Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-20-2019, 08:40 AM - Forum: Windows
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5 accessibility features that empower everyone
Empowering everyone means creating technology that reflects human diversity. Many of the features designed for people with disabilities can be used by allbecause they’re created to help make work, life and play easier.
Microsoft’s recentAbility Summit gathered employees and, on its second day, the broader disability communityto participate in sessions, a product exposition and the Disability Talent Job Fair. This included people with disabilities, parents of children with disabilities, and accessibility-focused engineers, specialists and organizations.
Here’s a glimpse atfive features highlighted during this year’s Ability Summit and accessibility product exposition.
Set your visual tone Your screen should fit your vision needs, including color, light and filter optimizations. Whether you prefer bright, vivid screens for designing and gaming, or you rely on lowlight or high contrast for better visibility, you can easily set your default tones and color filters across devices and applications.
Go screen-free with narration If you don’t use a screen — or if you’re multitasking — Narrator, built into Windows 10, can read pages out loud, describe images and link users to content via a Braille keyboard. Office 365 is designed to work seamlessly with Narrator and other screen readers. And apps like Seeing AI and Microsoft Soundscape go a step further, narrating the world around people who are blindor low vision.
Navigate with AI-powered apps Microsoft 365 makes it easier to steer around your screen with the keyboard shortcuts, voice commands and eye control built into Windows 10. You can also quickly find the documents and people you need using the Microsoft Search barin Windows 10 and Office 365 applications.
And through Microsoft’s newly announced partnership with Moovit —a popular transit app — navigating the physical world will get easier, too. Developers who use Azure Maps will gain access to the app’s trip planner and transit data, including wheelchair-friendly routes. With this information, they can build innovative, accessible tools to help people of all abilities travel more easily and safely.
Enhance comprehension and learning Microsoft 365helps people of varyinghearing and languageneeds with auto-generated subtitles and captions for videos and presentations built into PowerPoint and Stream. Auto-generated transcripts provide comprehensive notes of meetings to enhance everyone’s team experience, productivity and collaboration. Increased spacing between lines and letters; word suggestions that appear while typing; and reader support that breaks up tricky parts of speech are features developed for people with dyslexia but can help anyone.
Find your focus We’re all distracted sometimes, but for those who regularly struggle to concentrate, features like Focus Assist and Reading View are designed to help keep us on task. Clear distracting content from web pages; block unwanted alerts and notifications; and breeze through your to-do list by keeping track of projects and deadlines across synced applications.
For more on accessibility initiatives at Microsoft, follow @MSFTIssues on Twitter.
Apple to lead smartwatch growth through 2023, report says
By Mikey Campbell Wednesday, June 19, 2019, 07:25 pm PT (10:25 pm ET)
Apple will be a primary growth driver of worldwide smartwatch sales through 2023, though its share of the market is expected to see erosion from an onslaught of competitors, according to research firm IDC.
Smartwatches are expected to lead growth in the wider wearable device segment over the next five years with shipments moving from 91.8 million units in 2019 to 131.6 million units in 2023, IDC said in a forecast released on Wednesday. The product category currently accounts for 41.2% of worldwide wearable shipments and will grow to 43.5% at the end of 2023, according to the IDC Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker.
Apple is anticipated to lead the pack and will end the five-year period with a 25.9% share of all watches, the report said. Following behind Apple Watch will be a motley crew of devices running Android, WearOS, Tizen and other first- and third-party wearable operating systems.
“Apple’s…nearest competitors follow by a long margin,” Ramon T. Llamas, research director for IDC’s Wearables team, said in a statement to CNET. “Android also plays a big role here, but it’s mostly known as a Chinese wearables platform.”
While IDC sees Apple Watch as a clear market leader, the five-year forecast terminates in a number slightly down from recent estimates. In March, the research firm said Apple clinched a 26.8% share of the smartwatch market in 2018 on 46.2 million shipments, up 39.5% year-over-year.
According to IDC, watches and “earwear,” like AirPods, will dominate the overall wearables sector come 2023, combining for a whopping 78.3% share of the market. Wristbands, like those popularized by Fitbit, are predicted to account for an 18.2% marketshare, up only 0.3% between 2019 to 2023.
In total, IDC anticipates 302.3 million wearable device shipments in 2023.
Today’s results are modified down from predictions aired in March, which pegged Apple to take 27.5% of all smartwatch shipments at the end of 2023. The earlier report also quoted total wearable device shipments at 279 million units over the same period.
The Best (And Worst) Auto Chess Games on Android and iOS
By Josh Brown18 Jun 2019
Dota Auto Chess was called “the next big thing” after its meteoric rise back in January 2019. While It hasn’t exactly turned the masses away from the current Battle Royale craze just yet, its potential has yet to be fully realised. Just as we saw with the Puzzle, MOBA, and Battle Royale genres in the past; clones, copycats, and tributes are quick to spring up across gaming landscape.
If you gave Dota Auto Chess a shot and have always wanted the option to play on the go, mobile is finally stepping up to the plate to deliver just that. The genre is spreading on PC thanks to Riot Games and even Valve itself. But with such lacklustre vetting processes on mobile, there are at least 5 cash-grab clones for every decent attempt at mimicking the formula. We’ve gone through the best and worst Auto Chess variants mobile has to offer right now, and we’re ready to give some recommendations (and some hard passes).
And you needn’t worry about price. All ‘Auto-Battler’ games (legitimate or otherwise) are Free-to-Play. These things make their money through cosmetic micro-transactions like board skins and avatars – there’s nothing we’ve found so far that lets you spend real money to have an in-game advantage, which the way it’s meant to be done.
Those that don’t follow this model gain swift admittance into our ‘Ones to Avoid’ section.
If you were quick to the scene on Android and assumed Auto Chess by Dragonest to be nothing but a Chinese copycat, you’d be forgiven. It happens with website domains all the time. But in actuality, this is the ‘OG’ Auto Chess game that started it all. It comes from the same developers – Drodo. Washing itself of its Dota roots, Auto Chess (or Auto Chess: Origin as it’s now known on iOS) is the real deal.
Separating from its Dota foundation means Auto Chess: Origin no longer has access to familiar assets like sounds and models. So, while you might recognize its logo from the original PC version, you’ll find a pretty different looking game when you fire it up, with humour that might seem a little too juvenile for some. If you can get passed that, you’ll find a mobile replacement almost exactly the same as the PC version minus the obvious (and better suited) touch interface. If not, maybe consider the next title on our list.
Now this is what we’re talking about. A grittier, more sci-fi take on the Auto Chess formula. With some moody splash artwork and even a full-fledged opening movie to boot, our first thought when firing up this game was just how quickly the company must have got the ball rolling when Dota Auto Chess originally broke onto the scene.
Everything about Arena of Evolution: Red Tides screams respectable production value. If you’re trying to avoid being called out as a clone, this is the way to do it. The units don’t always match the space war vibe the opening movie sets up (thank you, kung-fu panda), but there’s a nice variety of unique characters to pick up and play with. If you’re not into multiplayer, AI brawls will still give anyone but the pros a decent (and welcoming) challenge. If you’re looking for a more mature Auto Chess experience, this is a solid recommendation over the official counterpart. Everything from the chess board – which is less a board and more a stone battlefield – to the crude iron fence separating the brawl from your bench screams quality in the face of what comes next.
Just like how Valve created Dota 2 from the foundations of the original WarCraft III mod, the overlords of Steam are prepping their own official Dota Auto Chess – Dota Underlords. And it’s coming to mobile real soon. It’ll officially place Auto Chess in the Dota lore with its armies battling it out for dominance of the city of White Spire. Announced in May, it’ll be released in beta for Dota 2 Battle Pass owners in the first instance, with an Open Beta planned on all platforms, including iOS & Android, not long after that.
This one was down for maintenance when we first tried to test it out. It wasn’t a good look, and we honestly thought the game was just dead on arrival… Turned out we were wrong! It fired up without a hitch the next day and was a pleasant surprise. There’s a clean UI and most of the of the details you’d come to expect from a game of Auto Chess, but without an AI mode after the initial tutorial, it might scare off newcomers looking to practice before diving into the real thing. It’s a little sparse of the extra game modes, but at least the developers found the time to offer micro-transaction goodies, right?
While it starts off looking like one of those cheap mobile ads on a dodgy website, Auto Chess Legends is one of the better made alternatives out there. Nowhere near the same level of depth and detail of the above games, but enough to avoid the bucket list below.
Ones To Avoid
We’re not going to call out the lack of direct competition on the app stores right now. After all, Auto Chess isn’t even a year old. But what we will call out are deplorable cash grabs siphoning the Auto Chess name and bewildering any curious mind that dares search for the next big thing. These games aren’t vying for your time at all – just your money. They function mostly the same as any other Auto Battler game would, albeit for once little thing – they’re all pay to win. Avoid these unless you’re looking for the quick and easy route to learn the fundamentals of the game.
Heroes Auto Chess
Developer: Tap2Play LLC Platforms: iOS/Android
The first of the lot we tested out, Heroes Auto Chess is one of the better efforts of the bunch – but it’s still pretty gnarly. Its low-poly art-style is reminiscent of old Steam shovelware riding the ‘voxel’ hype train. Hop into a match, however, and the quality starts to rapidly deteriorate further. It’s a very basic take on Auto Chess, with no notable polish. Units lack personality as they’re absolutely mute, while battles are nothing more than a slight wiggle animation with a cheap stock sword clash sound playing out every second or two.
Then comes the worst part – you can forgo any need for actual strategy by watching an ad to re-roll and buy additional units in the shop. Not cool. With only three slots on the bench, there’s very little actually strategy to be had here, anyway. Without the ads, we could let Heroes Auto Chess slide as a decent way to introduce the game to a far younger audience. Accept donations or charge for skins by all means, but don’t nullify the whole point of your game just to make 1c on an ad click. You’re better than that.
AutoChess War
Developer: Phoenix Mobile/Chengdu Phoenix Electronic Arts Co. Limited Platforms: iOS/Android
We wanted to like this one, but it flops out of the gate a little too soon. AutoChess War looked promising – and actually could be if development keeps up – but what little it does is quickly soured yet again by in-game ads. A unique Adventure mode is a nice little touch. It doesn’t really add much to the Auto Chess formula (aside from the horizontal board), but it does separate the game into bite-sized rounds you can drop in and out of at will, making the game more commute-friendly. When you’re at home, the Endless Challenge mode can be a good way to test out some strategies. But you’ll need to play another game entirely to actually execute them against another player.
Auto Chess Defense
Developer: Phoenix Mobile/Chengdu Phoenix Electronic Arts Co. Limited Platforms: iOS/Android
The first thing I noticed is that this one calls itself Auto Chess Mobile in game. Looks like someone paid for a logo a little too soon. Diving deeper, Auto Chess Defense (Mobile?) feels like a game you would have found on the original iPhone. The first app of its kind. While that would have been a glowing recommendation back in 2007, it’s the worst kind of criticism you can have in 2019. We appreciate the option to skip straight into battle rather than waiting on a laborious timer, but, again, the ads creep in the sour the experience.
Seen any other games worthy of people’s attention, or ones they should definitely avoid? Let us know in the comments!
The HTML5 2D game framework Phaser just released version 3.18.0. This release includes large rewrites to the Input API, as well as adding Multitouch support, Mouse Wheel support and more.
After another month of hard work, we’re very happy to announce the release of Phaser 3.18. In this release we took the time to rewrite large chunks of the Input API. This allowed us to fix a number of issues that had arisen, as well as optimizing the internal event flow. Native support for complete Multi-Touch support, Mouse Wheels and more advanced Pointer Button handling are now available. The whole API is smaller and tidier after the clean-up, which is always a good thing.
We’ve also added lots of other features and updates, including better Matter physics constraint handling, Arcade Physics improvements, Audio decoding events, Text justification, new Bounds methods and a lot, lot more. As usual, it doesn’t end there, though. You’ll find hundreds of great new features, updates and fixes.
Phaser is available for download on GitHub. Documentation has also been updated to the 3.18.0 standard and is available to read here. There is more to the release than shown here, read the full release notes for complete details of this release. If you are new to Phaser, be sure to check our introduction available here.
Dragon's Lair Trilogy, bringing three timeless arcade adventures together on one disc for Wii: Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp, and Space Ace.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is an exploration-focused, side-scroller action RPG by Koji Igarashi. Play as Miriam, an orphan scarred by an alchemist’s curse that slowly crystallizes her body. Battle through a demon-infested castle and defeat its master to save yourself, and all of humanity!
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-20-2019, 06:58 AM - Forum: Lounge
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GuardianCon Charity Marathon
As part of the GuardianCon Charity Marathon, we’re putting a price on our own heads. From 1-5 PM PDT (4-9 EDT) on June 20, 2019, we’ll be hosting a Bungie Bounty. The prize for besting us in matchmade combat in our own game is usually an emblem. This time, we have so much more in the reward pool.
This will be a bit different from previous bounties, as we’ll have one member of Team Bungie live on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC at the same time. Throughout the afternoon, we’ll be swapping game modes, players, hosts, and developers in and out of the chairs while viewers have the opportunity to donate to a great cause:
The mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures and means of prevention for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food – because all a family should worry about is helping their child live. St. Jude has treated children from all 50 states and from around the world. Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80% since it opened more than 50 years ago.
Bounty Schedule
Hour 1 – Crucible Quickplay
Hour 2 – Gambit Prime
Hour 3 – Iron Banner
Hour 4 – Iron Banner
If you happen to be on our team, help us win. If you’re going against us, we dare you to kick our ass. We’ll be in Crucible Quickplay, Gambit Prime, and Iron Banner. The winning team will receive the Sign of Mutual Combat emblem.
If you’d like to throw a wrench in our fighting style, or score some sweet loot as a reward for donating to charity, check out the incentives below:
GuardianCon Charity Marathon
Donation Incentives
$10 — Sign of Gambit 2018 emblem code
$25 — Entered for chance to win an item from the Bungie Prize Pool
$50 — New “Gateway to Knowledge” emblem code
$100 — Entered to win a signed Collector’s Edition of Destiny, Destiny 2, or Destiny 2: Shadowkeep
$300 — Invert controls for player of your choice
$500 — Three players all rotate stations
$777 — Player of choice wears Shaxx helmet for a match
$1,000 — DeeJ reads a lore entry
$5,000+ — Studio tour for a three player fireteam (Five max, travel/lodging not included)
Sign of Gambit (2018 Event Emblem)
Gateway to Knowledge (First available via GuardianCon Charity Stream!)
Donation Goals
Every 10K — dmg04 eats slice of bread
25K — Release The TWAB early
50K — Shadowkeep Legendary weapon art reveal
75K — Shadowkeep Legendary weapon art reveal #2
100K — DeeJ plays a match
150K — dmg04 gets a Destiny tattoo
Top donors
We’re creating three swag bags for our top donors, filled with various merchandise from the studio:
Top Donor: Uldren Statue, signed Shadowkeep Collector’s Edition, signed D2 Collector’s Edition, signed D1 Collector’s Edition, 3A Titan, Bronze Cayde statue, MegaBlocks Goliath tank, Cayde game box
Second Highest Donor: Signed Shadowkeep Collector Edition, signed D2 Collector’s Edition, signed D1 Collector’s Edition, Cayde game box, Cayde Statue, MegaBlocks Goliath tank
Third Highest Donor: Signed Shadowkeep Collector Edition, signed D2 Collector’s Edition, signed D1 Collector’s Edition, Mega Blocks Goliath tank
Bungie Prize Pool
If you donate $25, you will be entered to win one of the following items. We’ll sign what we can, but some things (like a Ghost Plushy) don’t respond well to ink.
(10) Destiny Grimoire Anthology, Volume 1
(5) Cayde Game Boxes
(5) MegaBlocks Goliath Tanks
(5) Plushy Ghosts
(5) Vinyl Ghosts
(4) Cayde Bronze Statues
(2) 3A Titan Figures
Collector’s Editions
If you donate $100, you’ll be entered to win one of the following Collector’s Editions:
(20) Signed Shadowkeep Collector’s Editions
(20) Signed D2 Collector’s Editions
(10) Signed D1 Collector’s Editions
This event and associated sweepstakes is operated by Rare Drop Co LLC. (“Rare Drop”) and subject to Rare Drop’s official rules located at https://ww1.guardiancon.co/. Bungie, Inc. is not the sponsor or organizer of this event.
During an interview with Kotaku news editor Jason Schreier at E3 2019, The Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma revealed Grezzo was also handling the remake of Link’s Awakening for Nintendo Switch.
When asked about the possibility of remakes for Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, Aonuma revealed there were currently “no plans” at this point in time.
Have you played Grezzo’s previous releases? Would you like to see Oracle of Ages and Seasons one day remastered for modern platforms? Tell us down in the comments.
