Earlier today we disabled a loophole that allowed players to purchase two of the Weekend Bundle rather than just one. Enough people exploited this loophole that we have decided that, for the next 24 hours only, we will give a chance for players who did not exploit it to also buy up to two bundles total within the client directly.

Newly announced Twitch distribution deal drives an average audience per minute of 408,000 for the opening day broadcast

IRVINE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– The Overwatch League roared to life last week at the Blizzard Arena Los Angeles, with four days of intense competition between all 12 teams of the world’s first major global city-based professional esports league.

Buoyed by a newly announced two-year deal with Twitch, the Overwatch League’s exclusive worldwide^[1] third-party digital broadcast partner, opening day drew an impressive average audience per minute of 408,000, and 280,000 for the week. More than 10 million viewers tuned in over the four-day period via Twitch, MLG, and Chinese streaming partners ZhanQi TV, NetEase CC, and Panda TV—not to mention the countless additional viewers at watch parties worldwide. On Twitch and MLG alone, the peak concurrent online audience of 437,000 hit during the highly anticipated day-one matchup between Dallas Fuel and Seoul Dynasty. In addition, tickets to Blizzard Arena Los Angeles were sold out for the entirety of opening week.

“We’re thrilled by the overwhelming response to the Overwatch League’s opening week of play,” said Pete Vlastelica, president and CEO of Major League Gaming (MLG). “But this is only the beginning. With more than 35 million Overwatch® players, the Overwatch League has the potential to become one of the most-watched leagues—of any kind—in the world.”

“Since we announced Overwatch League at BlizzCon 2016, we’ve been eagerly awaiting the day when the global competitive Overwatch community could come together under one banner,” said Nate Nanzer, Overwatch League commissioner. “Opening week was that coming-out party—for the fans, both in-person at Blizzard Arena Los Angeles and tuned in by the millions all over the world, and for the players, whose love for the game came through crystal clear.”

“We had high expectations for the inaugural broadcast of the Overwatch League on Twitch, given our platform’s passionate fanbase for Overwatch,” said Kevin Lin, COO of Twitch. “They really put on an amazing show and fans showed up en masse to support and celebrate Overwatch. Based on the response from the community, Overwatch League is off to a great start and we look forward to watching how the season progresses. This league demonstrates the power and potential of esports, and we’re thrilled to continue expanding our partnership with Blizzard.”

Viewers can tune in to catch all the action on Twitch, www.mlg.com, the MLG app (on iOS and Android), www.overwatchleague.com, and the Overwatch League app, which launched last week for iOS and Android. Blizzard gamers also can get easy access to the Overwatch League via a new Overwatch League tab in the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app.

The first season of the Overwatch League runs until June, with playoffs and finals scheduled for July. For the inaugural season, all regular-season games will take place at Blizzard Arena Los Angeles, a state-of-the-art live-event venue in Burbank, California, custom-renovated for Blizzard Entertainment esports events. Fans can purchase tickets to attend matches, which will be played each Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. A full schedule and information about ticket sales can be found at www.overwatchleague.com.

About the Overwatch League^™

The Overwatch League^™ is the first major global professional esports league with city-based teams across Asia, Europe, and North America. Overwatch® was created by globally acclaimed publisher Blizzard Entertainment (a division of Activision Blizzard—Nasdaq: ATVI), whose iconic franchises have helped lay the foundations and push the boundaries of professional esports over the last 15 years. The latest addition to Blizzard’s stable of twenty-one #1 games,^[2] Overwatch was built from the ground up for online competition, with memorable characters and fast-paced action designed for the most engaging gameplay and spectator experiences. To learn more about the Overwatch League, visit www.overwatchleague.com.

© 2018 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. OVERWATCH, OVERWATCH LEAGUE, BLIZZARD and BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT are trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. MAJOR LEAGUE GAMING is a trademark of Major League Gaming Corp.

[1] Not including China.
[2] Sales and/or downloads, based on internal company records and reports from key distribution partners

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Blizzard Entertainment’s expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including statements about the dates, events and features of the Overwatch League, are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause Blizzard Entertainment’s actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include unanticipated product delays and other factors identified in the risk factors sections of Activision Blizzard’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Blizzard Entertainment nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Blizzard Entertainment or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180117005551/en/

Overwatch League
Mark Van Lommel, 949-955-1380 x61147
MVanLommel@overwatchleague.com

Source: Overwatch League

News Provided by Acquire Media

We’re now feeling confident enough in the stability and feature-completeness of 1.14 – The Village & Pillage Update – that we’ve decided to enter the pre-release phase. Whilst we know that there are still bugs to be solved and polish to be added, we feel that this version is now good enough that we can ask you all to please help us test and find any issues for a smooth release in a few weeks. Remember to report anything you find to our bug tracker, or give feedback on new features over to our feedback website. It helps us immensely!

A full summary of the content available in this snapshot can be found in the changelog on Minecraft.net.

• Fixed a few bugs
• Some performance improvements

• MC-123773 – Scrolling the hotbar on mac behaves weirdly starting in 18w01a
• MC-133205 – Missing block with superflat preset “The Void”
• MC-137581 – Destroyed shulker boxes are lost in creative mode
• MC-138444 – Tall sea grass doesn’t drop sea grass when sheared
• MC-140236 – Using the Grindstone on an item to remove enchants doesn’t reset the XP price to add enchants to it in an anvil
• MC-140261 – When putting only one non-enchanted item in the grindstone GUI, the same item appears as the output
• MC-141253 – Zombie villagers in certain biomes don’t spawn with their biome specific skins
• MC-141990 – Cartography table does not update when cloning maps
• MC-143410 – Wandering Trader and Trader Llama spawn in the void biome
• MC-143998 – Switching in smoker between “Showing all” and “Showing smokable” does not work
• MC-144242 – Foxes’ heads never move
• MC-145738 – All town centers in village now generate in ground and creates many holes in superflat world
• MC-145848 – Players can sleep in the same beds as villagers
• MC-145916 – Food that can be planted cannot be eaten while targeting a block
• MC-146251 – Farmer doesn’t look at plants when he is working
• MC-146995 – Villagers don’t immediately replant crops
• MC-147338 – Bright spots underwater – ocean lighting errors
• MC-147565 – Foxes body model are 2 pixel higher when sleeping
• MC-147566 – Baby fox hitbox is shifted
• MC-147572 – Suspicious stews of saturation from shipwrecks and villagers still have a lasting effect
• MC-147598 – Baby foxes don’t drop items they’re holding when they die
• MC-147606 – Polar bear attack sound never changes pitch, even if the roar comes from a baby polar bear
• MC-147654 – Baby fox’s head is off center
• MC-147754 – Crash while opening world / while ticking entity: “IllegalStateException: POI data mismatch: already registered at ev{x=##, y=##, z=##}”
• MC-147951 – Cartography Table does not Lock Maps

• Fixed lots of bugs
• Some optimizations
• Inside optimize world screen there’s now an option to remove cached world data (e.g. height maps and light), so that it’s recomputed on the next load

• MC-134755 – All short mobs drown just below the surface of water
• MC-137451 – Mobs heads rotate super quickly when looking around
• MC-138979 – Scaffolding switches quickly between entity and block when placed on some non-solid blocks
• MC-139255 – Cave ambient sounds are not playing
• MC-140936 – The tall grass in the plains village structures doesn’t take the block it spawns on into consideration
• MC-142134 – Light sources spontaneously not working in some chunks
• MC-142228 – Skylight shines through blocks
• MC-142729 – Puffed puffer fishes with “NoAI” tag can shrink down
• MC-142768 – Mobs can suffocate below blocks, if the eye height isn’t inside the collision box
• MC-143112 – Duplicated files in village structure
• MC-143591 – Spiders and cave spiders fly-climb
• MC-143699 – Trader llamas won’t despawn
• MC-144798 – Barrels always try to set their “open” state to false
• MC-145031 – Crash while ticking barrel
• MC-145766 – Iron golems spawning at an alarming rate
• MC-146295 – Loom top texture is backwards
• MC-146538 – Eye position for riptiding player is incorrect
• MC-146800 – Villager can make the discount number of unstackable item more than 1
• MC-146860 – Trading sometimes takes the full price instead of the discounted price when player has the Hero of the Village effect
• MC-146919 – Drowned, fish and guardians are not spawning
• MC-147031 – When a zombie wakes up a villager, the bed tag is still on occupied (occupied: true)
• MC-147056 – Zombie villagers spawned with a zombie village move very fast
• MC-147207 – hs_pid_error appears for no reason in snapshots.
• MC-147227 – Shift-clicking an item out of the trading inventory instantly locks the trade
• MC-147240 – Villagers can trade Arrows of Luck
• MC-147268 – Villagers don’t run away from ravagers, pillagers, vindicators, evokers, zombies or husks
• MC-147270 – Player can still move at normal speed and sprint while sneaking in a 1.5 blocks tall space
• MC-147274 – Villager ‘Happy’ and ‘Angry’ particles not showing, even when particles are on ‘All’
• MC-147298 – Arrow facing down with 0 degrees on both x z (basically straight down) cannot be picked up and play a sound on loop
• MC-147305 – Player crouches with a delay
• MC-147363 – “Villager disagrees” sound is played twice when right clicking a villager without trades
• MC-147513 – Unable to focus anvil textfield by clicking
• MC-147529 – Background is not dimmed for book or lectern
• MC-147532 – Chunks stop loading after change view distance
• MC-147538 – Cannot drag any slider in “Video Settings” options
• MC-147560 – Mobs stop spawning over time if the render distance is less than 11
• MC-147607 – Command block text field isn’t focused when opening the GUI anymore
• MC-147642 – Narrator is toggled when typing in text fields
• MC-147681 – X-ray with door and slab

This week at Bungie, we watched Guardians hunt for Truth.

Season of Opulence is off and running. Guardians are piling into the Emperor’s lost vaults in search of the treasure of their choosing. Earlier this week, you discovered a new boss waiting for you in the depths of the Menagerie. Upon defeating it, you were given a quest to seek out Truth. Not in an X-files way, but to find the Rocket Launcher, Truth—a weapon that seeks out its targets… aggressively. Just look at what some players are seeing in the wild:

Next week, we’ll mix things up once again with a third additional boss to keep things fresh in our new six-player activity. And that’s not all we have planned. We are also welcoming an old friend back to the Tower.

Iron Pursuits

Lord Saladin will return next week for the first Iron Banner of Season of Opulence. With a new Season, you have a fresh set of weapons and armor available to earn. Saladin continues to offer Iron Banner bounties, but will also set you on a quest to earn your gear. In other words, prove your worth, and be outfitted as an Iron Lord.

Here is a preview of the armor and weapons available during Iron Banner events in Season of Opulence.

Valor boosts will also be available next week in Iron Banner and the rest of the Crucible. Saladin will also have some other items available including this new Emblem.

Raid Stats

Thousands of Guardians explored deep within the Leviathan to tackle the challenges of the Crown of Sorrow raid. A fireteam of six completed it first and paved the way for others to follow in their footsteps. We made a graphic showing the number of Guardians who beat the raid in a few key timeframes during the first week.

Congratulations to everyone who has completed it so far. If you’re still Powering up, Gahlran is waiting for you.

Q and A

The DPS team is always working diligently behind the scenes. They are making sure you have the info you need to have the best Destiny 2 experience.

This is their report.

Destiny 2 Hotfix 2.5.0.3

Today, we deployed Destiny 2 Hotfix 2.5.0.3 to players. This hotfix addressed the following issues:

• Resolved an issue blocking progress toward the quest “The Invitation,” where some players were not receiving credit when defeating Menagerie bosses.
• Resolved an issue blocking progress toward the quest “The Invitation,” where some players could not upgrade their Chalice of Opulence.
• Resolved an issue where Sturm’s “Accomplice” perk no longer reloaded non-Drang energy weapons following Update 2.5.0.1.
• PLEASE NOTE: We are investigating an ongoing issue where Sturm does not reload non-Drang sidearms.
• Resolved an issue causing Eververse armor to have different perks than shown in the Eververse storefront.

For upcoming patch notes as soon as they are available, players should monitor our Updates page.

Fall 2019 FAQ

Following the series of announcements we made last week, we’d like to follow up with the first batch of frequently asked questions submitted by players.

Forsaken and New Light

Q: Will Destiny 2: New Light be its own separate game/file?

A: No. All Destiny 2 players will be automatically converted to New Light and will maintain all of their prior purchases and entitlements.

Q: What Forsaken and Forsaken Annual Pass content will be included in New Light?

A: Forsaken content available in Destiny 2: New Light includes:

• Free roam on all destinations
• Strikes playlists
• Crucible playlists
• Gambit and Gambit Prime playlists
• Select Annual Pass content

Q: What Forsaken and Forsaken Annual Pass content will NOT be included in New Light?

A: Forsaken content available only with purchase includes:

• The Forsaken campaign
• Year 2 raids and dungeons
• Exotic quests

Cross Save

Q: Do players need to repurchase Destiny 2 on each cross save platform separately?

A: No. New Light will be available for free on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.

• Cross save will preserve all gear, character, and items across all platforms regardless of entitlements.
• Expansion ownership (Forsaken, Shadowkeep) is tied to the platform’s store it was purchased on. Players will need to purchase expansions on each platform that they wish to play that expansion content on.

Q: Can players merge different characters, items, or Triumphs from different accounts?

A: Cross save does not feature account, character, or progress merging. Selecting a active account for cross save does not delete or alter the data of any other accounts.

Q: Will Destiny 2 support cross-play matchmaking between different platforms?

A: Each platform will have its own matchmaking pool.

Steam PC

Q: Which Destiny 2 purchases and entitlements transfer over from Battle.net to Steam?

A: The PC migration from Battle.net to Steam will include a one-time transfer of ALL ownership rights that a player already owns (expansions, Silver, account, Seasons, etc.).

Q: Can players pre-order Shadowkeep on Steam right now and migrate their Battle.net account later?

A: Yes. Players may purchase Destiny 2: Shadowkeep from Steam’s product page now, and migrate their account at a later date.

Stadia

Q: Can players pre-order Google Stadia Founder’s Edition right now, and setup cross save for their account at a later date?

A: Yes. Players may purchase Stadia Founder’s Edition from Google’s product page now, and enable cross save on their account at a later date.

Q: Will Stadia feature cross play with Steam or other platforms?

A: Stadia is its own ecosystem, just like current existing platforms. Stadia players will only be able to play with other Stadia players.

For the consolidated list of frequently asked questions as they are added throughout the summer, players should see our Destiny 2: Fall 2019 FAQ help article.

Destiny 2 Season of Opulence Known Issues

Listed below are the latest player impacting issues discovered in Season of Opulence:

• Queen of Hearts Ship: We are investigating an issue where this ship can’t be reacquired from Collections when bought from Eververse.
• 404 Errors on Bungie.net: We are investigating an issue where players who are trying to get a Bungie Rewards code or are trying to verify their email receive a 404 error page.
• Opulence Weekly Bounties: We are investigating an issue where weekly bounties offered by Benedict 99-40 did not grant powerful rewards for a period following the 6/11 weekly reset.
• Chests on the Pleasure Barge: We are investigating an issue where the chests on Werner 99-40’s pleasure barge reset at Sunday’s daily reset and not at Tuesday’s weekly reset.

Showtime

We are back with a hot new edition of Movie of the Week. For anyone unfamiliar, this is where we highlight our favorite videos that were created by the community. The winners get an emblem, and you get to watch some cool Destiny action. Here is what we got this week.

Movie of the Week: TR3-VR Recreated

Honorable Mention: Better Blink

It’s been a blast sharing news with the community all while getting to see you experience the content we have been working on for Season of Opulence. We’re not done yet! There is more coming this season and more coming this fall. Thanks for inhabiting this universe we love to build.

<3 Cozmo

In the past, kings and leaders used oracles and magicians to help them predict the future — or at least get some good advice due to their supposed power to perceive hidden information. Nowadays, we live in a society obsessed with quantifying everything. So we have data scientists to do this job.

Data scientists use statistical models, numerical techniques and advanced algorithms that didn’t come from statistical disciplines, along with the data that exist on databases, to find, to infer, to predict data that doesn’t exist yet. Sometimes this data is about the future. That is why we do a lot of predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics.

Here are some questions to which data scientists help find answers:

1. Who are the students with high propensity to abandon the class? For each one, what are the reasons for leaving?
2. Which house has a price above or below the fair price? What is the fair price for a certain house?
3. What are the hidden groups that my clients classify themselves?
4. Which future problems this premature child will develop?
5. How many calls will I get in my call center tomorrow 11:43 AM?
6. My bank should or should not lend money to this customer?

Note how the answer to all these question is not sitting in any database waiting to be queried. These are all data that still doesn’t exist and has to be calculated. That is part of the job we data scientists do.

Throughout this article you’ll learn how to prepare a Fedora system as a Data Scientist’s development environment and also a production system. Most of the basic software is RPM-packaged, but the most advanced parts can only be installed, nowadays, with Python’s pip tool.

Jupyter — the IDE

Most modern data scientists use Python. And an important part of their work is EDA (exploratory data analysis). EDA is a manual and interactive process that retrieves data, explores its features, searches for correlations, and uses plotted graphics to visualize and understand how data is shaped and prototypes predictive models.

Jupyter is a web application perfect for this task. Jupyter works with Notebooks, documents that mix rich text including beautifully rendered math formulas (thanks to mathjax), blocks of code and code output, including graphics.

Notebook files have extension .ipynb, which means Interactive Python Notebook.

Setting up and running Jupyter

First, install essential packages for Jupyter (using sudo):

$ sudo dnf install python3-notebook mathjax sscg

You might want to install additional and optional Python modules commonly used by data scientists:

$ sudo dnf install python3-seaborn python3-lxml python3-basemap python3-scikit-image python3-scikit-learn python3-sympy python3-dask+dataframe python3-nltk

Set a password to log into Notebook web interface and avoid those long tokens. Run the following command anywhere on your terminal:

$ mkdir -p $HOME/.jupyter
$ jupyter notebook password

Now, type a password for yourself. This will create the file $HOME/.jupyter/jupyter_notebook_config.json with your encrypted password.

Next, prepare for SSLby generating a self-signed HTTPS certificate for Jupyter’s web server:

$ cd $HOME/.jupyter; sscg

Finish configuring Jupyter by editing your $HOME/.jupyter/jupyter_notebook_config.json file. Make it look like this:

{
 "NotebookApp": {
 "password": "sha1:abf58...87b",
 "ip": "*",
 "allow_origin": "*",
 "allow_remote_access": true,
 "open_browser": false,
 "websocket_compression_options": {},
 "certfile": "/home/aviram/.jupyter/service.pem",
 "keyfile": "/home/aviram/.jupyter/service-key.pem",
 "notebook_dir": "/home/aviram/Notebooks"
 }
} 

The parts in red must be changed to match your folders. Parts in blue were already there after you created your password. Parts in green are the crypto-related files generated by sscg.

Create a folder for your notebook files, as configured in the notebook_dir setting above:

$ mkdir $HOME/Notebooks

Now you are all set. Just run Jupyter Notebook from anywhere on your system by typing:

$ jupyter notebook

Or add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file to create a shortcut command called jn:

alias jn='jupyter notebook'

After running the command jn, access https://your-fedora-host.com:8888 from any browser on the network to see the Jupyter user interface. You’ll need to use the password you set up earlier. Start typing some Python code and markup text. This is how it looks:

In addition to the IPython environment, you’ll also get a web-based Unix terminal provided by terminado. Some people might find this useful, while others find this insecure. You can disable this feature in the config file.

JupyterLab — the next generation of Jupyter

JupyterLab is the next generation of Jupyter, with a better interface and more control over your workspace. It’s currently not RPM-packaged for Fedora at the time of writing, but you can use pip to get it installed easily:

$ pip3 install jupyterlab --user
$ jupyter serverextension enable --py jupyterlab

Then run your regular jupiter notebook command or jn alias. JupyterLab will be accessible from http://your-linux-host.com:8888/lab.

Tools used by data scientists

In this section you can get to know some of these tools, and how to install them. Unless noted otherwise, the module is already packaged for Fedora and was installed as prerequisites for previous components.

Numpy

Numpy is an advanced and C-optimized math library designed to work with large in-memory datasets. It provides advanced multidimensional matrix support and operations, including math functions as log(), exp(), trigonometry etc.

Pandas

In this author’s opinion, Python is THE platform for data science mostly because of Pandas. Built on top of numpy, Pandas makes easy the work of preparing and displaying data. You can think of it as a no-UI spreadsheet, but ready to work with much larger datasets. Pandas helps with data retrieval from a SQL database, CSV or other types of files, columns and rows manipulation, data filtering and, to some extent, data visualization with matplotlib.

Matplotlib

Matplotlib is a library to plot 2D and 3D data. It has great support for notations in graphics, labels and overlays

Seaborn

Built on top of matplotlib, Seaborn’s graphics are optimized for a more statistical comprehension of data. It automatically displays regression lines or Gauss curve approximations of plotted data.

StatsModels

StatsModels provides algorithms for statistical and econometrics data analysis such as linear and logistic regressions. Statsmodel is also home for the classical family of time series algorithms known as ARIMA.

Scikit-learn

The central piece of the machine-learning ecosystem, scikit provides predictor algorithms for regression (Elasticnet, Gradient Boosting, Random Forest etc) and classification and clustering (K-means, DBSCAN etc). It features a very well designed API. Scikit also has classes for advanced data manipulation, dataset split into train and test parts, dimensionality reduction and data pipeline preparation.

XGBoost

XGBoost is the most advanced regressor and classifier used nowadays. It’s not part of scikit-learn, but it adheres to scikit’s API. XGBoost is not packaged for Fedora and should be installed with pip. XGBoost can be accelerated with your nVidia GPU, but not through its pip package. You can get this if you compile it yourself against CUDA. Get it with:

$ pip3 install xgboost --user

Imbalanced Learn

imbalanced-learn provides ways for under-sampling and over-sampling data. It is useful in fraud detection scenarios where known fraud data is very small when compared to non-fraud data. In these cases data augmentation is needed for the known fraud data, to make it more relevant to train predictors. Install it with pip:

$ pip3 install imblearn --user

NLTK

The Natural Language toolkit, or NLTK, helps you work with human language data for the purpose of building chatbots (just to cite an example).

SHAP

Machine learning algorithms are very good on predicting, but aren’t good at explaining why they made a prediction. SHAP solves that, by analyzing trained models.

Install it with pip:

$ pip3 install shap --user

Keras

Keras is a library for deep learning and neural networks. Install it with pip:

$ sudo dnf instal python3-h5py
$ pip3 install keras --user

TensorFlow

TensorFlow is a popular neural networks builder. Install it with pip:

$ pip3 install tensorflow --user

Photo courtesy of FolsomNatural on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Henry Ford’s assembly line revolutionized manufacturing in the 20th century. The transformation driven by AI in the 21st century will be just as dramatic. 

“The Future Computed: AI and Manufacturing” is the second book in Microsoft’s The Future Computed series, looking at the impact of AI on society. 

Author Greg Shaw examines the way in which leading manufacturing companies are using AI to build the factories and supply chains of the future. He explores the exciting opportunities around this new technology and also looks at the way the manufacturing industry is again at the forefront of grappling with the challenges of adopting a new technology. In particular, “The Future Computed: AI and Manufacturing” looks at the importance of creating a framework for the ethical and responsible use of AI and ensuring that workers can be trained to take on new tasks.  

[Subscribe to Microsoft on the Issues for more on the topics that matter most.] 

In this video, Shaw explains the themes underlying his research, and hears directly from Çağlayan Arkan, general manager of Microsoft Global Manufacturing, and some of the manufacturing customers at the cutting edge of industrial AI. 

For more on AI innovations at Microsoft follow @MSFTIssues on Twitter.

It’s finally here – The Gears 5 Versus Tech Test goes live today to give players their first taste of Versus multiplayer action. Starting at 10 a.m. PDT today, COG hopefuls can enlist in the Boot Camp training mode and then jump right into Arcade, the new game type designed for over-the-top fun where characters become heroes with their own unique abilities, loadouts and playstyles.

Gears veterans will want to check out fan-favorite King of the Hill, the updated competitive game type Escalation and a mini-Tour of Duty, a series of challenges that grant sweet Tech Test exclusive rewards that will carry over into Gears 5.  No matter your level of Gears familiarity, Gears 5 offers a game type for you.

Access to the Tech Test is included with your Xbox Game Pass membership or as part of your Gears 5 pre-order (whether as a separate 5×5 code from a participating retailer or bundled in your digital pre-order). Eligible players can download the game app now and matchmaking will begin at 10 a.m. PDT today. Matchmaking will run through July 22 at 10 a.m. PDT and will be active again from July 26 at 10 a.m. PDT until July 29 at 10 a.m. PDT. To download, simply search for “Gears 5” in the Xbox or Windows Store to pull up the Tech Test on your Xbox One or Windows 10 PC. If you’re an Xbox Game Pass member, you will see the Tech Test available to download in “Recently added” section of the Game Pass library. Online multiplayer will require Xbox Live Gold on console or an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership. For players on Windows 10 PC, we have the below chart that outlines minimum and recommended specs for the Tech Test:

Boot Camp

Within the Tech Test, players will find Boot Camp, the perfect way to practice your skills and learn new mechanics before joining the fight in Gears 5. Boot Camp takes you through all the basics, from cover movement to executions, in easy-to-repeat sections perfect for new players and returning veterans alike. Whether you’re learning the ropes or just refreshing your memory, Boot Camp offers an intuitive training mode to ensure you’re ready for primetime in the Tech Test.

Arcade

Arcade is a brand-new type of Versus experience that encourages approachable gameplay for all types of players. Arcade is the ultimate jump-in/jump-out mode featuring classic characters such as Kait and Marcus each with their own distinct abilities and weapon upgrades. For more details on the Arcade experience, check out the above trailer or jump into the action yourself this weekend.

King of the Hill

The classic King of the Hill action you know and love is back in full force in Gears 5. Battle for supremacy and prove your dominance with a team or solo as you compete to capture and hold territories.

Escalation

If you’re looking for the ultimate competitive experience from Gears 5, Escalation offers thrilling, objective-based play requiring a combination of individual skill, teamwork and strategy. With the introduction of limited respawns, an overhauled weapon system and updated player spawning, Escalation in Gears 5 is more tactically rich and competitive than ever before. So grab some friends, experiment with new strategies and watch each other’s backs this weekend.

Thanks for your support and we look forward to seeing you online! Be sure to visit www.gears5.com and follow @GearsofWar on Facebook and Twitter to keep up-to-date with the latest on Gears 5 ahead of launch on September 10.

Gears 5 will release on September 10 for Xbox One, Windows 10 PC and Xbox Game Pass. Early access starts on September 6 for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members and Gears 5 Ultimate Edition purchasers. Pre-order details can be found on the Microsoft Store.

Xbox Game Pass provides a curated library of over 100 great games for one low-monthly price, with new games added all the time including the latest titles from Xbox Game Studios on the day they launch. The service is available across console and PC, with Ultimate members receiving access to all the benefits of Xbox Live Gold, as well as access to titles across both platforms.

In .NET Core 3.0 we are introducing a new type of application template called Worker Service. This template is intended to give you a starting point for writing long running services in .NET Core. In this walkthrough you’ll learn how to use a Worker with Azure Container Registry and Azure Container Instances to get your Worker running as a microservice in the cloud.

Since the Worker template Glenn blogged about is also available via the dotnet new command line, I can create one on my Mac and edit the code using Visual Studio for Mac or Visual Studio Code (which I’ll be using here to take advantage of the integrated Docker extension).

dotnet new worker

I’ll use the default from the Worker template. As it will write to logs during execution via ILogger, I’ll be able to tell quickly from looking in the logs if the Worker is running.

public class Worker : BackgroundService

{ private readonly ILogger<Worker> _logger; public Worker(ILogger<Worker> logger) { _logger = logger; } protected override async Task ExecuteAsync(CancellationToken stoppingToken) { while (!stoppingToken.IsCancellationRequested) { _logger.LogInformation("Worker running at: {time}", DateTimeOffset.Now); await Task.Delay(1000, stoppingToken); } }

}

Visual Studio Code’s Docker tools are intelligent enough to figure out this is a .NET Core app, and will suggest the correct Docker file via the Command Palette’s Add Docker files to workspace option.

By right-clicking the resulting Dockerfile I can build the Worker into a Docker image in one click.

The Build Image option will package my Worker’s code into a Docker container locally. The second option, ACR Tasks: Build Image would use Azure Container Registry Tasks to build the image in the cloud, rather than on disk. This is helpful for scenarios when the base image is larger than I want to download locally or when I’m building an application on a Windows base image from Linux or Mac. You can learn more about ACR Tasks in the ACR docs. The Azure CLI makes it easy to login to the Azure Container Registry using the Azure CLI. This results in my Docker client being authenticated to the Azure Container Registry in my subscription.

az acr login -n BackgroundWorkerImages

This can be done in the VS Code integrated terminal or in the local terminal, as the setting will be persisted across the terminals’ environment. It can’t be done using the cloud shell, since logging into the Azure Container Registry requires local shell access so local Docker images can be accessed. Before I push the container image into my registry, I need to tag the image with the URI of the image once it has been pushed into my registry. I can easily get the ACR instance URI from the portal.

I’ll copy the URI of the registry’s login server in the portal so I can paste it when I tag the image later.

By selecting the backgroundworker:latest image in Visual Studio Code’s Docker explorer pane, I can select Tag Image.

I’ll be prompted for the tag, and I can easily paste in the URI I copied from the portal.

Finally, I can right-click the image tag I created and select Push, and the image will be pushed into the registry. Once I have a Docker image in the registry, I can use the CLI or tools to deploy it to Azure Container Instances, Kubernetes, or even Azure App Service.

Now that the worker is containerized and stored in the registry, starting an instance of it is one click away.

Once the container instance starts up, I’ll see some logs indicating the worker is executing, but these are just the basic startup logs and not my information-level logs I have in my Worker code.

Since I added Information-level logs during the worker’s execution, the configuration in appsettings.json (or the environment variable for the container instance) will need to be updated to see more verbose logs.

{ "Logging": { "LogLevel": { "Default": "Information", "Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime": "Information" } }

}

Once the code is re-packaged into an updated Docker image and pushed into the Azure Container Registry, following a simple Restart…

… more details will be visible in the container instance’s logging output.

The Worker template makes it easy to create long-running background workers that you can run for as long as you need in Azure Container Instances. New container instances can be created using the portal or the Azure Command Line. Or, you can opt for more advanced scenarios using Azure DevOps or Logic Apps. With the Worker template making it easy to get started building microservices using your favorite ASP.NET Core idioms and Azure’s arsenal of container orchestration services you can get your microservices up and running in minutes.

Brady Gaster

Senior Program Manager, ASP.NET Core

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This is a slightly short and sweet entry this week because I’m out and above for work reasons, but still a few things to catch you guys up on. We’ll be cooling it a bit with Harry Potter content unless some news pops up and I’ve got nothing better to do, although I plan to look more into the Auto Chess stuff as it seems more our speed.

We’ve got more reviews coming as well, so don’t worry about that – most new, a few we missed from last month, and then looking at trying to keep things dynamic with more features etc… I’d especially be interested in what you thought about the Brave Exvius guide we ran. I’ve always wondered if there was room for content that’s on trying to ride the ‘free’ part of Free-to-play for as long as possible, making the most of what free resources one can get. I know plenty of people are turned off by the grind-mechanics themselves, but plenty do enjoy having something to whittle away idle time and I’m hoping this helps with that somewhat.

Meanwhile, in mobile gaming…

Out Now

LEGO Tower (iOS & Android)

We reported on this a week or two ago, but the LEGO themed Tiny Tower spin-off is finally here. If you played the original game (or Tiny Death Star) you’ll know what to expect, but for anyone not in the know this is a free-to-play experience where you need to build and manage a tower complex. LEGO figurines will come to work and live in your tower depending on what you build, and you can keep going as high as you can.

Standard Free-to-play warning applies with premium currencies and timers, although Tiny Tower never had a reputation for being that bad with its monetisation. Still, this isn’t going to sway anyone who’s definitely anti-F2P, but it might be a nice distraction for anyone else looking for something to idle some time away without much thought. Plus, LEGO!

Chess Rush (iOS & Android)

Tencent is a Chinese company you may have heard off because they’re kinda buying stakes in, like, everyone right now. I think they own a share of Paradox Interactive now? Perhaps I’m mis-remembering that, but they definitely own an interest in Riot Games, makers of League of Legends. Recently, they’ve done two things: The first is to partner with Drodo Games and Dragonest to help publish Auto Chess: Origin in China, the second is to just go ahead and launch their own similar game, Chess Rush.

I tried to fire it up for a spin but it couldn’t get it get past the ‘checking for update’ screen. It also asked for access to my microphone, to which I was like ‘hell no’. It’s mean’t to be a more fast-paced take on the genre though, with quicker matches lasting no more than ten minutes. I’ve always thought this was something that mobile-facing auto-battlers should try to deal with, as 30-40 minute matches that you can’t leave are problematic for a game that can be played on the go. If I can get it to work I’ll report back and most likely update our master list of Auto Chess games.

Sales

There’s still a fair few sales going on at the moment since it’s ‘the season’, and a few more interesting ones have popped up that you may be interested in:

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

Blender have just released the first, and hopefully only, release candidate for Blender 2.80.  Assuming no major show stopping bugs are found in the release candidate, Blender 2.80 final release should be just around the corner!  You can download the release candidate here.  Given the excitement around Blender 2.80 and the fact this isn’t their primary development server, except the download to be quite slow.  Note, even though the file says Beta, this is in fact the release candidate, just be sure to look for the July 11th or later release date when selecting the file to download.

Blender 2.80 has spent over 4 years in development and is absolutely packed with new features.  The star of the show is EEVEE, the new real-time viewport renderer, but other major features include massively improved 2D creation and animation tools, Cycles renderer improvements and of course a completely new UI.

To learn more about Blender 2.80 be sure to check out the Blender 2.80 launch page.  Much more in-depth details of the thousands of new features in Blender 2.80 are available in the extensive release notes.  Or you can simply watch the video below!

Stay tuned for more in-depth coverage when Blender 2.80 is finally released in the coming days!

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