The release of the GNOME desktop is the default desktop environment in the upcoming release of Fedora 30 Workstation. GNOME 3.32 includes a wide range of enhancements, including: new default application icons, a new emoji chooser in the on screen keyboard, and improved per-app permissions control.
GNOME 3.32
New Icons
GNOME 3.32 features a range of UI tweaks and improvements. Notably, the entire default icon library has been updated and refreshed, featuring more vibrant colours.
Some of the new icons in GNOME 3.32
Additionally, the colours of the desktop are tweaked to the brighter colour palette to match the new icons.
App Menus deprecated
In GNOME 3. the App Menu is the dropdown that appeared in the top left of the panel next to the Activities hotspot. As of GNOME 3.32, this UI feature is deprecated, and all core GNOME default applications now no longer have App Menus.
Fractional Scaling
Previously, the GNOME UI could only scale in increments of 1. With the wide range of different DPI screens available this may cause a strange middle ground on some displays, where the UI is either too small or too large when scaled. GNOME 3.32 provides experimental support for scaling the UI by more granular amounts.
Better emoji input
GNOME 3.32 features an updated on-screen keyboard implementation. Most notably, this includes the ability to easily “type” emoji with the on-screen keyboard
Emoji on-screen keyboard in GNOME 3.32
Improved App permissions control
The new “Application Permissions” in the main settings dialog allows users to view and change permissions for applications.
Read more about this release
There are many more changes and enhancements in this major version of GNOME. Check out the release announcement and the release notes from the GNOME Project for more information.
Maxell sues Apple over navigation, camera & data tech patents
By Roger Fingas Friday, March 15, 2019, 01:36 pm PT (04:36 pm ET)
Long-time magnetic storage and electronics maker Maxell on Friday launched a lawsuit against Apple, accusing it of violating 10 U.S. patents, some of them inherited from Hitachi.
Three of the patents — dubbed ‘317, ‘999, and ‘498 — are connected to walking navigation, and Maxell cites features like Find My Friends and pedestrian routes in Apple Maps as infringements. A third patent, ‘493, involves Apple camera design, while a fourth (‘438) relates to wireless communication and AirDrop file transfers.
Also cited are Maxell’s ‘193 covering cellphone technology, ‘306 for ring alerts, ‘794 for controlling power consumption, ‘586 for unlocking one device with another, and ‘991, which the company says is violated by FaceTime video calls and iTunes video.
A wide range of Apple devices are listed as infringing, including iPhones, iPads, and Macs up to 2018 models. The iPhone XS is repeatedly cited as an example in Maxell’s complaint, filed through a U.S. District Court in Texarkana, Tex.
The company is seeking a jury trial, compensatory damages, and both preliminary and permanent injunctions.
“Since at least June 2013, Apple has been aware of Maxell’s patents and has had numerous meetings and interactions regarding its infringement of these patents,” the complaint charges. “These meetings included Apple’s representatives being provided with detailed information regarding Maxell’s patents, the developed technology, and Apple’s ongoing use of this patented technology. Through this process, Apple’s representatives requested and received detailed explanations regarding Maxell’s patents and allegations. Maxell believed that the parties could reach a mutually beneficial solution and to that end considered a potential business transaction and continued to answer multiple inquiries from Apple over the course of several years, including communicating with Apple as recently as late 2018.”
Based on its track record Apple will mostly likely try to get the case dismissed or settled out of court, given the potential cost of losing a trial. This often succeeds, but Maxell is more prominent than most plaintiffs, and the company isn’t immune — earlier today a judge ruled against it a Qualcomm patent suit, awarding the latter $31 million in damages.
It’s been an interesting week as far as looking into the future goes – between potential Pokemon Go successor Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, and this morning’s news that a big PC mod is being ported to mobile, I’m hoping the free-to-play space will get its act together and give us some half-decent experiences for a change.
Until and if that happens though, we’ve got you covered with reviews of premium games like Card Crusade and Heroes of Flatlandia. Board games especially are getting better and better, with more on the way. We’ve already got reviews of Assembly and Tides of Time waiting to drop next week, but that’s just scratching the surface of what 2019’s got in store.
Probably the biggest highlight of the week is the news that Stardew Valley has now finally hit Android. Make sure you check out our review for our full thoughts on the game, but just in case you’ve not heard of this before it’s a game where you spend your time either tending your farm or exploring a dungeon for crafting materials (for the farm). There’s some relationship building thrown in there for good measure as well. The mobile version specifically now enjoys some platform-suitable improvements which the android version is getting from the off.
Mythical City Games return with another entry in their turn-based strategy/war game series Battle Fleet with a land-war focused entry, Battle Fleet: Ground Assault. Owen was rather luke-warm on the previous entry, 2014’s Battle Fleet 2, and Wargamer.com’s Bill Gray reviewed this latest entry on PC last year. He was a bit on the lukewarm side as well but then this is a heavily abstracted experience – it only features tanks, for starters, and is definitely more on the ‘arcade’ end of the war/strategy spectrum. Still, it does some interesting things with hidden movement and range finding, and I always thought it seemed more suited for mobile audiences.
The iOS version is priced at an incredibly premium $9.99, so we’ll try and get you a full review as soon as we can to see if this one measures up to the rest of the genre, but for the curious here’s a gameplay trailer:
Cartoon Network has put out some decent enough mobile titles, all things considered. Last year’s Teen Titans GO! Figure was especially engaging, and once again shows what you can do with a popular IP if you’re not just out to make a quick buck.
The Cartoon Network Arcade isn’t a game per se, but an app that features a collection of mini-games based around popular IP, and there’s an collectables aspect to it as well. There’s also supposed to be some interactivity features with regards to getting unlocks while watching a show at the same time. The app is free so it doesn’t cost you anything to explore if for yourself, but we felt it was worth a mention given how well CN treats mobile gaming at the moment.
Daylight Studios have entertained many a mobile gamer with their charming blend of deep, action-filled games and potatoes. It’s been over a year since Holy Potatoes! We’re in Space!?, and now the developer has released a new title on PC – Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story!?
Desktop warriors aren’t the only ones who get to enjoy this new spudtastic experience however – the game will be coming to iOS on March 28th. Pre-Orders are available now, if you want to spend the $4.99 on it now, otherwise the game (and our review), will drop at the end of the month. Not sure if it’ll be coming to Android, so far only Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop!? Has crossed that divide.
Those still keeping up with the mobile version of Fortnite might be interested in the changes that have come in the recent 8.10 patch. As well as adding in a new vehicle (The Baller, which looks like… well, a ball), vending machines and a new map marker, this update has also change the competition pool.
Now, mobile and Switch users are lumped in together, instead of Switch users competing against their console brethren. I’m not so sure this is doing mobile users any favours – reports suggest the Switch and mobile versions are basically the same, but I would have thought the Switch interface was closer to a controller than it was a mobile touch device. Time will tell, I guess, but if you suddenly start winning/losing more, this may be why.
Sales
Lots of sales on either one app store or the other this week, which is a shame, but let’s round up what we have:
Codito Development (All items $0.99)
These guys are having their own catalogue sale on iOS at the moment, and you can get the following games for just a buck:
Meanwhile, there are two games we spotted going cheap on Android (but not their iOS counterpart) that you may be interested in:
Hydra was Wave Light’s most recent game prior to the release of Shieldwall Chronicles, which we enjoyed. It’s the developer’s usual tactical RPG flair, but with more sci-fi.
Not sure why Beamdog chose to discount this game specifically, but there you go – half price on Android. Did you know they’re working on a digital adaptation of the Axis & Allies table-top wargame?
Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!
ONS Evolution: Cloud, Edge, and Technical Content for Carriers and Enterprise
The first Open Networking Summit was held in October 2011 at Stanford University and described as “a premier event about OpenFlow and Software-Defined Networking (SDN)”. Here we are seven and half years later and I’m constantly amazed at both how far we’ve come since then, and at how quickly a traditionally slow-moving industry like telecommunications is embracing change and innovation powered by open source. Coming out of the ONS Summit in Amsterdam last fall, Network World described open source networking as the “new norm,” and indeed, open platforms have become de-facto standards in networking.
Like the technology, ONS as an event is constantly evolving to meet industry needs and is designed to help you take advantage of this revolution in networking. The theme of this year’s event is “Enabling Collaborative Development & Innovation” and we’re doing this by exploring collaborative development and innovation across the ecosystem for enterprises, service providers and cloud providers in key areas like SDN, NFV, VNF, CNF/Cloud Native Networking, Orchestration, Automation of Cloud, Core Network, Edge, Access, IoT services, and more.
A unique aspect of ONS is that it facilitates deep technical discussions in parallel with exciting keynotes, industry, and business discussions in an integrated program. The latest innovations from the networking project communities including LF Networking (ONAP, OpenDaylight, OPNFV, Tungsten Fabric) are well represented in the program, and in features and add-ons such as the LFN Unconference Track and LFN Networking Demos. A variety of event experiences ensure that attendees have ample opportunities to meet and engage with each other in sessions, the expo hall, and during social events.
New this year is a track structure built to cover the key topics in depth to meet the needs of both CIOs/CTO/architects and developers, sysadmins, NetOps and DevOps teams:
The ONS Schedule is now live — find the sessions and tutorials that will help you learn how to participate in the open source communities and ecosystems that will make a difference in your networking career. And if you need help convincing your boss, this will help you make the case.
The standard price expires March 17th so hurry up and register today! Be sure to check out the Day Passes and Hall Passes available as well.
Xbox One Backwards Compatibility Adds Another Castlevania
Xbox One has gotten another bloody addition to its backwards compatibility line-up today, with the addition of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. The Xbox 360 game is now playable on Xbox One. If you don't already own it, it's now for $15, along with several character packs for a few bucks apiece.
The 2010 game was part of that year's Summer of Arcade lineup, with an emphasis on co-op play that remains unique to the series. To that end it featured several of the series' most well-known protagonists, including Alucard, Soma Cruz, and Julius Belmont. The DLC packs added other heroes like Simon Belmont and Maria Renard, along with extra stages.
In GameSpot's review, critic Giancarlo Varanini suggested that the co-op play was a unique twist, but some areas required it too much for it to live as a single-player experience.
"There are some instances where Harmony of Despair caters more to the multiplayer cooperative experience than the single-player," he said. "For instance, most of the secret areas can be accessed only with other players, but in reality, that's the best way to experience this new Castlevania. And it's the optimal way to experience what may be a new and fun potential direction for the series to take."
As always, the game will be ready to download on your Xbox One if you already own it. This was a digital-only release, but disc-based ones can be played if you still own the disc as well. Check out our full list of every backwards compatible game to see if some of your nostalgic favorites are ready to play.
Review: Turok – A Slice Of FPS History That’s Still Worth Hunting Down In 2019
Nintendo 64 games living a second life on handheld is nothing new, certainly not if you’ve owned and loved a 3DS at some point in the last eight years. But there’s something about that mid-to-late-’90s heyday of shooters – an era that gave us GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark and Quake II among so many others – that still exudes a quintessential kind of magic. And so while the original Turok might not be considered the series’ pinnacle – that falls to the incredible Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, which is also coming to Switch this year – it’s still an FPS landmark filled with charm, character and well, loads of dinosaurs.
Even if you’ve never heard of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter – never mind played it when it first launched in 1997 – it’s important to appreciate just how much this off-the-wall title progressed shooters as a whole. It was the first FPS to appear on N64 (back when its lineup of games was barely into the double digits) and it was massively ahead of its time. Its levels were open, full of twisting corridors, open-plan glades and shortcuts galore. It utilised motion capture to give enemies a realistic sense of movement, and its AI was aggressive and relentless in its quest to vanquish you. Even the way you sway and tilt from side to side as you run is a world away from the rigid movement model of Doom.
To 2019 eyes, Turok might seem a little basic visually – and it is, with its crude textures and sharp polygons – but this was a game built by an 18-strong team back when Nintendo 64 was barely out of its infancy. 3D itself was still a wild frontier of possibility, and developer Iguana Entertainment and publisher Acclaim took a huge risk trying to build a rewarding FPS in three dimensions with what was – at the time – a new IP in the gaming space (it’s based on a comic book which began in the 1950s, in case you were wondering). And, somehow, they had to find a way to fit it onto an N64 cart. Even the condensed soundtrack – one of a handful of concessions that were made to get Turok running on 64-bit hardware – still has a nostalgic quality to it.
So here we are, 22 years later, with that very same game running on Nintendo Switch. This remaster first popped its head up on PC at the tail end of 2015 before eventually making its way onto consoles, so while it’s not necessarily a new port, it is the first time this trailblazing shooter has gone mobile. Developer Nightdive Studios has done a fine job of transitioning Turok’s debut adventure to the world of Joy-Con and handheld adventuring. That infamous fog – one of those aforementioned technical sacrifices – which clouded many of its open areas in order to save memory, has been (mostly) lifted while every character model, lighting effect and weapon has been given a remastered spit shine.
The Nintendo Switch port also benefits from motion controls, so you can sit there and happily wave your console around in handheld mode, shooting dinosaurs and dodging grenades to your heart’s content. It’s a control scheme that suits the messy gunplay of Turok, and is often just as fun as using the sticks. Talking of handheld mode, there’s barely any change in performance when playing away from the dock. This is a port of 22-year-old game and you wouldn’t imagine such a title would put much strain on Switch’s processor, but being able to enjoy Turok’s old school sense of speed and break-neck action in its full form on-the-go is a huge boon.
So how does it play today? Well, that boils down to whether you played it the first time around, and how indoctrinated you’ve become to the tropes of modern first-person shooters. Turok comes from the same time that gave us Quake III Arena and Unreal, so it’s all about moving at sprinting speed, blowing enemies to bits with shotguns and exploring a labyrinthine set of levels before taking down a bullet-sponge boss. The lack of manual saving (something Nightdive could have added in, but presumably didn’t to preserve the game’s original intent) feels so odd in 2019, with checkpoints and save points spread very thinly across its large levels.
And while that gunplay lacks the finesse you’ve come to expect from Rainbow Six: Siege or the current CODs and Battlefields, it never, ever feels boring or rote. While it might not have the ridiculously over-the-top weapons of Turok 2 (Cerebral Bore, anyone?), its arsenal of 14 weapons tick enough classic and creative boxes to make the most of its dramatic death animations. Even now, all these years later, watching those polygonal enemies clutch their throats as blood spurts out feels as exhilarating as it did when that cartridge was first slammed into an N64. If you didn’t play the original that might sound like the kind of thing a psychopath would write, but honestly, it’s still really cool.
Conclusion
There’s no denying that Turok: Dinosaur Hunter has aged a lot in the last two-plus decades, but the fact it also holds up so well is a testament to the work of that small Iguana team and the effort Nightdive Studios has put it bringing this interactive time capsule to life. The lack of a proper story, inability to manually save your progress and sheer open nature of its level design will be something of a shock to players less experienced with the shooters of yore, but with a lick of new paint and some welcome motion controls, this piece of interactive history gets to live again on Nintendo hardware. It’s arguably more interesting as a piece of history than it is an FPS shooter in 2019, but Turok is still worth a look if you’re a fan of the genre.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 03-15-2019, 05:02 PM - Forum: Windows
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7 shopping prophecies from a retail futurist
Doug Stephens is always thinking about tomorrow. And about next year. And the year 2039.
The founder and president of Retail Prophet – one of the world’s top retail consultancies – has logged more than two decades in the industry, leading brands, authoring two books and offering his advice to numerous companies. As he likes to tell clients: “There’s no such thing as being fashionably late for your future.”
On a recent weekday in New York City, Stephens paused to predict how technology will vastly reshape the shopping experience, how retail marketing will change and how the stores themselves will look in the coming years. Yes, there will still be stores, he says.
Transform grabbed a few minutes with Stephens to hear seven futuristic retail realities he envisions, including his views on AI. Based on the interview, here is the thought leader’s forecast, in his words:
Artificial intelligence will become our go-to shopping buddy.
AI has the capacity to learn, to become smarter and more intuitive. It will reshape virtually every aspect of the retail industry – and the industry’s relationship with consumers.
Today, if we compare the development of AI to, say, the development of manned air flight, we are now at Kitty Hawk – the North Carolina town where the Wright brothers made their first controlled flight in 1903. We’re early.
Microsoft is working heavily in the AI field. Imagine where we’re going to be in 20 years. I fully believe that consumers will operate with an artificial intelligence that they can create and tailor in whatever form they like. They will make it look and sound like whatever they’re comfortable with. And it will go everywhere with them.
They will turn to it whenever they have a major consumer decision to make. And even when they make incidental consumer decisions, they will use AI just as they now use a map app – as soon as they leave the house, even if they know where they’re going. They will use AI to inform their consumer behavior and to make far better decisions.
AI will render today’s heart-tugging commercials and marketing campaigns useless.
AI will be a problem for marketers. If they want to appeal to a consumer, marketers may have to go through their AI-enabled, virtual assistant to get to that consumer.
The consumers are going to ask the assistant so many questions. What should I buy? Where should I eat? Which airline should I travel on?
AI is going to take all the emotion out of all those decisions. So consumers won’t be affected by the kind of emotional marketing we see today – ads that show families sitting eating together, traveling with their children, petting the dog. AI won’t care about any of that. Consumer decisions are all going to be based on hard-and-fast metrics.
Brick-and-mortar stores will retain a firm a place in our economy.
Many products still carry a level of immediacy. Waiting a day or two for them just seems silly.
Case in point: drug stores. Look in your medicine cabinet. When you need one of those products, you tend to go get it. That probably won’t change.
Similarly, stores that require significant interaction with the staff. A prime example: home improvement stores. They answer our questions. Is this item right for my needs? How do I install this? If this is beyond my abilities, who can install this for me?
It’s not just the product you’re purchasing. You’re also buying their expertise.
And let’s not forget: Many of us still like shopping in stores.
Another reason many traditional stores will stick around: Millennials like shopping there.
No doubt, today’s retail landscape was built for a different generation of consumers. So we shouldn’t be shocked that millennials aren’t pouring into the malls the way younger people did in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Millennials have lived their whole lives being stimulated by inordinate amounts of media. By comparison, most retail is relatively boring, if we get right down to it. How many times a week do you walk into a store and say, ‘You know, I need to take a selfie of this place?’ Zero.
However, we are starting to address these issues. And I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that millennials just don’t like the physical shopping experiences. That will not change with time.
Doug Stephens on stage.
The grocery store of tomorrow will be far smaller.
With more grocery products coming to our homes from our online shopping, retailers will continue to collapse their spaces. I imagine no cereal aisles, no detergent aisles.
Instead I see maybe a restaurant in the middle of the store where people can learn how to cook things, like different ethnic dishes every week.
Discount stores also will go digital, adding value to shoppers’ time.
If your brand is largely about convenience, ease and taking the friction out of shopping, you will have to focus on those elements and bolster that story in the consumer’s mind.
These stores won’t ask you to stop and take 20 minutes to engage with a shopping experience. They will put the things you need right in front of you to make it easy, so you don’t have to think about price, so you can get right out the door.
If discount retailers do that through technology, they’re going to carve out a very strong position. When we use the word “experience,” often our minds jump to these highly immersive, physically engaged store environments. But “experience” isn’t necessarily tied to luxury.
No single retail brand has yet claimed victory in the digital revolution – but one will.
There hasn’t been a company that can say, ‘We’ve figured it all out. We’ve nailed it.’ That said, there are some courageous, adventurous and insightful things happening across numbers of brands. Nordstrom, for example.
They had the courage to say, ‘What if we were to create a 3,000-square-foot department store that doesn’t stock any products? What if, in that store, everything gets ordered online and delivered to that store. And people come, try on their products and have a glass of wine?’ Sure enough, that became Nordstrom Local.
At some point, after all of the cumulative learnings like that are gained from various digital initiatives, I believe there will be one retailer that is able to bottle it all up in one place.
Of course, the troubling thing is by the time that happens, the retail industry will have shifted once again. It’s always moving – and always quickly.
Watch Doug Stephens reveal the five most important decisions facing today’s retail CEOs during a free webinar, March 21 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time.
Top image: Doug Stephens. (Photos courtesy of Retail Prophet)
Mageia Linux Is a Modern Throwback to the Underdog Days
I’ve been using Linux long enough to remember Linux Mandrake. I recall, at one of my first-ever Linux conventions, hanging out with the MandrakeSoft crew and being starstruck to think that they were creating a Linux distribution that was sure to bring about world domination for the open source platform.
Well, that didn’t happen. In fact, Linux Mandrake didn’t even stand the test of time. It was renamed Mandriva and rebranded. Mandriva retained popularity but eventually came to a halt in 2011. The company disbanded, sending all those star developers to other projects. Of course, rising from the ashes of Mandrake Linux came the likes of OpenMandriva, as well as another distribution called Mageia Linux.
Like OpenMandriva, Mageia Linux is a fork of Mandriva. It was created (by a group of former Mandriva employees) in 2010 and first released in 2011, so there was next to no downtime between the end of Mandriva and the release of Mageia. Since then, Mageia has existed in the shadows of bigger, more popular flavors of Linux (e.g., Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Elementary OS, etc.), but it’s never faltered. As of this writing, Mageia is listed as number 26 on the Distrowatch Page Hit Ranking chart and is enjoying release number 6.1.
What Sets Mageia Apart?
This question has become quite important when looking at Linux distributions, considering just how many distros there are—many of which are hard to tell apart. If you’ve seen one KDE, GNOME, or Xfce distribution, you’ve seen them all, right? Anyone who’s used Linux enough knows this statement is not even remotely true. For many distributions, though, the differences lie in the subtleties. It’s not about what you do with the desktop; it’s how you put everything together to improve the user experience.
Mageia Linux defaults to the KDE desktop and does as good a job as any other distribution at presenting KDE to users. But before you start using KDE, you should note some differences between Mageia and other distributions. To start, the installation is quite simple, but it’s slightly askew from what might expect. In similar fashion to most modern distributions, you boot up the live instance and click on the Install icon (Figure 1).
Once you’ve launched the installation app, it’s fairly straightforward, although not quite as simple as some other versions of Linux. New users might hesitate when they are presented with the partition choice between Use free space or Custom disk partition (Remember, I’m talking about new users here). This type of user might prefer a bit simpler verbiage. Consider this: What if you were presented (at the partition section) by two choices:
Basic Install
Custom Install
The Basic install path would choose a fairly standard set of options (e.g., using the whole disk for installation and placing the bootloader in the proper/logical place). In contrast, the Custom install would allow the user to install in a non-default fashion (for dual boot, etc.) and choose where the bootloader would go and what options to apply.
The next possible confusing step (again, for new users) is the bootloader (Figure 2). For those who have installed Linux before, this option is a no-brainer. For new users, even understanding what a bootloader does can be a bit of an obstacle.
The bootloader configuration screen also allows you to password protect GRUB2. Because of the layout of this screen, it could be confused as the root user password. It’s not. If you don’t want to password protect GRUB2, leave this blank. In the final installation screen (Figure 3), you can set any bootloader options you might want. Once again, we find a window that could cause confusion with new users.
Click Finish and the installation will complete. You might have noticed the absence of user configuration or root user password options. With the first stage of the installation complete, you reboot the machine, remove the installer media, and (when the machine reboots) you’ll then be prompted to configure both the root user password and a standard user account (Figure 4).
And that’s all there is to the Mageia installation.
Welcome to Mageia
Once you log into Mageia, you’ll be greeted by something every Linux distribution should use—a welcome app (Figure 5).
From this welcome app, you can get information about the distribution, get help, and join communities. The importance of having such an approach to greet users at login cannot be overstated. When new users log into Linux for the first time, they want to know that help is available, should they need it. Mageia Linux has done an outstanding job with this feature. Granted, all this app does is serve as a means to point users to various websites, but it’s important information for users to have at the ready.
Beyond the welcome app, the Mageia Control Center (Figure 6) also helps Mageia stand out. This one-stop-shop is where users can take care of installing/updating software, configuring media sources for installation, configure update frequency, manage/configure hardware, configure network devices (e.g., VPNs, proxies, and more), configure system services, view logs, open an administrator console, create network shares, and so much more. This is as close to the openSUSE YaST tool as you’ll find (without using either SUSE or openSUSE).
Beyond those two tools, you’ll find everything else you need to work. Mageia Linux comes with the likes of LibreOffice, Firefox, KMail, GIMP, Clementine, VLC, and more. Out of the box, you’d be hard pressed to find another tool you need to install to get your work done. It’s that complete a distribution.
Target Audience
Figuring out the Mageia Linux target audience is a tough question to answer. If new users can get past the somewhat confusing installation (which isn’t really that challenging, just slightly misleading), using Mageia Linux is a dream.
The slick, barely modified KDE desktop, combined with the welcome app and control center make for a desktop Linux that will let users of all skill levels feel perfectly at home. If the developers could tighten up the verbiage on the installation, Mageia Linux could be one of the greatest new user Linux experiences available. Until then, new users should make sure they understand what they’re getting into with the installation portion of this take on the Linux platform.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 03-15-2019, 10:49 AM - Forum: Lounge
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God Of War And Red Dead Redemption 2 Lead BAFTA Nominations; See The Full List
This year's British Academy Games Awards are happening soon, and BAFTA has now revealed the full list of nominations for 2019. God of War leads the way with 10 nominations, while there are six nominations each for Red Dead Redemption 2, Florence, and Return of the Obra Dinn. Celeste, meanwhile, is up for five awards.
The awards are voted on by BAFTA membership. The only award decided by the public is Mobile Game of the Year, which you can vote for here. The nominees for that are Brawl Stars, Clash Royale, Fortnite, Old School Runescape, Pokemon Go, and Roblox.
You can see the full list of nominees below. Which games do you think should win? Let us know in the comments!
BAFTA Game Awards Nominations 2019
Artistic Achievement
Detroit: Become Human
Gris
God of War
Spider-Man
Red Dead Redemption 2
Return of the Obra Dinn
Audio Achievement
Battlefield V
Detroit: Become Human
God of War
Spider-Man
Red Dead Redemption 2
Tetris Effect
Best Game
Assassin's Creed Odyssey
Astro Bot: Rescue Mission
Celeste
God of War
Red Dead Redemption 2
Return of the Obra Dinn
British Game
11-11: Memories Retold
Forza Horizon 4
Red Dead Redemption 2
The Room: Old Sins
Overcooked 2
Two Point Hospital
Debut Game
Beat Saber
Cultist Simulator
Donut County
Florence
Gris
Yoku's Island Express
Evolving Game
Destiny 2
Elite Dangerous
Fortnite
Overwatch
Sea of Thieves
Rainbow Six Siege
Family
Lego The Incredibles
Nintendo Labo
Overcooked 2
Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu / Eevee
Super Mario Party
Yoku's Island Express
Game Beyond Entertainment
11: Memories Retold
Celeste
Florence
Life is Strange 2
My Child Lebensborn
Nintendo Labo
Game Design
Astro Bot: Rescue Mission
Celeste
God of War
Into the Breach
Minit
Return of the Obra Dinn
Game Innovation
Astro Bot: Rescue Mission
Celeste
Cultist Simulator
Moss
Nintendo Labo
Return of the Obra Dinn
Mobile Game
Alto's Odyssey
Brawl Stars
Donut County
Florence
Reigns: Game of Thrones
The Room: Old Sins
Multiplayer
A Way Out
Battlefield V
Overcooked 2
Sea of Thieves
Super Mario Party
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Music
Celeste
Far Cry 5
Florence
God of War
Gris
Tetris Effect
Narrative
Florence
Frostpunk
God of War
Spider-Man
Red Dead Redemption 2
Return of the Obra Dinn
Original Property
Dead Cells
Florence
Into the Breach
Moss
Return of the Obra Dinn
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Snooker 19 Pots A Spring Release On Switch, New Details And Trailer Shared
Ripstone Games has revealed that the upcoming Snooker 19 will be launching on Switch this spring. A brand new trailer has been released to celebrate.
The game is set to feature 128 of the world’s top players including Ronnie O’Sullivan, Judd Trump, Mark Selby and Ding Junhui, with iconic venues including The Crucible and Alexandra Palace. Players can choose from plenty of offline and online modes to master every official tournament, including global online tournaments which are set to link in real-time with the live World Snooker calendar. On top of that, you’ll find quick play online match-making and fully customised matches of full snooker, 6-red snooker and fast-paced Shoot-Out snooker.
It’s been made in Unreal Engine 4, with Ripstone stating that this is the “most authentic depiction of the sport ever created”. You can see some of the player likenesses in the trailer above, which have been created using 3D facial scanning technology, and it also boasts highly detailed cues, tables and balls. “Advanced physics and AI engines” are also set to play their part in adding to the action.
Justin Forrest of Lab42 has said the following:
“It’s been way too long since the last flagship snooker title. We’re hugely excited to finally give players a snooker simulation worthy of this increasingly popular sport. The combination of official World Snooker licensed content, high quality, authentic gameplay and TV-style presentation, Snooker 19 is the complete package for both newcomers and hardcore fans.”
We’ll keep an eye out for more news, including the exact release date, but fans attending EGX Rezzed in London this April can go hands-on with the game from 4th – 6th April.
Are you a snooker fan? Will you be strutting your stuff around the table this spring? Let us know if you plan on picking this up in the comments below.
