RAGE 2 brings together two studio powerhouses – Avalanche Studios, masters of open world insanity, and id Software, creators of the first-person shooter – to deliver a carnival of carnage where you can go anywhere, shoot anything, and explode everything.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 05-16-2019, 11:59 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Video: The making of Larian Studios’ Divinity: Original Sin 2
In this 2019 GDC talk, Larian Studios’ Swen Vincke takes a look at all the strategies employed to make Divinity: Original Sin 2 a better game than Divinity: Original Sin, and how they worked out.
Vincke is a strong believer in the power of iteration, and in the course of his talk he walked the audience through the ways in which the team tried to iterate on Original Sin’s design at every level, with varying levels of success.
The team learned a lot about how to design and organize for iteration, and Vincke shared some of those lessons alongside plenty of examples of both success and failure.
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.
May 6th : New Preview Beta Ring 1905 Update (1905.190502-1940)
Starting at 2:00 p.m. PST today, members of the Xbox One Preview Beta Ring will begin receiving the latest 1905 Xbox One system update (19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1905\18362.3046.190502-1940) Read on for more about the new features, fixes and known issues in the latest 1905 system update.
DETAILS:
OS version released: 19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1905\18362.3046.190502-1940
Available: 2:00PM PDT 5/6/19
Mandatory Date/Time: 3:00 AM PDT 5/7/19
Fixes:
Audio:
Fixes addressing the audio streams when Atmos is used for Stereo Speakers and Mono-mix mode.
Home:
Fixes to the Controller Icon on home – “Unknown” battery should will not be shown as “plugged in” icon
Additional fixes to a memory leak to address overall system performance.
Fixes to UI and workflow when Signing in and out for some users.
UI fixes to the Game Pass Quests in the Game pass twist.
Fixes to address Legacy 360 gamerpics in the Settings app showing up too small.
System
Fixes to complete Kinect setup when it crashed at audio setup.
Additional fixes to a memory leak to address overall system performance.
Fixes to narrator bugs on the Updates Page and Xbox Privacy page.
UI fixes to light and dark themes to make text easier to read.
Localization fixes.
Known Issues:
Audio
We are tracking the issue in which your ATMOS setting switches back to DD 7.1 after taking an update. You can change it back after an update however we are working towards resolving.
Headsets are not being assigned to the users profiles and not working correctly.
Some users are encountering no audio on their Xbox console after boot (no shell audio, no game audio, no app audio), then have CSS ask them to perform the following steps:
Cold reboot the console
OR
Go to Audio settings on console
Change their HDMI audio settings to the highest supported uncompressed channel count for their equipment
Switch back to the desired format
Audio should be restored
My Games and Apps
We are tracking the video corruption issue with Youtube and Netflix 4k playback.
Profile Color
Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 05-16-2019, 06:06 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Nintendo Switch Online's Free NES Games For May Now Available
Nintendo Switch's NES library continues to grow little by little. May's free NES games are now available for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. This month brings three more classics to the hybrid console, as well as a special save state for one of last month's games.
Joining the lineup this month are Clu Clu Land, Donkey Kong Jr., and Vs. Excitebike, a two-player version of the classic racing game. Rounding out the new games is an SP version of Star Soldier, which was added to Switch's NES library in April. This version starts players off on stage 8 with a powered-up starship.
#NES games have been added to Nintendo Entertainment System - #NintendoSwitchOnline! Play as Donkey Kong’s son and rescue your dad in Donkey Kong Jr., race with two-player split screen in VS. Excitebike, and recover your stolen gold bars in Clu Clu Land!https://t.co/6Essu4Gof0pic.twitter.com/ZusjUWs5jZ
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) May 15, 2019
The NES library is one of the perks Switch owners get for subscribing to the Nintendo Switch Online service. It launched back in September 2018 with 20 games and has been updated every month since with new titles. In addition to the aforementioned Star Soldier, April brought Punch-Out and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels to the service, while March's additions consisted of Kid Icarus and StarTropics.
Individual NSO subscriptions run for US $4 / £3.49 / AU $6 for one month, US $8 / £7 / AU $12 for three months, and US $20 / £18 / AU $30 for one year. If you're interested in trying the service, you can grab a free year of NSO from Twitch Prime. Nintendo also offers a Family Membership, which covers up to eight Nintendo Accounts across multiple systems, for US $35 / £31.49 / AU $55. Other benefits for subscribing include the ability to play Switch games online, cloud save data backup for most games, and exclusive offers such as Tetris 99, which is free to download for NSO members.
Speaking of Tetris 99, the puzzle game recently received its first paid DLC. It costs $10 and introduces two offline modes, CPU and Marathon. Even those who don't have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription can download the DLC, but you'll need a membership in order to play Tetris 99 online against other players. The game's third Maximus Cup competition also takes place this week, from May 17-19. Players who rack up at least 100 points during that time will unlock a new theme based on the original Game Boy Tetris game.
Guide: Where To Buy The Simply Adorable Fire Emblem Plushies
If you’re looking forward to the upcoming Fire Emblem: Three Houses on the Switch, perhaps you could cuddle one of these delightful Fire Emblem plushies while you wait.
Produced by Japanese company Sanei Boeki, who also makes officially licensed Pokémon plushies you know these will be winners. These are the first ever line of Fire Emblem plushies in Japan, all the gang are there in plush form including Lucina, Corrin, Marth, Roy, and Ike.
We’d recommend that you import these from the lovely people at Play Asia:
Please note that some of the links on this page are affiliate links. If you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale which helps support the site. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.
Be warned the pre-order deadline is May 22nd, so you’ll want to get on this quick. The Fire Emblem plushies are expected to ship on July 31st.
Will you be buying any of these? Going for the full set? Let us know in the comments below.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 05-16-2019, 06:06 AM - Forum: Windows
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Ever-changing music shaped by skies above NYC hotel
Barwick composed five movements within an overall soundscape that reflect the constantly changing nature of the sky throughout the day, each with its own background of bass, synthesizer and vocal lines that weave in and out. For each “event,” identified by Microsoft AI, she then created six synthesized and six vocal sounds for the generative audio program to choose from – for example, 60 different musical options a day for every time an airplane passes above. The sounds are an expression of Barwick’s emotions in response to each stimulus.
“I didn’t want it to be too literal,” she says. “I could have made it sound ‘raindroppy,’ but it’s more about the attitude of the event. An airplane is a lot different than the moon, so it has more of a metallic sound than a warm sun sound or a quiet ‘moony’ kind of feeling. I wanted people who listen to it to be curious and wonder what that sound meant, what’s going across the sky right now.”
Barwick has never been afraid of technology, even if she didn’t have access to it. She recorded her first album in 2007 using a guitar pedal to form vocal loops on a cassette tape. “I didn’t even have a computer then,” she remembers. “I took my bag of tapes in somewhere to get mastered to produce the CD.”
Now she relies on technology to compose, record and perform her multilayered, ambient music. She uses effects on everything, including her voice. There’s no such thing as an unplugged Julianna Barwick set. Still, she says, “Before I was approached to do this project, the only thing I knew about artificial intelligence was from the movies. I’d never seen an application of it in my daily life.”
So as she began exploring sounds, Barwick grappled not only with what AI was and could do, but also with what her role would be in comparison to its. Who was the actual composer – she or the program? Was AI a partner or a tool?
“I contemplated how the project would play out in my absence and realized that I can make all the sounds, but I’m not going to be there to detect all the events — you have to rely on the AI to do that,” Barwick says. “And that’s such an important part of the score; it’s almost like it’s a 50-50 deal. And that’s what makes this project interesting. It almost brings in another collaborator, and the possibilities are endless. It’s opened up a new world of thinking and approaching future compositions and scores.”
A camera sends live images to a Microsoft Azure computer vision tool, which assigns tags such as “clouds” or “sun.” Those are fed into the system that technologists programmed after analyzing Barwick’s compositions and distilling them into an algorithm, which then chooses which tracks to play together.
Terraforming Mars is available to beta test on iOS [Updated]
By Joe Robinson15 May 2019
Update: We’ve spoken to Asmodee directly – the Android keys are already all gone and there’s no plans to additional keys – sorry Google folks! We also got some information on the minimum requirements, just in case you were wondering. The beta requires devices with iOS 10, Android 5.0 or newer.
Original Story: Our lord and saviour Asmodee Digital have been on form recently with their digital adaptations of popular boardgames, although if we’re being honest they’ve been slower than we’d like with bringing some of those to mobile platforms.
Two recent ones that we’ve had our eye on are Scythe and Terraforming Mars – both of which are currently available on PC. Terraforming Mars was a bit rough and ready when it first launched on desktop, but in the months since Asmodee Digital have really put work into bringing it up to snuff. So much so that it now sits proudly as one of our sister website’s favourite board games on PC.
Today we have even more good news – you can beta test the game’s mobile version on iOS and Android! Here’s a breakdown of the main features:
1 to 5 players
Learn the game with the Tutorials and the rules integrated to the game, available at any time from the menu
Play against AI opponents in Local Games, race alone against time in Solo Challenge, or experience Online Games with other players from around the world
All official variants available: Draft Mode, Corporate Era and Solo Challenge
Cross-platform multiplayer: iOS and Android users can play together during the mobile beta test. When the game will be officially released, they will also be able to play with Steam (Windows) users.
Available in 6 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish!
All you have to do is go here and login (or sign-up) with your Asmodee Digital account and then opt-in to the beta on your chosen platform. Both phones and tablets are supported, according to the info on the portal, but we don’t have any information on minimum requirements.
For our list of the best board games on mobile, go here.
At the MSBuild 2019 developer conference, Microsoft made a pretty huge announcement about the future of .NET. With the release of .NET 5, there will be one .NET, that is cross platform and open source. Essentially .NET Core, .NET Framework and Xamarin will all be replaced with a single unified .NET 5 framework.
In this blog post Microsoft discuss the future of .NET 5, as well as how we got here and how it will impact developers. The core (pun intended) of .NET is:
Produce a single .NET runtime and framework that can be used everywhere and that has uniform runtime behaviors and developer experiences.
Expand the capabilities of .NET by taking the best of .NET Core, .NET Framework, Xamarin and Mono.
Build that product out of a single code-base that developers (Microsoft and the community) can work on and expand together and that improves all scenarios.
This isn’t going to happen overnight however. Here is the announced timeline of developments:
This means in November of 2020, there will be just one version of .NET available for all platforms. With the release today of .NET Core 3.0 Preview 5, that seems to be the ideal platform to develop .NET applications in anticipation of .NET 5.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 05-16-2019, 12:04 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Rick And Morty Season 4 Release Date Confirmed With Teaser Video
Adult Swim's wildly popular animated comedy series Rick and Morty is finally returning. The long-awaited fourth season was given a release date as part of a broader set of announcements from WarnerMedia today. In a brief announcement video, the duo themselves announced Season 4 will premiere in November 2019--although they sound a little unsure about which year it actually is, currently. A specific day was not confirmed, but you can check out the video above featuring the two characters, both of which are voiced by co-creator Justin Roiland.
This isn't the first confirmation that more Rick and Morty is on the way. Season 4 was announced some time ago alongside word that the show will be getting a whopping 70 more episodes. Each season so far has been 10 episodes, so the order for 70 more could mean a full seven additional seasons, although that structure has not been confirmed. Regardless, we're essentially assured we have years and years of Rick and Morty ahead of us.
It's been a notoriously long wait for each new Rick and Morty season; Season 1 aired from 2013-14, while the most recent episode--the last of Season 3--came in October 2017. Getting through all 70 confirmed episodes won't take decades to complete, though, because the creators have committed to reducing the wait time between seasons. So far each season has been roughly two years apart, and now the wait between fresh episodes should be significantly reduced.
"I think we'll be able to move a little quicker," co-creator Justin Roiland told GameSpot last year. "We're not going to have these big, long gaps between seasons. We're going to just keep the machine going and schedule staggering vacations for people so we don't burn out. It's going to just be a perpetual production, which is exciting."
If you're still catching up on the show, or are already a die-hard fan, be sure to check out our collection of in-depth Rick and Morty breakdowns.
This news regarding Rick and Morty was just one of numerous announcements coming from the WarnerMedia 2019 Upfronts. Another big piece of news was that TNT is getting back into the wrestling business, as it will be the home for the upstart AEW. Like Season 4, AEW's weekly show will debut later this year.
