It’s been one year and six months since the release of the Fire Emblem Heroes game. We’re throwing a Summer Celebration full of limited-time events to express our gratitude for your continued support!
1. Summer Celebration Log-In Bonuses During this event, there will be two Log-In Bonus rounds in which you can collect a total of up to 40 Orbs!
Active: 8/2/18 at 12 a.m. PT to 8/15/18 at 11:59 p.m. PT
Active: 8/16/18 at 12 a.m. PT to 8/29/18 at 11:59 p.m. PT
2. Summer Celebration Quests Active: 8/2/18 at 12 a.m. PT to 8/29/18 at 11:59 p.m. PT
Defeat enemies with specific Hero types to earn up to 20 Orbs!
3. Daily Reward Maps Active: 8/2/18 at 12 a.m. PT to 8/15/18 at 12 a.m. PT
Reward Maps in two difficulties, Normal and Hard, for 10 days in a row. You can play these maps to earn up to 20 Orbs!
Note: Daily Reward Maps will be available for four days each .
4. Double EXP and SP Active: 8/2/18 at 12 a.m. PT to 8/15/18 at 11:59 p.m. PT
During this time, the EXP and SP you earn in battle will be doubled!
5. Tempest Trials+ Active: 8/14/18 at 12 a.m. PT to 8/23/18 at 11:59 p.m. PT
You can earn six of the Heroes who appeared in Tempest Trials during 2017!
6. Daily Summoning Focus Revivals Active: 8/2/18 at 12 a.m. PT to 8/16/18 at 11:59 p.m. PT
We will be reviving one limited-time skill-related summoning focus per day. They’ll each be available for 24 hours only!
Also, Legendary Hero Summoning Event – Lucina: Glorious Archer is available until 8/6/18 at 11:59 p.m. 5-star Focus Heroes have an initial appearance rate of 8%! (What’s more, the appearance rate regular 5-star Heroes are set to 0%.) Plus, for new summoning events, the first time you summon, you won’t have to use Orbs!
We hope you continue to enjoy Fire Emblem Heroes this summer! If you’re new to the Fire Emblem Heroes game, learn more at the official site.
Fantasy Violence Suggestive Themes Partial Nudity Digital Purchases
I’m so excited we’re launching No Man’s Sky on Xbox One today! Last week we shared our trailer for No Man’s SkyNext, and your feedback and response has been so lovely to hear; we just couldn’t wait to let everyone play.
We’re excited to see what people do with multiplayer, unlimited base building, and the ability to command freighters in this near-infinite universe.
And we will be able to watch and play along with you because the Xbox One version comes complete with Mixer integration which allows you to interact with other people’s streams either by helping or making their game more exciting. Maybe you’ll get involved by saving someone’s life in permadeath or send some pirates to attack a traveler who is stealing from others. Or perhaps you’ll just help guide a friend through their game.
As well as launching No Man’s Sky on Xbox One, which contains four huge updates since our initial launch, we are also unveiling our largest update to date: Next. If you want to see everything that’s new, please check out the full patch notes here from our official site.
This week we also launched The Galactic Atlas, a new website by us, featuring key points in the Euclid Galaxy, a galaxy seeded by us, but being brought to life by you, the community. You can track progress, share discoveries, or join one of the growing hubs or factions.
Thank-you to everyone who has supported us in the run-up to release. This is just one more step on a longer journey. We hope you enjoy No Man’s Sky and you can keep in touch with all the news on our official site. See you out there in the universe.
Though it may not initially seem so, video game production is an extremely demanding task, requiring equal amounts of ambition, creativity, and attention to detail to produce something memorable – and that’s not even accounting for the long shadow cast by countless other games that have garnered mass acclaim and popularity. The act of making a game is an intimidating mountain to climb even when you’ve got a team of talented individuals backed by sufficient resources, yet somehow, Joakim Sandberg has managed to do the impossible with Iconoclasts: he’s made a fantastic, memorable, and fun game, and he did it alone.
Iconoclasts is the result of one man’s dream project for an action platformer, borne out over a lengthy eight-year period of development. Fortunately, the final product reflects the time invested into it, as it expertly mixes an engaging and surprisingly heavy story with Metroidvania elements and a peerlessly gorgeous 16-bit visual style that favors immaculate detail and eye-popping color palettes. It’s a treat on several fronts, and isn’t a game you’ll want to pass on without giving it some consideration.
The story follows our silent heroine, Robin, an engineer and mechanic who lives in a society where her services are highly discouraged. A religious regime called the One Concern rules over people with an iron fist, tightly controlling the usage of a mysterious and powerful material called Ivory which has made the society’s technology possible. It’s a gripping and unusual tale, and one which will frequently take you by surprise with the themes that it covers.
Topics like the dangers of religious zealotry and the nature of free will are explored at length, and though the dialogue and cutscenes can sometimes feel like they’re dragging on a little long for this sort of game, they’re often an interesting change of pace and tone for what otherwise looks like a typical bright and friendly action platformer. Though these deeper themes take the center stage, they’re balanced out by a healthy dose of wry humor, which helps to keep the experience from feeling too preachy or dull. For every uncomfortable scene of watching a mother and daughter’s tense relationship erupt into a hurtful argument, there’ll be another where you listen in on a bar full of raucous men telling groan-inducing, pun-riddled jokes.
Gameplay is rather difficult to describe, as it borrows many elements from the Metroidvania genre, but it does so loosely. This is very much a narrative-driven experience, which means that exploration is not the number one focus, even if it is strongly featured in the familiar map design. Robin begins her adventure with a powerful stun gun and a giant, golden wrench, both of which are used to clobber the occasional enemies you’ll come across and in most of the puzzle solving as you explore. Though Iconoclasts is, on the whole, a more linear experience, there are several pockets where the map opens up considerably to allow for some good, old-fashioned trial and error exploration, and many of these sections must later be revisited with new power-ups if you wish to grab all the loot.
Instead of rote health or weapon upgrades, the various nooks and crannies of the map are rife with small treasure chests that contain crafting materials – like the cutely named ‘Improvium’ – which can then be used on benches to make special ‘Tweaks’. Tweaks act as a sort of skill or perk system, giving you a wide range of little boosts and buffs to make the game easier in some ways. You’re only given a few slots for equipping Tweaks, which can do everything from giving you more air for underwater sections to upping your max run speed. Taking any sort of damage will deactivate the Tweak in the rightmost slot, and each one after that will also deactivate as you take more damage, only to be restored if you find enough ivory from felled enemies and solved puzzles.
It’s a nice way of introducing a little more incentive to play defensively, though admittedly, Tweaks don’t do a lot to modify the overall experience. Yes, you may notice if one gets knocked out and Robin runs a little slower, but there’s seldom a situation where it feels like a notable loss. Nonetheless, the Tweak system is a welcome way of giving the player control over skewing the game towards particular playstyles, and there’s just something that feels so right about scouring the map and finding materials to craft more of them.
Much of this is down to the traversal and moment-to-moment gameplay, which feels positively sublime. Robin has just the right amount of weight to her jumps and the diverse skillset that she develops over the course of the game makes for a varied and interesting experience. Puzzles are often straightforward and simple to figure out, but there are many that will demand a little more thought and planning; some puzzles can span multiple screens and a few different tools just to get to a little blue chest. Some may see this as going a bit overboard, but it’s nice to see some puzzle design in a Metroidvania that goes for a little more than just using a single tool on an obvious obstacle.
Oddly enough, some of the best puzzles are actually dressed up as boss battles. One memorable fight involved two characters separated on different sides of a room-sized robot, with the two having to tag each other in and out as they dismantle different parts of the machine so the other can get to weak points on their side. It was dynamic, interesting, and rather off the wall, which was a refreshing change of pace from the usual loop of simply recognizing attack patterns and retaliating where possible. Each boss in Iconoclasts feels distinct from the last, with many of them employing unique tactics and requiring unconventional reactions to triumph. Though the difficulty does occasionally tend to be a little on the easy side, these boss fights more than make up for it in their overall fun factor and memorable design.
On the presentation side of things, Iconoclasts manages to astound with its hyper-detailed 16-bit graphics. This is pixel art at its absolute best; it’s immediately clear that Sandberg devoted a significant amount of development time to getting the looks of the game just right. Each environment you enter has a vibrant and bright veneer to it, and the atmosphere is perfectly captured in the little details, all adding up to make for quite a visual treat. Animation quality is similarly stellar, with a surprising amount of emotion and expression being coaxed out of each character as they pantomime during cutscenes. All of this is capped off by a retro soundtrack that’s just about as diverse, offering up the perfect backing tunes for whatever the situation requires. This element is perhaps not as striking as the gorgeous visuals, but it satisfies nonetheless.
Conclusion
On the whole, Iconoclasts is a memorable, thought-provoking, and enjoyable take on the Metroidvania genre which manages to stick out from the crowd with its chipper presentation and deeper storytelling style. Couple those elements with some of the best 16-bit spritework we’ve seen and a killer lineup of awesome boss encounters, and you’ve got another must-have for the Switch library. It may have been eight years in the making, but this one has certainly been worth the wait; don’t miss out on this one.
Save 25% on Vampyr as part of this week’s Weekend Deal*!
London, 1918. You are newly-turned Vampyr Dr. Jonathan Reid. As a doctor, you must find a cure to save the city’s flu-ravaged citizens. As a Vampyr, you are cursed to feed on those you vowed to heal.
MC-135261 – /setblock for player heads don’t show the texture after the placement
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. 1.13 will have a lot of experimental snapshots that may break everything and smell funny. This may be one of those snapshots. This is what happens when Mojang are changing all the things!
Share your thoughts on how 1.13 is shaping up in the comments below!
Hello, and welcome to another Community Focus! These articles give us an opportunity to shine a spotlight on those within the community that create wonderful tools for players at large to use, in their never ending search for loot. This week, we’ve got the creator of DestinySets.com. Using the Destiny 2 API, they’ve created a wonderful portal for Guardians around the world to see what gear they have yet to collect within Destiny 2 – whether it be the final few weapons from Gunsmith packages, or armor pieces from planetary vendors. This will be a great place for those among you who are trying to check off every last item before Forsaken launches on September 4, 2018.
That said, let’s dive in and get to know the brain behind the website:
Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you here?
Josh: Hi, my name is Josh and I’ve been playing Destiny since back in the Destiny beta days. Originally from Sydney, Australia, but I moved to London at about the same time Destiny 2 came out. I make DestinySets.com, a website to help Guardians collect their gear.
When did you start exploring web development?
Josh: Back in school, I had a problem I wanted to solve and I learned programming to solve it myself. I’ve stuck at that for a bit, and now I work full time as a web developer, making a few Destiny sites on the side.
That’s the cool thing about having an API for games like Destiny – its a bit of a trigger to get people into programming. On the Destiny API Devs Discord (https://discord.gg/HU3Q4up), we see so many people coming in learning programming for the first time to build something with the Destiny APIs – whether it’s something for their clan, or a way to see Xur inventory, or to dive more into perks and stats. Destiny Sets is on Github (http://github.com/joshhunt/destinySets) as an open source project, and people of all sorts of experiences contribute, especially for the data to organise the gear pieces into their respective loot tables.
What brought about the creation of Destiny sets?
Josh: Actually I first created Destiny Sets back in Destiny, mainly for strike and raid loot, to help me figure out whether I needed to use a Skeleton Key or SIVA key for another chance at the loot I was missing.
When Destiny 2 came out, the game changed these things around (for the better, I think) and I saw the opportunity to create one giant checklist to help you track the gear that you have, what you’re missing, and where everything comes from.
There’s so much gear in Destiny 2 from all sort of activities that sometimes it’s hard to keep track of. I like how, for me at least, looking at the items I don’t have yet on Destiny Sets will be a prompt for how I’ll play Destiny 2. I’ll go Crucible for a bit to work on my Season 3 objectives, or to try and work on that nightfall high score for a cool emblem.
What do you find yourself doing most in Destiny 2?
Josh: First and foremost I’m here for the friendgame. I really lucked out and found a wonderful clan, Bravo Company 30, that I love raiding with. I love the challenges, the teamwork, communication and banter that comes from the raids – it’s such a fun experience that you can’t really get anywhere else.
Other than that I love it when Iron Banner comes around and I like smashing through the Ornament objectives. Our clan runs “Iron Banner Disco” matches where we all head in with our most garish shaders and exclusively use weapons like Hard Light, Coldheart, or Prometheus Lens. It might not be the most effective, but it’s a load of fun.
Solstice of Heroes is just kicking off! What are you most excited to get your hands on?
Josh: Definitely the new armour! I’m really digging the new Warlock gear and I can’t wait to see what it’ll look like with my shaders and the new armor Glows.
With Forsaken just around the corner, what announced feature has caught your eye so far?
Josh: I’m actually really looking forward to Collections, purely from a selfish point of view. The hardest part of working on Destiny Sets is all the manual curation that goes into the site – all the gear on the site has been organised by me or a community contributor into specific set or vendor. I’m hearing that maybe Collections in Forsaken will make some of that work easier, and allow me to work on more features for the site.
Any last shoutouts before we wrap up? Solstice is calling, and we don’t want to keep you here too long!
Josh: Massive props to Bungie API engineer vthorn (aka /u/EdgarVerona) and the Bungie.net team for all the hard work that’s put into the API and support they provide for us.
Also to the whole Destiny Devs community, of which there’s far too many to name. On top of also providing invaluable support, both moral and technical, I’m constantly marbled by the variety of the cool things they all provide
Many thanks to Josh for stopping by for a chat, and creating this awesome tool. I know I’ll be using DestinySets over the next few weeks, seeing as though I have a few last Raid pieces to collect. We’re always searching for members of the community to celebrate. If you have someone in mind, let us know by suggesting them on our Community forum, or tweeting @Bungie, me (@A_dmg04) or Cozmo (@Cozmo23) directly using the #CommunityFocus tag.
Open source is now so pervasive at organizations of all sizes that there is outsized demand for workers skilled with open platforms and tools. This has created profound changes in the job market, and across industries the skills gap is widening, making it ever more difficult to hire people with much needed job skills.
In a recent webinar during which Seepersad discussed these topics, one participant asked about the differences between performance-based tests or multiple-choice tests.
“I’m a very passionate believer in performance-based tests,” Seepersad said, “and the reason is that it really reflects the reality of how you do your work as an IT professional. You do your work on a live system. You do your work at the command line. You don’t do your work by being quizzed and being handed a set of answers.”
“When I think of my own role in the past as a hiring manager,” Seepersad added, “if you gave me the option between the two I would always pick the one where the candidate has proven that they can do the work in a live, timed hands-on environment because that’s going to be a better reflection of what I’m going to expect them to do in the real world. A performance-based test is definitely going to give me a lot more confidence in a candidate than a multiple-choice exam.”
In this article series, we have looked at what is involved in obtaining Linux Foundation certifications, but other organizations offer training and certification for open source platforms and tools as well. Another participant asked about the differences between Red Hat certification and Linux Foundation certification, for example.
“One of the things that I really like and respect about the Red Hat program is that just like The Linux Foundation program, it is performance-based,” Seepersad said. “It is a live system that the candidate has to work on, which is great. Red Hat continues to be a great option for users who know for a fact that they’re going to be working in a Red Hat-only environment.”
“One other distinction is that we deliver our exam 100 percent online,” he added. “For the Red Hat exams, you have to go to a physical testing center or a kiosk. From a convenience factor, depending on where you’re located, if you’re not in an urban area or if you’re in a country that maybe doesn’t have a lot of test infrastructure, being able to take an exam from your own computer and take it 24/7 can matter a lot.”
Exam Insurance
Seepersad was also asked what is meant by “exam insurance” for Linux Foundation certification exams. Seepersad said that soon after the training program was launched, they talked particularly with candidates who were taking a bit longer than expected about why that was.
“The reason was that they were trying to save up for delivering their solutions until they were really sure they were ready,” he said. “Quite often that meant they were about to run out of time. We thought about how to take the stress out of this. The way we take the stress out is by offering a no-questions-asked exam retake option. If you take either exam, LFCS or LFCE, and you do not succeed on your first attempt, you are automatically eligible to have a free second attempt.”
With certification playing a more important role in securing a rewarding long-term career, are you interested in learning about options for gaining credentials? If so, please check out the other stories in this series and stay tuned for more information about open source training and certification.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 08-02-2018, 09:30 PM - Forum: Windows
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Surface Go available now, starting at $399
Since we announced Surface Go last month, we’ve seen great interest and excitement for this new product. Many of you have shared your appreciation for a sleek, beautiful, go-anywhere device that gives you so much portability, versatility and productivity for $399. We’re thrilled to make Surface Go available for purchase today in the U.S. and Canada, and in additional markets later this month.
Surface Go marks an important inflection point in our Surface journey. From the first tablet that could replace your laptop that pioneered the 2:1 category, to laptops that rival desktops, desktops that transform your desk into a Studio, and Surface Hub, which can make any space a collaborative space, Surface has always been about empowering you to be more productive and creative.
And yet, a lot has changed since we shipped our first Surface – not only in how technology and device categories have advanced, but in how work and life have blended. We all have the same 24 hours, but the way we move through the day is different. There is less structure or expectation of the types of tasks and activities we accomplish throughout our day. We may fit in a workout or personal errand in the middle of the work day, and we are just as likely to be productive in a coffee shop, on an airplane, in an office, or from our couch at the end of our day.
At Microsoft, as we consider the future of modern work and life, we envision a redefinition of personal productivity as something to encompass not just our job and daily tasks, but the steps we take to pursue our passions and our purpose. We’re thinking a lot about the role of technology in this new era of productivity and about our opportunity – and responsibility – to design products that empower us, not overwhelm us. We recently conducted some research that looks at our increasingly complex relationship with technology and the devices we carry every day. We found some interesting things:
People are conflicted about how devices fit into our daily lives. Nearly 80 percent of people in our research agree that technology empowers them to do more with their life, and 77 percent say their device enables them to be where they want to be, when they want to be there. This flexibility has been key in the workplace, where 75 percent say devices add flexibility in how they manage their job. This balance comes with a cost though. Almost 60 percent of respondents say their devices make them feel like they always need to be “on,” and 53 percent suggest their device forces them to split their attention. We can help by building features like Do Not Disturb in Outlook, which helps you protect your personal time and Focus Assist in Windows, to help you focus on what matters most.
People are increasingly frustrated by the limitations of their tablets. While there is no denying the appeal of the lightweight portability of the tablet form factor, people also reported higher feelings of frustration associated with an inability to be productive, as compared to laptops and smartphones. When choosing between their laptop, smartphone or tablet, tablets are reported to provide the least positive impact on people spending time on what they care about, and 65 percent of people would give up their tablet before other devices.
The laptop is still the go-to device associated with productivity. More than half of people associate productivity with laptops – and not just for work or school, but to pursue passions and hobbies. In fact, 74 percent of people claim that their laptop makes their life better overall and report that just having a laptop with you on vacation can give you peace of mind, with 64 percent of people saying they’re at ease when traveling with one.
This data reinforces the trend we have been seeing in the marketplace of 2:1 devices growing, while tablets continue to decline*. It speaks to what we have been hearing loud and clear from you – you want your devices to enable you to feel empowered and productive throughout your increasingly complex and blended life. At only 1.15 pounds, Surface Go gives you the versatility and portability of a tablet, the performance of a laptop and the option of smartphone-like LTE connectivity**, all in a single, compact device. Surface Go empowers you to stay connected, pursue your passions and tackle your side projects without weighing you down or compromising on quality.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 08-02-2018, 09:30 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Attending Black Hat USA 2018? Here’s what to expect from Microsoft
Black Hat USA 2018 brings together professionals at all career levels, encouraging growth and collaboration among academia, world-class researchers, and leaders in the public and private sectors. This is an exciting time as our Microsoft researchers, partners, and security experts will showcase the latest collaborations in defense strategies for cybersecurity, highlight solutions for security vulnerabilities in applications, and bring together an ecosystem of intelligent security solutions. Our objective is to arm business, government, and consumers with deeply integrated intelligence and threat protection capabilities across platforms and products.
Security researchers play an essential role in Microsoft’s security strategy and are key to community-based defense. To show our appreciation for their hard work and partnership, each year at Black Hat USA, the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) highlights the contributions of these researchers through the list of “Top 100” security researchers reporting to Microsoft (either directly or through a third party) during the previous 12 months. While one criterion for the ranking is volume of fixed reports a researcher has made, the severity and impact of the reports is very important to the ranking also. Given the number of individuals reporting to Microsoft, anyone ranked among the Top 100 is among some of the top talent in the industry.
In addition to unveiling the Top 100 and showcasing Microsoft security solutions at Booth #652, there are a number of featured Microsoft speakers and sessions:
Join us at these sessions during the week of August 4-9, 2018 in Las Vegas and continue the discussion with us in Booth #652, where we will have product demonstrations, theatre presentations, and an opportunity to learn more about our Top 100 and meet with some of Microsoft’s security experts and partners.
