Starting at 2:00 p.m. PST today, members of the Xbox One Preview Beta Ring will begin receiving the latest 1908 Xbox One system update (Build: 19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1908\18362.6044.190719-1520).

New Features:

This update lays the groundwork for what’s to come in 1908, so while you’ll find fixes and known issues listed below, please keep an eye out for feature announcements as they’re ready to be previewed. Thanks, as always, for your passion for helping make Xbox One system updates the best they can be prior to release to GA!

Today we will be enabling this new feature for flighting in Beta:

My Games and Apps – Download Queue Improvements

• We are adding a new feature in this build to the Download Queue in My Games and Apps today based on User feedback.  You will now see the Estimated time to finish downloads appears in queue. Please test out the new feature, provide feedback, and complete the survey in the Xbox Insider Hub.

DETAILS:

• OS version released: 19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1908\18362.6044.190719-1520
• Available: 2:00PM PDT 7/23/19
• Mandatory Date/Time: 3:00 AM PDT 7/24/19

Fixes:

System

• Various stability fixes to the system.

Known Issues:

Community

• Some users are experiencing and issue where the Dashboard reloads completely when navigating to the Community tab.

Audio

• Users who have Dolby Atmos enabled and console display settings set to 120hz with 36 bits per pixel (12-bit) are experiencing loss of Dolby Atmos audio in some situations.
  
  • Workaround: Disable 120hz or set Video Fidelity to 30 bits per pixel (10-bit) or lower.

Profile Color

• Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.

Save 33% on NieR:Automata™ Game of the YoRHa Edition during this week’s Midweek Madness!

Humanity has been driven from the Earth by mechanical beings from another world. In a final effort to take back the planet, the human resistance sends a force of android soldiers to destroy the invaders. Now, a war between machines and androids rages on… A war that could soon unveil a long-forgotten truth of the world.

The NieR:Automata™ Game of the YoRHa Edition includes the game itself and comes packed with DLC and bonus content for the full experience of the award-winning post-apocalyptic action RPG.

Solstice of Heroes is a grand tradition among Guardians. It’s a chance for us all to reflect on past hardships and celebrate the resilience of humanity’s foremost defenders. All players of Destiny 2 are welcome to participate in this event, which will begin on July 30 and run until August 27.

The festivities start with a visit to Eva Levante near the Statue of Heroes in the Tower.

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Become More Powerful

Let the energy of this community flow! Each day, the event will feature one of the three elements: Solar, Arc, and Void. Elemental kills will award you with Elemental Orbs. Picking up these orbs will let you complete objectives to upgrade your armor. You can create whatever orbs you need for the objectives you are working to achieve. You can also collect 30 orbs that match the daily element to apply an elemental buff for a brief time.

These buffs can really shake things up:

Solar Elemental Buff

Void Elemental Buff

Arc Elemental Buff

These effects will last for a short time or until you are defeated by your enemies. Have no fear… These buffs will not be active in Competitive or Gambit Prime.

Combat Meditations

Eva and Ikora have created a new ritual for you to hone your skills and take full advantage of the new elemental buffs. You will be going to an entirely new area called the European Aerial Zone (EAZ) to take on Hive, Cabal, or Fallen enemies. This is a new 3-player matchmade activity that can be launched from the Tower or the Director.

Your goal will be to defeat as many minibosses as possible before time expires. When your time runs out, you will face off against a final boss. Once the boss is defeated, you will set out across the EAZ in search of treasure chests. The more minibosses you defeat, the more treasure will await you.

The chests contain Solstice Packages that you can open with Solstice Key Fragments earned by completing any activity during the Solstice of Heroes. Consider them similar to Essence of Dawning. What’s in the packages?

Solstice Packages award:

Once you’ve earned Legendary Solstice armor, Solstice Packages will reward you with additional armor, so you can hunt for rolls with enhanced perks.

Collecting all of the Solstice Legendary armor sets on all three classes will give you access to the EV-37 Voidstreak Sparrow.

Upgrading Your Armor

Solstice of Heroes armor sets will need to be upgraded from their “Drained” Uncommon state to their “Renewed” Rare state. Completing the armor upgrade process will grant you the “Majestic” Legendary set. To upgrade the armor, Guardians must complete a variety of objectives on each armor piece before advancing to the next set. There will be a final set of objectives available to unlock the Masterwork version of the set.

We know that while upgrading these sets is a fun experience, it does take a commitment of time and effort. Lest it feel like a bummer earning this set just to have the new armor system make it somewhat obsolete when Shadowkeep releases, we decided, based on player feedback, to make the Solstice of Heroes armor set the first armor 2.0 set you will receive (assuming you earn it, of course). Whatever full Legendary sets you earn now will have their new armor 2.0 versions waiting for you to pick up from the Gunsmith when Shadowkeep releases. You will be able to see only the set for the character you are logged in as; you will have to switch characters to claim other eligible sets.

Extras

As with most events, there will also be a new offering from the Eververse Store. There won’t be an event engram this year. Instead, every single item will be available for direct purchase using Silver and Bright Dust. All Eververse items will be available for Bright Dust at some point during the event.

Armor glows will be available for you to add to your Solstice of Heroes armor sets. They will show up on any version of the set to provide Guardians with an enhanced look. Armor glows shine brightest when your subclass element aligns with the element of the glow. You will be able to purchase entire sets for either Silver or Bright Dust. Armor glows will remain available for use after the Solstice of Heroes event ends.

Here is a look at some of the cosmetics that will be available on the store:

There will be two additional Moments of Triumphs available during the Solstice of Heroes event as well. We will also be making Gambit available to all players of Destiny 2 during the Solstice of Heroes, from July 30 until August 27.

Good luck out there, Guardians!

Hamster’s latest Arcade Archives release for the Switch eShop is this time the 1986 SNK action game, Victory Road. It’s a sequel to Ikari Warriors, which was released on the Switch eShop earlier this year.

This story continues on from the first game. After Ralf and Clark finish their mission, they suddenly find themselves dragged into an alternate dimension. Of course, it’s now your responsibility as the player to help them get back home by defeating the evil Zangelt with new and old weapons. Below are some screenshots:

Like existing Arcade Archive releases, various game settings can be adjusted:

Players can change various game settings such as game difficulty, and also reproduce the atmosphere of arcade display settings at that time. Players can also compete against each other from all over the world with their high scores.

Victory Road will set you back $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29 and supports up to two players. Check out the Arcade Archives website to see more games in Hamster’s established series.

What was the last Arcade Archives game you bought? Did you play Victory Road back in the day? Leave a comment below.

After months of rumours, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was finally confirmed for the Nintendo Switch during this year’s E3.

While we know it’s coming to the system at some point this year, we still don’t know exactly when CD Projekt Red’s open-world RPG masterpiece will arrive on the hybrid platform. Fortunately, we might not have to wait much longer, as the game has now been rated by the Entertainment Software Rating Board:

As you can see above, the Switch release has received an M rating, just like the other versions. If you’ve played this particular entry in the Witcher game series before, you’ll probably already know why. If not, you can read the full rating summary on the ESRB website.

This classification follows on from a recent rumour in July, when a Czech retailer posted a supposed launch date for the Switch version of the Witcher 3 on its website. If you’re wondering, the date was 24th September, which falls on a Tuesday.

Are you excited for the release of the Witcher 3 on the Switch? When do you think this game will arrive on the platform? Leave a comment below.

Click Here!

Angelos

The ASP.NET team has built a command-line tool called HttpRepl. It lets you browse and invoke HTTP services in a similar way to working with files and folders. You give it a starting point (a base URL) and then you can execute commands like “dir” and “cd” to navigate your way around the API:

C:\> dotnet httprepl http://localhost:65369/
(Disconnected)~ set base http://localhost:65369
Using swagger metadata from http://localhost:65369/swagger/v1/swagger.json http://localhost:65369/~ dir
. []
Fruits [get|post]
People [get|post] http://localhost:65369/~ cd People
/People [get|post] http://localhost:65369/People~ dir
. [get|post]
.. []
{id} [get]

Once you have identified the API you are interested in, you can use all the typical HTTP verbs against it. Here is an example of calling GET on http://localhost:65369/People as a continuation from before:

http://localhost:65369/People~ get
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2019 20:33:07 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/10.0
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET [ { "id": 1, "name": "Scott Hunter" }, { "id": 0, "name": "Scott Hanselman" }, { "id": 2, "name": "Scott Guthrie" }
]

Right now HttpRepl is being shipped as a .NET Core Global Tool, which means all you have to do to get it is run the following command on a machine with the .NET Core SDK installed:

C:\> dotnet tool install -g Microsoft.dotnet-httprepl --version “3.0.0-*”

The ASP.NET team built HttpRepl for the purpose of exploring and testing APIs. The idea was to make the experience of exploring and testing APIs through a command-line more convenient. What do you think about HttpRepl and what other uses do you envision for it? We would love to hear your opinion, please leave us a comment below or visit the project on GitHub. And for those wondering, HttpRepl’s official ship date is expected to align with .NET Core 3.0 GA.

Configure Visual Studio Code to launch HttpRepl on debug

You can configure Visual Studio to launch HttpRepl when debugging (along with your web app) by creating a new launch configuration as follows:

"version": "0.2.0", "compounds": [ { "name": ".NET Core REPL", "configurations": [ ".NET Core Launch (web)", "httprepl" ] } ], "configurations": [ { "name": "httprepl", "type": "coreclr", "request": "launch", "program": "dotnet", "args": ["httprepl", "http://localhost:5000"], "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}", "stopAtEntry": false, "console": "integratedTerminal" }, { "name": ".NET Core Launch (web)", "type": "coreclr", "request": "launch", "preLaunchTask": "build", // If you have changed target frameworks, make sure to update the program path. "program": "${workspaceFolder}/bin/Debug/netcoreapp3.0/api.dll", "args": [], "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}", "stopAtEntry": false, // Enable launching a web browser when ASP.NET Core starts. For more information: https://aka.ms/VSCode-CS-LaunchJson-WebBrowser "serverReadyAction": { "action": "openExternally", "pattern": "^\\s*Now listening on:\\s+(https?://\\S+)" }, "env": { "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development" }, "sourceFileMap": { "/Views": "${workspaceFolder}/Views" } }

Configure Visual Studio for Windows to launch HttpRepl on F5

You can configure Visual Studio to automatically launch HttpRepl when you F5 a project with the following simple steps:

The .exe for HttpRepl on Windows can be found in the following location:

%USERPROFILE%\.dotnet\tools\dotnet-httprepl.exe

Don’t forget to select it from the menu after adding it:

Next time you F5 your project, Visual Studio will automatically launch HttpRepl with the appropriate base URL (same URL that would have been passed to a browser, controlled through launchsettings):

Note: We are currently working on integrating HttpRepl into Visual Studio, which will give you an out-of-the box and more refined experience.

Configure Visual Studio for Mac to launch HttpRepl as a Custom Tool

In Visual Studio for Mac, you can configure a Custom Tool to open a new Terminal window and start httprepl. To configure this, go to Tools>Edit Custom Tools…

This will bring you to the External Tools dialog where you can add a new tool. To get started click the Add button to add a new tool. Here you will configure a new tool to launch a new Terminal instance and start the httprepl tool. Fill in the dialog with the following values.

• Title: dotnet httprepl
• Command: osascript
• Arguments: -e ‘tell application “Terminal” to activate’ -e ‘tell application “Terminal”
  to do script “dotnet-httprepl”‘
• Working directory: ${ProjectDir}

See the image below showing this new tool:

After clicking OK a new tool will appear in the Tools menu. To test your application with httprepl, start your application with Run>Start Debugging (or Run>Start without Debugging) and then start the httprepl with the new tool in the Tools menu:

When you invoke the tool a new Terminal window should appear in the foreground. From here you can set the base url to that of the api that you would like to test with set base. For example, see the image below that shows set base was executed and a get request will be executed next:

Give us feedback

It’s not HTTPie, it’s not Curl, but it’s also not PostMan. It’s something that you run and stays running and its aware of its current context. We find this experience valuable, but ultimately what matters the most is what you think. Please let us know your opinion by leaving comments below or on GitHub.

Another Humble Bundle is running of interest to game developers, this one is the Humble 2D Game Dev bundle, a collection of 35+ sprite and graphic packs from Game Dev Market.  As always, Humble Bundles are organized into price tiers, where if  you buy a higher dollar tier, you get all tiers below that as well.

The tiers of this bundle include:

1$ Tier

• Game Character Sprite 20
• Game BG Platformer Tileset 01
• 10 Game Backgrounds
• Cute Animals Pack
• Explosives Pack
• Water and Fluids Tiles
• Chests n’ Keys
• Platformer Game Tile Set 13
• 18 Amazing Sprite Effects for Your Game

15$ Tier

• Soldiers Pack
• Platformer Tile Set Game BG 12
• Sprite Sheet Animation
• 10 Game Vector Backgrounds
• Animated Soldier 2
• Platformer Game Tile Set 2
• 32×32 Gameboy Pack 5
• Cyberpunk Platformer Tileset
• Cyberpunk Character Sprites Set
• Platformer Assets Pack 3

25$ Tier

• 10 Game Sprites Bundle Boys and Girls
• Game Character Sprite 06
• 2d Game Obstacles Sprites
• Mega Projectile Pack
• Ship Level Construction Kit
• 2D Fantasy Character Pack
• Mega Castle and Dungeon Pack
• 100 Cartoon Characters for 2D Games
• Platformer Game Tile Set 12
• Characters Spritesheets 9
• Six Animated Pirate Crew Characters
• Folding Platforms
• Skeleton Army
• Goblins Game Character Sprites
• Monsters Enemies 2D Game Sprite Set

If you buy using this link you can choose to support GFS (thanks if you do!) as well as deciding how your money is split between Humble, Charity and the publisher.  Of course, the license of the assets is super important as well, and it’s available here.

Art GameDev News 2D