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Blog: Solving interdimensional crimes in Double Cross
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
Designing the investigation system for Double Cross
One of my favourite moments in Double Cross’s pre-production was when we agreed to try the interdimensional police as the game’s setting. Worlds with different mechanics, characters with unique looks, and a huge amount of story ideas that could fit there. Oh, the potential!
It wasn’t until a few months later that Alex, our CEO and Double Cross’s creative director, asked me if I had an investigation system ready for a pitch due a few days later. I was confused at first, but he explained to me that an investigation system was the piece that we were missing. After all, we were already planning a system of non-linear platforming levels to represent a variety of locations in the multiverse, and were already designing a combat system that’d let players confront and capture criminals and evildoers in a highly customizable way. But we had nothing to showcase the detective work and mystery-solving aspect of our main character’s job, RIFT agent Zahra Sinclair. And having a cool investigation system would add something unique to the action game we were developing.
I quickly designed the first iteration of the investigation system. To do that, I took the detective board trope and thought of a mechanic that could fit.
In this first iteration, as you beat the game’s levels and talk to certain NPCs you would find items or notes that worked as clues, like you would in Ace Attorney. These were hidden in the levels, like the upgradium is. While in the game’s hub level at the RIFT HQ, you could access Zahra’s detective board and place clues alongside pictures of characters you’d met and locations you’d visited. You had a limited amount of red strings that you could use to connect clues, profiles and locations.
If an NPC’s profile was connected to the right clues or locations with a red string, new dialogue options would be available when talking to them, and you’d be able to unlock further clues, areas, or lore. That successful dialogue changed the red string into a green one, meaning that part of they mystery was solved. Eventually, getting a green string between the masked villain and one of the other RIFT agents would reveal the traitor and unlock the game’s final level.
The board would be a nice visual representation of the player’s progress, as well as a way of helping understand the complex, non-linear, multi-layered plot we were planning. Furthermore, it felt like a great way of having players fulfill the detective fantasy.
The first iteration worked well for the pitch, but as we went deeper into its details we realized that the system was excessively complicated and didn’t really streamline towards the goal of figuring out who the traitor was. So Design and Narrative started to work together in designing a new investigation system. For the next three weeks one of the designers, Justin, and myself turned our computers off, sat on a couch, and started crafting a paper prototype that included the characters, locations and clues for the game.
In the new system we kept the clue gathering throughout the game’s levels, but changed what you do with them. Instead of physically connecting stuff on a board, you would make a ‘deduction’ by connecting a clue and a character profile with a phrase, a system inspired by Detective Grimoire‘s.
A further simplification we implemented in this system was that each character only had one clue tied to them. Once you had used a clue properly, you would be able to get some evidence that served as an alibi to the character, removing them from the list. You repeated this process until you were only left with three suspects. At that point, the final deduction was a more complicated version of the same system, having to tie three clues to one character through multiple phrases. Doing it successfully would unlock the final part of the game.
As soon as we had the paper prototype ready, we started bringing our co-workers one by one to play through it. We observed where they got stuck, what they found too easy or difficult, listened to their feedback, and slowly improved the prototype after each playtest session.
Eventually, the investigation system underwent several changes, such as dividing the characters in ‘profiles’ for RIFT agents and ‘case file’ for the villains. This is a summary of how it worked:
Talk to NPCs to get their Profiles or Case files.
Defeat levels to get Clues (or Evidences in boss levels).
Connect a Profile and the right Clue using one of the six available phrases to get Evidences.
Connect a Case file and the 3 right Evidences to unlock a boss level, or the final level.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was fun and it involved some great character interactions. Our schedule was already pretty tight without spending more weeks working on this system, so we decided to move forward with this.
After leaving it be for some weeks, we came back to it once it was actually time for the coders to implement it. Reviewing it again, Design realized that it was too complicated and many players might not like the difficulty of having to figure out the clues in the current manner, and getting negative feedback such as having to spend time going through menus again after failing could get frustrating. So we decided to start removing some of the intricacies and simplifying the system.
First of all, after some discussion we tried removing the Detective Grimoire-style phrases, which were considered an unnecessary step to verify if players actually understood the connection between the clue and the character. This didn’t sound as a good idea to me at first, but to be fair the changes resulted on positive feedback on playtesting, so we decided to keep the phrases out.
We also decided to have Zahra show the clues directly to the characters, instead of connecting them to profiles in a menu. Besides removing the unnecessary step of having to talk to a character after making the right deduction, this allowed us to write some funny or insightful reactions to the wrong clues, which ended up being a great addition.
One more change that had happened was that clues were no longer hidden in the levels. Instead, they were now found in chokepoints or at the end, and you couldn’t miss them. This makes it clearer that solving the investigation is a mandatory part of the game to unlock levels, and not something optional.
Finally, several weeks later, we turned the step of assigning evidence to case files into automatic, which removed an entire tab from the menu and greatly simplified the process. This is how the simplified investigation system works:
Defeat levels to get Clues (or Evidences in boss levels).
Show the right Clue to a character to get an Evidence.
Evidence is automatically assigned to a Case file that you have from the beginning.
Talk to the Commissioner once a Case file is complete to unlock a boss level, or the final level.
And that’s pretty much the system you will find in the final product!
In retrospective, some of the simplifications we applied to the investigation system ended up hurting rather than helping.
Some of the changes really work—for instance, merging the Evidence and Case file tabs, or adding more interactions with the NPCs. But others removed the challenge and agency from the investigation. The detective work involved in having to find clues and understand them had been simplified to a fetch quest. This doesn’t sit well with the interdimensional agent fantasy we have aimed for and it’s not surprising that many players miss a deeper system.
At the same time, some other players feel like the investigation is an unnecessary addition to a platforming game that only serves to lengthen the game. I believe this would have felt better if the mechanics had more to do with each other, such as when clues were optional to find. As you can tell from this blog post, the investigation mechanic was developed as an add-on to an existing idea and wasn’t properly integrated—the design decisions of the platforming system didn’t affect the investigation, and vice versa.
The end result isn’t as robust as it could’ve been. We fell in a middle-point between “let’s embrace the mix of mechanics that represent the interdimensional detective fantasy”, where the system would have been more complex and better integrated, and “let’s just make a platforming game”, where this mechanic should’ve been scrapped. And so, it can be unsatisfactory to players expecting either of those.
However, I think that the end result is still interesting and entertaining. There are definitely some lessons we’ve learned here, and I hope we get a chance to revisit some of the discarded ideas in future project and apply those lessons.
(This article was originally published on 13AM’s website)
We know you’re busy and might miss out on all the exciting things we’re talking about on Xbox Wire every week. If you’ve got a few minutes, we can help remedy that. We’ve pared down the past week’s news into one easy-to-digest article for all things Xbox! Or, if you’d rather watch than read, you can feast your eyes on our weekly video show above. Be sure to come back every Friday to find out what’s happening This Week on Xbox!
Tips for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Blackout – Play the Free Trial Now on Xbox One Hello, Xbox fans! The Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Blackout Free Trial runs from Thursday, January 17 at 10 a.m. through to Thursday, January 24 at 10 a.m. PDT. Xbox Live Gold members can jump in now for free to experience Call of Duty’s fun, fresh take on the battle royale genre. In Blackout, you’ll never have the same experience twice… Read more
Dragons, Elsweyr, and a Year-Long, Epic Adventure are Coming to The Elder Scrolls Online on Xbox One The world of Tamriel continues to get bigger and more dangerous with the announcement of The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr and the Season of the Dragon year-long storyline. The third major Chapter release since ESO first launched almost five years ago, Elsweyr takes you into the warm climes of the home of Tamriel’s beloved cat people… Read more
Learning to Guac: The Journey to Guacamelee 2, Available Now on Xbox One ¡Hola amigos! This is Augusto Quijano. In case you don’t know anything about me (you probably don’t!) I’ve been working in the games industry since 2009, focusing mainly on concept art/design and animation. I was born and raised in Mexico and moved to Canada… Read more
New Content, New Battles, and New Rewards Are Yours in Battlefield V Ready to face intense challenges in Battlefield V? Today’s your lucky day, Tides of War Chapter 2: Lightning Strikes has arrived. What is the Tides of War? It’s the grand journey you and your Company of customized soldiers, weapons, and vehicles take through World War II… Read more
Get One Month of Xbox Game Pass and Sling TV for $1 Grab your popcorn and settle in because Xbox Game Pass is partnering with Sling TV, to give you one month of all of the games and live and on-demand TV you can handle for $1. New subscribers to both services are eligible for this deal through January 30: buy one month of Xbox Game Pass for $1 and get one month of Sling TV for free… Read more
Free Play Days: Override: Mech City Brawl, Metro 2033 Redux, and Metro: Last Light Redux This weekend, Xbox Live Gold members can play Override: Mech City Brawl, Metro 2033 Redux, and Metro: Last Light Redux for free as part of the Free Play Days event. Starting on Thursday, January 17 at 12:01 a.m. PST and running through to Sunday, January 20 at 11:59 p.m. PST, you’ll be able to experience epic mech battles and thrilling post-apocalyptic adventures… Read more
The 5 Biggest Changes to the Dark Zone in Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 The launch of Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 is nearly upon us, and everything we’ve seen to date says its going to be bigger and better than its predecessor in every way. Set seven months after the first game’s Black Friday event, the seasonal change looks to be one of the most visible differences… Read more
Sharpen Your Skills in the Jump Force Open Beta on Xbox One Our world is being attacked! With villains from Shonen Jump manga wreaking havoc on Earth, it’s up to you to defend this place we call home. Luckily, the Jump Force is here to help, made up of heroes from iconic properties and storylines we all know and love, this exciting mashup of characters from epochal manga… Read more
Blue Skies are a Good Sign in Metro Exodus Looking up to a crisp blue sky in a Metro game doesn’t seem quite right. It’s a suspicious new vision in a series known for carving a living out of resolutely detailed, subterranean hell. Metro has been elegant and perfectly dour in digging this hole for humanity, documenting the dwindling hopes of people that somehow persist in Moscow’s crumbling subway network… Read more
Smoke and Sacrifice Available Now on Xbox One Hello, Xbox Wire readers! I’m George Morgan, Product Manager for Curve Digital, and today I’m here to tell you about Smoke and Sacrifice, a narrative-driven RPG that’s available now on Xbox One. Smoke and Sacrifice follows the story of Sachi, a mother who due to a tradition lasting many years, is forced to sacrifice her first born son to The Sun Tree… Read more
Xbox Game Pass: We Happy Few, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, The LEGO Movie Videogame, and More Hi, Xbox Game Pass friends! Don’t want to freak you out, but we turned around today and suddenly there were even more games sitting on our desk. We’re going to need a bigger desk… and you’re going to need some free time, because there’s so many games on the way. We’re dropping four awesome games in the next two weeks… Read more
GDC 2019: Gaming for Everyone Community Events GDC 2019 is just a few months away and Xbox is excited to return with a full week of community events for game developers, including the first ever Gaming for Everyone Community Nexus bringing many communities together in one place… Read more
Next Week on Xbox: New Games for January 22 – 25 Welcome to Next Week on Xbox, where we cover all the new games coming soon to Xbox One! Every week the team at Xbox aims to deliver quality gaming content for you to enjoy on your favorite gaming console. To find out what’s coming soon to Xbox One, read on below and click on each of the game profiles for pre-order details (dates are subject to… Read more
Train Sim World: The Northern Trans-Pennine is Available Now on Xbox One A whole new world is available now in Train Sim World’s latest route add-on! The Northern Trans-Pennine: Manchester – Leeds route unleashes our players on the hills and mountains that make up the backbone of England in a route filled with new challenges and features. The Route The Northern Trans-Pennine route takes on the mountains… Read more
Video: Updated Travis Strikes Again Intro Scene Clashes Suda51 Worlds Together
Yesterday, an update found its way to Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, extending the game’s intro to showcase exactly how Badman found out Travis was hiding out in Texas. If you want to experience the shocking revelation for yourself, this is your last chance to stop yourselves from being spoiled by our analysis. Just update the game and fire up your Death Mark II console.
Still with us? Happy to be spoiled? In the name of Harman, hit that play button below.
At first, the voice was familiar, but we could not quite place it. Eventually, the revolver made us connect the dots and finally, the grand reveal: Dan Smith! Fifteen odd years after the original release of Killer7, Michael Gough is back to voice “the Hellion” and forever merge both games in a common canon. For years, Suda51 fans have been asking a sequel to both No More Heroes and Killer7. Due to this shocking development, a single game combining both universes might just pull the trick. Moe indeed! Did you see this one coming? Do you think this small cameo increases the chances of a Killer7 remastered port coming to the Switch? Master, write your thoughts in the comments section.
New functional block that provides a simplier way to craft various stones (Stairs, Slabs, Chiseled, etc)
Crafted with 3 stone + 1 iron ingot
To get snapshots, open your launcher and go to the “launch options” tab. Check the box saying “Enable snapshots” and save. To switch between the snapshot and normal version, you can find a new dropdown menu next to the “Play” button. Back up your world first or run the game on in a different folder (In the “launch options” page).
Please report any and all bugs you find in Minecraft to bugs.mojang.com.
Snapshots can corrupt your world, please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds.
Share your thoughts on how 1.14 is shaping up in the comments below!
How Machine Learning Will Change Software Development
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not sci-fi anymore; machines have made their way into our lives with ever-increasing importance. Today, humans are teaching machines and machines already affect the way we live, make choices, and get entertained.
There are many ways we already use AI in our everyday lives:
* We ask our devices to perform simple searching tasks, play music, or send messages without touching them.
* We are overwhelmed with sometimes creepy suggestions of things we “want” to buy or lists of movies we will enjoy watching according to some smart algorithms.
* We’re already used to the idea of self-driving cars.
* And we can’t ignore the convenience of the new auto-fill and follow-up Gmail features.
Machine Learning on Code
As AI technology matures and the number of use cases grows, you would think that developers would already be using machine learning to automate some aspects of the software development lifecycle. However, Machine Learning on Code is actually a field of research that is just starting to materialize into enterprise products. One of the pioneers of movement is a company called source{d}, which is building a series of open source projects turning code into actionable data and training machine learning models to help developers respect technical guidelines.
With every company quickly becoming a software company, intangible assets such as code represent a larger share of their market value. Therefore companies should strive to understand their codebase through meaningful analytic reports to inform engineering decisions and develop a competitive advantage for the business.
On one hand, managers can use tools like the open source source{d} engine to easily retrieve and analyze all their Git repositories via a friendly SQL API. They can run it from any Unix system, and it will automatically parse their companies’ source code in a language-agnostic way to identify trends and measure progress made on key digital transformation initiatives.
For example, as an engineering manager, you can track the evolution of your software portfolio. You can easily see what programming languages, open source or proprietary frameworks are becoming more popular as part of your development process. With that extra visibility, it becomes a whole lot easier to decide who to hire and develop a set of company-wide best practices
On the other hand, developers can save an incredible chunk of time by training bots to review their code as they submit pull requests (PRs). Once enabled across a large set of repositories, this could automate part of the code review process and enable developers to ship secure and qualitative code faster than ever before.
At the moment it checks for common mistakes, makes sure the style and format of each commits is consistent with the existing code base or highlights hotspots that might need closer attention. That’s huge already and clearly can benefit not only developers but companies as well. Imagine how much time and resources you could save from delegating your code review to a bot capable of working 24/7.
Assisted or automated code review is not the only Machine Learning on Code use case. In the coming years, machine learning will be used to automate quality assurance and testing, as well as bug prediction or hardware performance. For now, you can try source{d} Lookout and install it on your repository. It will listen for PRs, run analyzers and comment results directly on GitHub.
This article was produced in partnership with Holberton School.
Now, THIS is more like it. 2019 has finally arrived in the world of mobile games, and we’ve got an appropriately packed update to yourself through to the weekend. Not much to highlight in terms of the week’s content, although if you didn’t see the great news coming out of Dire Wolf Digital, read up!
Before you get too excited, we suggest you go read Brittany’s review for this one. Turns out Blackout isn’t that good, despite it’s interesting-on-paper premise. Shame – I think we could have done with a decent premium mobile spin-off title.
This one rather came out of nowhere. Based on Michael Menzel & Jörg Ihle’s fantasy adventure board game of the same name, Legends of Andor is a solo-only experience where you must guide a group of heroes through twelve ‘legends’ that will see you exploring more of the world and setting. It’s supposed to sport simple rules, but we’ll try and give you a detailed review ASAP.
We also spotted iOS-only Ridiculous Rugby, which seems like a wonderfully bonkers take on the English sport (with influences from American Football, not doubt). We’ll add this one to the review list as well, but it’s rare to see a decent sports game emerge (even if it’s not super serious).
Anything premium that references Fire Emblem is probably worth paying attention to, and strategy RPG Partia 3 might just be a wonderful way to end the first month of 2019. It’s a semi-stand alone sequel to 2014’s Partia 2 set hundreds of years after the events of that game. Releases of this nature (especially in the face of FE: Heroes) are rare now, so we’ll definitely be adding it to the list for review.
If you want to know more about it though, there’s no better place than the developer’s rather frank App Store description.
Speaking of Fire Emblem, we shouldn’t forget to mention our Lord and Saviour… Langrisser Mobile.
Get Hype
Star Traders: Frontiers (iOS Universal & Android)
The Trese Brothers have released some excellent mobile games over the years, but recently their focus has been on their most recent Star Traders offering, Star Traders Frontiers, which now has been PC only. We’re very excited to be able to say that, come next week, iOS and Android users will also be able to enjoy this excellent evolution of the Star Traders series.
I’ve been playing the PC version quite a bit, having also dabbled in Star Traders Elite, and it’s quite good. Provided I can get a hold of some android code in time, I’ll probably handle the review for this myself. Stay tuned!
Sports Interactive’s 2019 edition of the eternal Football management franchise has gone on sale for the first time, with the discount varying by addition. As a reminder, the ‘Touch’ version is essentially the full PC games ported to tablets (not universal), while the ‘Mobile’ variant is a stripped down version that can work on phones.
This game has only been on sale once before since it launched in December 2017, and now it’s on sale again for a new lower price. Get it while you can!
This sci-fi puzzler has been on our review pile for a while, but we never got around to it. Still, of $0.99 those looking for a new brain teaser my find their answers on the red planet. This is only the second time the game has been discounted since launch.
Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!
We Played Several Hours Of Anthem: Here's What The Game Is Like
The best way to sum up Anthem, BioWare's online third-person shooter, is to call it a cross between Mass Effect 3 and The Division. On one hand, it's a lot like other, similar shooters: you'll team up with other players as you blast away at various creatures, causing numbers to fly off their bodies as you work to take them down, hoping to get newer, better guns for your powered Javelin mech suits. On the other hand, Anthem is definitely a BioWare game, even if it's a pared-back version of the more complex and story-heavy RPGs the developer is known for. Anthem hits a middle ground that, on the whole, makes it feel unique among the shooters like it.
BioWare recently gave GameSpot a chance to play the first few hours of Anthem at its studio in Austin, Texas, starting from the game's opening missions, as well as some late-game content. That gave us a pretty solid cross-section of what Anthem offers--from its team-based gameplay that feels a lot like the multiplayer of Mass Effect 3, to the way the game delivers story through conversations with its various characters, much like in BioWare RPGs of the past. We got the best sense we've had yet of what it'll be like to play Anthem, at least through the main story campaign.
Becoming A Freelancer
Here's how missions and activities go in Anthem. Starting in your home base of Fort Tarsis, you pick your Javelin, one of the four Iron Man-like mech suits at the center of the game's combat. Most missions start with you traveling to wherever the action is, guided by your Cipher Owen, a partner back at Tarsis who provides you with intel about the situation at hand. Javelins can fly thanks to their rocket boosters, although not indefinitely; eventually your suit will overheat, forcing you to wait for them to cool down. Strategically dipping through waterfalls and lakes, or diving straight down to increase airflow through your jets, can cool the suit down. Exploring Anthem is almost as much a part of the game as fighting in it, and there are lore drops to find and ruins and other secrets to discover out in the world.
Each Javelin type has its own strengths and weaknesses and work together in different ways. The Ranger is the middle-of-the-road class that specializes in single, high-power weapons like grenades and missiles, while the Interceptor is a faster, more agile Javelin that's good for close-range and melee attacks. The Colossus is a tank that lacks the recharging energy shield of other Javelin classes, which means it requires aggressively play and constantly grabbing health packs in order to be effective. Finally, the Storm generally floats above the battle, using elemental attacks to debuff enemies and aid other teammates.
All the Javelins also can carry two weapons, and you can equip a variety guns, from assault rifles to shotguns, rail guns, sniper rifles, pistols, and beyond. But in Anthem, shooting takes a bit of a back seat; using your Javelin's on-board abilities in smart ways is what combat is really all about.
In fact, the shooting portion of Anthem was sometimes a bit underwhelming, as the guns feel like generic shooter fare and never hit especially hard. Anthem's enemies are the sort of bullet-sponges that can make guns feel weak and ineffectual. It's clear that combining your different abilities together intelligently with other players is where BioWare wants you to put your effort in combat, and pulling off strategic moves with teammates to dominate the battlefield or escape a tough scrape is the best part of any fight.
Each Javelin has two abilities (on a controller, each is tied to a bumper button) that can be changed based on what you equip in your Javelin's four component slots. Grenades, missiles, and various other attacks can inflict status effects like freezing enemies or setting them on fire, and those effects can set up combos. Hitting an enemy "primed" by a freeze grenade with a missile, for instance, will "detonate" them, which can do bonus damage or pass the freeze status effect to other enemies.
The early part of the game demonstrated only easiest opportunities for combos, and they weren't especially exciting. As time goes on and you learn the strengths and weaknesses of each Javelin, though, the strategy of comboing looks to become a much bigger part of the game--it mattered a lot more, and was a lot more satisfying, in the high-level content BioWare demonstrated than the early stuff. BioWare told us a lot more about how progression and teamwork will come together in Anthem, especially late in the game.
Terminal Velocity
The other thing Anthem's combat has going for it is its sheer speed and fluidity. At any given moment, you can hop into the air and activate your jets to go flying away from a losing situation, find a shady spot to recover your shields, or get a better angle on enemy weak points. Much has been made about Anthem's verticality in exploration, but flying is also a huge part of combat and what makes it feel fresh. For instance, a Storm Javelin will mostly hover over a battle, somewhat out of harm's way, to rain down elemental attacks on groups of enemies and help control the battlefield. At the same time, an Interceptor can dart in and out of combat, inflicting heavy damage and bugging out before things get to hot. In all cases, using flight effectively and strategically is essential to winning fights and staying alive.
We faced several different missions during our time in Anthem. Some concerned Shaper Relics--powerful alien technology left behind by the race that created the world of Anthem, but has since disappeared. Those missions usually included the kind of sub-objectives familiar from other shooters, like defending a fixed position while a timer ticks down, or gathering items and bringing them back to a specific location--all of which were fairly generic activities you're used to seeing in shooters like this. The fact that you can fly around huge arenas helps break things up, but apart from the underlying combat and flight capabilities, most of Anthem's missions are the kinds of activities players will be very familiar with completing by now.
Other missions had us facing off against the Scars, an insect-like race of angry aliens with whom humans share the world of Anthem. The more interesting enemies were the Dominion, Anthem's main antagonists. These guys are human soldiers led by a big scary Javelin pilot called the Monitor, and they include fighters who are more comparable to the player, with Javelins that let them fly and some of the elemental powers that you can use. Their goal: grab Shaper Relics and try to control the Anthem of Creation for their own ends. They're ruthless and well-armed with powerful technology, and stopping their ambitions is what most of the story in Anthem seems to be about. (We've got a lot more information on Anthem's story here.)
Fort Tarsis: Your Story Hub
When you're not fighting weird creatures or the Monitor and his minions in your Javelin, you're hanging out at Fort Tarsis, the frontier town you call home. Tarsis serves the usual functions of a post-mission hub, allowing you to talk with faction leaders to accept missions or work on your Javelin at a station called The Forge.
You also pick up new missions from people in the town, including your contacts in the game's various factions, like Brin, one of the Javelin-wearing town guards called Sentinels, or Matthias, a member of the Shaper scholars known as the Arcanists. Both will give you missions that allow you to increase your standing with their organizations, which lead to more missions and better rewards.
The town is more than a compendium of shops and quest-givers, though. It sports a number of characters with whom you can hold lengthier conversations of the sort that feel akin to BioWare's traditional RPG titles. Some of these are just rundowns of what's going on before your next mission, but a few let you get to know the characters of Anthem a little better. Conversations all include a few choices, too, which allow you to shape your responses and your Freelancer's personality, at least somewhat.
Spending time talking to Owen, the Cipher character, revealed some of the strongest writing in what we saw of Anthem, as we dug into his past and revealed more of his character. Owen's funny, amiable, and pretty complex--the kind of character BioWare fans will expect to see--and is likely destined to become a fan-favorite akin to the companions of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series. But even talking to quest-givers gives Anthem a chance to expand on their characters and make them a little more interesting and relevant than the next contract they hand over.
Wandering around Fort Tarsis and engaging in some of these deeper, more involved conversations felt like Anthem's answer to Mass Effect's Normandy: it's a place where you hang out between missions and learn about the other character with whom you share Anthem. While you won't engage in anything like the deep conversations that make up other BioWare games, Fort Tarsis changes the feel of Anthem compared to games like The Division or Destiny 2 by making the story and its characters feel a lot more close and personal.
Gussying Up Your Javelin
Working through missions will earn you better gear for your Javelin, and as you reach the higher levels, you'll start to find guns and Javelin pieces that have special properties and change your loadouts. Bringing loot you find in the game back to the Forge in Fort Tarsis allows you to check it out and equip it, or salvage it for crafting.
You can play Anthem solo, but it's obviously built for teamwork. Combat incentivizes working together and bringing a variety of Javelins into any given situation, and there's also the Alliance system, which rewards you for playing with others. Whenever you play with other people, whether they're friends or randoms you group up with as you work through the game, the Alliance system passively awards you and anyone you play with Alliance experience points. Those points get tallied at the end of the week and converted into Anthem's in-game currency, Coin--so playing with more people earns you, and them, more money.
There's also a surprisingly large amount of customization possible when it comes to Javelins. You start the game with a variety of paint options you can apply to your Javelins that can make it look pretty slick and unique, and there are more customization options you can purchase in Fort Tarsis as well. Anthem will also include a premium currency you can purchase with real money, and that currency can be used on additional customization options. But BioWare has previously said that premium currency will only be for purchasing cosmetic upgrades, and that you'll never buy things like blind loot boxes--you'll always know exactly what you're getting when you spend real money.
Early play in Anthem was fun, if a little similar in some respects to a lot of what's already available in shooters like it, specifically in areas like mission objectives and gunplay. It's the late-game and endgame content that's the real question at this point. Our chance to play the high-level Stronghold BioWare showed off at E3 2018 suggested what Anthem can do when it really pushes players to work together and coordinate. But BioWare hasn't revealed much in the way of details about endgame or live content yet, and if there's one big concern about shared-world shooters, it's how well they'll be able to keep players engaged once the story campaign wraps up.
What we've seen of Anthem so far shows that BioWare's online shooter is pretty familiar, but the elements it adds to the formula might be enough to make it stand apart. Verticality and speed from flight in particular make combat feel different from many of the things that are out there right now, and it's more character-focused approach to storytelling has the potential to make its world much more engaging than lore entries in an in-game codex--although Anthem has those, too. Our time with Anthem shows that BioWare has the moment-to-moment gameplay down pretty well in the early going, and there are a lot of good ideas in the game that might be enough to let it carve out a space in a genre of persistent shooters--as long as it can keep people playing long-term.
Editor's Note: Electronic Arts provided GameSpot with travel and accommodations for its preview event.
One of the most popular tasks undertaken on Linux is development. With good reason: Businesses rely on Linux. Without Linux, technology simply wouldn’t meet the demands of today’s ever-evolving world. Because of that, developers are constantly working to improve the environments with which they work. One way to manage such improvements is to have the right platform to start with. Thankfully, this is Linux, so you always have a plethora of choices.
But sometimes, too many choices can be a problem in and of itself. Which distribution is right for your development needs? That, of course, depends on what you’re developing, but certain distributions that just make sense to use as a foundation for your task. I’ll highlight five distributions I consider the best for developers in 2019.
Let’s not mince words here. Although the Linux Mint faithful are an incredibly loyal group (with good reason, their distro of choice is fantastic), Ubuntu Linux gets the nod here. Why? Because, thanks to the likes of AWS, Ubuntu is one of the most deployed server operating systems. That means developing on a Ubuntu desktop distribution makes for a much easier translation to Ubuntu Server. And because Ubuntu makes it incredibly easy to develop for, work with, and deploy containers, it makes perfect sense that you’d want to work with this platform. Couple that with Ubuntu’s inclusion of Snap Packages, and Canonical’s operating system gets yet another boost in popularity.
But it’s not just about what you can do with Ubuntu, it’s how easily you can do it. For nearly every task, Ubuntu is an incredibly easy distribution to use. And because Ubuntu is so popular, chances are every tool and IDE you want to work with can be easily installed from the Ubuntu Software GUI (Figure 1).
If you’re looking for ease of use, simplicity of migration, and plenty of available tools, you cannot go wrong with Ubuntu as a development platform.
There’s a very specific reason why I add openSUSE to this list. Not only is it an outstanding desktop distribution, it’s also one of the best rolling releases you’ll find on the market. So if you’re wanting to develop with and release for the most recent software available, openSUSE Tumbleweed should be one of your top choices. If you want to leverage the latest releases of your favorite IDEs, if you always want to make sure you’re developing with the most recent libraries and toolkits, Tumbleweed is your platform.
But openSUSE doesn’t just offer a rolling release distribution. If you’d rather make use of a standard release platform, openSUSE Leap is what you want.
Of course, it’s not just about standard or rolling releases. The openSUSE platform also has a Kubernetes-specific release, called Kubic, which is based on Kubernetes atop openSUSE MicroOS. But even if you aren’t developing for Kubernetes, you’ll find plenty of software and tools to work with.
And openSUSE also offers the ability to select your desktop environment, or (should you chose) a generic desktop or server (Figure 2).
Using Fedora as a development platform just makes sense. Why? The distribution itself seems geared toward developers. With a regular, six month release cycle, developers can be sure they won’t be working with out of date software for long. This can be important, when you need the most recent tools and libraries. And if you’re developing for enterprise-level businesses, Fedora makes for an ideal platform, as it is the upstream for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. What that means is the transition to RHEL should be painless. That’s important, especially if you hope to bring your project to a much larger market (one with deeper pockets than a desktop-centric target).
Fedora also offers one of the best GNOME experiences you’ll come across (Figure 3). This translates to a very stable and fast desktops.
But if GNOME isn’t your jam, you can opt to install one of the Fedora spins (which includes KDE, XFCE, LXQT, Mate-Compiz, Cinnamon, LXDE, and SOAS).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t include System76’s platform, customized specifically for their hardware (although it does work fine on other hardware). Why would I include such a distribution, especially one that doesn’t really venture far away from the Ubuntu platform for which is is based? Primarily because this is the distribution you want if you plan on purchasing a desktop or laptop from System76. But why would you do that (especially given that Linux works on nearly all off-the-shelf hardware)? Because System76 sells outstanding hardware. With the release of their Thelio desktop, you have available one of the most powerful desktop computers on the market. If you’re developing seriously large applications (especially ones that lean heavily on very large databases or require a lot of processing power for compilation), why not go for the best? And since Pop!_OS is perfectly tuned for System76 hardware, this is a no-brainer. Since Pop!_OS is based on Ubuntu, you’ll have all the tools available to the base platform at your fingertips (Figure 4).
Pop!_OS also defaults to encrypted drives, so you can trust your work will be safe from prying eyes (should your hardware fall into the wrong hands).
For anyone that likes the idea of developing on Arch Linux, but doesn’t want to have to jump through all the hoops of installing and working with Arch Linux, there’s Manjaro. Manjaro makes it easy to have an Arch Linux-based distribution up and running (as easily as installing and using, say, Ubuntu).
But what makes Manjaro developer-friendly (besides enjoying that Arch-y goodness at the base) is how many different flavors you’ll find available for download. From the Manjaro download page, you can grab the following flavors:
GNOME
XFCE
KDE
OpenBox
Cinnamon
I3
Awesome
Budgie
Mate
Xfce Developer Preview
KDE Developer Preview
GNOME Developer Preview
Architect
Deepin
Of note are the developer editions (which are geared toward testers and developers), the Architect edition (which is for users who want to build Manjaro from the ground up), and the Awesome edition (Figure 5 – which is for developers dealing with everyday tasks). The one caveat to using Manjaro is that, like any rolling release, the code you develop today may not work tomorrow. Because of this, you need to think with a certain level of agility. Of course, if you’re not developing for Manjaro (or Arch), and you’re doing more generic (or web) development, that will only affect you if the tools you use are updated and no longer work for you. Chances of that happening, however, are slim. And like with most Linux distributions, you’ll find a ton of developer tools available for Manjaro.
Manjaro also supports the Arch User Repository (a community-driven repository for Arch users), which includes cutting edge software and libraries, as well as proprietary applications like Unity Editor or yEd. A word of warning, however, about the Arch User Repository: It was discovered that the AUR contained software considered to be malicious. So, if you opt to work with that repository, do so carefully and at your own risk.
Any Linux Will Do
Truth be told, if you’re a developer, just about any Linux distribution will work. This is especially true if you do most of your development from the command line. But if you prefer a good GUI running on top of a reliable desktop, give one of these distributions a try, they will not disappoint.
Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 01-25-2019, 04:54 PM - Forum: Windows
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‘Resident Evil 2’ available now, enhanced for Xbox One X
Get ready, Xbox fans! The epic retelling of the survival horror classic has arrived today on Xbox One and is enhanced for Xbox One X. Resident Evil 2 has been rebuilt from the ground up, powered by the glorious RE Engine that brought Resident Evil 7 to life in 2017, featuring realistic visuals, frightening sound design, definitive over-the-should horror, and updated controls.
We’ve been eagerly awaiting this title since its announcement earlier this year, and now we’re formally accepting the invite back to Raccoon City to re-experience this immersive and terrifying survival horror game experience. Not only that, but we can also welcome back the return of two of the series’ most-beloved characters (in our opinion): Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield.
As these two iconic heroes, we’ll investigate a deadly virus outbreak that has engulfed the residents of Raccoon City in September of 1998, plunging the city into chaos as flesh eating zombies roam the streets for survivors. Now it’s up to us to uncover the sinister actions of the Umbrella Corporation and put a stop to them if the city has any hope of survival. To get a taste for what’s in store, why not take the 1-Shot Demo for a spin on Xbox One. See how far you can get in 30 minutes as you dust off your survival horror skills to get ready for the full RE2 experience before the demo ends January 31, 2019.
In addition to the standard edition that’s available today on the Microsoft Store, the Resident Evil 2 Deluxe Edition includes the full game plus the downloadable Extra DLC pack, which includes five character costumes (two for Leon and three for Claire), the Albert Model: Samurai Edge weapon, and the retro soundtrack players can choose to enable as an option during gameplay.
There’s also additional free content coming soon to Resident Evil 2. The Ghost Survivors will explore various “what if” scenarios centered around the victims of the outbreak.
So, load up on ammo and stockpile your herbal plants. It’s time to re-experience this classic all over again with Resident Evil 2 on Xbox One.
