There is a new Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, this one is the Ultimate Fantasy Game Development bundle. It’s a collection of fantasy themed models, full rigged, textured and animated with tons of modularity and different texture packs. Even more impressive, the package is available as keys for both Unity and Unreal Engine asset stores and the models and textures are in a format that can be used in any 3D game engine with ease. As with all Humble Bundles, this one is organized into tiers:

1$ Tier

• Plant Monster
• Rock Monster
• Mushroom Monster

15$ Tier

• Giant Worm
• Minotaur
• Mimics & Chests
• Medusa
• Locks and Lockpicks

25$ Tier

• Spiders
• Dragons
• Humans
• Armor Pack 1
• Weapons & Armor 1
• Character Accessories
• Trolls
• Demons
• Magic & Melee Sounds Library
• Devils

As with all Humble Bundles, you get to decide how your money is allocated between Humble, Charity, the publisher and if you so choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GFS purchasing through this link. You can get additional asset packs in the same art style created by Infinity PBR on the Unity Asset Store. You can learn more about the asset pack in the video below.

Honeywell to leverage Microsoft Azure cloud platform and connect Microsoft Dynamics 365 to Honeywell Forge, enabling predictive maintenance applications with closed-loop maintenance workflows in the buildings industry

CHARLOTTE, N.C., and REDMOND, Wash., October 22, 2020 — Honeywell (NYSE: HON) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced today that Honeywell will bring to market its domain-specific applications built on the Microsoft cloud platform to drive new levels of productivity for industrial clients.

With the integration of the AI-driven autonomous controls of the Honeywell Forge enterprise performance management software with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, customers will be able to access operating data that includes workflow management support to improve performance and energy efficiency within the enterprise environment. Workers in the field will benefit from real-time access to critical data that will help them prioritize, analyze and solve problems more quickly.

The first area of focus will be in automating maintenance for building owners and operators. To optimize their buildings’ energy, performance and comfort, they often need to pull data from a variety of sources that are not normalized and inform remote and dispersed workforces. Facility managers must determine what problem to fix, when to fix it and who to assign to the job, which can be very difficult without having the necessary asset know-how and work order management capability.

“Honeywell’s partnership with Microsoft will deliver new value to our customers as we help them solve business challenges by digitizing their operations,” said Que Dallara, president and CEO, Honeywell Connected Enterprise. “Working with Microsoft, Honeywell will bring solutions at scale – powered by AI-driven insights and immediate access to data – that will help our customers work more efficiently than ever before.”

Honeywell Forge delivers cost savings, improved energy efficiency and a better occupant experience to customers. For example, at Crown Towers Perth in Australia, the Honeywell Forge Digitized Maintenance solution provided faster inputs on potential maintenance issues versus traditional annual maintenance schedules and helped reduce reactive work orders by 90%.

In the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) operation alone – which is known to account for up to 60% of total energy consumption in commercial buildings* – an AI-automated account system such as Honeywell Forge Energy Optimization can save between 10% and 20% in energy costs.**

Dynamics 365 Field Service allows companies to remotely detect and address potential issues early to avoid unnecessary downtime or operational inefficiencies by analyzing IoT data and to improve proactive service offerings through AI-infused IoT alerts and work orders. Leveraging the global scale of Microsoft’s cloud will enable Honeywell to quickly bring new offerings to market while helping customers meet regional security, privacy and compliance requirements.

“To achieve resilient operations and sustainable growth, businesses need to partner to fully unlock the opportunities of cloud, AI and IoT technologies. By integrating Honeywell and Microsoft services, companies turn IoT data into critical business insights and actions to optimize operations and deliver new customer value faster,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president, Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business.

Working with Microsoft, Honeywell is already delivering the following Honeywell Forge SaaS solutions that will address what customers need now to return to work and, in the future, to operate safely and efficiently, including:

• Digitized Maintenance – Offers a panoramic view of the performance of facilities and assets using near real-time analytics. This provides important information about critical equipment issues before they become big repair or even replacement problems.
• Energy Optimization – A cloud-based, closed-loop, machine-learning solution that continuously studies a building’s HVAC energy consumption patterns and automatically adjusts to optimal energy saving settings without compromising occupant comfort levels.
• OT Cybersecurity – Honeywell Forge Cybersecurity provides continuous threat detection with minimal disruption of services. The robust software solution simplifies, strengthens and scales industrial cybersecurity operations across the enterprise.

The companies are also exploring more ways to bring innovation to customers by integrating Honeywell Forge solutions with Azure services such as Azure Digital Twins and Azure edge capabilities. Digital twins allow businesses to easily model and create digital representations of connected physical environments to deliver products that meet fast-changing market needs while saving operational costs. Using edge computing, customers can run AI, machine learning and business processes directly across plants, warehouses, machines and appliances for quicker actions without the need for a constant internet connection.

Learn more about the partnership on Honeywell.com.

About Microsoft:

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

About Honeywell:

Honeywell (www.honeywell.com) is a Fortune 100 technology company that delivers industry specific solutions that include aerospace products and services; control technologies for buildings and industry; and performance materials globally. Our technologies help aircraft, buildings, manufacturing plants, supply chains, and workers become more connected to make our world smarter, safer, and more sustainable.  For more news and information on Honeywell, please visit www.honeywell.com/newsroom.

###

Contacts:

Media                                                                                      

Nati Katz                                                                                   Microsoft Media Relations

Honeywell, External Communications                                      WE Communications for Microsoft

(704) 627-6109                                                                         (425) 638-7777

Netanel.Katz@honeywell.com                                                 rrt@we-worldwide.com

Many computers use the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize their system clocks over the internet. NTP is one of the few unsecured internet protocols still in common use. An attacker that can observe network traffic between a client and server can feed the client with bogus data and, depending on the client’s implementation and configuration, force it to set its system clock to any time and date. Some programs and services might not work if the client’s system clock is not accurate. For example, a web browser will not work correctly if the web servers’ certificates appear to be expired according to the client’s system clock. Use Network Time Security (NTS) to secure NTP.

Fedora 33¹ is the first Fedora release to support NTS. NTS is a new authentication mechanism for NTP. It enables clients to verify that the packets they receive from the server have not been modified while in transit. The only thing an attacker can do when NTS is enabled is drop or delay packets. See RFC8915 for further details about NTS.

NTP can be secured well with symmetric keys. Unfortunately, the server has to have a different key for each client and the keys have to be securely distributed. That might be practical with a private server on a local network, but it does not scale to a public server with millions of clients.

NTS includes a Key Establishment (NTS-KE) protocol that automatically creates the encryption keys used between the server and its clients. It uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) on TCP port 4460. It is designed to scale to very large numbers of clients with a minimal impact on accuracy. The server does not need to keep any client-specific state. It provides clients with cookies, which are encrypted and contain the keys needed to authenticate the NTP packets. Privacy is one of the goals of NTS. The client gets a new cookie with each server response, so it doesn’t have to reuse cookies. This prevents passive observers from tracking clients migrating between networks.

The default NTP client in Fedora is chrony. Chrony added NTS support in version 4.0. The default configuration hasn’t changed. Chrony still uses public servers from the pool.ntp.org project and NTS is not enabled by default.

Currently, there are very few public NTP servers that support NTS. The two major providers are Cloudflare and Netnod. The Cloudflare servers are in various places around the world. They use anycast addresses that should allow most clients to reach a close server. The Netnod servers are located in Sweden. In the future we will probably see more public NTP servers with NTS support.

A general recommendation for configuring NTP clients for best reliability is to have at least three working servers. For best accuracy, it is recommended to select close servers to minimize network latency and asymmetry caused by asymmetric network routing. If you are not concerned about fine-grained accuracy, you can ignore this recommendation and use any NTS servers you trust, no matter where they are located.

If you do want high accuracy, but you don’t have a close NTS server, you can mix distant NTS servers with closer non-NTS servers. However, such a configuration is less secure than a configuration using NTS servers only. The attackers still cannot force the client to accept arbitrary time, but they do have a greater control over the client’s clock and its estimate of accuracy, which may be unacceptable in some environments.

Enable client NTS in the installer

When installing Fedora 33, you can enable NTS in the Time & Date dialog in the Network Time configuration. Enter the name of the server and check the NTS support before clicking the + (Add) button. You can add one or more servers or pools with NTS. To remove the default pool of servers (2.fedora.pool.ntp.org), uncheck the corresponding mark in the Use column.

Enable client NTS in the configuration file

If you upgraded from a previous Fedora release, or you didn’t enable NTS in the installer, you can enable NTS directly in /etc/chrony.conf. Specify the server with the nts option in addition to the recommended iburst option. For example:

server time.cloudflare.com iburst nts

server nts.sth1.ntp.se iburst nts

server nts.sth2.ntp.se iburst nts

You should also allow the client to save the NTS keys and cookies to disk,
so it doesn’t have to repeat the NTS-KE session on each start. Add the
following line to chrony.conf, if it is not already present:

ntsdumpdir /var/lib/chrony

If you don’t want NTP servers provided by DHCP to be mixed with the servers you
have specified, remove or comment out the following line in
chrony.conf:

sourcedir /run/chrony-dhcp

After you have finished editing chrony.conf, save your changes and restart the chronyd service:

systemctl restart chronyd

Check client status

Run the following command under the root user to check whether the NTS key
establishment was successful:

# chronyc -N authdata

Name/IP address Mode KeyID Type KLen Last Atmp NAK Cook CLen

=========================================================================

time.cloudflare.com NTS 1 15 256 33m 0 0 8 100

nts.sth1.ntp.se NTS 1 15 256 33m 0 0 8 100

nts.sth2.ntp.se NTS 1 15 256 33m 0 0 8 100

The KeyID, Type, and KLen columns should have non-zero values. If they are zero, check the system log for error messages from chronyd. One possible cause of failure is a firewall is blocking the client’s connection to the server’s TCP port ( port 4460).

Another possible cause of failure is a certificate that is failing to verify because the client’s clock is wrong. This is a chicken-or-the-egg type problem with NTS. You may need to manually correct the date or temporarily disable NTS in order to get NTS working. If your computer has a real-time clock, as almost all computers do, and it’s backed up by a good battery, this operation should be needed only once.

If the computer doesn’t have a real-time clock or battery, as is common with
some small ARM computers like the Raspberry Pi, you can add the -s
option to /etc/sysconfig/chronyd to restore time saved on the last
shutdown or reboot. The clock will be behind the true time, but if the
computer wasn’t shut down for too long and the server’s certificates were not
renewed too close to their expiration, it should be sufficient for the time
checks to succeed. As a last resort, you can disable the time checks with the
nocerttimecheck directive. See the chrony.conf(5) man page
for details.

Run the following command to confirm that the client is making NTP
measurements:

# chronyc -N sources

MS Name/IP address Stratum Poll Reach LastRx Last sample ===============================================================================

^* time.cloudflare.com 3 6 377 45 +355us[ +375us] +/- 11ms

^+ nts.sth1.ntp.se 1 6 377 44 +237us[ +237us] +/- 23ms

^+ nts.sth2.ntp.se 1 6 377 44 -170us[ -170us] +/- 22ms

The Reach column should have a non-zero value; ideally 377. The value 377 shown above is an octal number. It indicates that the last eight requests all had a valid response. The validation check will include NTS authentication if enabled. If the value only rarely or never gets to 377, it indicates that NTP requests or responses are getting lost in the network. Some major network operators are known to have middleboxes that block or limit rate of large NTP packets as a mitigation for amplification attacks that exploit the monitoring protocol of ntpd. Unfortunately, this impacts NTS-protected NTP packets, even though they don’t cause any amplification. The NTP working group is considering an alternative port for NTP as a workaround for this issue.

Enable NTS on the server

If you have your own NTP server running chronyd, you can enable server NTS support to allow its clients to be synchronized securely. If the server is a client of other servers, it should use NTS or a symmetric key for its own synchronization. The clients assume the synchronization chain is secured between all servers up to the primary time servers.

Enabling server NTS is similar to enabling HTTPS on a web server. You just need a private key and certificate. The certificate could be signed by the Let’s Encrypt authority using the certbot tool, for example. When you have the key and certificate file (including intermediate certificates), specify them in chrony.conf with the following directives:

ntsserverkey /etc/pki/tls/private/foo.example.net.key

ntsservercert /etc/pki/tls/certs/foo.example.net.crt

Make sure the ntsdumpdir directive mentioned previously in the
client configuration is present in chrony.conf. It allows the server
to save its keys to disk, so the clients of the server don’t have to get new
keys and cookies when the server is restarted.

Restart the chronyd service:

systemctl restart chronyd

If there are no error messages in the system log from chronyd, it should be
accepting client connections. If the server has a firewall, it needs to allow
both the UDP 123 and TCP 4460 ports for NTP and NTS-KE respectively.

You can perform a quick test from a client machine with the following command:

$ chronyd -Q -t 3 'server foo.example.net iburst nts maxsamples 1'

2020-10-13T12:00:52Z chronyd version 4.0 starting (+CMDMON +NTP +REFCLOCK +RTC +PRIVDROP +SCFILTER +SIGND +ASYNCDNS +NTS +SECHASH +IPV6 +DEBUG)

2020-10-13T12:00:52Z Disabled control of system clock

2020-10-13T12:00:55Z System clock wrong by -0.001032 seconds (ignored)

2020-10-13T12:00:55Z chronyd exiting

If you see a System clock wrong message, it’s working
correctly.

On the server, you can use the following command to check how many NTS-KE
connections and authenticated NTP packets it has handled:

# chronyc serverstats

NTP packets received : 2143106240

NTP packets dropped : 117180834

Command packets received : 16819527

Command packets dropped : 0

Client log records dropped : 574257223

NTS-KE connections accepted: 104

NTS-KE connections dropped : 0

Authenticated NTP packets : 52139

If you see non-zero NTS-KE connections accepted and Authenticated
NTP packets, it means at least some clients were able to connect to the
NTS-KE port and send an authenticated NTP request.

— Cover photo by Louis. K on Unsplash —

1. The Fedora 33 Beta installer contains an older chrony prerelease which doesn’t work with current NTS servers because the NTS-KE port has changed. Consequently, in the Network Time configuration in the installer, the servers will always appear as not working. After installation, the chrony package needs to be updated before it will work with current servers.

Expensive-but-fantastic statue maker First 4 Figures has shared an unboxing video of its delightful Varia Suit Samus figure.

Available as a standard edition or a super fancy Exclusive edition that includes LED lights, the figure has entered its ‘last chance to pre-order’ stage on First 4 Figures’ website. The standard model costs US$533.99, with the Exclusive model setting you back US$587.99.

The figure shows Samus in her Varia Suit as it was seen in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes:

First 4 Figures is proud to showcase Samus in the Varia Suit. Instantly recognisable from games as far back as the original Metroid game on the NES, the Varia Suit has remained a series mainstay, and is here depicted as it was seen during Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Captured in a stunning ¼ scale in hand painted polystone, Samus measures an awesome 20 inches tall, standing upon a base inspired by the series insignia.

It’s actually the second in the company’s series of Metroid Master Arts statues; a few years ago, fans were also treated to an equally delicious Light Suit variant.

Watching that unboxing video, we were already getting excited just seeing that Metroid logo base. It’s not easy to justify spending that kind of cash, but these figures sure are wonderful.

Please note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.

The latest Nintendo Download update for Europe has arrived, and it’s bringing new games galore to the eShop in your region. As always, be sure to drop a vote in our poll and comment down below with your potential picks for the week. Enjoy!

Switch Retail eShop – New Releases

Asterix & Obelix XXL: Romastered (Microids, 22nd Oct, £35.99 / €39.99) – The year is 50 B. C. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely. . . One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium. Peace reigns in the small Armorican village, where the villagers go about their daily business. Our two heroes, Asterix and Obelix, hunt wild boar, the blacksmith and the fishmonger quarrel, and the village chief strolls around the village square atop his shield. After a fine day’s hunting, Asterix and Obelix return to find their village in flames, pillaged by the Romans! They set off to rescue their fellow villagers, accompanied by their faithful Dogmatix.

TRANSFORMERS: BATTLEGROUNDS (Outright Games, 23rd Oct, £34.99 / €39.99) – With Earth under invasion and MEGATRON, leader of the Decepticons close to capturing The Allspark, BUMBLEBEE and the Autobots need a new commander to help them restore peace to the universe – you! Assemble your squad and roll out, for a turn-based tactical war that will rage from Central City to Cybertron itself. You’ll need both strength and strategy to outwit the fiendish Decepticons. Choose the TRANSFORMERS characters and their abilities to dominate the battle ahead, with OPTIMUS PRIME, GRIMLOCK and more ready to join the fight.

Switch eShop – New Releases

Death Ray Manta SE (Thalamus Digital, 19th Oct, £9.99 / €12) – SCENARIO: Death Ray Manta is a short-form twin-stick arena shooter where you blow up enemies using colourful laser beams. You spawn in the centre of the screen, moments later the screen is filled with mines, robots, rabbits, and lasers from beyond the stars. Collect space gems for bonus points and shoot everything else. With 32 screens of increasingly colourful and crazy laser firing mayhem, how far into fish space can you get?

Blackjack Hands (QUByte Interactive, 20th Oct, £0.89 / €0.99) – Merge neighbouring cards in the correct order to beat the Dealer. Enjoy and challenge yourself in this new experience. game feature: Use your arrow keys to move the cards. When two cards touch, they merge into one! Try to beat the dealer in 50 handcrafted levels; designed for experienced blackjack players and newcomers alike.

HyperBrawl Tournament (Milky Tea, 20th Oct, £17.99 / €17.99) – The universe’s greatest heroes have gathered to compete in a showdown for the ages; the legendary HyperBrawl Tournament! Armed with unique weapons and a thirst for glory; smash, brawl and score your way to victory in relentless, high-adrenaline PvP arena battles for 1-4 players. Master the Hypercurve: Only the universe’s elite champions can summon this incredible skill. The HyperCurve lets you seize control of the ball mid-flight to ‘magically’ manoeuvre it around the opposition and obstacles to score legendary goals that could only happen in HyperBrawl.

Outpost Delta (Hidden Achievement, 20th Oct, £18.99 / €20.99) – An abandoned research station has gone unnoticed in the depths of space for years, until now. With an army of invasive aliens boarding the station, the outpost AI has rebooted its last remaining defence drone: Delta. Now Delta needs to repel the Klaath threat, save the outpost, and head out into space to search for answers. Classic platforming blended with twin-stick shooting.

Bullet Beat (TERNOX, 21st Oct, £3.81 / €4.24) – Available in the game: 8 different levels with unique tracks in the dubstep genre and more; different types of control (classic or motion); infinite mode with fortress protection; dubstep electronic music! Warning! This game contains fast flashing images. It may cause discomfort and trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy. Gamers discretion is advised. Safety first!

ScourgeBringer (£15.29 / €16.99) – Set in a post-apocalyptic world where a mysterious entity wreaked havoc on all humanity, ScourgeBringer puts you in the shoes of the deadliest warrior of her clan: Kyhra. Help her to explore the unknown and slash her way through ancient machines guarding the seal of her past, and maybe the redemption of humanity. – Read our ScourgeBringer review

A Frog Game (EntwicklerX, 22nd Oct, £0.89 / €0.99) – In this game you just have to catch flies. Nothing more, nothing less. But be careful, you are not the only hungry frog. Eat special flies for better scores or time bonus. You also should know that not every fly is delicious!

CrossKrush (£4.99 / €4.99) – Henry & Florence are a happily married couple, they enjoy music & have been dancing all their lives. But now, a noisy highway has been built right in front of their home, disrupting their harmonious lifestyle. Defend your peaceful abode by blowing up as many cars in a row as possible, or whack and hack at them with your cane to finish them off. Battle wave after wave of oncoming traffic as the challenge increases.

Double Pug Switch (Apriori Digital, 22nd Oct, £6.29 / €7.01) – Take control of the Pug Otis, the loyal companion of the Professor! After an accident in the Professor’s lab involving the mischievous cat Whiskers and some Portal Fluids, Otis and Whiskers are sucked into an alternate dimension. Challenge yourself with side-scrolling alternative dimension switching mania requiring lightning-quick reflexes to jump, hop, and dimension swap your way to victory. Hop, dimension swap and navigate your way through unique dimensions to chase down Whiskers and save him from his evil wrongdoings!

Fracter (The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild, 22nd Oct, £4.31 / €4.79) – FRACTER is an emotive, isometric puzzle adventure game set in a mysterious labyrinth of glowing black architecture. The game follows a veiled young hero who has set out on a perilous quest to dispel the darkness within. Players must explore this world of shadows, discover secrets hidden in the dark, and outsmart ominous creatures while solving each meticulously designed puzzle using their only force against darkness: light. Dramatic landscapes in shades of gray, an eerie ambient soundtrack and a poetic, self-reflective narrative await you on this emotional journey restoring light to a darkened world.

Galacide (£9.04 / €10.00) – Galacide combines the frenzied action of classic space shooters with the focused, fast-thinking tactics of puzzlers. Choose from a variety of ships, each equipped with unique features and abilities. Embark on your mission to tunnel through the strengthening alien invasion, find the source, and save the galaxy! Go it alone or assemble a squad of your friends to battle in the most unforgiving corners of the universe!

GONNER2 (Raw Fury, 22nd Oct, £10.52 / €11.69) – In GONNER2, our altruistic and unexpected hero Ikk is back! And this time Death needs his help. Her lair has been taken over by a mysterious presence and she needs Ikk to take it down. Journey your way through deep dark chaotic places with sparks of unimaginable colour and crazy bosses, all while trying to literally keep your head! GONNER 2 is a procedurally generated platformer with roguelike elements that will keep you on your toes – now with more added colour and chaos!

Grood (£4.49 / €4.99) – Your mission: annihilate an army of robotic enemies and bosses, all of them furiously blasting bullets, missiles and lasers your way. Your ship: a powerful vehicle you created, called GROOD. It’s now time to pilot this killing machine! Travel through woods, swamps, cities, frozen lands, deserts, and more to seek and destroy strange mechanical foes.

Horace (505 Games, 21st Oct, £10.99 / €14.99) – This masterpiece from Paul Helman and Sean Scapelhorn is a classic platformer that tells an emotional and surprisingly rich tale of self-discovery peppered with nostalgic popular culture references that will bring a smile to any gamer who enjoys the 8 and 16-bit era! Made by just two people, Horace offers over 15 hours of exciting platforming and pushes the boundaries of the genre with profound storytelling and quirky and nostalgic pop culture references! – Read our Horace review

Kakurasu World (£0.91 / €0.99) – Kakurasu World – beautiful puzzler, a great addition to your logic game collection. Select squares until the row and column totals match the clues. 90 kakurasu puzzles, Easy/Medium/Hard difficulty levels.

Lord of the Click (£4.49 / €4.99) – Lord Of The Click — it’s the game for those who outgrew meaningless shooters and tiresome endless RPGs. Lord Of The Click will give you the unsurpassed feeling of almightiness by controlling the huge army with only one muscle of your body.

LUNA the Shadow Dust (Coconut Island Games, 22nd Oct, £15.29 / €17.99) – LUNA The Shadow Dust is a fully hand-animated puzzle adventure, brought to life through wordless storytelling, beautiful cinematics and a breathtaking original soundtrack.

Maze (£6.29 / €6.99) – EXPLORE EVERY CORNER OF THE MAZE. It feels like you really are the part of the Maze. Don’t get tricked! Or the Maze will devour you and your fantasy adventure will be ended. Remember, do not be fooled by beauty and seductive scents. Everything here wants to kill you. AVOID DANGEROUS TRAPS. Be careful where you step and maybe you will live. Let this fantasy adventure conquer you.

Nullum (Silesia Games, 22nd Oct, £1.25 / €1.39) – The goal is to eliminate all tiles by creating matching numbers. Rules: A tile can only be moved onto an adjacent tile. If they have the same number, both are eliminated; otherwise, they’re added together. Make the right sums and eliminations to clear the playfield and unlock the next challenge! 40 handcrafted levels. original music composed specially for this game.

Outbreak: Epidemic (Dead Drop Studios, 22nd Oct, £11.46 / €12.74) – Featuring the great Outbreak series gameplay with greater mobility, crushing difficulty and more camera options than ever before. Alone or in 2-player local co-op, fight through the Campaign story mode, the wave-based Onslaught Mode and all-new Experiments Mode scenarios. Choose your survivor, class and level up to unlock new buffs for your survivor as you face the nightmare. You’ll need to manage your inventory and supplies carefully, so make every bullet count!

Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood! (NIS America, 16th Oct, £17.99 / €19.99) – When the mysterious Phantom Thief steals Master Etna’s panties, the Prinny horde must rise up once again to retrieve them… or suffer the consequences! Slash and Hip Pound your way through chaotic stages full of devilish foes, and build up the Combo Gauge to unleash powerful moves like Prinny Cyclone and Prinnykaze. Also, dive into the bonus story of the OTHER protagonist(?) of the DISGAEA games and claim your glory with Asagi Wars: Vengeance of Asagi!

Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? (NIS America, 16th Oct, £17.99 / €19.99) – Master Etna demands the ultimate dessert, and it is up to a legion of lowly Prinnies to make it! Jump, slash, and combo your way through different stages of the Netherworld, devastate enemies and bosses with special attacks, and encounter both new and familiar faces in this explosive action-adventure from the twisted minds behind the DISGAEA series!

Pumpkin Jack (£24.99 / €29.99) – Pumpkin Jack is a spooky scary 3D platformer in which you embody Jack, the Mythical Pumpkin Lord! Dive into an Epic Adventure through otherworldly landscapes and help the Evil annihilate the Good!

Restless Hero (Restless Corp, 22nd Oct, £5.29 / €5.89) – You are about to be a part of an adventure of the Dark Age. Follow Rick in his damned path of vengeance and help him to redeem his soul. The life of your beloved is in danger. Hurry up and make a wise choice. Along the way complete challenging platforming levels and upgrade your powers. Unfold the story by reading dialogues and finding crucial items on the levels. Items are key to the puzzle of the story.

Rusty Spout Rescue Adventure (7 Raven Studios, 22nd Oct, £6.29 / €6.99) – Rusty Spout is a lonely but honest pirate. He sails around the world looking for new adventures and always helps people in need. Cocco the evil pirate has kidnapped all the children from Rusty’s village. Now, he needs you to help him defeat Cocco and his monsters. Navigate with Rusty Spout through five different beautiful worlds, each one with 10 amazing levels. Beat Cocco’s monsters at the end of each world in an epic boss battle. Free all the children to unlock special characters. You can use them in either Endless or Battle mode.

Supermarket Shriek (£16.99 / €19.99) – Join the unlikely duo of man and goat in this unique (shopping) kart racer, as they traverse precarious obstacles and complete deadly challenges inside a range of shops, boutiques and supermarkets. An outlandish solo adventure and a truly one-of-a-kind co-op experience!
Scream like a man! Scream like a goat! Scream together!

Supraland (Humble Games, 22nd Oct, £17.99 / €19.99) – Embark on a valiant quest to save your toy village in the hit first-person open-world puzzle platformer! Roam and explore a huge interconnected world. Unlock powerful new abilities and combine them to overcome imaginative puzzles or uncover shrouded secrets. Defeat charging hordes in fast, frenetic first-person combat as you battle your way towards an audience with the Blue King.

The Red Lantern (Timberline Studio, 22nd Oct, £19.99 / €15.99) – The Red Lantern is a story-driven, rogue-lite, survival game where you and your team of 5 sled dogs, lost in the wilderness, must navigate the ever-changing encounters of the Alaskan bush to find your way home. Features: A dynamic world that changes as you play. Nearly 100 different encounters each with varied results. Gain items and upgrades as you discover things about the world around you8 different pups to add to your team, each with their own personalities.

They Bleed Pixels (Spooky Squid Games Incorporated, 22nd Oct, £10.79 / €11.99) – As an anonymous student of the Lafcadio Academy for Troubled Young Ladies, you must battle through your nightmares to defeat a curse that’s slowly transforming your body into a clawed demonic form. They Bleed Pixels balances a perfect mix of fast-paced acrobatic platforming and fierce, one-button, slash ’em up combat. By suppressing your urge to button mash in favour of focusing on stylish and smart kills, you are rewarded with checkpoints you can choose when to place for safety.

THO Simulator (Aerosoft, 22nd Oct, £4.49 / €4.99) – “Technischen-Hilfs-Organisiation” THO, examine damage, ensure safe roads and carry out a controlled blasting! It’s your job to coordinate all special units and transport heavy equipment with different vehicles, so that the realistic course of the operation is ensured. Complete various mini-games to advance the scenario. The new THO Simulator is perfect for people on the move and can be played without any previous knowledge – suitable for everyone!

Toolboy (Art Games Studio, 22nd Oct, £9.03 / €9.99) – A story of a repair robot who during the weekend, instead of enjoying his free time watching a speedball game on a planet nearby, has to go to work and fix a malfunction in one of the corporate buildings, as he’s usually the one to be called in such cases. By accident, he discovers a corporate management plot regarding a new project related to the department of power.

Torchlight III (£35.99 / €39.99) – It’s been a century since the events of Torchlight II, and the Ember Empire is in decline. In Torchlight III, Novastraia is again under threat of invasion and it’s up to you to defend against the Netherim and its allies. Gather your wits and brave the frontier to find fame, glory, and new adventures! Travel the Frontier Explore the wilderness, party with friends, gather materials to craft gear, or use magic to enter unknown dungeons! There’s always something to do in the new frontier. Build & Upgrade Your Fort It’s time to rebuild – and that includes you! Enjoy your very own fort, where you can upgrade gear and renovate your fort to show off to your friends and the world.

Truck Driving Simulator (£10.79 / €11.99) – Drive carefully, connect to trailers and complete delivery jobs for clients at the Shipping Docks. Earn your seat in bigger and better trucks to access more advanced jobs, with longer loads, bigger trailers and more valuable cargo!

Zombie Hill Race (£8.99 / €9.99) – Find out what you can do in the world of the zombie apocalypse and take part in the racing battle for survival! Practice your mountain racing skills and try to survive on the front lines in the fight against the dead. Collect as many coins as possible, build a cool zombie killing machine and deal with the hordes of undead roaming the mountains. If you don’t want to join the ranks of the dead, you have to survive! Don’t let yourself get killed, run over hordes of undead, and climb as high as possible to escape! Good luck, Zombie Killer!

Switch eShop – Super Mario Bros. 35th Anniversary Sale

A Super Mario anniversary sale is now on for a limited time, discounting three Mario games on Switch!

Switch eShop – Demos

DLC / Add-On Content

Nintendo Switch games with new DLC this week:

So that’s your lot for this week’s Nintendo Download. Go on, be a sport and drop a vote in the poll above, and comment below with your hot picks!

Let’s momentarily exit 2020 and pay an imaginary visit to 2029.

(If only we could, right? Anyway, back to our mental trek.)

Picture the world’s cities by the end of this decade: Streets, intersections and roundabouts are a safer, cleaner, quieter and vastly more organized stream of connected, self-driving electric vehicles. Block by block, their shared “driving brain” learns from roadway experiences to make traffic deaths tragedies of our messy past.

Rush hour jams? No chance. Horns? No need. Road rage? No more.

That’s how Alex Kendall sees our urban future. Kendall is the co-founder and CEO of Wayve, a London-based startup that’s building an artificial intelligence (AI) solution that will enable autonomous vehicles to operate not in a single city but in any urban environment, securely moving people and goods.

His vision blends cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities with heavy doses of human equity and healthy air to deliver a new transportation model that will be sustainable, affordable and accessible to people in all cities. He calls it: “Riding the Wayve.”

“One of our values is to leave positive tracks,” Kendall says, “so we exclusively work on electric vehicles.”

To scale their solution, the three-year-old company is leveraging both Microsoft Azure and the Microsoft for Startups: Autonomous Driving program, which provides benefits like free Azure credits and access to Microsoft engineers and program managers to support the development of these complex workloads on the cloud.

Transform recently chatted with Kendall via Microsoft Teams to hear about our commutes of tomorrow.

TRANSFORM: Autonomous driving means different things to different people. What does it mean to you?

 KENDALL: It means the start of a new era, creating artificial intelligence that we trust to move people and goods throughout our cities without requiring supervision by humans. We’re talking about a world of autonomous mobility services that disrupts private car ownership, that makes it more sustainable for people to move around cities and, ultimately, that reduces road deaths to zero.

TRANSFORM: Wayve aims to be the first company to launch its self-driving technology in 100 cities, not just one city. Tell me about that goal.

 KENDALL: Across the self-driving industry today, many teams are trying to make it work in one place, just trying to get something out there as quickly as they can. This comes at the expense of what we call “generalization”: How quickly can the system go from working in one place to many places?

When humans learn to drive, they go from understanding how to drive in one city to quickly learning how to drive in other cities. In that same way, scaling our technology to other cities should just be a matter of adding a small amount of experience to adapt to each new place.

TRANSFORM: Where are some of those 100 projected cities?

KENDALL: We’re headquartered in London. That will be our first city. Beyond the UK, we are most excited about targeting a few cities in Europe as next expansion points. Next countries include the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

TRANSFORM: You mentioned how humans learn to drive. What does that mean?

 KENDALL: Humans are interesting because they use many means of learning to learn how to drive. The dominant one is unsupervised learning. That is how humans watch and view the world.

Every time you’re sitting in a car or observing cars driving, you’re building an internal mental model about how things behave, how things move, how things interact. When you actually get in a car, it’s this internal model that makes it efficient for you to learn how to drive.

TRANSFORM: How will Wayve’s machine learning system mimic the human process?

KENDALL: Just like humans, our system learns most efficiently using many sources, including unsupervised learning, imitation learning and reinforcement learning.

First, we learn to drive (autonomously) by copying expert humans. We record the driving data from their vehicles. Based on the data, we learn to copy their expert driving. This is called imitation learning.

From that, we build a self-driving system and deploy it on the roads with safety drivers. (These are people who sit behind the steering wheel during testing and, if needed, immediately take control.) Every time the system makes a mistake, and the safety driver intervenes, we learn from that feedback. This is called reinforcement learning.

Finally, we use computer simulation to learn from the situations that are too dangerous or too rare to experience in the real world. Through these three steps, we build a safe and robust autonomous driver.

TRANSFORM: Who are the expert drivers that you mentioned, and how do you record their driving data?

KENDALL:  We deploy our self-driving platform with data-collection devices across large scale-commercial fleets.

We provide these vehicles with data-collection computers – fully integrated, self-driving, sensing suites – and small computers with a 4G connection. Integrated with Azure cloud and IoT services, this allows us to understand this data and send back interesting examples to the cloud, ultimately for our system to learn from.  At scale, this will provide us access to millions of images per second.

TRANSFORM: In your computer simulations, are you estimating the accident rates?

 KENDALL: We’ve built a scalable (simulation) system to extract insights from every part of the drive. We classify these into scenarios and look at the metrics for each one, whether that’s driving through traffic lights or going through a roundabout in the rain.

It gives us a good view on what we are and aren’t good at – and where we should focus our resources and our learning.

Within each of these scenarios, we can accurately estimate human-level performances and what we need to beat. For example, humans can pass through roundabout intersections without an accident causing injury 99.999 percent of the time. We want to be able to surpass this.

TRANSFORM: What has the Microsoft for Startups: Autonomous Driving program meant for your company and achieving your vision?

 KENDALL: In the early days, we were building an autonomous car in our garage, driving it around the block and testing it.

We had nothing to show and everything to prove. Despite that, Microsoft was excited about what we were building. This early engagement was critical. More than the financial credit support, the engineering support around the backend and the quick turnaround to our requests and questions allowed us to get that speed of iteration we needed.

Because we had this speed of iteration, we were able to quickly graduate from a house and build a headquarters and an organization that ultimately decided to build our infrastructure at scale in Azure.

TRANSFORM: When your technology is fully deployed, how will this look in the real world?

 KENDALL: We envision a world where we have large fleets of connected vehicles, all sharing experiences to improve and train a driving brain that ultimately learns from its mistakes and learns to adapt to society’s needs at a rapid pace.

TRANSFORM: And this self-driving network will be available to all who want to use it?

 KENDALL: Yes, for people who are disabled, self-driving is a technology that should massively increase their mobility options. It should reduce the stigma and the cost (of today’s accessible transportation options).

Also, I don’t want to see self-driving only deployed in affluent areas with expensive infrastructure. I want to see self-driving address urban societies throughout the world. This requires a more intelligent autonomous driving system which is able to understand the world around it. This is only possible with machine learning.

TRANSFORM: When might this become part of everyday life?

KENDALL: Over the next few years, Wayve will get to a point where we have the safety case in place, where we’ll invite members of the public to experience riding the Wayve. They will do this, first, with a safety driver supervising the ride, then as an autonomous service.

By the end of this decade, I think riding the Wayve will be dominant within the multimodal transportation options we use in cities throughout the world. It will just be a matter of time before it is as prevalent as today’s ride-hailing services.

Top photo: Alex Kendall. (All photos courtesy of Wayve.)

For those who have been here long enough, you know what this means.  Our Minecraft: Java Edition accounts are migrating for a second time.  For those who have an account now, we will need to Migrate from a Mojang Account to a Microsoft account in early 2021.  Starting later this fall, however, new accounts will already be required to create Microsoft accounts.  I know change can be bothersome but Mojang does state some good points when making the switch.

• More account security.
• All Minecraft accounts connected.
• Parents can have more control for the safety of their child/children
• Chat and invitation blocking

In the coming months Mojang will list out what exactly is needed and how to migrate your account, this will be mandatory if you wish to continue playing Minecraft: Java Edition.  Here on the Forums, we will do our best to also help remind members of the upcoming switch as well as list the how-to/need-to-know for account Migration.  For those who are Migrating Mojang Studios do have a nice added bonus, a cape!

To ensure that the Migration happens smoothly Mojang Studios will be migrating players in batches to hopefully make this an easy process for all.  Make sure your emails are up to date for your Mojang account as you will receive instructions when it is time to Migrate.

For those worrying, Java Edition itself is not changing, it is only the account that you use to login that is changing.  You will still keep your current names, new players will still be able to pick their name.  Your login is just finding a new home.

For now, read over the FAQ Mojang has provided so far: https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/360050865492-JAVA-Account-Migration-FAQ

A crew of former Blizzard developers have set up a new studio to develop real-time strategy games, and have landed $4.7 million in seed funding to get the effort off the ground.

That new outfit is Frost Giant Games, and its helmed by former Blizzard developers Tim Morten and Tim Campbell.

Both have experience in the genre from their days at the StarCraft developer, with Morten having previously worked as production director on StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty and Campbell having served as lead campaign designer for Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne.

According to a chat with VentureBeat, the founding duo plans to use the funding infusion to grow the team at Frost Giant, build out a prototype, conduct consumer research, and expand operations altogether. That $4.7 seed funding round was led by Bitkraft Ventures, and saw contributions from 1UP Ventures, GC Tracker, fellow dev studio Riot Games, and Griffin Gaming Partners as well.