Kicking off the Indie World Showcase was the premiere of Blue Fire – a 3D action-adventure from the Argentine developer, Robi Studios. It’ll launch first on the Nintendo Switch this summer, as a timed-exclusive.

As the player, you’ll explore the mysterious and “beautiful forgotten kingdom” of Penumbra, while you slash and platform your way through enemies. Discover secrets of the long-forgotten land, explore mystical temples, encounter survivors and take on stage quests to collect valuable items. Below is a look and some of the features you can expect:

A Haunting World – Travel through the perished world of Penumbra to explore unique areas filled with diverse enemies, sharp 3D platforming challenges, quests, collectibles and more.

Slash Your Way Through Great Adversaries – Encounter dangerous enemies with distinct fighting styles and partake in intense combat-platforming boss fights.

Encounter Peculiar Survivors – A long time has passed since Penumbra fell into darkness, but those that survived the kingdom’s fall will aid your journey to unlock valuable rewards.

Collectibles – Once a rich and lush kingdom, Penumbra is filled with many collectibles and items to discover, loot, collect, sell, trade and purchase.

Upgrades – No great warrior can battle the dangers lurking in Penumbra without the proper equipment. Upgrade your swords, collect valuable amulets and unlock new abilities to transform into a fierce fighter.

Lost in the Void – Far from Penumbra, there is a lost land called The Void. Find Void entrances throughout the world to uncover abstract platforming challenges that require great

Do you like the look of Blue Fire? What did you think of it compared to the other Nindies revealed today? Leave a comment below.

In continuing not-GDC news, Unity have just released Unity 2020.1 beta.  This beta continues the trend of moving more and more functionality into packages, including new code performance and analysis tools, support for Visual Studio and VS Code and more.  Additionally 2D physics was improved, raytracing support was added and more.

Details from the Unity blog:

The Unity 2020.1 beta is a milestone in the development cycle of the first TECH stream release this year, one of two 2020 TECH stream releases that lead up to the 2020 Long-Term Support (LTS) release next year.

As a token of our appreciation, everyone who tries out the 2020.1 beta and submits at least one bug report gets a chance to win one of four NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 2080 graphic cards. See the end of this post for details on the prize draw.

On April 20, we will be hosting a webinar for people interested in a guided tour of the features and updates in this beta. You can register here and find more information at the bottom of this post.

To get started, download the Unity 2020.1 beta from the Unity Hub or from our beta page. We recommend that you check out the beta to evaluate the technology while planning your future development, and don’t use it to work on projects that are live or in production. As always, make sure you back up existing projects before you test them with beta and Preview technology. Read our guide for more details.

For more complete details be sure to check out the video below.  If you are interested in the Physics2D samples mentioned in the video, it is available here on GitHub.

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GameDev News Unity

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Sourabh

.NET 5 Preview1 is now available and is ready for evaluation! .NET 5 will be a current release.

Get started

To get started with ASP.NET Core in .NET 5.0 install the .NET 5.0 SDK.

If you’re on Windows using Visual Studio, we recommend installing the latest preview of Visual Studio 2019 16.6.

Upgrade an existing project

To upgrade an existing ASP.NET Core 3.1 app to .NET 5:

• Update the TargetFramework property to netcoreapp5.0
• Update all Microsoft.AspNetCore.* package references to 5.0.0-preview.1.20124.5.
• Update all Microsoft.Extensions.* package references to 5.0.0-preview.1.20120.4.

See the full list of breaking changes in ASP.NET Core 5.0.

That’s it! You should now be all set to use .NET 5.

What’s new?

ASP.NET Core in .NET 5 Preview 1 doesn’t include any major new features just yet, but it does include plenty of minor bug fixes. We expect to announce new features in upcoming preview releases.

See the release notes for additional details and known issues.

Give feedback

We hope you enjoy this release of ASP.NET Core in .NET 5! We are eager to hear about your experiences with this latest .NET 5 release. Let us know what you think by filing issues on GitHub.

Thanks for trying out ASP.NET Core!

By AppleInsider Staff
Tuesday, March 17, 2020, 06:30 pm PT (09:30 pm ET)

Fox became the latest major media corporation to step into the world of streaming on Tuesday with its all-cash acquisition of Tubi, an ad-supported service that hosts a variety of popular television series and movies.

Under terms of the deal, which was financed in large part with funds Fox gained through a sale of its stake in Roku, Tubi will remain a separate entity and retain current CEO Farhad Massoudi, reports The Wrap.

With a user base of 25 million people as of December, Tubi offers a range of movies and television shows from partners including Lionsgate, MGM and Paramount. Fox plans to leverage the platform for its own content, though the creation of originals, a mainstay of streaming leaders like Netflix, is not currently planned.

“Tubi will immediately expand our direct-to-consumer audience and capabilities and will provide our advertising partners with more opportunities to reach audiences at scale,” said Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch. “Importantly, coupled with the combined power of Fox’s existing networks, Tubi provides a substantial base from which we will drive long-term growth in the direct-to-consumer arena.”

Fox’s acquisition follows similar moves from entertainment companies looking to take a slice of the booming streaming segment. Most companies are concentrating on subscription-based offerings, though some are experimenting with free-to-stream services. For example, ViacomCBS purchased Pluto TV for $340 million in 2019, while Comcast acquired Xumo in February. Sony also offers an ad-supported product in Crackle.

Tubi content can be streamed on the web and on a number of portable and set-top device operating systems, including iOS and tvOS, via native apps.

The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Fedora 32 Beta, the next step towards our planned Fedora 32 release at the end of April.

Download the prerelease from our Get Fedora site:

• Get Fedora 32 Beta Workstation
• Get Fedora 32 Beta Server

Or, check out one of our popular variants, including KDE Plasma, Xfce, and other desktop environments, as well as images for ARM devices like the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3:

• Get Fedora 32 Beta Spins
• Get Fedora 32 Beta Labs
• Get Fedora 32 Beta ARM

Beta Release Highlights

Fedora Workstation

New in Fedora 32 Workstation Beta is EarlyOOM enabled by default. EarlyOOM enables users to more quickly recover and regain control over their system in low-memory situations with heavy swap usage. Fedora 32 Workstation Beta also enables the fs.trim timer by default, which improves performance and wear leveling for solid state drives.

Fedora 32 Workstation Beta includes GNOME 3.36, the newest release of the GNOME desktop environment. It is full of performance enhancements and improvements. GNOME 3.36 adds a Do Not Disturb button in the notifications, improved setup for parental controls and virtualization, and tweaks to Settings. For a full list of GNOME 3.36 highlights, see the release notes.

Other updates

Fedora 32 Beta includes updated versions of many popular packages like Ruby, Python, and Perl. It also includes version 10 of the popular GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). We also have the customary updates to underlying infrastructure software, like the GNU C Library. For a full list, see the Change set on the Fedora Wiki.

Testing needed

Since this is a Beta release, we expect that you may encounter bugs or missing features. To report issues encountered during testing, contact the Fedora QA team via the mailing list or in the #fedora-qa channel on IRC Freenode. As testing progresses, common issues are tracked on the Common F32 Bugs page.

For tips on reporting a bug effectively, read how to file a bug.

What is the Beta Release?

A Beta release is code-complete and bears a very strong resemblance to the final release. If you take the time to download and try out the Beta, you can check and make sure the things that are important to you are working. Every bug you find and report doesn’t just help you, it improves the experience of millions of Fedora users worldwide! Together, we can make Fedora rock-solid. We have a culture of coordinating new features and pushing fixes upstream as much as we can. Your feedback improves not only Fedora, but Linux and free software as a whole.

More information

For more detailed information about what’s new on Fedora 32 Beta release, you can consult the Fedora 32 Change set. It contains more technical information about the new packages and improvements shipped with this release.

Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner, No More Robots advisor), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.

The latest highlights include intelligent impressions on a mass of new titles, including Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Call Of Duty Warzone, and Nioh 2, as well as great writing on pixel pets, bullet painting in GTA V, Kabaddi, dev crunch, and lots more besides.

Weird week, huh? Let’s keep on keeping on, especially since a lot of people are going to be looking at their computers and phones more over the next few weeks. Oh – and don’t forget we’re doing a GDC virtual streaming week this week in place of the actual event, with the full IGF/Game Developers Choice Awards, a Day Of The Devs showcase, & a ton of remotely recorded talks. Hurray?

Until next time…
– Simon, curator.]

——————
 
The Man Behind The Mustache (Bijan Stephen / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“Currently, the Doc is in a nondescript building in Glendale, California. Over the course of two days, the cockpit of a helicopter has taken shape in the middle of a very large soundstage, an assemblage of ‘80s-era buttons and dials and a generous amount of black paint. It’s all because Doc is here to shoot a hype video for his latest announcement: he’s re-signed to Twitch for an exclusive two-year contract — for a lot of money. [SIMON’S NOTE: excellent longform Dr Disrespect streamer profile.]”

Murder by Numbers Review: Ace Attorney Meets Picross! (First Five / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Murder by Numbers sets up a straightforward pitch: An Ace Attorney-esque visual novel that spruces up its inspiration’s investigation segments with some actual gameplay more riveting than clicking around a screen adventure game-style. And then it goes about…fantastically delivering exactly that without any additional muss or fuss!”

Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego? (David Craddock & Frank Cifaldi / Video Game History Foundation – ARTICLE)
“You all know Carmen Sandiego, but do you know about her most obscure caper? Back in 1989 – somewhere between her jetsetting adventures Where in Europe and her chrono-conquest in Where in Time, Carmen took an odd detour to the Peace Garden State – North Dakota. When I discovered the game decades later as a minor footnote on Wikipedia, I couldn’t help but be intrigued.”

Call Of Duty: Warzone is the best battle royale since Fortnite (Gene Park / Washington Post – ENHANCED ARTICLE)
“Warzone is a unique Call Of Duty take on battle royale. Specifically, it’s a battle royale game where I don’t have time to be bored. [SIMON’S NOTE: interesting ‘text snippets x gameplay video’ format for this review.]”

The Ars 13: Our top indie game picks from PAX East 2020 (Kyle Orland & Sarah Leboeuf / Ars Technica – ARTICLE)
“Playing every indie game at a modern PAX East would take multiple weeks; a four-day show just doesn’t offer enough time to take it all in. But we did our best, sampling from a wide variety of the most interesting indie prospects. Here, in alphabetical order, are 13 indie games that stood out from the PAX East crowd.”

Valorant: How Riot finally made something new (Austen Goslin / Polygon – ARTICLE)
“But while Riot will soon be publicly earning the “s” in its name, the truth is that it’s actually been there for a lot longer than players might think — the studio just didn’t tell anyone. During a recent visit to Riot’s headquarters in Los Angeles, I was able to hear how Valorant’s long and winding development process started, from the developers who have been there every step of the way.”

The Wild Astrophysics that Outer Wilds Simulates (Super Bunnyhop / YouTube – VIDEO)
“[SIMON’S NOTE: Here’s a comment on the video which explains things well: ‘I love how this guy can hop from journalism and mechanical/thematic analyses to full on physics (complete with Carl Sagan cosplay). The amount of effort and pure intelligence that goes into his videos is amazing.'”]

Pixel Pets: How game developers bring animals to life (Stacey Henley / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“Research is one of the pleasures of my work. It makes me appreciate the world around me in new ways,” Emma Richey, the art director for the upcoming Shelter 3 told me. “We’ve studied the anatomy, habitats, motions and sounds for inspiration. Yet, our intentions have never been to create realistic animal simulators, but instead emotional journeys, told through the eyes of animals.

‘Dreams’ Is So Much Weirder and More Interesting Than Video Game Remakes (Patrick Klepek / VICE – ARTICLE)
“I had no interest in The Algorithm. If it was possible, I’d sort Dreams not by “most liked” but by “least liked,” because I’ve been primarily interested in discovering what people are creating that’s either being ignored or created without the explicit purpose of being popular. I want to see what seven-year-old kids are getting up to when they’re supposed to be asleep.”

Ori and the Will of the Wisps review: A natural beauty (Kyle Orland / Ars Technica – ARTICLE)
“The most striking thing about Will of the Wisps, though, is how it maintains a feeling of near-overwhelming threat despite Ori’s inexorable rise in power. Even as your abilities increase, Ori remains a very small force working against a sprawling and uncaring universe.”

Finding Workarounds: Bosnian Video Games & Development (Cloth Map / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Despite many setbacks, Bosnian development studio Prime Time has learned to thrive in the aftermath of war.”

The authors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre were roleplaying long before Dungeons & Dragons (Jody McGregor / Dicebreaker – ARTICLE)
“Branwell Brontë owned a collection of miniatures any Warhammer player would be proud of, and when his father brought home 12 toy soldiers as a birthday present he shared them with his three sisters. Each sibling chose a miniature and named them. They became Bonaparte, Gravey, Waiting Boy and the Duke of Wellington, and were the first inhabitants of a land eventually dubbed the Glass Town Confederacy and sketched out by Branwell on a map that needs only a hex grid to look at home in a tabletop RPG supplement.”

Killing Me Softly: The Insidious Beauty of Dying Game Worlds (Sean Martin / EGM Now – ARTICLE)
“If anything, our love of post-apocalypses reflects an abdication of responsibility, a wish to skip over the ending and find a brave new world waiting for us. But as a “quiet apocalypse,” van Lierop’s The Long Dark, insists on giving us a slow, beautiful death.”

The rise of impossibly cute and wholesome games (Khee Hoon Chan / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“There has been a boom in popularity for titles like Frog Detective lately; these are often quirky, relaxing, comical, perhaps a tad absurd, and devastatingly adorable. Think of the whimsical adventures in Wattam, the charming bite-sized games by the Sokpop Collective, the relaxing hiking trips in A Short Hike, and the dreamy farm sim of Garden Story.”

The Fragile Art of Bullet Painting in Grand Theft Auto V (Jack Yarwood / Fanbyte – ARTICLE)
“For most players, the walls of Los Santos are unremarkable. A dull patchwork of greys and whites, they blur into the background without any need for recognition. But for a small group of digital artists, these same walls are blank canvases waiting to be painted. Their art implement of choice: Grand Theft Auto V’s vast assortment of weaponry.”

The Mysterious Origins of Mastermind, the Codebreaking Board Game (Duncan Fyfe / VICE – ARTICLE)
“If you only know Mastermind as a well-worn and underplayed fixture of living room closets and nursing home common areas, you may have no idea just how big this thing was in its early years. Invented in 1970, Mastermind would sell 30 million copies before that decade was up, and boast a national championship at the Playboy Club, a fan in Muhammed Ali, official use by the Australian military for training, and 80% ownership amongst the population of Denmark.”

Descenders ‘Rewards’ Pirating Gamers With a Fitting Flag (Ernesto / TorrentFreak – ARTICLE)
“RageSquid, the studio behind the downhill biking game “Descenders” has come up with a unique feature for players who pirated the game. To “reward” the efforts of release groups such as SKIDROW and CODEX, it has pimped their bikes with an unremovable pirate flag.”

Nioh 2 and the annoying joy of fighting through a puzzle game (Dave Tach / Polygon – ARTICLE)
“I hold the R1 button down, tap the triangle button on my PlayStation 4 controller, and my Nioh 2 weapon transforms from a blade on a pole into a sickle so large and ornate that the Grim Reaper would blush. This is the Seething Dragon switchglaive in its most powerful (and slowest) form. I’ve gone full scythe because I’m getting desperate.”

As Naughty Dog Crunches On The Last Of Us II, Developers Wonder How Much Longer This Approach Can Last (Jason Schreier / Kotaku – ARTICLE)
“Even in an industry where overtime is ubiquitous, where it’s near-impossible to find a game that isn’t the result of weeks or months of crunch, Naughty Dog stands out. Its games, including the Uncharted adventure series and 2013’s groundbreaking The Last of Us, are widely considered among the best of the best, with ultra-realistic graphical fidelity and the type of meticulous details you wouldn’t see in other games.”

It’s Time You Knew About Kabaddi: The Ancient Game That’s Gone Pro (People Make Games / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Quinns dives headfirst into Kabaddi, India’s fastest-growing sport. [SIMON’S NOTE: Shut Up & Sit Down’s Quinns has joined up with the already great People Make Games to talk about, well, not computer games, and this is the excellent first video.]”

Ashly Burch saves video games by making fun of them (Joshua Rivera / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet isn’t just a great comedy about video games, but a strand connecting an older, weirder era of its culture to the more mainstream world of workplace comedies. Few people on the show exemplify this more than Ashly Burch, a writer on Mythic Quest who also plays Rachel, a wide-eyed game tester for the studio that makes the show’s eponymous game.”

Why the Developers of ‘Amnesia’ Waited 10 Years to Make a Sequel (Patrick Klepek / VICE – ARTICLE)
“I had a chance to spend a few minutes chatting with Frictional co-founder and creative director Thomas Grip earlier this week, and I teased a few details about Rebirth out of him. Most of our conversation, however, was about the big changes Frictional has undertaken since Amnesia blew up, what it’s like to give up micromanagement, how he’s handling Amnesia fans becoming Amnesia developers, and what lessons have been learned about some SOMA players being turned off by the game’s scary enemies.”

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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

Reboot Develop conference organizers confirmed today that the upcoming Reboot Develop Blue event in Croatia will be postponed until the fall due to travel bans and other issues caused by the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

This is the latest in a string of game industry events being postponed or cancelled due (at least in part) to the spread of coronavirus, and the quarantines and travel restrictions being implemented globally to try and contain it.

Reboot Develop Blue was originally slated to kick off in Dubrovnik in late April, but in a post to the Reboot Develop Facebook page today the organizers say it will instead be postponed until October 15th. They also expect to be able to provide attendees more information next week, including further details on how to cancel (and presumably rebook) their accommodations with no penalties.

This comes just days after the ESA cancelled its annual E3 industry trade show due to “increased and overwhelming” coronavirus concerns, though it left open the possibility of doing some sort of streaming show during the week in June E3 was scheduled to take place.

Organizers of the Game Developers Conference confirmed last month that GDC 2020 will be postponed for similar reasons, though some talks planned for the event will be streamed via the GDC Twitch channel next week (when GDC was slated to take place) alongside awards ceremonies for the annual IGF and Game Developers Choice Awards.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent Informa Tech