Call to Arms is Now Available on Steam and is 10% off!*
Call to Arms offers an innovative mix of real-time strategy and 3rd, as well as 1st person controls. Set in the time of modern warfare, the game offers realistically modeled vehicles and heavy weaponry, as well as dozens of firearms and customizations. Command your troops to victory or fight by yourself in the 3rd or 1st person action mode.
Xbox Live Creators Program empowers passionate developers everywhere to share their games with the world. In the Creator’s Corner series, Xbox Live Creators Program developers will share what inspires and motivates them to design and create their games, what challenges and creative solutions they pursue to bring their games to fruition, and how they leverage Xbox Live capabilities to enhance their games for Xbox. Today, we’ll be chatting with Ben and Max Snyder about their experience creating and bringing Fighties to the Xbox audience.
Tell us about your developer journey — what inspired you to start developing games and what continues to motivate you? We went to school to get software engineering degrees. We like to play games so whenever we could choose our school projects we would make a game. The thing that continues to motivate us is the game ideas in our heads that we want to make.
What was the first game you created, and how did that experience contribute to Fighties? Fighties was the first game we created as Pillow Pig Games. Before that we individually made small games for school projects. While making the small games we learned the basics of game development which helped us create Fighties.
Tell us about your team and how you came together (briefly) We are a team of two. Max does the programming and music. Ben does the art and animation. We are twin brothers.
What’s been the most rewarding part of developing and shipping your game in the Creators Program? The most rewarding part was winning the Dream.Build.Play challenge. (Editor’s Note: Dream.Build.Play is a global community of gamemakers. It’s a place where individuals can engage with independent developers around the world, and the companies, technologies, and leading creators that support them. The Dream.Build.Play Challenge is an annual skills-based contest looking for the latest and greatest UWP games form the indie developer community).
What’s been the most frustrating roadblock/challenge you’ve faced in developing a game, and how did you solve for it? The most frustrating challenge We faced in developing a game was making the backgrounds for Fighties. Ben doesn’t like drawing backgrounds and when he does he doesn’t think it looks good. To solve this, we simplified the backgrounds as much as possible.
Now that the game is available in the Creators Program, what would your team like to work on next? We are working on our next game. We haven’t come up with the name for it yet. It has trains, sword fighting, and animal riding.
What’s your favorite game, ever, and why? Max’s favorite game is StarCraft 2 because it’s a really fun and challenging game. Ben’s favorite game is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker because of the art style.
If you could be any character in any game, who would you be and what would be the first thing you do? If we could be any characters in any game, we would be Mario and Luigi. The first thing we would do is race in karts.
Thanks so much to Ben and Max for this interview and bringing Fighties to the Xbox community. Tune in to an exclusive interview and live-stream with Ben and Max on Mixer.com/Xbox on Monday, April 23 at 11 a.m. PST.
Check out all the other incredible games in the Microsoft Store or in-console within the Creators Collection and stay tuned to Xbox Wire for monthly posts featuring Creators Program developers from all around the world!
Despite being a little over a year old, Nintendo Switch already has more than its fair share of top-down action adventure games. The presence of Cat Quest, Kamiko, Ittle Dew 2+ and numerous others like it means genre fans are already spoiled for choice when it comes to the old hack-and-slash routine.
Jotun: Valhalla Edition is the latest to join the ranks and it’s a game that more die-hard Nintendo types may already be familiar with, since it previously launched on the Wii U eShop a year and a half ago. Since the Wii U was on the way out by then it’s probably fair to say most failed to notice it, so let’s treat this Switch port like we’re seeing it for the first time.
The game puts you in the hefty shoes of Thora, a Viking woman who’s not been having the best time of things lately. She’s recently died, you see, and naturally she’s a tad peeved at the inconvenience. What’s worse, because it was considered an inglorious death – a storm sunk her boat and she drowned – she doesn’t yet get the chance to enter Valhalla, the heaven for heroes who die in combat.
There’s hope for Thora yet, though. Waking up in a Norse version of purgatory called Ginnungagap (the Void), she discovers that if she can make her way through each of its realms and defeat the Jotun – enormous giants – located in each of them, she’ll impress the gods enough to gain access to Valhalla anyway. It’s basically the video game equivalent of when the One Direction boys failed their solo X-Factor auditions before Simon Cowell gave them another chance by putting them in a band.
The aim, then, is to travel from Ginnungagap (which acts as a hub world) to five different regions, each containing a couple of stages. After finding and activating the rune located in each of these stages, you’ll then get to fight off against that region’s huge Jotun in a boss fight. Beat them all and it’s a trip to Valhalla for you.
This structure results in a slightly disjointed experience, though not necessarily a bad one. Each region’s two stages tend to be fairly sparse, and with a couple of exceptions enemy encounters are by and large a rarity. Much of these stages are instead spend exploring the environment in a hunt for the rune you need to unlock the boss fight. This is made easier with a map on the pause screen, though it isn’t entirely spelled out for you: your location isn’t shown so you’ll need to use the environment to figure out where you actually are on the map.
After wandering through these relatively empty environments, the Jotun battles offer a huge change of pace as a result, offering lengthy boss fights with screen-filling opponents. This stark contrast in action also brings with it a hefty difficulty spike, meaning playing the game can feel like a bit of a rollercoaster at times with easy exploration levels followed by difficult boss fights. The second boss is a particularly good example of this: by the time you reach Fe you’ve just finishing strolling your way through a couple of straightforward cave levels, and now all of a sudden you’re fighting a stone goddess 50 times your size, who can summon literally hundreds of dwarven servants to attack you. You will get your ass kicked numerous times here, and given that you’ve just spent an hour in relatively peaceful surroundings it can be a little frustrating (especially with the slightly-too-long load times between deaths).
This way of offering two distinct playing styles also leads to another contrast, in terms of how the game looks. It’s always a visually stunning game whether you’re playing the stages or the boss fights, but in different ways. When you’re exploring the vast, generally empty stages the game has a tendency to occasionally zoom out, continuing to do so until your character is a tiny speck on the screen. This gives a true sense of scale, further puts across the feeling of being in limbo, and is a great way of showing off the beautiful hand-drawn environments.
On the other hand, when you’re fighting a boss the camera pulls in tighter to make sure you’re fully immersed in the action: when it’s closer in like this you can better appreciate the phenomenal character designs and animation. The bosses in particular are gorgeously animated, each frame hand-drawn as if you were watching a Don Bluth creation (such as Dragon’s Lair or The Land Before Time). When you first encounter them you’re treated to a fantastic animation of them discovering your presence and ‘awakening’ to start the battle, and when you finally manage to beat them – which is no mean feat, as previously explained – they die in a brilliantly satisfying, drawn-out way (literally).
Jotun is a fascinating take on the action-adventure genre. Written down it doesn’t sound like it should work: its controls are basic, most of the main levels are practically free of enemies and the boss fights range from tricky to knuckle-gnawingly infuriating. And yet, when it combines all its parts and brings them together, the result is a journey that takes in stunning landscapes, puts you in intense battles and blesses you with some of the most beautifully and professionally-designed characters and animations you’ll see in an indie game.
As long as you’re prepared for its erratic pacing and are happy to accept that there’ll be moments where you’re doing very little and moments where you’re cursing the game upside-down, you’re going to have a great time playing this visually stunning game.
Conclusion
Graphically, it’s a masterpiece, but Jotun’s action is too imbalanced to allow the same to be said about the game as a whole. Exploring its environments will be a treat for some players and getting stuck into its difficult boss battles will be a treat for others: if your tastes are wide-ranging enough to appreciate both scenarios, this is a winner.
Inked is a tale of love and vengeance told in ink on paper. You play as the Nameless Hero who sets out on a journey in a vast landscape filled with puzzles for you to solve. Each puzzle takes you closer to your lost love, unraveling a story that will forever change you.
Elytra now requires Phantom Membrane to be repaired
Phantoms now drop Phantom Membrane instead of leather
Can be crafted into a super spooky Slow Falling potion
ADVANCEMENTS
We’re making progress!
Fishy Business: Catch a fish
Tactical fishing: Catch a fish… without a fishing rod!
A Throwaway Joke: Throw a trident at something. Note: throwing away your only weapon is not a good idea.
Very Very Frightening: Strike a Villager with lightning
More to come!
RIPTIDE
Whooosh!
No longer compatible with Loyalty or Channeling
If riptide won’t work (such as being on land, nice and dry) you can’t attack with the trident at all
Riptide will not throw the trident, but instead launch you forwards with the trident
Looks neat!
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. 1.13 will have a lot of experimental snapshots that may break everything and smell funny. This may be one of those snapshots. This is what happens when Mojang are changing all the things!
Share your thoughts on how 1.13 is shaping up in the comments below!
This week at Bungie, we mapped more of the road ahead.
We have a new version of the Destiny 2 Development Roadmap. Take a look at what’s coming in Season 3 through the summer, all way up to the beginning of Season 4. You can read more developer commentary in the full Roadmap post.
We hope this gives you a good idea of what we have on our plate for the months ahead. These delivery times are goals. Some of these features could move around as we get closer to releases.
Our next expansion, Warmind, arrives on May 8. We know you have a lot of questions about it. Your answers will arrive in our next reveal stream on April 24. Developers from Bungie will be on the hot seats along with some representatives from our new partners at Vicarious Visions to talk about this new adventure that we created together.
In the meantime, if you want to decorate your desktop.
Ultimate Power
One thing we’re changing up at the beginning of Season 3 is how your Power level will affect the enemies you face. As you tackle a new campaign and start taking on activities above your current Power level, you may find that the villains you face put up more of a fight. Here is Combatants Design Lead Tomonori Kinoshita to give you some details on the changes we’re making.
Tomo: Hey, folks!
I’d like to let you know of an upcoming PvE difficulty tuning pass that should be hitting your consoles and PCs along with the beginning of Season 3.
The main goals from this tuning pass are to provide a more challenging experience for players when they take on higher-leveled activities. This should make Power progression and acquisition more meaningful, reinforce and reward the energy type matching gameplay, and provide opportunities for our master PvE-ers to demonstrate their prowess at the highest levels.
So, how are we going to tackle this?
Change our outgoing player damage scaling vs. higher-leveled combatants to be steeper (make them more difficult), similar to Destiny. As a result, higher-leveled combatants will take longer to kill than they currently do—but if you’re at or above their level, you can still melt them (like you’ve come to love) with Update 1.1.4.
Extend our outgoing and incoming damage scaling from capping at a 40 power level delta to a 50 power level delta. Currently, in Destiny 2, our scaling only affects the difficulty of combatants up to 40 Power levels above the player before plateauing. Increasing this to 50 Power levels adds a little more room for players to show off how badass they really are.
When combatants are 50 Power levels or higher above the player, they will be immune and display a “??” icon on their nameplate. OG Guardians probably remember the first time they stumbled across the Hive in the depths of Cosmodrome. We wanted to bring back that feeling of mystery and provide challenges for the player to come back to later in their journey.
Change combatant energy shields to fulfill the following: Matching energy element damage to shields is most effective (roughly 3x damage plus the current shield detonation), followed by non-matching energy (roughly 2x damage), and Kinetic damage won’t have any bonus damage multiplier. To further incentivize the matching game, the 3x multiplier for matching damage types is not affected by the damage scaling of higher-leveled combatants until the combatants display the “??” nameplates.
The previous change also allows us to bring back Match Game as an additional Prestige Nightfall modifier for extra points and bragging rights. When this modifier is enabled, all non-matching damage to energy shields is reduced to 10%, so make sure your fireteam is coordinating appropriately. The current plan is for Match Game to launch along with the rest of these difficulty changes.
We look forward to watching the community show off their PvE skills after these new settings go live. Show us what you’re made of, Guardians.
Back in Plaid
We’ve seen the Destiny community do some pretty amazing things to have a positive impact on the real world. Guardians never shy away from lending a helping hand. We’re rallying the banners again for a couple of great causes. Over the next month, Bungie will go head-to-head against other local businesses to raise money for two great organizations.
To prove that men don’t have exclusive rights to kilts, Bungie Foundation Manager Christine Edwards has your call to action.
Christine: Bungie is celebrating its 7th anniversary of supporting families at the Seattle Ronald McDonald House through their annual Men in Kilts fundraiser! As you all know, 7 is a big deal for us, so we’re planning on going all out this year with a giant goal of raising $77,000. Help us achieve our goal and cast your vote for Team Bungie by donating $10 or more. Every $30 donated will pay for a family to stay at the House for one night. Head to the RMHC Donation Page to cast your votes by Friday, April 27!
Need a sweeter incentive? Check out these backer rewards for donating to Men in Kilts!
$50—Exclusive high-resolution digital Destiny 2 teaser concept art.
Art will be prepped at a 3:2 aspect ratio at a high resolution for easy printing and framing.
Art will be delivered via email attachment to donors in early–mid June.
$100—The prize above, plus a postcard shipped to you signed by our MiK team.
$250—All prizes above, plus a digital print of exclusive art made by Mark Flieg.
$500—All prizes above, plus a physical print shipped to you of Mark’s exclusive art.
$1000—All prizes above, plus participation in a Bungie studio visit with you and a guest, dates scheduled quarterly in 2018/2019 and announced separately to donors after the event concludes.
Note: All travel and hotel accommodations are the sole responsibility of the donor.
$2000—All prizes above, plus your own piece of custom concept art, featuring you, created by Mark Flieg
This year marks our 5th anniversary of the Gauntlet Tabletop Fundraiser. On Sunday, May 20, Team Bungie will compete in a tournament against 20 other local gaming studios and tabletop aficionados to raise funds for Wellspring Family Services. They’re a local organization that has been working to build emotionally healthy, self-sufficient families and a nonviolent community for over 120 years. Your donations help them reach that goal and embolden our team with Power-Ups that will help us win the tournament. Head to our team’s Donation Page to commit your support on or before May 20!
Debating between donating to Men in Kilts or the Gauntlet? Once you see these backer rewards, you’ll want to donate to both!
$10—Vote on a local charity where the Gauntlet Tabletop team can volunteer.
$50—Receive an unannounced new exclusive emblem at the beginning of Season 4.
Exact distribution date to be announced to all donors via email in the future.
$100—The prize above, plus a “programmer art” caricature of you—we can’t guarantee it’ll be good, but it will be funny!
An email containing a deadline for photo submissions will be sent to donors at the end of the event. No photos will be accepted after the deadline has passed.
$500—All prizes above, plus a 1 ½-hour Destiny gameplay session with one of our developers.
$1000—All prizes above, plus participation in an exclusive virtual Pentathlon Puzzle Hunt.
Every year during the Bungie Pentathlon, teams at Bungie compete to solve a series of puzzles the fastest to win honor and glory. This year we are putting together an exclusive virtual puzzle-hunt for donors.
You and up to 12 of your friends will be invited to participate against other donors who’ve contributed over $1000. Date and time subject to Bungie and donor availability.
Whatever clan donates the most will be featured on Bungie.net.
A survey will be sent to all donors at the end of the event requesting clan names. The winning clan will be contacted regarding their feature upon final determination.
If we reach $77k as a team, we will create a video of employees performing an emote of your choice.
An email will be sent to all donors at the end of the event with a survey of emotes.
This is your chance to be a hero in real life—and maybe even score some sweet loot.
Rain Delay
Last week, we discovered a late-breaking bug that was going to cause issues with the upcoming 6v6 Iron Banner. We decided to postpone the event and replace it with Rumble. We have resolved the issue with 6v6 Iron Banner, and it will be going live at 10 AM PDT on April 17. The details posted in last week’s TWAB are still true for the upcoming Iron Banner. Sorry for the last-minute schedule changes. We look forward to watching players participate in 6v6 action for the first time in Destiny 2. We will be on hand to gather your feedback. Make Lord Saladin proud.
Scan and Repair
Whatever the issue, the Destiny Player Support team is always there to make sure you have the information you need.
This is their report.
Tower Vendor Issues
This week, Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.1.4.1 addressed issues where players were unable to spawn into the Tower. Since release, we have been closely monitoring the #Help forum for reports of issues and have found that vendors sometimes take up to 30 seconds to spawn. We have forwarded these reports to the appropriate party for investigation.
If you load into a Tower that does not have vendors present, please post a report to the #Help forum noting how long it took for the vendors to appear.
Destiny 2 PC Crash Troubleshooting
In Destiny 2 on PC, players who encounter issues with installed game files should try running the Scan and Repair tool in the Battle.net app. In some cases, players may repeatedly receive an error directing them to use the Scan and Repair tool, but the tool reports “no problems found.” For more information, players should see: Scan and Repair in the Battle.net App.
Additionally, we recommend that players delete their existing CVARS.xml file if they are experiencing issues. This file can be found in: \Users\USER_NAME\Appdata\Roaming\Bungie\DestinyPC\prefs\
PLEASE NOTE: When relaunched, Destiny 2 will generate a fresh CVARS.xml file. This will revert all custom player settings in Destiny 2 to their defaults. For more information, please see our CVARS knowledge base article.
We’ll Always Have Paris
It’s time for the movies. Grab your popcorn and candy of choice, and please take a seat. Before we get to the main attraction, I’m going to give a quick explanation of how this works. Players send in their submissions via the creations page. We pick our favorites. Anyone showcased here gets an emblem. Just please make sure you include your player name in the description of the video so we know who to give them to.
All right, on to the winners.
Movie of the Week: Destiny 2 Sound Swap
[embedded content]
Honorable Mention: Darkness
[embedded content]
Here are last week’s top scores for the Nightfall. This one was close, with only a 281 point difference between first and second place.
Our next update is only a month away. We’ll have more info to share with you before then. Keep an eye on this blog as well as our upcoming stream on April 24.
Windows 10 means big changes for the future of Xbox
Microsoft made a lot of sweeping statements yesterday about what it wants for the future of Xbox and Windows. We don't like broad statements here at Engadget; we like specifics. Good news! We've broken down the aforementioned statements into the stuff that really matters: how you will be affected by the upcoming launch of Windows 10, specifically as it pertains to the game console you own and the PC you use for games. We've got answers on everything from in-home game streaming to Xbox's biggest games heading to the PC, so head below for a beat-by-beat breakdown of what yesterday's big announcements mean for the future of the Xbox platform as we know it.
PC GAME STREAMING ON XBOX ONE, AND VICE VERSA
HALO, GEARS OF WAR, FORZA AND MORE, ALL ON YOUR PC
Quote: Microsoft announces Xbox One game streaming to Windows PC and tablets At its Windows 10 event today, Microsoft announced that its Windows 10 Xbox app will support game streaming from the Xbox One console. That means that Windows 10 PCs and tablets will be able to stream games from an Xbox One console.
Microsoft has added a special feature to Set Scheduled Themes on Xbox One so that users can switch between the two themes easily. Once you enable the feature, the operating system changes the themes from light to dark depending upon sunlight all by itself. For the time being, it is available in the Xbox One Alpha Ring. Even if you are not a part of it, wait for a while as it will roll out for everyone shortly. We are here today to discuss the way to Set Scheduled Themes on Xbox One. Let’s proceed with the procedure first.
How to Set Scheduled Themes on Xbox One
On the eve of 2017, Microsoft added the Light theme in the console. This theme differs from the Dark one as it favors the white and light colors in order to enhance the visibility in bright sunlight. On the other hand, the Dark theme makes the visibility smooth after sunset using black and dark shades. Enabling the Scheduled Theme on Xbox console is rather an easy task and users can accomplish it through its Settings. As we cannot do the Sunrise and sunset mapping for a specific region accurately, users need to set the time of start and stop manually. Here are the steps to do so.
Step-1: On the Xbox One, go to the Settings and then navigate to Personalization.
Step-2: Click on Theme & motion form following page, and quickly reach out to System theme drop-down menu.
Step-3: From the list, select Scheduled. The system will prompt you to input the Start time for the light theme. Set the time in the specific field as well as set the end time for the same. Thus, the dark theme will be enabled once system matches the current time with the end time.
This guideline will enable schedules theme on Xbox one console. Therefore, it will shift between the two themes at the time set by you.
Conclusion
Scheduled Theme is a complementary feature introduced by Microsoft. Light theme enhances the visibility of daylight as the system uses more white and brightness. On contrary, Dark theme reduces the brightness and utilizes black and grey color in order to increase visibility when it’s dark. Microsoft set another exemplary milestone with the introduction of settings to Set Scheduled Themes on Xbox One. This feature is now available for the limited number of users having the latest Xbox insider program. This is so simple and easy to implement on your device. Upon proper execution, you can have automatic changing of the theme when the clock reaches to set time.
This is known as the Christmas lights or FRAG frequent red and green error.
Most of the time the screen is blank and if you were doing work recently such as modchipping this could be caused by solder splashes on the mobo or a shot MCPX chip. Removing the MCPX chip is impossible without very expensive equipment so if you can't find any solder splashes or you weren't soldering on the board junk the whole board.
Solid Green However you have no audio video or eject functions -
This is usually has to do with a blown or improperly flashed TSOP bios check the board for solder splashes or wire bridges those people at the xbox linux project found a way to reflash your TSOP and if you see wires or solder from wires removed the TSOP either is linux ready or was destroyed in the attempt you can try and install a modchip if you see no signs of the latter and you should be good as new.
Solid Green However you have no audio video but you can eject -
Well this problem is usually caused by a bad AV cables replace the AV cables and you should be fine.
Orange and Green Flashing -
Well this error is specifically telling you the xbox can't find an AV cable connected to this unit if you do have one then odds are your AV cable is damaged (a frayed or damaged wire). Replace your AV cables and your good to go.
Orange Flashing -
If you've just finished modchiping check the board for solder splashes and remove any you find. This error usually only occurs with novice solderers that don't practice first and pick an expensive board to learn on. Get out your desoldering braid and clear any splashes you find.
Orange/Red Flashing -
You've got a better chance of hitting the lottery then having this code but it happens during mod attempts check pin 5 on your lpc port for a broken trace if you find one fix it by bridging the break with a wire. You will notice small circular traces where a 30 AWG wire can be inserted find the nearest one towards the beginning of the trace and the end and put a wire and (bridge) them.
![[Image: How-to-Set-Scheduled-Themes-on-Xbox-One-Image-1.jpg]](http://www.howto-connect.com/wp-content/uploads/How-to-Set-Scheduled-Themes-on-Xbox-One-Image-1.jpg)
