News | Bungie.net”> News | Bungie.net”>

PlayStation Xbox Live Battle.net Steam

Jeb has posted a new combat snapshot over on Reddit.

If you missed the original snapshot, you can find it’s Reddit post here.

Below is the post he made, explaining some of the changes made along with how to get this snapshot to try it out.

Feedback for this should be posted on their dedicated feedback page located here: https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/topics/360001335672-Java-Combat-Snapshot

These are the edits in this version:

• Decreased attack speed of swords

• Attacking while crouching will now disable the shield during the attack

• Shields protect against critical attacks again

• Removed auto-attacking by holding the button

• Fixed creative mode bugs

• Fixed scale of the hotbar attack indicator

Some clarifications:

• The theme of the next major update will be announced at MINECON. These combat tests are done in parallel and will be included when they’re good enough (i.e. the next theme is not “combat update”)

• Weapon reach is always active (not only for special attacks), but during special attacks the reach is increased by an additional half a block

• Hold to auto-attack will always be enabled for controller and touch

Installation instructions:

Finding the Minecraft application folder:

• Windows: Press Win+R and type %appdata%.minecraft and press Ok

• Mac OS X: In Finder, in the Go menu, select “Go to Folder” and enter ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft

• Linux: ~/.minecraft or /home/<your username>/.minecraft/

Once you have the launcher set up you can download the server files from there as well.

Cheers!

In site news, you may have noticed that the site is a bit quicker to load (in places). Magic Find has been helping to resolve some of the issues that have plagued the site. They have done some changes which should hopefully mean that the site will load quicker for you and will not have to download as much to get you to your favorite threads.

They have also implemented a change which should fix the long running issue preventing you from viewing your old PMs. If you still have any problems viewing your messages however, please let us know so that we can investigate.

They are still aware of other issues with the site and will be looking at resolving those issues in future updates.

If you notice any problems with the site or have feedback, please let us know in the Forum Discussion and Info section.

Following on from its recent reveal of the Luigi’s Mansion 3 statue, First 4 Figures has now announced its first exclusive PVC statue based on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. As you can see above it’s the princess herself.

Pre-orders for the exclusive edition of this statue are live until 6th December. You’ll have to return to the website to validate your order and confirm your signature edition on Validation Day.

*You must come back to the website on Validation Day, log into your account and VALIDATE your order to confirm your Signature edition.

The estimated release date for this statue is the fourth quarter of this year. Below is a look at all three versions of the statue. The other two will be available at local retailers.

Exclusive Edition – $114.99

The package includes the following:

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Zelda 10″ PVC Painted statue
• Premium Deluxe Box exclusive to First 4 Figures
• Sheikah Slate with LED function
• Base with LED function
• Authentication Card

Product Size:

Statue including base:

• Height – 9.5 inches (24cm)
• Width – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Depth – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Weight – 0.342 KG

Collector’s Edition – $99.99

The package includes the following:-

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Zelda 10″ PVC Painted statue
• Sheikah Slate with LED function
• Base with LED function

Product Size:

• Statue including base:
• Height – 9.5 inches (24cm)
• Width – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Depth – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Weight – 0.342 KG

(Pre-orders available at local retailers)

Standard Edition – $74.99

The package includes the following:-

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Zelda 10″ PVC Painted statue

Product Size:

Statue including base:

• Height – 9 inches (23cm)
• Width – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Depth – 5.6 inches (14cm)
• Weight – 0.248 KG

(Pre-orders available at local retailers)

Will you be pre-ordering one of these statues? Leave a comment below.

Athena sprung from the head of Zeus fully-formed. That’s rad. We wish we could say games emerged from our skulls in the same way, but it’s a much more complex, lengthy process. We thought it would be cool to share the inspiration behind our games, to shed some light on the initial ideas that grew into the fully-formed Party Pack 6 that we are thrilled to bring to Xbox One.

The first thing we agreed upon this year was that we wanted to do a reboot of one of our most-loved games, Trivia Murder Party. And like any self-respecting sequel, it needed to be bigger, better, and even spookier. So we set Trivia Murder Party 2 in a haunted murder hotel. Our murderous host is back and this time he’s saddled with the obligation of running his family business and hosting a trivia murder game. (Can men have it all?!) In addition to the new setting, we packed the game with new minigames and mechanics, including bonus, secret scenes that trigger after certain “gifts” come into play. Because we were building on an existing base, we were able to add exciting new layers that transform the original into an even more murderous labyrinth.

In Dictionarium, we wanted to create a word game where you didn’t need a big vocabulary… or really any vocabulary at all. In each game, we give you a gibberish word and you build a whole dictionary entry around it. By the end of the game, you’ll have a winning definition, a synonym, and an example of it being used in a sentence. When designing this game, we made sure to leave all the power in the hands of (gulp) the players. You can get as silly or serious as you want; there are no right answers. We leaned into the idea that a thousand groups could look at the word “qwop” and come up with a thousand different meanings.

Push the Button actually incubated in the Jackbox offices for years before making its debut in Party Pack 6. We knew we wanted to make a hidden identity game and we kicked around multiple iterations before finally pushing the button on Push the Button. In this game, there are aliens hiding in your midst and you have to eject them from the ship before the timer runs out. Personal questions, moral quandaries, writing tasks and drawing games help you slowly sniff out the aliens. We view it as a spiritual successor to Fakin’ It. But in this version, we raised the stakes all the way into space! When we play this game in our office, people yell things like “I actually AM scared of horses, so I’m NOT an alien!” and that’s how we know it’s working.

You know that lively conversation where you and your friends go around sorting each other into wizard boarding school houses? That’s the inspiration behind Role Models. Our dev team wanted to capture the spirit of those lively discussions, but add a Jackbox-twist to them. In Role Models, you sort your friends into oddly specific archetypes, like which kind of ankle tattoo would each of you be? Choose wisely because you get points when you’re in agreement with the group. In the event of a tie, absurd minigames help settle the record. Editorially, we were inspired to explore areas other than pop culture. For example, “Which of your friends would scream HELP ME MOMMY while skydiving?” That is a real question, so start thinking about it now.

For Joke Boat, our inspiration couldn’t have been more simple: make ‘em laugh, baby! It was important for us, when designing this game, to set the player up for success. Since crafting a one-liner from scratch feels daunting, we have players create them in bite-sized steps. After you choose a classic joke structure and topic, you write the punch line. It’s like Build-A-Bear, except appropriate for all ages. There are even funny catchphrases to help buoy you. You can choose to read your joke out loud, or bury your head in your hands while the game presents it for you. But fret not—we intentionally made the stakes very low by placing you on a terrible cruise ship.

So there you have it. That is what inspired us to make The Jackbox Party Pack 6. We hope you have as much fun playing these games as we did making them! Let us know what you think by sharing your thoughts on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Now that you’ve peeked into our brains, we kindly ask you to leave. There are just some thoughts we don’t want you to see.

Thomas Grip thinks a lot about monsters. As the creative director at Frictional Games, developers of horror games including Amnesia: The Dark Descent and most recently Soma, he has substantial sway in how his studio’s creatures look and behave.

Grip shares his fascinating approach to creating the unique monsters of recent existential nightmare, Soma. Not everything went as planned, or came out as expected…

What were some guidelines you had in mind when designing the monsters of Soma?

The first thing about the monster design was that they should relate to the theme somehow—that the monsters were put there for a reason. They should make you think about the story. We also wanted to create monsters that put players on edge, and that boosted their imaginations a bit.

Those were the design cornerstones, but the ideas about the monsters did evolve from the start, because we weren’t really sure how to do the monsters at the start. We weren’t sure how the experience would flow, because there was a lot of testing going on. What we ended up with are monsters that are thematic and put players on edge. That set the framework for the monster design.

Thomas Grip creating horrific monsters

Going through the playtesting, how did playtesters react to the different iterations of monsters, and how did you adapt to that in development?

One of the first ideas that emerged with the monster encounters–around alpha time, or even vertical slice time which is about three years ago–was to get players to feel really uncertain in monsters’ behaviors, as to whether the monsters were hostile or not.

There are some floating robots that we spent weeks on that had this behavior, but they only showed up for a minute or two in the game. [laughs] The idea was that the players would be curious enough to approach monsters, but also be a little bit afraid—that they might keep their distance and watch how [the monsters] reacted.

But it turns out that players didn’t react like that at all. Either they ran straight up to the monsters, which triggered this aggressive behavior, or they’d stay away from them and not really notice them at all.

“It’s that ambiguity that I wanted to convey more in the creatures. But it turned out to be a harder problem than we thought.”

So you didn’t have any of this interesting middle ground where people started to second-guess the monsters at all. So that was all in vain. We then switched gears on the monster design so that they were either really docile or pretty aggressive instead. We had to sort of polarize enemies a little more than before. I’m not sure what went wrong, but I think one thing we missed out on is the narrative bit–that maybe the monsters should’ve spoken clearly, that the monsters should’ve had more foreboding behavior so that players knew what to expect.

But yeah, that was one of the big findings from playtesting, that we had to polarize the monster behavior.

Whether or not the monster design turned out as you initially intended, it’s interesting that you considered prodding a feeling of curiosity about the monsters. I think a lot of times, as a player, you obviously want to stay away from the monsters, or obviously kill them. It’s rare that you’re drawn in by a monster out of curiosity.

Hitting the grey zone of how players approach monsters is a very big part of the game. Not just from an enemy standpoint—which didn’t turn out as good as I hoped—but from a story standpoint, an ethical standpoint, we wanted players to think, “this robot is screaming…am I going to care about it? Or am I ok with that?” Or if you do something that hurts a robot…should you keep doing that?

It’s that ambiguity that I wanted to convey more in the creatures. But it turned out to be a harder problem than we thought.

You said before that the way your team did monster AI in this game was a risky approach. Why was it risky, and what would’ve been a less risky approach?

One aspect that we talked already about was ambiguity [in theme]. But another thing that also has to do with ambiguity is ambiguity in behavior.

The idea was that if you have fast enough behavior that still follows some strict—yet still fuzzy—rules, the player is going to project a lot more intelligence and intent behind the monsters than what actually exists.

We wanted to make sure monster mechanics weren’t like the ghosts from Super Mario where [encounters] became very obvious gameplay objects, in which you try and optimize your path through them as much as possible. Rather, we wanted players to be constantly unsure whether or not they’re doing the right thing.

“If it’s too mechanical, it’s a very uninteresting, systemic feel. And if it’s too random, monster interactions will be a haze that the player can’t make sense of.”

Doing that turned out to be really, really hard! Because the balance you have to have is that if you go to far on the mechanical side, they become gameplay objects. And that’s no fun anymore, because the fear of the unknown is something you want to draw a lot of your horror from. On the other hand, if monster behavior becomes too unknown, then the player has no idea what’s happening with the monsters, and they become an annoyance.

“Can the player make a mental model of them?”: that’s what you always want to be doing, and you always want the richest possible mental models of a monster in a player’s mind as you can have—meaning you want their imagination to be as wild as possible.

But if it’s too mechanical, it’s a very uninteresting, systemic feel. And if it’s too random, monster interactions will be a haze that the player can’t make sense of. So that was the risk.

Some players had one good encounter—some had all good encounters. And it varied which monsters were considered “good” [experience-wise]. Overall, we didn’t hit a good amount of players getting the right kind of experience, even though some players got a perfect experience all the way through.

The thing I’m thinking of is how to fix this. We could’ve made the monsters a little bit better. But then I also think that if we went a safer route, the players who said they had a perfect [monster experience] might not have had such a good experience.

It’s very hard! And it’s an interesting design problem. Am I good with 30 percent of players having a 10 out of 10 experience, or am I ok with no one having a 10 out of 10 experience, but having 60 percent have an 8 out of 10 experience? That’s the risk we took.

Something at the end of the hallway…

How much of this player data that you collected even applicable to future designs?

We’re a bit unsure. One thing that we relied a lot on was to get a lot of gameplay from ‘nothing.’ Just hearing the noises, being in a room wondering where a monster might come from, and seeing the player react told us whether or not we had enough behaviors, enough narrative stuff going on that that would be exciting for players.

Some [long-time horror game] players liked this approach, and some thought, “Auughhh, this is getting boring for me, hiding from monsters is getting old for me!” Whereas other players who’ve not played a horror game since Amnesia thought, “This is awesome!”

“You always want the richest possible mental models of a monster in a player’s mind as you can have—meaning you want their imagination to be as wild as possible.”

Going forward, I think it’s time to leave this “wait-and-run” behavior a bit behind and see what more we can do instead.

You’ve done horror with no combat—do you think you could do horror with no monsters?

Yeah, we kind of already did in Soma. [Ed. note: A certain level in the game plays with this concept.]

Yeah, though I wonder if that’s something sustainable design-wise throughout an entire game, because the fear is still of monsters, although in the anticipation of monsters.

That level was inspired by a staircase simulator, in which all you do is walk down a staircase—that’s the entire game. There’s something about just strolling down that makes it really creepy, especially if you read about the SCP and you know that something’s lurking down there.

But I had trouble getting to the end of that game because nothing happened. My anticipation just kept building and building and building, and it was one of the few games where I’m like, “Fuck, I am not sure if I can handle going down more.” It was just a stupid staircase!

So [in Soma], the idea was to do something similar…where you’re going forward instead. That level was another risk—it was a lot [more difficult] before. From early playtesting we found that players either thought it was the best thing in the whole game, or they hated it. It was almost 50/50.

You brought up that maybe it’s time to move on from this “hide-and-seek” horror game design. Then where does it go?

I have some ideas right now. It’s about expanding upon the things we tried out but that didn’t work. I think we can make them work. The important part is that you don’t want to make things too gameplay-focused.

There are two things that you can do: One, you need to have monsters that still have a lot of unknown to them, but still rely on the player being an active [participant]. The player needs agency in how the encounters play out.

The other thing is that players should have more options in how they go about the way they play. You see it a bit in games like Alien: Isolation where you have crafting and tools to lure the alien in. I think more stuff like that, where the player isn’t just reactive to the horror, but is able to make plans, and have a lot of ways to move forward, [is a design path]. So basically, the players are active in encounters in a way that’s not just about hiding, but also actively encountering monsters—though without fighting them and looking the monster in its face, in order to preserve an element of the unknown.

 It’s about giving more options in these encounters, rather than doing the old hide-in-the-closet trick.

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is Now Available for Pre-Purchase on Steam!

Monster Hunter: World, the game that brought you a new style of hunting action, is about to get even bigger with the massive Monster Hunter World: Iceborne expansion!

Pre-purchase now to receive the Yukumo Layered Armor Set* free!

*Layered armor only changes your character’s appearance. It does not include any weapons.

NeoAxis 2019.3 was just released.  NeoAxis is a free C# powered 3D game engine with an editor capable of targeting Windows and UWP platforms currently with more planned in the roadmap.  The 2019.3 release brings several major new features such as a new terrain system and a built in 3D building for assembling geometry directly inside the game engine.

Details from the changelog:

• API of the engine and the editor have been updated. Now they are considered complete.
• Terrain.
• Builder 3D. Fast level creation tools, 3D modeling tools, constructive solid geometry operations.
• Three ways to create objects in the scene are now available: Drag & Drop, By Click, By Brush.
• Tools for creation a huge amount of objects.
• Surface component. A definition of surface type which contains material, set of meshes and other objects. Surfaces are used for painting and object creation by means brush.
• Group Of Objects component. An object in a scene designed to store and display a large number of similar objects.
• Decals.
• Material: Advanced blending. The ability to configure which channels to write to the G-Buffer. Used for decals.
• Per-object motion blur.
• Smooth LOD transition.
• Area component. Represents an area in space defined by the set of points.
• Layers in the scene.
• Package manager has been added.
• Support for creating a build for the target platform has been improved. Now scripts and engine add-ons are supported. The process of creating a build is simplified. The page about build in manual has been added.
• Build for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) has been improved.
• Engine DLL assemblies management has been improved. Now unnecessary assemblies are not loaded into the simulation, thereby reducing the load on garbage collector.
• C# Editor: Work with CS files has been improved. Now changes are synchronized between files. Now there are no invalid warning markers.
• C# Editor: The ability to customize the visibility of markers has been added.
• Occlusion query API has been added.
• Lens flares now use occlusion queries to detect visibility on the screen.
• Lens flares now appear and disappear smoothly.
• The ability to change video mode, fullscreen mode, vertical sync in the player app.
• Editor: Tool tips for events.
• Editor: Many small fixes.
• Material Editor: Access to TexCoord 2 and 3 from the shader editor.
• Material Editor: DitherBlending function.
• Objects Window: Search.
• Scene Editor: Select same objects in sphere area by mouse double click.
• Vignetting screen effect: Noise.
• Bug fix: Physics: No collision between soft bodies and rigid mesh shapes.
• Bug fix: Scene Editor: Unable to detach the object when it contains collision body.
• Bug fix: Screen Space Reflection effect fixed.

You can learn more about the release and see NeoAxis in action in the video below.

GameDev News C# Engine

Review

By Andrew O’Hara
Saturday, October 26, 2019, 09:00 am PT (12:00 pm ET)

If you want to not only protect your AirPods but to also transform them into a quirky 1984 Macintosh, then the Elago AW3 is your new best friend.

Elago AW3 AirPods case

Just launched, the AW3 is the latest in the accessory-makers lineup of retro Apple designs. The company made headlines a couple of years ago for its line of Mac-inspired Apple Watch chargers that turned the watches display into the screen on a vintage Mac.

Now it’s graduated from Apple Watches and moved on to AirPods.

Elago AW3 AirPods case has easy access to charging port

Cases for AirPods are a bit of a thing at the moment, with new ones seemingly launching each week, but all of the cases we’ve run across are generally different variations of the same design. Kudos to Elago for doing something a bit different.

Elago AW3 AirPods case comes in two pieces

Made from very soft silicone, the AW3 case slides onto your AirPods — first or second-generation — with ease. It is compromised of two separate components, consisting of a top section as a lid for the AirPods charging case and one for the body. The silicone adds a bit of grip, as well as some drop protection.

The front and back of the case are very thin, allowing the pairing button the back to be pressed without removing it, and for the status light on the front to shine through.

Those worried about having to take the extra case off to recharge using wireless charging can rest easy, because it still supports wireless charging while still applied. The silicone actually aids in wireless charging by preventing the AirPods case from sliding around on the charging pad.

Elago AW3 AirPods case

There is something charming about the retro beige design with the iconic script “hello” emblazoned on the front. It is taking one of Apple’s newest and most iconic product designs — the AirPods — and meshing it with the equally iconic 1984 iMac.

All that, coupled with the relatively low price tag, we are sure many people will take to the unique Elago AW3 case.

Pros

• Quirky design
• Protective silicone
• Status light and button still function

Cons

• Top can easily come off
• Must like the retro design

Rating: 4 out of 5

Where to buy

You can pick up the Elago AW3 silicone AirPods case on Amazon for $13.

In healthcare and life sciences, advances in research and technology development are providing a deeper understanding of human health and leading to more effective ways to prevent and treat disease. At the same time, the shifting landscape of the business of healthcare, including changes in policy and new business models, has created disruption and uncertainty for health providers, insurers, and, most of all, for patients.

At the heart of both this promise and this uncertainty is data. Twenty years ago, much less than 20 percent of healthcare records existed in digital form. Today, that number stands at better than 98 percent – a remarkable digitization of an entire industry. This massive shift to digital creates an opportunity to use cloud computing, AI, and a host of other advanced digital technologies to usher in a new era of profound and powerful insights about human health. But to realize this opportunity, we need to make all that data usable.

It’s relatively easy to find interesting datasets that may contain important insights for human health. People and organizations engage with us every day to explore promising ideas about how to turn their datasets into better outcomes, better experiences, and lower costs. The potential is pretty amazing, but converting these opportunities into action is surprisingly difficult and time-consuming. There are still many barriers that must be overcome before the impact of AI can be made real, including information systems that are difficult to manage, incompatible data standards, inconsistent privacy regulations, and conflicting commercial incentives.

One of our most important commitments is to work with partners from across the healthcare industry and in governments to eliminate these barriers and make it much easier for healthcare innovators everywhere to be successful. The good news is that real progress is being made. Today, I am excited to provide an update on some of the work Microsoft is involved in that is helping to make that progress possible.

Partnerships

One thing that’s clear to all of us is that healthcare is so complex, and the issues so broad, that the best way to move forward is through partnerships with people and organizations that have deep expertise in every aspect of healthcare research, analysis, and delivery.

One example is our relationship with the Walgreens Boots Alliance, the largest retail pharmacy, health and daily living destination across the United States and Europe. With more than 75 percent of the U.S. population now living within five miles of a Walgreens, there is an important opportunity to extend care to where it is most convenient. One way we’re doing this is by working together to develop cloud AI platforms to integrate information across healthcare providers, pharmacies, and payers in ways that create personalized, community-based care networks. Central to our partnership is a focus on connecting people to healthcare services through their digital devices to support preventative self-care and reduce emergency room visits.

In July, we launched a new partnership with one of the largest health systems in the United States, Providence. We’re accelerating the adoption of data-driven clinical and operational decision-making by developing new tools and solutions that use Azure and the FHIR interoperability standard to integrate disconnected data sources. Building on this foundation, we’re working together to create a flagship “clinic of the future” in the Seattle area. We’re also bringing Microsoft’s strength in AI together with Providence’s clinical expertise and data to develop natural language processing tools to assist in cancer care.

For the past two years, we have been working intensively with our partners at Adaptive Biotechnologies on a major effort to decode the human immune system by coupling Adaptive’s advanced immune system sequencing technology with our large-scale machine learning capabilities to develop a map of T-cell receptor repertoires to disease states. While this is something close to a “moonshot” effort, we are increasingly convinced that real diagnostic and therapeutic results are possible in the near term. As part of this, it has been exciting to see Adaptive’s business success follow the trajectory of our joint science and technology success.

Earlier this month, we announced a groundbreaking alliance that will combine Microsoft’s advanced AI technology and the deep life sciences expertise of Novartis to address the challenges that make it so costly and time-consuming to develop new treatments. One of the most important goals of this multi-year alliance is to empower Novartis associates at every level of the organization to wrangle and share important datasets and then use AI to analyze information, and speed the discovery of new treatments, even if they aren’t data scientists by training.

Just recently, we’ve shared news of two more major partnerships. The first, with Nuance Communications, will see our two companies work together to transform the exam room by deploying ambient clinical intelligence solutions that capture, with patient consent, interactions between clinicians and patients so that clinical documentation writes itself. The goal is to empower caregivers to focus more on patients by dramatically reducing the burden of documenting doctor-patient visits.

The second is a seven-year partnership with Humana to use data and AI to enable a more holistic, value-based approach to healthcare delivery. Together we will create predictive solutions and intelligent automation to support more personalized care and help patients follow treatment plans and medication schedules. With a more longitudinal view of a person’s health, including the use of intelligent home health solutions that use voice technologies, we hope that Humana will better address factors that influence health outcomes.

Products

Working together with researchers and industry partners, we’re also moving forward to create a broad range of cloud-based tools and solutions that touch many aspects of the development and delivery of effective care.

As part of our ongoing commitment to making health data more easily accessible, we just announced the general availability of the Azure API for FHIR. FHIR is quickly becoming the preferred standard for exchanging electronic health information and enabling the management of PHI data in the cloud. A rapidly growing number of healthcare delivery and healthcare technology companies are already using the Azure API for FHIR to improve interoperability within their own IT systems, including Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) of the NHS, Darena Solutions, Northwell Health, and Humana. With the release of the Azure API for FHIR, Microsoft is the first cloud with a fully-managed, enterprise-grade service for health data in the FHIR format.

Earlier this month, we released Cromwell on Azure, an open-source project on GitHub from Microsoft Genomics that provides scientific workflow management for genetic analysis. There is so much promising genomics-powered research underway right now, including the work St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Seattle Children’s Hospital are doing with the Microsoft Genomics service to gain a better understanding of pediatric cancers and how genetic variations contribute to infant mortality. It is extremely gratifying to have the opportunity to support these important initiatives.

And earlier this year, building on the Microsoft Healthcare Bot Service, we announced a new technology to help patients learn about clinical drug trials and enable researchers to find people to participate in clinical trials. It was an honor to have our clinical trials work included in the U.S. White House Presidential Innovation Fellows program.

People

Improving healthcare also demands a great team that understands the challenges that the healthcare industry faces and brings the right combination of expertise, passion, and insight. Over the last six months, we’ve added a number of the industry’s most talented and dedicated leaders to Microsoft’s healthcare leadership team, beginning with Dr. Gregory Moore, who joined Microsoft last spring as Corporate Vice President, Health Technology and Alliances. A neuroradiologist, researcher, engineer, and former Geisinger Health clinician, he is leading our research and development partnerships that focus on next-generation healthcare technologies and experiences.

This summer we were fortunate to recruit Dr. David Rhew to serve as Microsoft’s Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Healthcare. David came to Microsoft from Samsung where he led the company’s healthcare initiatives. An adjunct professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, David is a computer scientist who holds six U.S. patents related to healthcare technology and he was recently named one of Modern Healthcare’s 50 most influential clinical executives.

I’m very excited to welcome the newest member of our leadership team, Lisa Maki, who joined the company two weeks ago. As General Manager of Health Alliance Formation, she’ll play a central role in identifying new opportunities for strategic partnerships. Lisa is a highly respected technologist and entrepreneur. The startups she has founded have been unique in harnessing deep knowledge of the mechanics of data and data connections in the healthcare industry, making them remarkably impactful and successful. Most recently, Lisa co-founded and was CEO of PokitDok, a platform for healthcare interoperability including DokChain, one of the first blockchains for healthcare. PokitDok was recently acquired by Change Healthcare.

These leaders join an experienced team of healthcare and technology leaders that includes Heather Cartwright, Vikram Dendi, Jean Gabarra, Dr. Joshua Mandel, Ben Shobert, Desney Tan, Dr. Jim Weinstein, and others.

Looking ahead to the future

As exciting as the past few months have been, I know we’ve really only taken the first few steps to address the challenges in healthcare that we have long dreamed about solving. I believe the work that we are doing now with great people and fantastic partners from across the industry will open the door to new ways to understand human health that we are only beginning to imagine.

In that spirit, I look forward to sharing more news with you in the very near future as we continue to push the boundaries of what technology can do to improve health outcomes for people around the world. At the HLTH conference next week, we’ll share news of another exciting partnership and, hopefully, have a chance to connect with many of you.

Luigi’s green doppelgänger Gooigi was first introduced to us last year in the Luigi’s Mansion remake for Nintendo 3DS.

Since then, this new character’s history has been fleshed out in Professor E. Gadd’s research journals. He’ll also be returning in the upcoming Switch release Luigi’s Mansion 3 next week.

If you’ve grown as fond of this green and gooey blob as we have over the past year, and are tired of wearing the same old costume every Halloween, then this Gooigi mask on the Play Nintendo website might be for you. Above is the mask itself and below is the description:

What happens when you convert Luigi’s biological data into an electrical signal, then input it into a gooey element? You get Gooigi, an exceedingly green copy of Luigi who can help solve puzzles and fight ghosts in the Luigi’s Mansion 3 game. You can make your own Gooigi mask with this printable craft!

All you have to do is download and print the file available from the Play Nintendo website. To assemble this mask, you’ll need some sturdy paper, ribbon or string, tape or glue (optional), a hole punch (optional) and scissors.

Will you be dressing up as Gooigi this Halloween? Leave a comment below.