The Armistice Steam Sale fundraiser is back, promoting peaceful gameplay in support of children still affected by war today. This year marks 100 years since the armistice that ended the First World War, so War Child has pulled together a bunch of the best-selling games to mark the occasion that are either non-violent or have been modified as part of this year’s Armistice campaign (Dick Wilde & Prison Architect).
Each game that is part of the sale is donating a % of developer proceeds to War Child UK & its US partner Children in Conflict to raise vital funds for children whose lives have been torn apart by war.
• ABZÛ (505 Games) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 50% • Broken Sword 5 (Revolution Games) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 25% • Democracy 3 (Positech) – Donating 100% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 25% • Dick Wilde (PlayStack) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 50% • Machinarium (Amanita Design) – Donating 60% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 60% • Mini Metro (Dinosaur Polo Club) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 50% • Prison Architect (Introversion Software) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 75% • Scanner Sombre (Introversion Software) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 75% • RiME (Six Foot) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 50% • The Talos Principle (Devolver Digital) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 75% • The Room (Fireproof Games) – Donating 100% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 75%
Kingdom Hearts 3 already has an all-star cast of Disney characters, but at Xbox's X018 fan event one more made his debut. Everyone's favorite honey-loving bear, Winnie the Pooh has been confirmed to appear in the third entry in the Square Enix-developed title. Of course, this isn't the first time he's been featured in the series, as players have traveled to 100 Acre Woods, home of Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and friends multiple times.
This time, we got to see Pooh talking to Sora, Donald, and Goofie, telling him that he'd always be with him. Along with Pooh, the trailer also provided another glimpse at what Master Xehanort and Organization XIII are up to. Naturally, it will require Sora, Donald, Goofy, and a supporting cast of some of the most iconic Disney characters from throughout the ages to come together and put a stop to these evil schemes, which involves creating an ultimate keyblade.
Shinji Hashimoto from Square Enix also appeared during the stream to talk about Pooh's appearance, saying that in Kingdom Hearts 3 there will be mini-games to play in the 100 Acre Woods. For this location specifically, gameplay will be oriented around puzzles. Talking about technological advancements and what they bring to Kingdom Hearts 3, Hashimoto said the Xbox One hardware allowed the team to depict roaring scenes in the Pirates world and the vastness of Big Hero 6's San Fransokyo.
The trailer also gave us a glimpse at the some of other words, including an evil Baymax in the Big Hero 6 universe. Some on-ship acrobatics in the Pirates of the Caribbean world.
On November 5, Square Enix released a trailer set in the Kingdom of Corona, the world in which Tangled takes place. In that trailer, Sora, Donald, and Goofy meet Rapunzel and Flynn, before being ambushed by enemies. Rapunzel looks to have a pretty handy traversal ability that involves using her long hair to swing from tree branches. This will no doubt help the gang get around much easier.
Other Disney franchises represented in Kingdom Hearts 3 include Toy Story, Big Hero 6, Frozen, Hercules, and Monsters Inc. Various members of the voice cast attached to these are also reprising their roles for the game. For example, Zachary Levi be playing as Flynn Rider while Donna Murphy will once again be Mother Gothel. For Frozen, Idina Menzel will be voicing Elsa, while Kristen Bell returns for Anna, Josh Gad is Olaf, and Jonathan Groff is Kristoff. Haley Joel Osment will also be voicing series protagonist Sora again.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is set to release on January 29, 2019 on Xbox One and PS4.
A wildfire in California has claimed, among other locations, a series of iconic movie and TV sets outside of Los Angeles. The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area announced that the western town portion of Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills, California has burned down.
The sets, which have served as the home of projects like Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, American Sniper, and The Love Bug, has most recently been used by the HBO series Westworld. On the show, it served as the town of Escalante, which was a beta-testing location within the Westworld park.
Evan Rachel Wood, who stars on Westworld and has done a fair amount of shooting at the location, tweeted, "This is eerie. So sad for the history lost. Amazed the church is still standing." Indeed, the little white church that became so recognizable on the show was one structure that remained unharmed.
Thankfully, HBO confirms that no filming for the upcoming season of Westworld was taking place at the time of the fire. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, the network said, "Westworld is not currently in production, and as the area has been evacuated, we do not yet know the extent of the damage to any structures remaining there. Most importantly, our thoughts go out to all those affected by these horrible fires."
A series of photos from Los Angeles photojournalist John Schreiber show the extent of some of the damage, which sees very little of the sets left standing. "Sad for fans of [Westworld] and shows like Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, the Paramount Ranch western town movie set has burned to the ground in the Woolsey Fire," he wrote.
It remains to be seen whether the sets will be rebuilt for future production or if the next season of Westworld will feature the town of Escalante.
Ok, so maybe the Weekender will stick around a bit longer. I’ve been able to make enough time to take care of it myself (more or less), and this is definitely a worthwhile thing that we enjoy doing. I guess it depends if we should come up with a new name to note the changing of the guard.
Something to ponder over the weekend, perhaps…
What We’re Up To
So… how about that Diablo Immortal announcement, huh? That proved… divisive. The backlash seems reminiscent of the one that followed in the wake of C&C Rival’s announcement, only magnified because this was Blizzcon and everyone wanted Diablo 4 instead.
I actually managed to get some play-time in with this one. Cat Lady is a digital port of a card game of the same name that sees you collecting cards from a 3×3 grid. You need to acquire cats to fill your ‘cattery’, but you also need to collect food for them to eat (so you can earn the points they’re worth), costumes for them to wear, as well as toys. There are plenty of other bonus and special cards as well to offer a variety of tactical choices and routes to victory.
This is a set collection game, and there’s a single, central deck. Once that runs out the game ends you total up the points – person with the most wins. The app itself is very slick and nicely animated, without going overboard. There’s a good tutorial, challenges and a challenge mode, and you can play against up to four AI or four local cat owners in pass-and-play. This is a fun quick game for all ages.
Ok, so it’s crazy golf, but the courses are in the shape of letters. What’s not to love? Local pass-and-play for up to four people, with 26 levels and several different game modes made this an intriguing pick for this week. We especially like the fact that you can type out words which then form the courses you will be playing, adding a touch of personalisation to proceedings. The trailer is a bit much though…
There have been a few puzzle releases this week, but this one caught our eye the most. It’s got a great, painted-effect art style, is mainly based around logic-puzzles (an excellent type of puzzle), and seems to have a very rich visual identity.
It’s although worth noting that developer Hero Factor are donating half of their profits from any IAPs to charities and organisations that look after real-life Pangolins (a type of Anteater). This is a premium game, but we’ve been unable to determine if there are any IAPS currently present, or what they may be. It’s possible they won’t come till later, but the developer says they won’t charge more than $6 for an unlock. Gameplay is estimated at 3 – 6 hours, with bonus unlocks and GameCenter achievements.
The sci-fi spin-off of the charming Knights of Pen & Paper, Galaxy was a fun new take on developer Behold’s premise, but it fell a bit short of expectations. Now, nearly a year after release (and plenty of updates in the interim), there’s a new free content job called the “+1” update.
There’s a lot here for fans of the game, including six new classes, new planets and biomes, lots of new quests, skills, items etc… and a better event system, to name just a few things. If you haven’t played this in a while, might be worth giving it another look.
Sales
Quite a few sales that might interest you this week, although mainly on iOS. Asmodee Digital, Klei Entertainment and the Trese Brothers all offer discounts on some of their games:
Klei have slashed the price on both the original and the Shipwrecked version of their iconic survival/sim Don’t Starve. Both are equally as good, although the variations in Shipwrecked are potentially lost if you haven’t played the original. Bear in mind this can be a frustrating and gruelling experience at times as well. The last time the games were at this price was back in February, so while there’s a chance there may be a Christmas sale, I wouldn’t dally if you’ve yet to try this out.
Last week the Trese Brothers discounted Heroes of Steel, this week it’s the premium version of Templar Battleforce (there is a free version, if you want to try it out). The Trese Brothers have been a dependable staple in premium mobile games, so their work is always worth checking out. This represents a 50% discount and it’s never been cheaper – that being said, the Brothers seem to run this discount fairly regularly so you can always wait for the next instance.
Asmodee Digital have discounted a few of their boardgames this week – Jaipur & Splendor by a buck, with Twilight Struggle getting a discount of a couple of dollars. All of these games pretty much speak for themselves – especially Twilight Struggle – but do check out our review for more information. It’s also worth nothing that all of these games have been cheaper in 2018, so this isn’t the best discount – might be worth seeing if they go cheaper for Black Friday or at Christmas.
Also Spotted: The Quest & The Quest: Fire & Ice is 50% off on Android.
That’s all for this week’s update – seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!
The Quiet Man is an immersive story driven cinematic action experience that seamlessly blends high-production live action, realistic CG and pulse-pounding action gameplay that can be completed in one sitting. [Square Enix]
Some people say ‘friends don’t let friends right click publish’ but is that true? If they mean that there are great benefits to setting up a CI/CD workflow, that’s true and we will talk more about these benefits in just a minute. First, let’s remind ourselves that the goal isn’t always coming up with the best long-term solution.
Technology moves fast and as developers we are constantly learning and experimenting with new languages, frameworks and platforms. Sometimes we just need to prototype something rather quickly in order to evaluate its capabilities. That’s a classic scenario where right click publish in Visual Studio provides the right balance between how much time you are going to spend (just a few seconds) and the options that become available to you (quite a few depending on the project type) such as publish to IIS, FTP & Folder (great for xcopy deployments and integration with other tools).
Continuing with the theme of prototyping and experimenting, right click publish is the perfect way for existing Visual Studio customers to evaluate Azure App Service (PAAS). By following the right click publish flow you get the opportunity to provision new instances in Azure and publish your application to them without leaving Visual Studio:
When the right click publish flow has been completed, you immediately have a working application running in the cloud:
Platform evaluations and experiments take time and during that time, right click publish helps you focus on the things that matter. When you are ready and the demand rises for automation, repeatability and traceability that’s when investing into a CI/CD workflow starts making a lot of sense:
Automation: builds are kicked off and tests are executed as soon as you check in your code
Repeatability: it’s impossible to produce binaries without having the source code checked in
Traceability: each build can be traced back to a specific version of the codebase in source control which can then be compared with another build and figure out the differences
The right time to adopt CI/CD typically coincides with a milestone related to maturity; either and application milestone or the team’s that is building it. If you are the only developer working on your application you may feel that setting up CI/CD is overkill, but automation and traceability can be extremely valuable even to a single developer once you start shipping to your customers and you have to support multiple versions in production.
With a CI/CD workflow you are guaranteed that all binaries produced by a build can be linked back to the matching version of the source code. You can go from a customer bug report to looking at the matching source code easily, quickly and with certainty. In addition, the automation aspects of CI/CD save you valuable time performing common tasks like running tests and deploying to testing and pre-production environments, lowering the overhead of good practices that ensure high quality.
As always, we want to see you successful, so if you run into any issues using publish in Visual Studio or setting up your CI/CD workload, let me know in the comment section below and I’ll do my best to get your question answered.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 11-10-2018, 12:10 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Fortnite's New Lil Kev Challenges Guide: How To Get The New Back Bling
Fortnite has opened up a new set of limited-time challenges in honor of everyone's favorite sentient otherworldly cube, though it might already be too late to qualify for them. Your reward for completing the event is a Kevin the Cube to call your own, nicknamed Lil' Kev, as a new piece of back bling.
The event takes place in two phases. First, you had to log on prior to 1 PM ET on November 5 to unlock the Lil' Kev challenge pack--in other words, if you didn't get in before that deadline, you have no way to obtain these challenges and the accompany back bling. Provided you did get online, doing so provides you with a set of three challenges, which themselves are pretty simple. You'll have until November 11 at 1 PM ET to finish them to earn the back bling. If you didn't qualify, at least you have Week 7 challenges to take on.
Unlike Fortnite's weekly challenges, which are usually catered toward some specific seasonal content, these challenges will be naturally obtained if you play some Fortnite over the coming week. You'll get completion simply by playing matches, earning XP, and outliving opponents. You'll need to play a minimum of 15 games to complete all three.
If you're still looking to complete this season's Battle Pass and earn your Season 6 rewards, check out our challenges guide. You can tote a new weapon into battle soon, since Epic has been teasing the addition of a new heavy assault rifle to the game that could drop any time. And if you're a Kevin fan that somehow missed the big world event over the weekend, check out our recap. The cube has been busy making all sorts of weirdness happen in the world.
The Armistice Steam Sale fundraiser is back, promoting peaceful gameplay in support of children still affected by war today. This year marks 100 years since the armistice that ended the First World War, so War Child has pulled together a bunch of the best-selling games to mark the occasion that are either non-violent or have been modified as part of this year’s Armistice campaign (Dick Wilde & Prison Architect).
Each game that is part of the sale is donating a % of developer proceeds to War Child UK & its US partner Children in Conflict to raise vital funds for children whose lives have been torn apart by war.
ABZ (505 Games) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 50% Broken Sword 5 (Revolution Games) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 25% Democracy 3 (Positech) – Donating 100% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 25% Dick Wilde (PlayStack) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 50% Machinarium (Amanita Design) – Donating 60% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 60% Mini Metro (Dinosaur Polo Club) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 50% Prison Architect (Introversion Software) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 75% Scanner Sombre (Introversion Software) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 75% RiME (Six Foot) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 50% The Talos Principle (Devolver Digital) – Donating 50% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 75% The Room (Fireproof Games) – Donating 100% of developer proceeds / Discounted by 75%
Things are about to get spookier in Kingdom: New Lands as Halloween descends upon us. In the spirit of trick or treat, you might notice an evil grin on the moon during night time and haunted mansions in the far distance across the islands of Kingdom. Even the greedy creatures are dressed up in pumpkin masks, but they won’t be bribed with candy — they want your coins and crown.
For Halloween, you’re able to find a spooky horse wandering about. What does this cursed steed offer besides spreading horror to your loyal subjects? Kingdom has always been about exploration, discovery, and survival, so I don’t want to reveal all details.
Part of Kingdom’s experience is to figure out how you build up your Kingdom and manage it. As you expand and explore you understand how the world works and can be ruled effectively. In this journey, you’ll get to see different seasons and environment that evoke emotions of tranquillity and melancholy along the frantic nights when the greedy creatures appear.
I hope you’ll enjoy Halloween in Kingdom: New Lands. If you survive the horrors (and sugar rush after trick and treating), we’ll have more news on the sequel Kingdom Two Crowns in November. Besides new mounts like the mighty griffon, a brand-new campaign mode and local or online drop-in/drop-out co-op, we have still have a couple of surprises up our sleeves…
Nintendo Is Currently Recruiting For A New 3D Legend Of Zelda Game
A couple of job listings have appeared on Nintendo’s Japanese website, revealing that the gaming development giant is looking for staff to help work on a new 3D The Legend of Zelda title.
At the time of writing, two job listings have been posted online – one for a 3D computer graphics designer, and one for a level designer. As well as needing to be able to communicate in Japanese (the jobs are based at Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters), the listings show that staff will need to work on terrain design for dungeons, level design, concept art, world visualisation, game events, enemy planning, and more.
If you’re nosey like us, you might also be interested to know that the hiring process consists of interviews, portfolios, and exams, and each applicant can earn between 3.8 to 8.1 million yen a year depending on experience (which equates to roughly £25,000 / $33,000 – £54,000 / $71,000 without thinking about differences in cost of living).
Of course, we’ve known that a new Zelda game has been in the works for some time, and it would be safe to assume that future titles for the series are likely being thought about at all times. With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild going on to be such a raging success last year, it would also be safe to assume that a new game could follow suit with a similar design, but the series has often tended to shift direction regardless of its current popularity so it would be impossible to know for sure.
What would you like to see from the next Legend of Zelda game? A Breath of the Wild 2, or something completely different? Let us know down below.
