Build your cities and set up defensive structures to protect them from the constant threat of monsters. Brought to you by ACE Team, SolSeraph combines action and strategy for a rich gameplay experience reminiscent of the 16-bit era (ActRaiser).
Microsoft recently applied to join a private Linux kernel mailing list that’s meant for reporting and discussing security issues privately before they are made public. After a week-long discussion, it’s all but certain that Microsoft will be subscribed to the list. Alexander Peslyak, the maintainer of the list wrote in a discussion thread on Openwall, “Per our current policy and precedents, I see no valid reasons not to subscribe Microsoft (or part(s) of it, see below) to ‘linux-distros’. So I intend to figure out some detail and proceed with the subscription.” Once accepted, Microsoft will join companies like Oracle and Amazon who are already on the list.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 07-10-2019, 11:33 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Friends Is Leaving Netflix For WarnerMedia's HBO Max Streaming Service
Are you ready to subscribe to more streaming services? Following the news of The Office leaving Netflix for NBC Universal's upcoming service, Friends is also making its exit from the streaming giant. It's been announced that the sitcom will be moving to WarnerMedia's new offering when it launches in Spring 2020.
The new service, which has been dubbed HBO Max, will also serve as home to HBO's and The CW's programming library, which will also be departing Netflix. In a press release, WarnerMedia Entertainment and Direct-To-Consumer chairman Robert Greenblatt said, "HBO Max will bring together the diverse riches of WarnerMedia to create programming and user experiences not seen before in a streaming platform. HBO's world-class programming leads the way, the quality of which will be the guiding principle for our new array of Max Originals, our exciting acquisitions, and the very best of the Warner Bros. libraries, starting with the phenomenon that is Friends."
Friends and combined lineups of HBO and The CW aren't all you'll find on HBO Max, though. The service is expected to launch with 10,000 hours of content, and a promotional video shows that it will include everything from TruTV's Impractical Jokers to DC Universe originals like Doom Patrol--which has yet to be renewed for a second season.
Among the other titles coming to HBO Max are the complete runs of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Pretty Little Liars, along with a slew of original programming. The most notable originals are Dune: The Sisterhood, a live-action series set in the world of the Dune franchise, and an animated Gremlins prequel show.
As for what this means for DC Universe as a standalone service, GameSpot has learned that the plan is for DCU and HBO Max to co-exist, meaning those that enjoy the access to the DC Comics library that Universe offers won't be losing that. How it will be determined what shows remain on DCU and what is part of the HBO Max library remains to be seen, but DC Universe is set to reveal news about its original programming at San Diego Comic-Con.
HBO Max will launch in early 2020. No pricing details have been revealed for the service. Also coming to market are the aforementioned NBC Universal service, as well as Disney+.
Smash Bros. Ultimate Splatoon-Themed Spirit Event Starts This Friday
In the lead up to the final Splatfest for Splatoon 2, a few other Nintendo games are running Splatoon-themed events this weekend. One of these titles is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
It’s hosting a Splatoon spirit board event, which starts later this week on 12th July and runs until 14th July. You’ll be able to obtain spirits such as Callie and Marie and even Judd the cat. During this period, the amount of SP you earn will also be doubled.
Apart from Smash Bros., Tetris 99 will also be hosting a Splatoon event where you can unlock a special Splatoon theme. If you’re more interested in the Splatfest itself, it starts on 18th July and runs for a total of 72 hours.
Will you be booting up Smash Ultimate later this week to catch some Splatoon spirits? Tell us down below.
Today marks a new day in the 26-year history of Red Hat. IBM has finalized its acquisition of Red Hat, which will operate as a distinct unit within IBM.
What does this mean for Red Hat’s participation in the Fedora Project?
In short, nothing.
Red Hat will continue to be a champion for open source, just as it always has, and valued projects like Fedora that will continue to play a role in driving innovation in open source technology. IBM is committed to Red Hat’s independence and role in open source software communities. We will continue this work and, as always, we will continue to help upstream projects be successful and contribute to welcoming new members and maintaining the project.
In Fedora, our mission, governance, and objectives remain the same. Red Hat associates will continue to contribute to the upstream in the same ways they have been.
We will do this together, with the community, as we always have.
If you have questions or would like to learn more about today’s news, I encourage you to review the materials below. For any questions not answered here, please feel free to contact us. Red Hat CTO Chris Wright will host an online Q&A session in the coming days where you can ask questions you may have about what the acquisition means for Red Hat and our involvement in open source communities. Details will be announced on the Red Hat blog.
Apple launches ‘accelerator’ program for developers in China
By William Gallagher Wednesday, July 10, 2019, 01:01 am PT (04:01 am ET)
Following a similar scheme in Bangalore, Apple has begun a Design and Development Accelerator program in Shanghai, which is designed to teach and support local developers.
Developers at Apple’s new Accelerator program in Shanghai
Apple has begun a series of lectures, workshops and networking sessions in the Pudong District of Shanghai as part of a program designed to help and support app developers in China. Called a Design and Development Accelerator, it sees local developers working alongside Apple experts.
“Developers here in China are leading the world with some of the most popular apps on the App Store, and we are proud to be providing this additional support for them,” said Enwei Xie, Apple’s head of developer relations, Greater China, in a statement.
“From education to health to entertainment, the innovation we see here is incredible,” he continued, “and we can’t wait to see what these talented developers will come up with next.”
The program is for developers across all of Apple’s platforms, and it began on Tuesday with a workshop dedicated to augmented reality. Alongside a lecture on ARKit 3, Apple provided one-to-one consultation sessions for attendees.
Apple says that Greater China has over 2.5 million app developers, and that since the 2010 launch of the App Store in the region, local developers have earned more than $29 billion. More than $10 billion of that was earned in the last year.
To attend the program, attendees must be registered members of the Apple Development Program and have an Apple ID registered in the region. Through Apple’s Developer site, they can then book sessions.
Apple has not said whether this is a short-term program, but it follows the similar App Accelerator scheme in India. That was launched in 2017 and is still running today.
There is no shortage of card-based games on iOS (or Android). From straight up trading card games, to games that use the randomness of card drawing in some aspect of its design, there’s just something universally satisfying about drawing from a deck and taking your chances. In many ways, Void Tyrant isn’t that much different than many of its contemporaries. But like the Uncharted series on PlayStation consoles, Void Tyrant is more concerned with perfecting well-worn design features than innovating them completely.
A mysterious chaos pyramid has appeared at the edge of the solar system. It’s locked, its keys scattered across disparate planets, each granting both power and madness to their inhabitants. You must gather the keys, enter the deadly structure, and put an end to whatever is causing the malevolence. It’s a story that is both familiar, but resonant enough to climb onboard with quickly.
The “you” in this game is a character that gets randomly rolled at the start of each run. They are a mix of various races, classes, and passive attributes that make each character hold a specific sort of uniqueness each time. Sometimes, these variables can change some interactions with characters or environments you’ll encounter in your run. If you draw a race that can see in the dark, then wandering off of the beaten path into a spooky cave won’t be ominous for you.
The act of traversing these worlds in search of chaos keys is standard first person RPG fare. Every step takes you into a new encounter, which could be a monster, trap, or treasure. Every once in a while, you’ll have the option to turn left or right, but rarely do these paths branch farther than a single screen.
When you do stumble across a monster, that’s when the signature blackjack-style combat goes down. You and your enemy have a deck of 24 cards, each with a number of 1-6. While drawing, your goal is to get as close to 12 as possible without going over. The side who is closest wins, and gets an amount of attacks against their enemy equal to the difference between both numbers. Pretty simple stuff.
The many ways this basic concept gets modified is where combat really shines. Each combatant has another hand of cards full of spells and abilities. These either take effect when you win a round, or immediately. They can alter the count of your draw, add extra attacks if you win, put status ailments on your enemy, etc. Using all of these flairs strategically is when Void Tyrant feels most like an RPG. Analyzing your draw total, how many cards you’ve left to pull, and where a useful ability might fit into that equation is a rewarding exercise. The sort of risk taking aspect of playing around the draw is rewarding as well.
That said, combat can also feel arduous. Sometimes, you’ll find yourself in minutes long stalemates with enemies. Making the “right” decisions can put you in a holding pattern for what feels like an endless amount of turns. Especially against bosses, you could spend just as much time sticking and moving around the enemy as it did to get all the way to them.
That and the randomness of the game can truly feel unfair at times. More often than not, enemies that are supposed to be tough seem to always draw favorably, and you always seem to come up short. This isn’t to say that the numbers are being actively fudged, though. It’s more to draw a parallel to Void Tyrant’s casino counterpart. Just like you may feel like you’re caught in a bad card patch at a 21 table, you can feel that same bad energy against a big, icy, armored beetle.
Another pretty demoralizing thing can be playing the free to play version of this game. It’s heavily ad supported, which means almost everything will involve watching an ad to take part of. Getting bonuses from spirits – little npcs that grant you bonus currency, card packs, and extra lives – involves watching an ad first. Journeys on planets can be impeded every few steps by ads. It’s truly an annoying experience.
More than that, there are parts of the game that suddenly began to appear after I upgraded to the premium version. Side paths that used to just be a single treasure chest or monster encounter suddenly became doorways to whole new mini dungeons. I can’t confirm whether I passed a particular in-game threshold to open these up, or if it was a premium exclusive feature.
Many of the variants for your hero character is locked behind lots of grinding. Certain quests have to be completed before unlocking new classes or races. These quests can consist of killing a certain number of creatures or finding a number of a specific item. Many of these quests can only be done on specific planets, and can’t be done in one run. Also, you can’t just replay a specific planet without either cancelling your run prematurely, or finishing it to the end. You’ll play as a human knight for a large bulk of your early experience, which feels like a very narrow view of what this game has to offer.
If you can stick with it (and are willing to drop the approximately $5/£6 for the premium version) then Void Tyrant may very well be your next favorite iOS RPG. It’s clever, if not ground-breaking, take on the blackjack combat trope, as well as fun utilization of rogue-like mechanics, makes Tyrant a unique experience on the platform. It bogs itself down with the pacing of its free to play ads and the natural ebb and flow of card-based randomness. It also hides a big swath of its customizability behind arduous grinding. But if you have time to grind, Void Tyrant is worth the investment.
Today we are taking a look at a free, cross-platform (Mac, Windows & Linux) texturing tool from Agisoft called De-Lighter. The purpose is all in the name, it’s for removing the effects of lighting from a texture. This is useful in removing specular highlights or shadows from a texture captured via photography or 3D scans via photogrammetry such as using Meshroom.
The workflow is simple enough, you enter a 3D object in a variety of 3D formats with the original texture applied. You then mark the areas that are influenced by light and the areas that are shadowed and De-Lighter takes care of the rest. This leaves you with a texture that is then light neutral for use in your own lighting set up, be it a 3D renderer or a real-time game engine. Thanks to 80.lv for the heads up on this release.
De-Lighter is available for download, completely free and no registration required, right here. Watch the video below to see De-Lighter in action.
The Debian community has announced the release of Debian 10 “Buster.” Buster will be supported for the next five years. Buster ships with several desktop environments including, Cinnamon 3.8, GNOME 3.30, KDE Plasma 5.14, LXDE 0.99.2, LXQt 0.14, MATE 1.20, and Xfce 4.12. Buster supports a total of ten architectures, including 64-bit PC / Intel EM64T / x86-64 (amd64), 32-bit PC / Intel IA-32 (i386), 64-bit little-endian Motorola/IBM PowerPC (ppc64el), 64-bit IBM S/390 (s390x), ARMel, and more. Buster can be downloaded from the official Debian page.
Destiny 2's latest weekly reset brings some new loot to chase, thanks to the newly released Moments of Triumph for Year Two. Knock out some Triumphs, and you can earn a special emblem, Sparrow, ship, and even a new seal and title. Along with that, there's also Lumina, Destiny 2's newest Exotic hand cannon, which you can track down quickly with our Lumina guide. And as always, there's the new Power level cap grind to bring your characters up to full strength. One handy way to do that is with the weekly Ascendant Challenge, which can get you the Powerful gear you need. This week's challenge is the third of six that repeat in Forsaken. Here's where its portal is located and what to do inside.
If you've done an Ascendant Challenge (or several at this point) before, you'll have an idea of how this goes. Start out by buying the appropriate bounty from Petra in the Dreaming City. Alongside that, you'll need a Tincture of Queensfoil. Once you consume that, you get the Ascendance buff that allows you to see the Taken portal--after you've found it.
This particular portal is located in the Spire of Keres; you can see its location in the video above. Go through it to visit the Shattered Ruins in the Ascendant Plane, where are tasked with climbing a tower made of rocks without dying. Enemies will try to snipe you, and Taken rifts will try to boop you off the tower to your death. Be careful with where you move as you go toward the top; once you're there, kill the boss to complete the Ascendant Challenge.
Your reward is a chest that may not have anything special inside, but you'll also complete the bounty you picked up from Petra. This offers a piece of Powerful gear, making it a task worth tackling. With the recently released Black Armory expansion, the Power cap for characters has been raised to 650, so it's definitely worth revisiting the Ascendant Challenge as you grind up to those new heights.
As noted above, the prerequisite for doing an Ascendant Challenge--aside from access to the Dreaming City, which only comes after finishing the Forsaken campaign--is a Tincture of Queensfoil. These can be obtained through chests and Public Events in the Dreaming City, but that's not the only means.
The video above details a location you can go to trade 50 Baryon Boughs, the planetary material you earn in the Dreaming City, for a Tincture of Queensfoil. If you're desperate to get your hands on one to try the Ascendant Challenge, follow our video guide to help you find your way to the spot where you can trade with Huginn.
The Season of the Drifter brings two new activities--Gambit Prime, a tougher version of the Gambit competitive mode we've seen since Forsaken, and The Reckoning, a new pinnacle-level activity related to the Drifter. It also seems set to expand on the Drifter's story and what we saw in the last new activity in Destiny 2, The Draw. Stay tuned for more guides and coverage as we dig into the new content this week.
