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Hello everyone!
It’s been quite a while since we shared the last piece of information about the X-Morph: Defense port for Nintendo Switch. We have an excuse for that, and it’s a good one – the game is almost ready! We spent the last couple of weeks working really hard to make the gaming experience on the Switch as smooth as possible. It has been an exciting process and we have also learned a lot from it. What follows is quite a detailed description of what’s been going on (there’s also a TL;DR version, just scroll down).
We made sure to transfer the whole X-Morph: Defense experience to the Nintendo Switch.
At first, we did not plan to develop X-Morph: Defense for the Nintendo Switch. Even though many people have been asking for it we just kept saying no. We were aware that porting the game to the Nintendo Switch would prove to be a challenge. Packing so much content and keeping the quality consistently high on mobile hardware is no easy feat. All the requests from players have stayed in the back of our minds and we finally decided to give it a try. So, in a sense, you have made it happen.
During the campaign, you will see all the levels, weapons and enemies known from the other versions.
X-Morph: Defense is quite a demanding game even for the latest consoles. The amount of visual effects and physics calculations keeps all the processing cores saturated with work at 100% most of the time. Nintendo Switch is a significantly less powerful device due to its portable nature. It meant we had to optimize many elements while keeping the experience largely unchanged. Therefore, we set some goals for ourselves. Stable performance, no gameplay changes, the same level of destruction, in both docked and handheld modes.
The new towers are available with the base game at launch.
Stable performance was the first one. Our aim was to achieve 30 frames per second both in handheld and docked mode. After we got the game up and running we began performance profiling to find problematic parts of the game. Through trial and error, we arrived at a stable 30FPS in 720p in handheld mode, without the visuals taking a big hit. Sure, we had to cut some props here and there and reduce some particle effects, but the game looks and plays great in handheld mode.
Our team has pushed the Switch hardware to its limits, EXOR never gives up on explosions!
As for the docked mode, we tried 1080p at first. An important fact here is that in 1080p the device has to render over twice as many pixels as in 720p. Unfortunately, the Switch does not become twice as fast in docked mode and the performance wasn’t satisfactory. Cutting objects from the game was out of the question since we didn’t want the handheld version to suffer. Therefore, we decided to reduce the resolution to 900p. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough, so we also reduced the size of the post-processing buffer responsible for HDR bloom. The difference in rendering quality is negligible, but it gave us an extra 2-millisecond boost in frame rendering time that allowed us to equalize the handheld and docked performance.
The gameplay is dynamic and responsive, as you have to constantly adapt to the types of enemies attacking your core.
The gameplay itself is exactly what you saw in other versions of X-Morph: Defense. The number of enemies has not been reduced, all the missions are the same and all the levels play out exactly as you would expect them to. We had to reduce the amount of debris left by the enemies, but we compensate for that with added score multipliers, counting both for the resource gathering and the final score. Some maps have undergone cosmetic changes to reduce the strain on the hardware, but these changes have no effect on the gameplay.
The destructible environment has always been one of the biggest advantages of the game. Keeping this feature and maintaining performance required some clever trickery.
The destructible environment was a big challenge. Buildings consisting of physical chunks require the device to render a huge amount of polygons and it was too much for Nintendo’s handheld. To combat that, we made custom, static versions of all physically simulated destructible objects in the game, which we swap for the dynamic versions once they are damaged. This saves up performance when it comes to the polygon count, but costs 90MB of system memory in our case. It is a lot. Nintendo Switch has a lot less memory on board than the PS4 or Xbox One. Just to get the game running we had to reduce memory usage by about 30%. Code optimization, texture size reduction, and sound compression got us there, but it was not a cakewalk. Memory fragmentation was one of the greatest issues, causing crashes and rendering the game unplayable. We fixed the stability by allocating static memory pools for the game components, such as sounds, particles, GUI, videos and save files. We eventually managed to stick to the limits.
Even though we had to cut down on some visual effects, the game still looks gorgeous.
The only gameplay feature we had to cut is the co-op mode. Our split-screen mode requires the device to render almost twice as many elements as in the single-player mode. It doesn’t mean that all calculations are done twice – the physics, AI, or pathfinding require only a single operation. Our experience from working with other platforms shows that split-screen requires about 30% more processing power. Such a number exists under the assumption that we have some spare CPU cores and we can use them to parallelize some calculations. We do not have this luxury on the Switch – we use 100% of resources at all times. It means we would have to cut down on some features and do a lot of extra work. This is why we decided to leave the split-screen out from the game for now. We do not rule it out in the future, but can’t promise anything at this point.
The red-hot rivers of lava on Iceland are one of the most eye-catching features in X-Morph: Defense.
We know that download sizes are a big concern in the Switch community. Through numerous optimizations, we have reduced the package size from over 4GB to just a little bit over 1.6GB. Among other things, we have used OGG Vorbis compression on our audio files and removed the 4K-ready textures, as they would never be utilized anyway. Moreover, this is the first release of the game on the Switch, meaning we do not need to keep older versions of the maps just to keep save files compatible. This way you will be able to have X-Morph: Defense installed alongside other games, without worrying about the free space on your device.
The boss fights remain as epic as ever.
X-Morph: Defense will be available together with all the updates that were previously released on other platforms. It means that you will be able to enjoy the survival mode, additional tower types and all the little changes that happened over the course of the game’s lifetime. All the pieces of premium DLC will be available for purchase day one. We also do not raise the cost of the game – it will be around the $20 price point, with currency-specific adjustments.
Tricking your enemies into taking a suboptimal route is very important. The control scheme remained unchanged, so you have perfect control over the battlefield.
Last, but not the least important is the release date. We wanted the game to be released before the end of 2018. The reality has verified our plans, but the delay is not that big. X-Morph: defense will become available on Nintendo eShop in very early 2019. We are also looking into releasing a physical edition of the game – we will share more info about this as soon as everything is 100% confirmed.
And finally – TL;DR:
Very early 2019.
The base game has all the free updates that were previously released on other platforms.
All DLC available for purchase at launch.
720p/30FPS handheld, 900p/30FPS docked.
All gameplay features including fully destructible environments and building physics remain except split-screen co-op.
1.6GB install size.
$20 price point with currency-specific adjustments (check Steam pricing for reference).
No gameplay changes.
Digital download from Nintendo eShop.
We’re looking into physical release options.
Developing the Nintendo Switch version has been a challenge, pointing out problems we did not know about and allowing us to optimize the game beyond what we imagined. All the optimizations will also find their way onto other platforms with future patches. This way our fans can enjoy improved performance on all devices. We hope you’ll have as much fun playing it as we had working on it.
In celebration of the 5th Anniversary, get Company of Heroes 2 for FREE starting now until December 10th at 10AM Pacific Time! Once you add the game it will remain in your account after the free period, so don’t miss out!
Plus, check out the finals of the Anniversary Classic 2v2 Tournament. Watch the stream when it is live here. Additionally, save 75% on all DLC as well.
* Melee heroes below 300 base movement speed increased by 5
* Tranquil Boots: Movement speed reduced from +28% to +24% * Power Treads: Attribute bonus increased from 12 to 14 * Phase Boots: Now has the active again instead of the passive * Mask of Madness: Movement speed changed from +12% to +25 constant * Yasha: Movement speed changed from +8% to +25 constant * Manta Style: Movement speed changed from +8% to +25 constant * Sange and Yasha: Movement speed changed from +12% to +35 constant * Yasha and Kaya: Movement speed changed from +12% to +35 constant * Wraith Band: Recipe cost increased from 220 to 240 * Bracer: Recipe cost increased from 220 to 240 * Null Talisman: Recipe cost increased from 220 to 240
* Axe: Counter Helix damage reduced from 75/110/145/180 to 60/100/140/180 * Axe: Level 15 Talent reduced from +4 Mana Regen to +3 * Brewmaster: Primal Split cooldown increased from 140/120/100 to 140/130/120 * Brewmaster: Level 10 talent reduced from +30 Damage to +20 * Clinkz: Burning Army damage type changed from Pierce to Hero type (50% vs heroes to 100%) * Clinkz: Burning Army base attack time increased from 1.5/1.35/1.2 to 1.75/1.6/1.45 * Dazzle: Intelligence gain reduced from 3.4 to 3.2 * Dazzle: Bad Juju cooldown reduction reduced from 30/40/50% to 20/35/50% * Elder Titan: Level 25 Talent changed from Astral Spirit Grants Spell Immunity to +600 Echo Stomp Wake Damage * Ember Spirit: Base armor increased by 1 * Faceless Void: Time Lock chance reduced from 10/15/20/25% to 10/14/18/22% * Faceless Void: Level 10 Talent reduced from +20 Damage to +15 * Grimstroke: Ink Swell max damage reduced from 160/240/320/400 to 100/200/300/400 * Grimstroke: Ink Swell max stun duration reduced from 2/2.6/3.2/3.8 to 1.7/2.4/3.1/3.8 * Grimstroke: Soul Bind cooldown increased from 80/65/50 to 90/70/50 * Io: Tether heal/mp transfer rate from 1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5 to 1.05/1.2/1.35/1.5 * Juggernaut: Omnislash now removes debuffs on cast * Juggernaut: Level 15 Talent reduced from +25 Attack Speed to +20 * Keeper of the Light: Will-o-Wisp now has a 100/125/150 gold bounty * Keeper of the Light: Will-o-wisp manacost increased from 200/300/400 to 250/350/450 * Lich: Base movement speed reduced from 315 to 310 * Magnus: Empower cleave damage reduced from 30/45/60/75% to 20/38/56/74% * Magnus: Level 15 Talent reduced from +15 Strength to +12 * Magnus: Level 20 Talent reduced from +12 Armor to +10 * Monkey King: Mischief invulnerability duration reduced from 0.3 to 0.2 * Nature’s Prophet: Agility gain increased from 2.8 to 3.3 * Nature’s Prophet: Wrath of Nature’s max targets increased from 16 to 18 * Phantom Assassin: Phantom Strike attack speed duration reduced from 2.5 to 2.25 * Phantom Assassin: Blur now has a 0.4 second cast point * Phantom Assassin: Coup de Grace damage reduced from 230/340/450% to 210/330/450% * Puck: Dream Coil stun duration from 1.5/2.25/3 to 1.8/2.4/3 * Rubick: Telekinesis cooldown increased from 28/26/24/22 to 34/30/26/22 * Rubick: Telekinesis lift duration reduced from 1.1/1.5/1.9/2.3 to 1/1.4/1.8/2.2 * Sand King: Sand Storm cooldown from 40/32/24/16 to 40/34/28/22 * Sand King: Burrow Strike stun duration from 1.9/2/2.1/2.2 to 1.6/1.8/2/2.2 * Sand King: Level 15 Talent reduced from +50 Sand Storm DPS to +40 * Slark: Leash distance increased from 350 to 400 * Slark: Shadow Dance movement speed reduced from 30/40/50% to 20/35/50% * Slark: Level 25 Talent reduced from +100s Essense Shift Duration to +80s * Spirit Breaker: Greater Bash damage reduced from 12/20/28/36% to 8/16/24/32%
This week at Bungie, the Black Armory opened its doors.
A new mysterious section of the tower revealed itself and a new vendor by the name of Ada-1 sent you out to reclaim the Lost Forges. Your reward: The ability to craft the most powerful weapons of the golden age.
Many of you are still increasing your power to attempt this new challenge. Yesterday, we lowered the Power requirement of the Lost Forge encounters by five. This wasn’t a huge change. These Forges are meant to be aspirational extensions of the endgame. But we did want to make them more accessible to Guardians around 600 Power. You can read the full details of the change and our goals here.
For some of you the enemies guarding the Lost Forges are immune to your weapons. We promised more details for players who are still working their way up to 600 and beyond. Here is what we have planned to help you move more quickly up to 600.
Prime engrams will now drop more frequently and with larger power bumps for players under 600 Power
This change is planned to land in the 2.1.2 update on December 11. We are also considering additional changes to assist with the Power climb in a future update. We will continue to monitor your feedback on Season of the Forge as it continues.
Scourge of the Past
Tomorrow, the Scourge of the Past raid opens up to all of Guardians who have the Annual Pass and are brave enough to venture into the Last City to confront a new threat to its safety.
Design Lead Brian Frank is here to brief you one last time before the race for World First begins tomorrow.
Brian: The team could not be more excited for the Scourge of the Past Raid to unlock tomorrow and accept challengers to be the first to fight their way through the Last City and recover a forgotten secret of the Black Armory. As always, we will be cheering you on from the theater. Dust off your sparrow collections. You’re going to want the right perk, and the right look, for crossing the finish line.
Make sure you grab the final chest to complete the activity before returning to orbit. Good luck Guardians!
The first fireteam to defeat the raid will be crowned as World First and awarded with a raid belt. As always, they will be awarded to six teammates. Please note that, if you swap players out during the mission, the spoils will only go to the final six.
Anyone who beats all of the encounters of Scourge of the Past in the first 24 hours will be awarded the “Scourge of Nothing” emblem. If you don’t think you can take down the final boss that fast, you will still have some extra time to qualify for the exclusive raid jacket through Bungie Rewards. You have until 9AM Pacific on 12/12 to beat the raid and claim your code to purchase the jacket on the Bungie Store. Here is a look at all of these rewards.
As Brian mentioned above, if you think you have finished first, have someone in your fireteam grab the final chest and return to orbit immediately. Completing the activity is crossing the finish line. You can read the full rules here. Good luck!
I am the Crucible
Today, we’d like to address the feedback we’ve received about the Crucible. The top issue reported by the community is associated with Matchmaking in the Competitive playlist. Many of you are expressing feedback around matching solos against fireteams, matching high Glory teams against lower Glory teams, and have many other suggestions regarding how progressing through the ranks should be changed. The appropriate teams are investigating possible changes to be included in a future update. We will have details for you as soon as we can.
We do have some information on changes to address another top trending issue in the Crucible: Power ammo spawns. There have been numerous requests to lower the amount of Power ammo spawning in Competitive games. Based on this feedback, we will be lowering the amount of Power ammo available during matches by increasing the time between Power ammo spawns. Here are the details:
Competitive:
Control
Initial timers stay the same
Increased respawn timer for heavy ammo (was 45 seconds, now 120 seconds)
Clash
Initial timers stay the same
Increased respawn timer for heavy ammo (was 45 seconds, now 120 seconds)
Survival
Initial timers stay the same
Increased respawn timer for heavy ammo (was 45 seconds, now 60 seconds)
Rotators:
Showdown
Initial timers stay the same
Increased respawn timer for heavy ammo (was 30 seconds, now 60 seconds)
Rumble:
Initial timers stay the same
Increased respawn timer for heavy ammo (was 60 seconds, now 120 seconds)
It Gets Everywhere
Power ammo and Matchmaking are not the only top-trending pieces of community feedback that we have been tracking. Many of you have Sandbox-related questions that apply to PVP and PVE. There are vocal camps on both sides for a lot of these issues and our Sandbox team is considering a combination of player feedback and data on the effectiveness of certain gear and abilities. Design Lead John Sandwich with notes on their process.
Joe: Hello again, my friends! Hamrick here to answer some hot community questions we have seen and give you a quick glimpse into what Sandbox is working on for the rest of the year and on into 2019.
While we have those hot questions coming right up, I just wanted to take a second to call out something you may have noticed. Instead of building up to one or two massive patches a year, we have transitioned to shipping smaller batches of changes much more frequently. We hope that this new approach will allow us to remain more agile than we have been in the past and allow us to shake up the meta a bit on more frequent intervals. We hope that a year from now we can all look back on this new way of working and agree that it was very successful. Alright, enough of my rambling, onward, to the questions!
Can you buff snipers? We would really like flinch to be reduced and to have more lower zoom scopes.
Snipers are definitely one of the archetypes we are actively looking at and making changes to. For example, later in January, Rapid-fire snipers will be moving to a two-shot body kill. Additionally, we are considering allowing more snipers to be able to one-shot supers on headshots in a future patch.
Lower zoom scopes do exist in the game, but have not been particularly prevalent with post-Forsaken weapons and have been largely limited to a few weapons (ie., The Supremacy), but we’ll be increasing the number of them in the game as we move forward.
We don’t currently have plans to alter sniper flinch any more at this time, but we will continue to keep an eye on your feedback.
Nova Warp??????????????????????????????
Yup, the Nova Warp super is too dominant right now and we are planning to tweak it. It’s currently slated to land with a patch coming in late January.
Spectral Blades hit detection feels much more consistent. Can sentinel and other melees get the same treatment?
We definitely want all melee supers to feel as good and reliable as possible. This is something we are still looking into.
A lot of the pre-forsaken subclasses feel underpowered now. Can they get buffed?
Yes! We have some planned buffs coming to older subclass paths in the patch currently slated for late January, but we are already looking ahead to what we’d like to do in patches further down the line. We will be regularly looking into tuning subclass content to ensure that there’s a healthy balance of viable choices in all activities. We use a combination of data and community feedback to track the right things to fix, so please continue to surface which choices feel the least viable to help guide us.
Any changes to the top exotics being used in the Crucible like One Eyed Mask, Shards of Galanor, etc.?
These exotics get talked about quite a bit and while I don’t have any immediate incoming changes to share, I expect that they will be getting looked at in the future.
Telesto is currently besto. Can you tone it down or move it to the Power slot?
Late in January you will find that Telesto’s bolts-to-kill will now match its charge rate, where it was previously doing more damage than other fusion rifles of its type. That said, due to it being affected less by damage falloff due to its explosive nature, it will still be more consistent than fusion rifles of the same charge rate. Worth noting, PvE damage will be increased to keep parity there. Once we see how these changes land, we can decide if and what to do next. The goal still being to buff where we can, but when we have to nerf, you’re going to find us trying to inch down instead of going nuclear… at least as much as we can.
Scouts Rifles still feel weak in both PVP and PVE. Can they come up?
This is another archetype we are looking at and I would currently expect to see changes show up in future patches.
Could SMGs get a non-precision damage buff?
We just recently buffed the range on SMG’s to make them more competitive. We’ll be monitoring the data and feedback for a bit to help us decided where to take them next. If we find that they still aren’t good enough, we will be happy to buff them further.
Can Fusion Rifles get buffed? Maybe longer range or higher damage to combat shotguns?
This is another archetype we are looking at and I would currently expect to see changes show up in future patches. We did bring up the damage of Rapid Fire Fusion Rifles in 2.1.0 last week.
Any plans to adjust Wavesplitter?
It’s not at the top of our list but we do intend to take a look at it. First we want to look at the global ammo economy for trace rifles in PvP, and then we can take a look at Wavesplitter’s effectiveness.
Titan skating is rampant on PC. Do you plan to remove it?
We’d like to fix this, however, we’re being careful about how we do so because it’s so closely tied to the core feel of the Lift ability. In other words, we don’t want a Titan skating fix to change the way the Lift ability feels for all players. We’d love to have a simple fix to this issue we could roll out immediately, but this one is going to take us a while to land on something solid.
To recap, we want to roll out smaller batches of patches more frequently. We want to bring things up whenever possible, but when we do need to bring something down, we are going to try and inch it down and into the correct location. And finally, there is a patch coming, currently slated for late January, where we expect you to see some changes coming to things like Rapid-fire snipers, Telesto, Nova Warp and pre-Forsaken subclasses… And we have much more planned for the months ahead.
Love you, always,
Hamrick
That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles
This morning, details about The Dawning hit the Bungie Blog. Our next seasonal event is starting up next week on December 11. We are excited to see you driving around on your new Sparrow, delivering your baked goods across the solar system.
Eva’s Little Helpers
Player support is tracking known issues and keeping you up to date when we deploy updates to address them.
This is their report.
Destiny 2 Update 2.1.1.1
This week we deployed Destiny 2 Update 2.1.1.1 to players. This update resolved issues causing crashes at the Morgeth encounter of the Last Wish raid, and reintroduced The Inverted Spire strike activity after it was disabled in Update 2.1.0 due to rather large bug.
For the full Update 2.1.1.1 patch notes, please click here.
Destiny 2 Update 2.1.2
Next Tuesday, December 11, Destiny 2 Update 2.1.2 is scheduled to go live.
While the timeline for this deployment has yet to be finalized, players should follow us at @BungieHelp on Twitter or monitor our support feed on help.bungie.net for the latest information as soon as it is available.
Upcoming Challenges
On Tuesday, the Black Armory officially opened its doors and the Volundr Forge was discovered in the EDZ. Tomorrow, the Gofannon Forge will become available, and the race for world’s first will kick off in the Scourge of the Past raid.
For those among you who accept the challenge of becoming the world’s first Fireteam to conquer the Scourge of the Past, set your alarms and prep your fireteams. Scourge of the Past will unlock in the EDZ map tomorrow (12/7) at 9 AM PST. Players waiting in Orbit who do not see this activity become available in their Director may need to log out and back in after 9 AM.
As always, players who encounter issues in newly-launched activities should report them to our #Help forums. Providing imagery or video footage which outlines a reported issue will assist the Destiny Player Support team in escalating investigations with the dev team.
Holiday Cheer
Next Tuesday the Dawning returns in Destiny 2. All players are invited to experience the Dawning who have completed the Red War campaign and unlocked access to the Tower.
The Dawning will conclude at the weekly reset on January 1, 2019. For the full support copy, players should visit: Destiny 2: The Dawning Guide
Destiny 2: Forsaken and Season of the Forge Known Issues
In addition to the items listed above, Destiny Player Support is tracking the latest issues reported by players on the #Help forum. Provided below is a brief overview of the latest known issues in Destiny 2: Forsaken and Season of the Forge.
Blind Well Matchmaking: We are investigating reports regarding players entering empty instances of the Blind Well in the Dreaming City. While we are working on a fix, affected players should try entering the Blind Well slowly, hugging the right side staircase and hallway walls.
Mars Flashpoint: We are investigating reports describing sometimes not receiving powerful gear from the Mars Flashpoint.
Harbinger’s Echo: We are investigating ongoing reports regarding the Harbinger’s Echo exotic sparrow not being awarded as expected to players who have earned it after the deployment of Update 2.1.1.1.
Hello There
You all continue to create great content every week. Movie of the Week is our chance to show off a few of our favorites. Here is what caught our eye this week.
Movie of the Week: Paint it Black (Armory)
Honorable Mention: Royalty
Honorable Mention: Thundercrushed
The creators of both of these videos will be rewarded with the Lens of Fate emblem. If you are one of the winners, make sure you have the player names of who worked on the video in its description.
Thanks for continuing to provide valuable feedback as we transition from a box product to a world that evolves and changes over time. We will continue to consider avenues to help you keep up with the evolutions. But also continue rolling out difficult activities to challenge the mettle of the bravest among you.
We’re all excited about raid day tomorrow. Be careful as you adventure into the Last City. May the best fireteam win.
Cloud Foundry, Cloud Native, and Entering a Multi-Platform World with Abby Kearns
2018 has been an amazing year for Cloud Foundry, with Alibaba joining as a Gold member, and Pivotal going public with its IPO, among some of the highlights. I recently talked with Abby Kearns, Executive Director of Cloud Foundry Foundation, to reflect on these milestones and more.
Kearns has been part of the Cloud Foundry ecosystem for the past five years and, under her leadership, Cloud Foundry has grown and evolved and found its way into half of the Fortune 500 companies, with those numbers increasing daily.
All of the major public cloud vendors want to be part of the ecosystem. “This year, we saw Alibaba join as a Gold member, and Cloud Foundry is now natively available on Alibaba Cloud,” said Kearns.
In 2017, Cloud Foundry embraced Kubernetes, the hottest open source project, and created CFCR (Cloud Foundry Container Runtime). “Kubernetes is a great technology that brings tons of capabilities to containers, which are the fundamental building blocks for a lot of portability for cloud native apps,” Kearns said.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 12-07-2018, 10:36 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Aquaman 2 Already Planned, Before First One Is Even Out
The first Aquaman movie doesn't hit theaters for another couple of weeks, but Warner Bros. is already reportedly planning a second one. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. executive Toby Emmerich has already started preliminary discussions about a sequel, though the report acknowledged that Warner Bros. hadn't hired a writer yet.
Tracking estimates show that Aquaman is expected to make $65 million for its US opening later this month, beating Mary Poppins Returns and the Transformers spinoff Bumblebee, which open at the same time. This strong box office tracking is what supposedly gave Emmerich the confidence to get started on an Aquaman sequel before the first one is even out.
The quote came as part of a wider story focusing on actress Amber Heard, who plays Mera in Aquaman. According to the report, she was paid a low-seven-figure salary for Aquaman, meaning she earned at least $1 million to appear in the movie. For the sequel, Heard--and presumably Aquaman actor Jason Momoa--will see bigger paydays, according The Hollywood Reporter.
Aquaman is directed by James Wan, who previously helmed The Conjuring and Furious 7, and hits theaters on December 21, 2018.
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled Speeds Onto The Switch In June Next Year
Following the success of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, publisher Activision has revealed Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled will be released on multiple platforms, including the Nintendo Switch, on 21st June 2019.
Below is the Twitter confirmation:
The title is a remake of the original 1999 PlayStation game that was developed by Naughty Dog. It will be handled by Beenox and will include all of the original game modes, characters, tracks, power-ups and weapons. There’ll also be additional karts and tracks from beyond the original release, and players will also be able to race online with friends and take on the competition in online leaderboards.
Take a look at the official trailer above and tell us in the comments if you’re excited to head out onto the track with Crash.
Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon walked out on stage at this year’s Game Awards to announce a winner of a select category and instead presented us with the surprise reveal of Mortal Kombat 11 – the next entry in the long-running bloody and brutal fighting series by NetherRealm Studios and Warner Bros. The game is arriving worldwide on 23rd April.
While no platforms were specifically mentioned by Boon, at the end of the announcement trailer the Switch logo was present (we’ve grabbed a screenshot for you below). The game’s official Twitter account makes mention of the Nintendo Switch release as well. This is a rather big surprise considering a Mortal Kombat game hasn’t appeared on a Nintendo platform since the 2007 DS release.
As you can see above, if you pre-order the game you’ll get the character Shao Kahn. Below are some official screenshots:
Did you expect Mortal Kombat to be released on Switch? Are you excited for the 11th entry? Tell us below.
Apple’s iPhone XR named best single-lens smartphone by DxOMark
By William Gallagher Friday, December 07, 2018, 03:04 am PT (06:04 am ET)
The photography software firm’s benchmarking arm praises Apple for improvements to flash but criticizes zoom shots and low-light images. For overall quality, the iPhone XR still beats the previous best phone, the Google Pixel 2.
Detail of an iPhone XR with its single rear camera
Apple’s iPhone XR is now the top-ranked single-camera smartphone according to photo specialist DxO’s benchmarking unit, DxOMark. Testers shot over 1,500 images and more than two hours of video to conclude that the XR is “excellent.”
It beat the Google Pixel 2 and DxOMark says the cheaper iPhone “offers a very similar proposition for image quality as the flagship iPhone XS Max.” This is in spite of the XS Max’s dual-camera setup.
Where the iPhone XR falls down compared to the more expensive XS Max is in zoom and bokeh shots. The iPhone XR attempts to mimic the bokeh of a dual-camera phone through software algorithms. While Apple claims to have “turned the model of a lens into math,” in this case software is never going to equal hardware.
Yet if the XS Max maintains its hardware lead, the software has been improved for the XR. Of note, the single-lens iPhone boasts a digital zoom function that produces “very acceptable” results up to 2x magnification.
A high-contrast scene photographed during testing (Credit: DxOMark)
Equally, the firm reports that Portrait Mode on the XR performs well in low-light environments, offering better detail on faces than the XS. However, the company says that the XR’s “depth estimation is relative poor making the overall effect look a bit ‘photoshopped’.”
DxOMark notes that its bokeh tests involve both people and objects. Using Apple’s built-in Camera app, the iPhone XR’s computational bokeh is activated only when a face is detected. Outside of those scenarios, users looking to add bokeh to images must rely on iPhone’s physical lens stack, which produces minimal blur effects due to a relatively short equivalent focal length.
“Apple has managed to improve the flash on the XR a little, which we identified as a weak point for the XS Max during our testing,” said DxOMark.
These same flash issues in part hindered iPhone XS Max’s chances of taking top honors in a round of testing earlier this year. DxO ultimately named Huawei’s P20 Pro as the world’s best smartphone camera system.
DxOMark’s iPhone XR feature ranking
According to DxOMark’s points ranking system, the iPhone XS Max scored 110 in photo and 96 in video. By comparison, the newly announced results for the iPhone XR are 103 points for photo and the same 96 for video. DxOMark describes the XR’s video, saying it gives: “outstanding performance in bright light conditions.”
DxOMark’s overall smartphone rankings
While the iPhone XR is now the top-ranked single camera smartphone in DxOMark’s testing, it is still bested by dual camera handsets. DxOMark currently places the XR seventh out of all smartphones, with the Huawei P20 Pro still top overall.
Welcome to Solis, a huge South American world home of conflict, oppression and extreme weather conditions. Just Cause 4 sees rogue hero Rico Rodriguez land in Solis to hunt down the truth about his past, at any costs. Strap into your wingsuit, equip your fully customizable grappling hook, and get ready to bring the thunder. Soar through the skies with your wingsuit - Skydive, Base Jump and Free Dive with no limits. Fight your enemies under extreme weather conditions, including treacherous tornadoes and tropical lightning storms, taking the iconic Just Cause action to insane new heights. Use extreme weather events to your advantage thanks to never seen before in-game physics. Spearhead the rebellion and defeat the Black Hand, a hi-tech private military organisation. Face off against Gabriela Morales ? your most fierce, capable, and unpredictable adversary yet. Uncover the truth of Rico?s father?s past life on Solis? and its extreme weather. Explore the remote South American country of Solis, home of conflict, secrets, and danger. Enjoy 100 square kilometres of exotic playground, from rainforest to desert, via snowy mountain peaks. Discover a plethora of wonders as you explore the world of Solis from bustling cities to rural grasslands. [Square Enix]
During the campaign, you will see all the levels, weapons and enemies known from the other versions.
The new towers are available with the base game at launch.
The gameplay is dynamic and responsive, as you have to constantly adapt to the types of enemies attacking your core.
The destructible environment has always been one of the biggest advantages of the game. Keeping this feature and maintaining performance required some clever trickery.
The red-hot rivers of lava on Iceland are one of the most eye-catching features in X-Morph: Defense. 
Tricking your enemies into taking a suboptimal route is very important. The control scheme remained unchanged, so you have perfect control over the battlefield.
