Custom Games API: – Added GetDedicatedServerKeyV2 which utilizes a new approach for securing/generating the keys. Any custom game that relies on GetDedicatedServerKey to communicate with its backend will want to switch to the V2 version as soon as possible. – To give custom game authors time to switch to the new system, GetDedicatedServerKey will remain unchanged until 3/31/2019, after which will be automatically switched to V2. – When playing on local/unofficial servers, GetDedicatedServerV2 will return special values to make the state more clear for developers (e.g. “Invalid_NotOnDedicatedServer”).
Now Available on Steam Early Access – Factory Town, 10% off!
Factory Town is Now Available on Steam Early Access and is 10% off!*
Build, automate, and optimize your own village on procedurally-generated 3D terrain. Use marble-run chutes, railways, logistic blocks, conveyor belts, and a variety of worker units to research useful new technology and keep your houses supplied with goods.
New Preview Delta and Omega Rings 1902 build 3/2/19
Starting at 6:30 p.m. PST today, members of the Xbox One Preview Delta & Omega Rings will begin receiving the latest 1902 Xbox One system update (RS5_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1902\17763.4086.190302-0015). Read on for more about the fixes in the latest 1902 system update.
DETAILS: OS version released: RS5_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1902\17763.4086.190302-0015 Available: 6:30PM PST 3/2/19 Mandatory Date/Time: 3:00 AM PST 3/3/19
New Features:
1902 is a bug fix only release.
Fixes:
System:
System reliability fixes.
Known Issues:
Profile Color
Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.
Production line is the new car factory management/simulation/tycoon game that pushes your organisational and entrepreneurship skills to the limit. Can you build the ultimate optimised, free-flowing car production line whilst beating the competition and still turn a profit?
What’s orange and white and sleeps all day? Jens, but Mojang still managed to finish another Java Snapshot this week. Enjoy!
A full summary of the content available in this snapshot can be found in the changelog on Minecraft.net, the following is a short summary:
Added Fox
Narrator is now available in menus (“Ctrl + B” to activate it)
Paintings are now broken up into individual textures
Fixed bugs
FOX
What do they say?
Foxes are nocturnal
Foxes are nimble and quick, so sneak up on them carefully!
Breed foxes with berries
If you breed two foxes, their offspring will trust you forever
Foxes like to eat any and every food item they find on the ground
You may find a fox exploring a nearby village at night
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.
Share your thoughts on how 1.14 is shaping up in the comments below!
This week at Bungie, we’ve been cast adrift on a sea of action.
Next Tuesday, a new season begins in Destiny 2. When the Drifter assumes control of our shared adventure, he’ll have much more to offer than the Gambit you’ve known since the release of Forsaken. New quests and pinnacle weapons will become available for players who want to rank up in their favorite activities. There will be new Triumphs to complete and lore to collect. Gambit Prime and the Reckoning also become available to owners of the Annual Pass, with a call to embrace and master one of four distinct roles in combat: Reaper, Invader, Collector, and Sentry. To get a full rundown of what’s coming, make sure to check out the ViDoc that was released earlier today:
Below, you can find a calendar showing off a more in-depth view of Season of the Drifter. Save these dates! The Drifter will also offer Annual Pass owners a unique set of Power Surge bounties, granting 640 Power gear to get players right into the content.
The Gameplay calendar has been updated to reflect some changes throughout development. Check the Season of the Drifter article for quick preview of Invitations of the Nine and the Allegiance quest.
We’re excited for you to jump in and play. March 5 is just a few sleeps away, and we still have some time to get into the nitty-gritty. Let’s dive in.
Prime Accessibility
With Season of the Drifter, we’ve kept accessibility in full focus through the development process. This isn’t just from a standpoint of entering the activity at appropriate Power levels, but also making sure that each role is readable to all players. As you can see in the ViDoc above, each role has a specific color applied to their armor. Tech Art Lead Nate Hawbaker has some information on how colorblind settings will apply to these armor pieces:
Nate: For colorblind modes in Destiny, rather than applying a filter over the whole screen, we change only the content that uses color as its primary messaging to the player and greatly impacts their moment-to-moment decisions in the gameplay loop. Each case is handled individually and authored by hand to ensure we’re making the best decision possible. Most forms of colorblind have only two dominant colors—for situations like this, we have to get creative with color saturation and value to ensure each role is as identifiable as possible.
This is what each of the Gambit Prime roles will look like when seen through the (simulated) eyes of affected players once their respective colorblind settings are enabled.
Three Peaks
With each season, Guardians have new ways to become legend: climbing the ranks in Crucible, mastering new modes, or racking up the most kills with new, powerful weapons. Sandbox Designer Victor Anderson is back to unveil three new pinnacle weapons, available to all players, coming with Season of the Drifter. In other words, here’s a preview of the bread you’ll be baking next season.
Victor: For Season of the Drifter, we have another set of pinnacle weapons for players to acquire. Like with the last set, we have one each for Vanguard, Crucible, and Gambit.
Vanguard Oxygen SR3—Precision Scout Rifle (Solar)
Oxygen SR3’s unique perk is “Meganeura: Dragonfly deals more damage based on the number of precision hits made beforehand.”
Scout Rifles have had a long history with Dragonfly and its predecessor over the history of Destiny. This weapon seeks to double down on that history and improve upon it in a simple and effective way. The general design ethos of a pinnacle weapon is that if it approaches an Exotic-esque effect, it must work conditionally—such as activating on a kill event or asking you to risk getting into melee range—and if it works in a neutral setting, then it must only change the way you can do something, not necessarily what you can do. This is an example of the former.
Crucible The Recluse—Lightweight Submachine Gun (Void)
The Recluse’s unique perk is “Master of Arms: Kills with any weapon improve this weapon’s damage for a short time.”
Submachine Guns are in a contentious spot in the game after the Forsaken release. With Shotguns occupying a similar engagement range while also offering that one-shot-kill potential that is so highly valued, alongside always being in competition with Sidearms and even the Last Word as the close-quarters primary weapon of choice, Submachine Guns have fallen slightly to the wayside. So we created the “Master of Arms” perk so it could find its place in any given loadout. We look forward to seeing people experiment with it.
Gambit 21% Delirium—Rapid-Fire Machinegun (Arc)
21% Delirium’s unique perk is “Killing Tally: Kills increase this weapon’s damage until it is stowed or reloaded.”
This will be our first Rapid-Fire Machine Gun for Destiny 2—how many of you out there guessed the archetype, but not the sub-archetype? With the reintroduction of bullet-hose-style Machine Guns, we figured a perk that played with their large magazine sizes and dealing with waves of enemies would be appropriate. Unlike the other two weapons, this one also has one of the new weapon perks we’re introducing in Season of the Drifter—“Overflow,” to kick the magazine size out even further for true spray ’n pray action.
While we’re on the subject of weapons, here’s another preview of some changes made for Season of the Drifter:
Exotic Power Weapons in Destiny have been the go-to for quite some time due to getting the most bang for your buck from raw damage. These changes, along with others that will be shown when the full patch notes for 2.2.0 are revealed, are intended to make Legendary Power weapons a good option for those who enjoy their Exotic Kinetic and Energy weapons. We believe that the Exotic you choose to run should be an expression of your playstyle rather than just the math working out in your favor.
Exotics will always have their unique properties, but a well-rolled Legendary Power weapon should be able to compete in raw damage with an Exotic Power weapon, although the Legendary weapon may need conditional setups and mods to outright match. Nonetheless, the gap should not be so wide that you, the player, feel it necessary to run an Exotic in any specific slot.
Grenade Launchers
PvE damage increased by 25%
Reserve ammo increased on most Grenade Launchers
In most cases, Grenade Launchers gained three rounds in reserves, but this amount may vary based on the perks you have (Field Prep, etc)
Magazine perks and mods no longer affect ammo reserves
Grenade Launchers had a bit of a reserve issue due to the magazine having an impact on reserves—and as a result, the reserve total wildly changed, typically not in favor of the player. This was addressed, and they got a PvE damage bonus on top of it to make them more competitive in that slot.
Rocket Launchers
PvE damage increased by 60–65% (Exotic Rocket Launchers have had their damage tuned separately)
Cluster Bomb
Damage reduced by ~80%
This lost damage was moved to the Rocket Launcher’s main projectile, as noted above in the damage increase
Rocket Launchers were entirely too dependent on Cluster Bombs to be effective. Like the Full Auto perk on Shotguns, Cluster Bombs would nearly double the damage output of any given rocket (under optimal conditions). The result was that on any target that you couldn’t get all the Cluster Bombs to impact and detonate, Rocket Launchers fell by the wayside pretty harshly. By moving most of the damage of Cluster Bombs into the rocket itself, Rocket Launchers will now be more reliable and more effective all around—especially against aerial targets that Cluster Bombs would almost never damage.
Eververse Seasonal Update
With each season, we have an opportunity to update our goals surrounding Eververse, and the ways players engage with it. In Season of the Drifter, we’ve put more focus on giving players control in the ways they acquire the items they wish to equip. From the Dev Team:
Destiny Dev Team: Last year, we talked about our efforts to give you more control over how you purchase Eververse items. We released the Prismatic Matrix as an experiment to partially address this, but we believe we can do even better.
For Season of the Drifter, we want to try something new. We will be removing the Prismatic Matrix. Instead, every week, there will be unique bundles available that can be directly purchased for Silver, allowing you to directly buy exactly the items you want. All unique bundles will also contain an exclusive vanity item available only through that weekly bundle.
If you currently have any Prismatic facets, you can still use them up until March 5. After the beginning of the new season, they will turn into Expired Prismatic Facets that will dismantle into 150 Bright Dust. The Bright Dust Storefront will also continue to offer a direct path to acquiring items found within Bright Engrams.
As always, we will continue to monitor feedback and work to improve the Eververse experience each season. And when we are ready to try something new, we will share those plans directly with you. For now, here are a few items you can expect to see in next Season’s Bright Engram:
Sealing the Deal
With the release of Forsaken, many among you have been on the hunt for titles to augment your Guardians with. Whether it be a Dredgen dominating the competition in Gambit, or Cursebreakers fighting for the Queen, titles are a unique way to ornament your guardians and show off your accomplishments.
Some titles require the completion of Destination Badges, which are dependent on earning every piece of gear from various destinations or vendors. We have been collecting feedback and are currently working on a change to drop weights associated with vanity items from the Dreaming City and Last Wish raid. Additionally, we are looking at BrayTech weapon schematics, and One Thousand Voices. We will provide additional information closer to the release of these changes.
We are also extending the availability of the Bungie Rewards Medallion Pins tied to each Seal. The Bungie Rewards Help Article has been updated with the following information:
Premium Seal Pins: The Bungie Rewards offer for the Premium Seal Pins has been extended from March 30, 2019, to August 31, 2019. Codes that are redeemed from the Bungie Rewards page before February 28 will expire on April 30, 2019; codes generated before or on February 28 will need to be used on the Bungie Store by April 30. If a code expires and players are unable to use a code on the Bungie Store in time, they should make a post on the #Help forums describing the issue for assistance. Codes redeemed after February 28th, 2019 will need to be used in the Bungie Store by September 30, 2019.
For all support information concerning Bungie Rewards, please see this Help Article.
The Only Good Bug…
Next week, Destiny 2 Update 2.2.0 will be resolving a number of issues that have been impacting your gameplay. Destiny Player Support has a preview, accompanied with vital information to get you ready for the impending download. Let’s see what bugs have been squashed, shall we?
With Destiny 2 Update 2.2.0 closing in, here’s the third and final preview of player-impacting issues that we expect to be resolved with Update 2.2.0 on March 5.
Elevated GUITARs: Players are experiencing above average GUITAR errors in the final encounters of the “Last Wish” raid.
Elevated BUFFALOs: Players are experiencing above average BUFFALO errors on PC.
Blind Well Matchmaking: Blind Well in the Dreaming City is not matchmaking players consistently.
Masterwork Inspection: Gear items sometimes do not display as Masterworked when previewed by other players.
Repeat Triumph Pops: Transferring gear with the bungie.net API triggers repeated Triumph notifications.
Crucible Damage: Healing abilities in Crucible activities subtract from the overall damage score reported in the post-game screen.
Hawthorne XP: Clan XP bounties sometimes do not count toward Hawthorne’s weekly challenge.
Editor’s Note: This is due to system changes for Hawthorne in 2.2.0.
Blank Director: The Director may appear to be empty for players accessing Destiny 2 in Korean under some circumstances.
Antaeus Wards Slide: Antaeus Wards do not consistently improve sliding.
Izanagi’s Burden: The scope on Izanagi’s Burden may sometimes be obfuscated by VFX when ADSing while invading in Gambit or standing in Well of Radiance.
Le Monarque DOT: Le Monarque applies poison damage inconsistently when fired over long distances.
Le Monarque Exotic Collection: Le Monarque appears in the Kinetic weapon collection instead of the Energy weapon collection.
Long Shadow Scope: Relevant scopes on Long Shadow do not highlight enemies.
The Mountaintop: The Mountaintop cannot use the Quick Access Sling mod.
Star Map Chest Detection: The Star Map Shell does not detect chests in the Dreaming City.
Stryker’s Sure-Hand: Some perks fail to activate on Stryker’s Sure-Hand when it is fully Masterworked.
For the full Destiny 2 Update 2.2.0 patch notes when they are available, players should monitor our Updates page.
Destiny 2 Update 2.2.0 Deployment Timeline
Next Tuesday, March 5, Destiny 2 Update 2.2.0 will become available to players and Season of the Drifter will begin. All Destiny 2 players will need to download and install this update when it is available.
Please see below for the Update 2.2.0 deployment timeline for Tuesday, March 5.
8 AM PST (1600 UTC): Destiny 2 maintenance is scheduled to begin. Some Destiny Companion features may become unavailable on the web, mobile, and third-party apps.
8:45 AM PST (1645 UTC): Destiny 2 will be taken offline. Players will be returned to title screen. Players will not be able to log in.
9 AM PST (1700 UTC): Destiny 2 Update 2.2.0 will begin rolling out across all platforms and regions. Destiny 2 will be back online and players will be able to resume gameplay once Update 2.2.0 has been downloaded and installed. Maintenance will be ongoing.
10 AM PST (1800 UTC): Destiny 2 maintenance is expected to conclude. Destiny Companion features will be re-enabled on the web, mobile, and third-party apps. Players who encounter issues should report them to the #Help forum.
Changing Seasons
With Season of the Forge nearing its end, we’d like to take this opportunity to remind players that seasonal Triumphs and objectives have until the start of Update 2.2.0 maintenance on March 5 to be completed. At the weekly reset, Season of the Drifter will begin, ranks will reset, and incomplete Triumphs for Season of the Forge will expire.
Here are some examples of what will reset and/or expire:
Nightfall Rank
Valor Rank
Glory Rank
Infamy Rank
Clan Rank
Prismatic Matrices from Season of the Forge
Any incomplete Triumph or quest step that requires players to complete objectives in any single season
All incomplete Triumphs with “Season 5” in the title will expire and be removed
Here are some examples of items that will not reset and/or expire:
Quests for pinnacle weapons from Season of the Forge
Any incomplete Triumph or quest step that requires players to complete objectives across all seasons
Lastly, as a reminder, Iron Banner bounties from Season of the Forge will expire at the end of this season. Players who wish to redeem them for Powerful Rewards must do so before March 5. For more information, please see This Week at Bungie—1/31/2019.
Duty Bound
In case you didn’t know it, there’s a small army of volunteers who patrol the forums of bungie.net. Over the years, Destiny Player Support has recruited a number of dedicated individuals into their ranks, to reinforce our efforts in serving Destiny players.
This week, we’d like to highlight the below individuals, who’ve pledged to make bungie.net the very best place that it can be. For some of them, this shout out is long past due—but there’s no time like the present. Take a look!
Mentors
Mentors are the white gloves of the #Help community. They direct players to support content hosted on help.bungie.net and are sources of guidance for all newly-rez’d kinderguardians. If you’re a #Help regular, you’ll undoubtedly see them around.
Please welcome:
DragonWithin
LA 2395
SonicF2K
Spawns
Sutter
suttungur
swfan77
Tosh
Ninjas
Ninjas are the unseen blades that ensure bungie.net is a welcoming place for all Guardians. Whether you set up camp in #Destiny or #Offtopic, the Ninja’s Prime Directive is to make sure bungie.net is a safe place for you to plant your flag and build your community. For the citizen who abides by the bungie.net Code of Conduct, the Ninja is a gracious ally. All others will be faced with Ninja Justice.
Please welcome:
machinimagames
Needless
Phoenix1710
Plain Ben
Pobreloko
ZER0COOL
If you see any of our moderators making their rounds on bungie.net, make sure to offer them a friendly greeting. Their service often goes unseen, and they are a critical factor in making bungie.net a home away from home. You’ll know that they’re the genuine article when you see their respective moderator badge in the forums.
Sending the Season out with a Bang
Introduction goes here. No, this is not a placeholder. I just know that whatever I type won’t be as awesome as the content found within these videos. I think this week, I’ll let them speak for themselves as I rewatch for the 10th time.
As we said earlier in the article, we’re a few short sleeps away from Season of the Drifter. If there are any Triumphs you’re trying to complete or ranks you’re trying to achieve, get ’em done before time is up!
We’ve got plans for a few Gambit Prime Bungie Bounties in the next few weeks. These will take place on Xbox, PlayStation 4, and PC. Next week, we’ll give you dates and times, so you’ve got some leeway in preparing to battle. I think my role will be Sentry. Anti-invader, and yellow is my favorite color. I’ve got some grinding to do before then…
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 03-12-2019, 07:19 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
10 of the latest Microsoft Teams integrations to help you work smarter
We built Microsoft Teams as a platform to bring together all of your workplace tools, apps, and services—whether or not we built them—to allow you to deliver better workday flow for you and your employees. A lot of you recognize the power of Teams, and you’ve been asking how to use Teams to its full advantage. Look no further. Today, we’re sharing ten of the latest Teams integrations you can use every day to simplify workflows, refocus your attention, and get back to working smarter—not harder. This is something our CEO, Satya Nadella, recently addressed in his interview on the future of communication at work with the Wall Street Journal.
Ten of the latest integrations to try in Teams
These ten integrations bring everything from customer feedback and employee polls, to workflow and project management, into Teams, to make your apps work for you.
Funnel customer feedback straight into Teams:Twitter As one of the largest social media platforms around, Twitter mostly needs no introduction. However, did you know it’s a great way to gather customer feedback? By integrating Twitter into Teams, you can set up alerts relevant to your company. So, when a customer tweets at your handle or uses your hashtag, it flows directly into Teams, where you can share or respond without stopping your workflow.
Transform the way you work: ServiceNow ServiceNow delivers digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity. The cloud-based Now Platform transforms old, manual ways of working into modern digital workflows, so employees and customers get what they need when they need it. Read more about the ServiceNow integration for Virtual Agent, a chatbot that helps build conversational workflows to resolve common ServiceNow actions, as well as IntegrationHub, which lets anyone break down development backlog with codeless workflows in an easy-to-use interface.
Get organized with your very own automated administrative assistant:Zoom.ai Zoom.ai lives inside your chat, email inbox, and calendar to help you offload and automate tasks. You interact with it by typing commands in a chat window, where it can schedule Teams meetings for you, brief you on your day, send and receive reminders, and create documents when you need them. It works for you, where you work. Watch the Zoom.ai video to learn more.
Organize any of life’s projects:Trello Trello is a project management software whose boards, lists, and cards enable you to organize and prioritize your projects in a flexible way. By integrating in Teams, you can see your Trello assignments, tasks, and notifications and have conversations about them—without leaving Teams. A fun way to bring together project management and project collaboration. Watch the Trello video to learn more.
Run polls in tandem with your conversations:Polly Polly is a survey app that lets you create surveys in Teams. You can quickly create polls in your Teams channels and view results in real-time. You have the option to create multiple choice polls, freeform polls, or a mixture of both. Turn on comments and you’ve got yourself a full discussion board. Get the answers you need without disrupting workflows or clogging inboxes. Visit Polly for Microsoft Teams to learn more.
Celebrate your organization’s culture and values: Disco Disco is a solution that rallies your entire company around your core values. It makes it easy to give public shout-outs and congratulate your colleagues in real-time. So, next time a team member delivers a project ahead of schedule or demonstrates one of your team or company values in their work, pay it forward by giving them Disco “points” in Teams. They’ll feel supported and, who knows, maybe repay your appreciation. Watch the Disco video to learn more.
Help teams deliver value to customers faster by releasing earlier, more often, and more iteratively: Jira Jira Software is a leading software development tool used by agile teams to plan, track, and release great software. Integrate Jira with Teams for a seamless way to visualize the important things like development velocity, workloads, bug resolution, and app performance all in real-time—from Teams. This makes it easy to inject insights into group collaboration without disrupting workflows. Learn more about Microsoft Teams Jira Connector.
Bring more structure to online brainstorming: MindMeister MindMeister is an online mind-mapping tool that lets you capture, develop, and share ideas visually. And by integrating in Teams, you can take notes, brainstorm, visualize project plans, and easily show connections between ideas all while discussing details with your team in the chat. Read Create and Manage All Your Mind Maps in Microsoft Teams! to learn more.
Bring creative work to team work: Adobe Creative Cloud Adobe Creative Cloud gives you the world’s best apps and services for video, design, photography, and the web including Adobe Photoshop , Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, Premiere Pro CC, and more. Integrate with Teams to bring your creative work and teamwork together. You can share work, get feedback, and stay up-to-date on tasks and actions. Read Adobe XD Adds Integration with Microsoft Teams—Creativity meets collaboration to learn more.
Build software in the way that works best for you: GitHub GitHub is the platform where developers work together, solve challenging problems, and create the world’s most important technologies. Whether you are a student, hobbyist, consultant, or enterprise professional, the GitHub integration in Teams allows you to create, share, and ship the best code possible.
Get started with Teams
Bringing these apps and tools together in Teams is a great way to bring focus back to your workflow. They’re easy to integrate and offer something for everyone, whether you’re developing software, managing projects, or gathering customer feedback. And with new apps going live on Teams every day, your next productivity superpower is only a few clicks away. Check the Teams Store today so you don’t miss out!
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 03-12-2019, 12:51 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
What’s new with Seeing AI
By Saqib Shaikh, Software Engineering Manager and Project Lead for Seeing AI
Seeing AI provides people who are blind or with low vision an easier way to understand the world around them through the cameras on their smartphones. Whether in a room, on a street, in a mall or an office – people are using the app to independently accomplish daily tasks like never before. Seeing AI helps users read printed text in books, restaurant menus, street signs and handwritten notes, as well as identify banknotes and products via their barcode. Leveraging on-device facial-recognition technology, the app can even describe the physical appearance of people and predict their mood.
Today, we are announcing new Seeing AI features for the enthusiastic community of users who share their experiences with the app, recommend new capabilities and suggest improvements for its functionalities. Inspired by this rich feedback, here are the updates rolling out to Seeing AI to enhance the user’s experience:
Explore photos by touch: Leveraging the Custom Vision Service in tandem with the Computer Vision API, this new feature enables users to tap their finger to an image on a touch-screen to hear a description of objects within an image and the spatial relationship between them. Users can explore photos of their surroundings taken on the Scene channel, family photos stored in their photo browser, and even images shared on social media by summoning the options menu while in other apps.
Native iPad support: For the first time we’re releasing iPad support, to provide a better Seeing AI experience that accounts for the larger display requirements. iPad support is particularly important to individuals using Seeing AI in academic or other professional settings where they are unable to use a cellular device.
Channel improvements: Users can now customize the order in which channels are shown, enabling easier access to favorite features. We’ve also made it easier to access the face recognition function while on the Person channel, by relocating the feature directly on the main screen. Additionally, when analyzing photos from other apps, the app will now provide audio cues that indicate Seeing AI is processing the image.
Since the app’s launch in 2017, Seeing AI has leveraged AI technology and inclusive design to help people with more than 10 million tasks. If you haven’t tried Seeing AI yet, download it for free on the App Store. If you have, please share your thoughts, feedback or questions with us at seeingai@microsoft.com, or through the Disability Answer Desk and Accessibility User Voice Forum.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 03-12-2019, 04:32 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
Marvel's Avengers: Endgame Is Finished
Avengers: Endgame--a movie that wraps up 10 years worth of MCU stories and concludes the ongoing Phase 3--is finally finished, it seems. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo tweeted recently that the movie is "locked," which seems to suggest that the editing process is finished.
The last day of editing was March 8, it seems, as referenced in the tweet by the sundae bar that was apparently created for the editors to enjoy. The editors may be sad to see the ice cream go, but they're likely happy to have completed the project.
The last we heard, Endgame was expected to have a run time of around three hours long, making it the longest MCU film to date. That comment came while the editing process was still underway, so it's possible the film is shorter. Whatever the case, the directors say Disney/Marvel are OK with Endgame being so long.
"This is a culmination film of 22 movies, it's a lot of storytelling to work into it," the directors said. "Emotion is an intrinsic part of that to us. When you have to tell a really complicated story and you want strong emotional moments with the characters, it just requires a certain amount of real estate. This one, in particular, feels like three hours worth of real estate."
Review: RICO – A Great Tactical Shooter That Truly Comes Alive In Co-Op
‘Kick doors, kill men.’ These four seemingly simple words, which appear on-screen while you patiently wait for one of RICO’s procedurally generated levels to load, might seem like a throwaway line – and yet they perfectly sum up its bombastic simplicity. For all the extra objectives and features, everything boils down to putting boots to doors and asses, and that’s what makes its first-person shooter action so addictive.
Falling into that randomly laid out and semi-roguelike corner of the industry populated by the likes of City of Brass, RICO is a co-operative FPS that revels in the moment-to-moment exchanges of its gunfights. You play an agent of a task force sent to hunt down and destabilise criminal organisations the only way you know how: by killing every drug-peddling, gun-running felon stupid enough to stray into your crosshairs. You’re here to deal out justice, one room at a time.
Quite literally, too. You’ll work your way through a web of criminals, each posted throughout a randomly-generated set of rooms. Sometimes you’ll need to collect evidence in briefcases, defuse bombs in a given timeframe or destroy assets in the field, but while you’re doing that you’ll need to end the life of every criminal you encounter. Every time you reach a door you’ll press ‘B’ to kick it in and initiate a short burst of bullet time. When every enemy inside is dead, the room will be cleared and you’ll be free to pursue any objectives or collect any ammo or health before progressing to the next room.
By defining its action with short bursts of gunplay, each set of randomised rooms is different; you never know what you’re going to get next. Will it be a large open drawing room filled with shotgun-wielding jumpsuits? Or a small corridor with bald-headed enforcers with tyre irons and desire to bash your head in? Will you choose to go in with the accuracy and reduced range of your pistol, or try and clear house with the extra power and unwieldy recoil of an AK47-style assault rifle?
You can actually finish a level at any time by returning to the door you first entered it from, but the more rooms you clear and the more objectives you complete, the better your rewards at the end. You’ll earn XP, which will level you up and unlock new traits and weapons, but you’ll also earn merits. These tokens enable you to buy new guns, attachments and tactical items, but also top up your health and your armour. Your health level is persistent throughout, so forget to restore your health and you’ll need to fight at a disadvantage and hope you breach and clear a room with some health pickups within.
Backing up that roguelike persistence comes the risk/reward of each mission. Should you die at any point while kicking doors and killing men, that mission will remain permanently failed and it’ll black out any further missions along that arm of the sting. By losing those missions you’ll also lose a source of XP and merits, so it pays to play with caution as much as it does with gung-ho gunplay. You can run and slide, enabling you to pull off the kind of moves that would turn John Woo green with envy, but it’s easy to get shredded by a flurry of enemy fire, so you’ll need to use those bursts of slow-mo to hit the biggest threats in a room quickly and pull back to pick off the rest by training your iron sights on the doorway.
You can play through every mission solo – whether through a campaign or missions, in quick play or in a daily set of rooms – but things get really interesting when you play in co-op. You team up with a buddy locally via split-screen in docked mode, or you can head online and unleash bullet-based justice from afar. With a partner in tow, you’ll need to breach doors at the same time in order for bullet time to kick in, so working together is the only way to truly excel. And it makes for one hell of a rush as you both breach a room from different directions, causing the enemies within to split their attention before a barrage of death arrives forthwith.
On Nintendo Switch, loading times can sometimes stretch on a little too long and textures can occasionally take a bit too much time to pop in, but performance is mostly pretty solid. With its semi-cel-shaded graphics and simple corridor and room designs, RICO isn’t going to make your eyes glaze over with its artistic splendour, but the simple gunplay and over-the-top encounters mean it’s a perfect fit for Switch’s pick-up-and-play ethos. There are even daily missions to complete, which come with leaderboards and the chance to earn a currency that unlocks new weapon skins, so you can keep unlocking new things even when you’ve only got five minutes to spare.
Conclusion
RICO is simple, moreish fun in arcade FPS form; a literal corridor shooter that makes every gunfight a glorious exchange of bullets as you fight your way to the words ‘Room cleared’ over and over again. It’s great fun in single-player, but when you head into each randomised set of rooms in co-op, you’ll shoot your way into an interactive buddy cop movie right there in the palm of your hands. Loading times and the occasional bit of pop-in aside, this is another fine addition to the console’s growing list of first-person shooters.
