering the same, and since Apple Arcade is currently the new shiny thing, I thought I’d share a distillation of the reddit thread (OP – u/yworker) for your convenience. I’m listing them by post and whether or not anyone concurred – some posters recommended several games in one go.
To clarify, the OP was specifically asking about games for three-year olds, so YMMV on some of these recommendations:
Sneaky Sasquatch (Seconded)
Frogger in Toy Town and Painty Mob
Dodo Peak, Fledgling Heroes
Cricket Through the Ages
Assemble with Care (Seconded)
There were some non-Arcade suggestions in that thread as well, but I wanted to try and remain on message. Let me know what you think or whether you have any suggestions of your own – kids are growing up with an unprecedented level of access to technology, and anything we can do to help each other out is appreciated.
Redesigning Configuration Refresh for Azure App Configuration
August 27th, 2019
Overview
Since its inception, the .NET Core configuration provider for Azure App Configuration has provided the capability to monitor changes and sync them to the configuration within a running application. We recently redesigned this functionality to allow for on-demand refresh of the configuration. The new design paves the way for smarter applications that only refresh the configuration when necessary. As a result, inactive applications no longer have to monitor for configuration changes unnecessarily.
Initial design : Timer-based watch
In the initial design, configuration was kept in sync with Azure App Configuration using a watch mechanism which ran on a timer. At the time of initialization of the Azure App Configuration provider, users could specify the configuration settings to be updated and an optional polling interval. In case the polling interval was not specified, a default value of 30 seconds was used.
public static IWebHost BuildWebHost(string[] args)
{ WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .ConfigureAppConfiguration((hostingContext, config) => { // Load settings from Azure App Configuration // Set up the provider to listen for changes triggered by a sentinel value var settings = config.Build(); string appConfigurationEndpoint = settings["AzureAppConfigurationEndpoint"]; config.AddAzureAppConfiguration(options => { options.ConnectWithManagedIdentity(appConfigurationEndpoint) .Use(keyFilter: "WebDemo:*") .WatchAndReloadAll(key: "WebDemo:Sentinel", label: LabelFilter.Null); }); settings = config.Build(); }) .UseStartup<Startup>() .Build();
}
For example, in the above code snippet, Azure App Configuration would be pinged every 30 seconds for changes. These calls would be made irrespective of whether the application was active or not. As a result, there would be unnecessary usage of network and CPU resources within inactive applications. Applications needed a way to trigger a refresh of the configuration on demand in order to be able to limit the refreshes to active applications. Then unnecessary checks for changes could be avoided.
This timer-based watch mechanism had the following fundamental design flaws.
It could not be invoked on-demand.
It continued to run in the background even in applications that could be considered inactive.
It promoted constant polling of configuration rather than a more intelligent approach of updating configuration when applications are active or need to ensure freshness.
New design : Activity-based refresh
The new refresh mechanism allows users to keep their configuration updated using a middleware to determine activity. As long as the ASP.NET Core web application continues to receive requests, the configuration settings continue to get updated with the configuration store.
The application can be configured to trigger refresh for each request by adding the Azure App Configuration middleware from package Microsoft.Azure.AppConfiguration.AspNetCore in your application’s startup code.
public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)
{ app.UseAzureAppConfiguration(); app.UseMvc();
}
At the time of initialization of the configuration provider, the user can use the ConfigureRefresh method to register the configuration settings to be updated with an optional cache expiration time. In case the cache expiration time is not specified, a default value of 30 seconds is used.
public static IWebHost BuildWebHost(string[] args)
{ WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args) .ConfigureAppConfiguration((hostingContext, config) => { // Load settings from Azure App Configuration // Set up the provider to listen for changes triggered by a sentinel value var settings = config.Build(); string appConfigurationEndpoint = settings["AzureAppConfigurationEndpoint"]; config.AddAzureAppConfiguration(options => { options.ConnectWithManagedIdentity(appConfigurationEndpoint) .Use(keyFilter: "WebDemo:*") .ConfigureRefresh((refreshOptions) => { // Indicates that all settings should be refreshed when the given key has changed refreshOptions.Register(key: "WebDemo:Sentinel", label: LabelFilter.Null, refreshAll: true); }); }); settings = config.Build(); }) .UseStartup<Startup>() .Build();
}
In order to keep the settings updated and avoid unnecessary calls to the configuration store, an internal cache is used for each setting. Until the cached value of a setting has expired, the refresh operation does not update the value. This happens even when the value has changed in the configuration store.
Try it now!
For more information about Azure App Configuration, check out the following resources. You can find step-by-step tutorials that would help you get started with dynamic configuration using the new refresh mechanism within minutes. Please let us know what you think by filing issues on GitHub.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-21-2019, 12:08 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
How AI is helping children overcome their speech disabilities
The idea immediately appealed to brothers Alex and Cosmin, who founded Ascendia after seeing how their mother, a teacher, struggled to meet all her students’ needs with limited resources. What started as a personal passion project has flourished in the last decade to become a multinational company operated by 33 staff in nine countries. So far, Ascendia has created over 1,100 hours of educational content supporting students, parents and teachers alike. As Cosmin Malureanu puts it, “our goal is to get teachers comfortable with new technologies, so they can prepare the next generation for the jobs of the future, not those of the past.”
With the support of Alex and Cosmin, Daniela and her team set about creating a solution to help children working to overcome their speech disabilities – a solution now known as Timlogo.
Timlogo is an interactive, digital speech development tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse children’s pronunciation and diagnose their specific speech issues, and then recommend the most relevant course of exercises to correct these. The tool’s offering also learns and adapts over time, meaning that as children improve, the suggested exercises evolve too.
Most importantly, Timlogo is designed to be fun, integrating games, characters and stories that spark a child’s imagination and hold their attention. Teacher and speech therapist Dragan Georgeta explains: “Many children become anxious when they struggle to pronounce certain sounds. But in Timlogo, they are introduced to cartoon characters who tell a story around each sound and encourage them to join in and attempt to pronounce it.” This gamification creates a feeling of inclusion and boosts children’s confidence, something that is key when it comes to overcoming speech difficulties.
Contribute at the kernel and IoT edition Fedora test days
Fedora test days are events where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed to Fedora before, this is a perfect way to get started.
There are two upcoming test days in the upcoming week. The first, starts on Monday 30 September through Monday 07 October, is to test the Kernel 5.3. Wednesday October 02, the test day is focusing on Fedora 31 IoT Edition. Come and test with us to make the upcoming Fedora 31 even better.
Kernel test week
The kernel team is working on final integration for kernel 5.3. This version was just recently released and will arrive soon in Fedora. This version will also be the shipping kernel for Fedora 31. As a result, the Fedora kernel and QA teams have organized a test week for Monday, Sept 30 through Monday, October 07. Refer to the wiki page for links to the test images you’ll need to participate. The steps are clearly outlined in this document.
Fedora IoT Edition test day
Fedora Internet of Things is a variant of Fedora focused on IoT ecosystems. Whether you’re working on a home assistant, industrial gateways, or data storage and analytics, Fedora IoT provides a trusted open source platform to build on. Fedora IoT produces a monthly rolling release to help you keep your ecosystem up-to-date. The IoT and QA teams will have this test day for on Wednesday, October 02. Refer to the wiki page for links and resources to test the IoT Edition.
How do test days work?
A test day is an event where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed before, this is a perfect way to get started.
To contribute, you only need to be able to download test materials (which include some large files) and then read and follow directions step by step.
Detailed information about both test days are on the wiki pages above. If you’re available on or around the days of the events, please do some testing and report your results.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Petition: Please Bethesda, Put This Character In The Game
Dear Bethesda,
At E3 2018 you revealed that you're making Elder Scrolls VI, a new entry in the much loved Skyrim line of video game product. You showed us next to nothing, but everyone still lost their dang minds. And who could blame them? The *NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ACTUAL GAME* trailer gave fans a brief look at a world they have so much invested in. The rousing orchestral rendition of the Elder Scrolls theme conjured memories of their fondest times with the franchise: filling a room full of cheese wheels, talking to a dog, turning dragons into Macho Man Randy Savage.
What we do know about it comes from Todd Howard himself, and it's that it's probably going to be some time until the game is ready for us to play. Howard said it's "not coming anytime soon" and, "I don't even know what the world is going to be like when it comes out."
It might look more like Fallout if we're not careful, am I right folks?
Anyway, it's clear the game is still early in development, which means this is the perfect time for us, the gamers--the fans--to get our requests in ... Because that's definitely how game development works.
My request is a simple one and it involves including a character that has become critical to fantasy fiction. A figure that transcends intellectual properties and franchises to become part of the tapestry of the genre, as necessary as swords and shields, magic and mysticism, small cheese wheels and big cheese wheels. I am, of course, talking about the great and powerful Potion Seller.
Although the scale of the story may be small, what it depicts is still impactful. The knight, preparing to go into battle, asks for the Potion Seller's "strongest potions," to which the Potion Seller responds by rebuking his request. His potions, as it turns out, are too strong for the knight, according to the seller, and thus the knight would not be able to handle them.
The knight, exerting whatever authority he has, attempts to press on, demanding that the Potion Seller give him his "strongest potions" once again. "My strongest potions will kill you, traveler, you can't handle my strongest potions," he replies. In this moment, the message behind the story becomes clear. You see, in the eyes of the Potion Seller, the knight is just another person, a "traveler." Whatever accolades the knight has gathered in battle thus far are not important, for the seller, the power of his potions are all that matter and it is his responsibility to ensure that they are only given to those he has confidence in ... for their own good.
"YOU BETTER GO TO A SELLER THAT SELLS WEAKER POTIONS," says Potion Seller, attempting to make the knight see sense.
The knight, taken back by the Potion Sellers unwavering morals and values, arrogantly asserts himself once again. "I'm telling you right now," he begins, "I'm going into battle, and I need only your strongest potions." The arrogance of the knight becomes clear. This is a story about hubris and how it can be the undoing of even the most self-assured heroes.
"MY STRONGEST POTIONS WOULD KILL A DRAGON, LET ALONE A MAN," the Potion Seller clapeth back. "YOU NEED A SELLER, THAT SELLS WEAKER POTIONS ... because my potions ARE TOO STRONG." The knight's desperate pleas are cast aside, "YOU CAN'T HANDLE MY STRONGEST POTIONS. NO ONE CAN!!!!!!!! MY STRONGEST POTIONS ARE FIT FOR A BEAST LET ALONE A MAN."
In this moment, it becomes clear that "Double U, Double U, Double U Dot YouTube Dot Com Forward Slash Watch Question Mark V Equals R Underscore FQU4KzN7A" is also the story of how those that the masses would dismiss as a lowly member of society--a mere potion seller--can wield strength even greater than champions of the realm.
He may be branded "a rascal with no respect for knights" but, ultimately, the Potion Seller stuck to his convictions. He respected the power of his potions and, in the face of a would-be hero, he stuck up for himself, begging the question: Who was the real hero?
Answer: It's the Potion Seller
In The Elder Scrolls VI, whatever it may become, players will inevitably be cast as the hero and go on a journey to save the lands, untangle political turmoil, and become a legendary figure for the peoples of the lands to sing songs about and deify. But there's also an opportunity to make the little characters count, to remind adventurers that, while they may be on a quest to decide the fates of many, others have their own destinies, be it collecting wheels of cheese or choosing who to sell potions to.
And who better to remind people about this than arguably the most important representation of the little-guy-standing-up-for-himself fantasy archetype, the Potion Seller. He deserves to be in The Elder Scrolls VI. He is too important to fantasy fiction not to be. To that end, we at GameSpot have created a petition to urge Bethesda to reach out to acclaimed author Justin Kuritzkes and bring Potion Seller to The Elder Scrolls VI. Please sign and support this noble cause.
Laigter is an open source tool for Mac, Windows and Linux that enable you to create normal, parallax and specular maps for 2D sprites very easily. This enables your 2D game to easily have a 3D effect, while also enabling more advanced lighting capabilities. The 1.7 release contains a number of quality of life improvements such as better threading to improve UI responsiveness and auto reloading maps that have been modified externally.
Now Laigter auto-reloads images being modified from external program! This makes it easier for users that wanted to make the texture at the same time than the normal map. This also lets you modify custom heightmaps and specular maps externally and see results almost live! This was implemented by flamendless! (BTW, if you like indie horror games, you MUST play his game Going Home).
Now maps are generated in background thread, making GUI more responsive.
Now Laigter supports rendering multiple textures at the same time! Just Ctrl+click on the textures list, and every selected item will be rendered, and processed in real time! Note that they will be rendered at the same order they were selected. Once rendered, you can click on them in the preview widget, to move, scale, or change settings to them! You can also select multiple of them with Ctrl and modify the same setting to all of them at the same time! Check this twit if you want to see an example!
Minor Changes:
Updated About Dialog! This is because of new contributions and new Patreon. Thanks Lodugh! (By the way, check out Ldugh’s games, they are pretty cool).
Changed all code language to english. Users will not notice this, but this is helpful for people that wants to contribute coding.
Applied clang-format to all code. Same comment than previous item.
Added automatic generation of qm files, and removed them from git.
Grayed out “Add Light” button, when preview is not selected. That button often caused confusion when not in preview, because it entered the add light mode, but nothing was visible.
Added a contributing guide for new developers that want to help!
Now “Lights per texture” option is disabled by default. This made more sense for the new multiple texture feature.
Added “Preview” export option to export dock, and changed the behaviour of the export preview button in toolbar. Makes more sense now. Button in toolbar will export everything being rendered (except for lights icons), and the option in the dock will export the original texture with the processing applied.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed casting in shaders, that caused Laigter not to work with some glsl versions.
Fixed bug that caused “Cut” radio button not to work on some situations.
Translations:
Laigter is now translated to French! thanks to Calinou!
Laigter is available here, with the source code available on GitHub under the GPLv3 license. You can learn more about an earlier version of Laigter in our video below.
