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Xbox Insider Release Notes – Beta (2008.200721-0000)
Hey Xbox Insiders! We have a new Xbox One update preview coming to the Beta ring. It’s important we note that some updates made in these preview OS builds include background improvements that ensure a quality and stable build for Xbox One.
We continue to post these release notes, even when the noticeable changes to the UI are minimal, so you’re aware when updates are coming to your device. Details can be found below!
System Update Details:
OS version released: RS_XBOX_RELEASE_2008\19041.3980.200721-0000
Available: 2 p.m. PT – July 23, 2020
Mandatory: 3 a.m. PT – July 24, 2020
Fixes Implemented
Thanks to the hard work of Xbox engineers, we are happy to announce the following fixes have been implemented for this build:
System
Various updates to properly reflect local languages across the console
Note: Users participating in Preview may see “odd” text across the console, for more information go here.
Known Issues
We understand some issues have been listed in previous Xbox Insider Release Notes. These items aren’t being ignored, but it will take Xbox engineers more time to find a solution.
New issues we’re investigating:
System
We’ve received reports of some users getting “stuck” at the sign in screen. We are aware and investigating.
We’re still tracking these known issues:
Audio
Users who have Dolby Atmos enabled and console display settings set to 120hz with 36 bits per pixel (12-bit) are experiencing loss of Dolby Atmos audio in some situations.
Workaround: Disable 120hz or set Video Fidelity to 30 bits per pixel (10-bit) or lower.
Some users have reported that Dolby Atmos for Headphones audio setting changes when the console is rebooted/updated.
Note: If you attempt to set the audio to Dolby Atmos for Headphones and see a message advising you to launch the Dolby Access App, please file feedback before launching the app.
Game DVR
Some users have reported that clips are being recorded without audio. We are aware and investigating.
Note: When reporting the issue, please be sure to include details about what resolution, length, and game you were trying to record.
Guide
Some users have reported that the audio mixer cannot be used to adjust chat/game audio levels.
We’ve received reports that the Friends tab is not showing the correct status of online/offline friends.
Some users may notice that the Guide has changed appearance and functionality, this is expected behavior as there are certain experiences being flighted among a random subset of users in Preview.
My Games & Apps
Users have reported seeing black tiles instead of game artwork when browsing their collection.
Note: We are still investigating the issue, please report the issue again from the console if you have done so with a prior update and are still seeing this behavior.
Some titles in collection may appear with a “trial” tag incorrectly in collection.
System
Users may notice that the 24-hour clock does not display correctly across all sections of the dashboard. We are aware and investigating.
Profile Color
Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.
Make sure to use Report a problem to keep us informed of your issue. We may not be able to respond to everyone, but the data we’ll gather is crucial to finding a resolution.
How to Get Xbox Insider Support
If you’re an Xbox Insider looking for support, please reach out to the community subreddit. Official Xbox staff, moderators, and fellow Xbox Insiders are there to help with your concerns.
When posting to the subreddit, please look through most recent posts to see if your issue has already been posted or addressed. We always recommend adding to threads with the same issue before posting a brand new one. This helps us support you the best we can! Don’t forget to use “Report a problem” before posting—the information shared in both places helps us understand your issue better.
Thank you to every Xbox Insider in the subreddit today. We love that it has become such a friendly and community-driven hub of conversation and support.
For more information regarding the Xbox Insider Program follow us on Twitter. Keep an eye on future Xbox Insider Release Notes for more information regarding your Xbox One Update Preview ring!
The Sims 4 passes 30 million lifetime players, doubles Q1 net bookings
Newsbrief: The Sims 4 has officially surpassed 30 million players across all platforms, a milestone that comes as the game exits its highest quarter in terms of daily, weekly, and monthly active users to date.
For reference, that includes players that have given the life management game a go since its PC launch in 2014, and also includes those that have played on PS4 or Xbox One since it launched on consoles in 2017.
EA shared those tidbits about the game in its recently quarterly reporting, naming it alongside FIFA, Madden, and Apex Legends as games that saw particular gains during the quarter ending June 30, 2020.
Though a specific number wasn’t offered in EA’s earnings report or its quarterly investor call, EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen also announced The Sims 4 has more than doubled its net bookings year-over-year, noting that the game’s net bookings are up 110 percent year-over-year.
PuzzleNation creates digital games based on bestselling printed puzzles including Crosswords, Word Search, Sudoku and more. Our games feature content from Penny Press & Dell Magazines, the number one puzzle magazine publisher. Our flagship apps, Daily POP Crosswords and Penny Dell Crosswords, are consistently rated 4.5 stars and engage 100,000 players daily.
PuzzleNation is excited to expand our efforts with the addition of a Senior Mobile Game Engineer, reporting to the Director of Digital Games. The right candidate will be results oriented, have deep knowledge and experience in developing mobile apps on iOS and Android platforms. This role requires 5 or more years experience developing mobile apps using various common technologies, such as Unity, Xcode, AWS, third-party SDKs and more. Knowledge of current mobile games, monetization and marketing trends is highly desirable. Salary is flexible, commensurate with experience. This is an excellent opportunity to join a successful and growing game development team!
This is a 100% telecommuter, work at home position. Our process includes daily morning video chats (U.S. Eastern time), additional video chats as-needed and constant communication via Slack and Trello.
Responsibilities
Contribute to development of new mobile games based on traditional pencil puzzles
Contribute to maintenance of existing mobile games – app updates and new content
Ability to be a strong contributor within a small development team
End-to-end development of new features from implementation to testing to deployment
Participate in game design, user interface design and monetization design
Perform ongoing analysis of application performance and implement optimizations
Collaborate with marketing on technical requirements and implement solutions
Keep up to date with the technological developments and advancements in the mobile game industry
Personal Characteristics
Enthusiastic communicator with ability to make technical challenges clear and digestible to stakeholders at all levels
Attention to detail in all phases of development, including internal QA process
Self-starter who is as comfortable generating tasks as following assignments
Quick learner, rapidly pick up and begin working with new tools and technologies
Interest in traditional pencil puzzles with creative ideas for translating to digital games
Not above any task—will do what it takes to get it done as part of a small team
Willingness to task switch rapidly, prioritize conflicting tasks and be part of a small, nimble team
Required Technical Experience
Developed and launched multiple mobile apps on iOS and Android platforms
Experience with in-app purchasing, advertising, and analytics for multiple mobile apps
Worked with JSON and a NoSQL database for storage of app data
Very comfortable using Git for version control
Desired Technical Experience
Unity and C#
XCode and Objective-C
Amazon Web Services (S3, DynamoDB, and API Gateway)
Facebook Platform
Multiple mobile ad partners (SDK implementation)
PuzzleNation offers flexible scheduling as well as health, dental, life and voluntary benefits, including a 401k plan. We are a 100% telecommuting team.
Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.
Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.
Apple Card COVID-19 assistance program extended into August
Apple has, once again, extended its COVID-19 Customer Assistance Program for Apple Card for another month, with customers able to defer their payments due in August without any penalty.
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the slow return to normal is making it financially hard for some families, leading to some tough choices about bill payments. In a continuation of the established program by Apple and financial partner Goldman Sachs, Apple Card customers are able to avoid one outgoing cost for the month.
Apple Card users are now able to defer their August payment without incurring interest. To do so, they will need to talk to a financial representative to request entry into the scheme, or to extend any existing deferments.
The program continues a pattern of assistance Apple has offered from March until July, with August’s addition making it a total of six months of deferment for some customers.
How to request entry into the COVID-19 Customer Assistance Program
On your iPhone, open the Wallet app.
Tap the “…” button
Tap Message
Type “I want to enroll in the Customer Assistance Program.”
Tap the send button
The deferment program is one of a number of initiatives Apple has put in place to assist its customers with financial planning. Apple Card offers the ability to buy Apple products in installments, gives insights via the Wallet app on how a user may better use the card to avoid paying interest on their outstanding balance, and in June Apple launched a four-month “Path to Apple Card” credit coaching program.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 08-02-2020, 11:54 AM - Forum: Lounge
- No Replies
Anthem Update Will Change How Loot Works, Here's How
BioWare continues to update, support, and evolve Anthem, the 2019 online looter-shooter published by EA. BioWare Austin studio director Christian Dailey posted a new blog post today that covers the changes coming to Anthem's loot and equipment systems--and they sound quite significant.
For loot, Dailey acknowledged that BioWare "fell short" in creating a loot system for Anthem that was deep and engaging enough. In response, BioWare recognized it needed to basically start over and build a new system "from the ground up."
The new loot system in Anthem aims to "respect your time," "embrace choice," "create a rewarding loot experience," and "keep it accessible and immediate," among others.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 08-02-2020, 05:23 AM - Forum: Python
- No Replies
7 Sources of Passive Income for Coders
These are the types of passive income:
Affiliate earnings
Advertising earnings
eBooks
Online courses
SaaS
Index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
Real estate
Where to Go From Here?
Enough theory, let’s get some practice!
To become successful in coding, you need to get out there and solve real problems for real people. That’s how you can become a six-figure earner easily. And that’s how you polish the skills you really need in practice. After all, what’s the use of learning theory that nobody ever needs?
Practice projects is how you sharpen your saw in coding!
Do you want to become a code master by focusing on practical code projects that actually earn you money and solve problems for people?
Then become a Python freelance developer! It’s the best way of approaching the task of improving your Python skills—even if you are a complete beginner.
Banner Of The Maid Brings Bodice-Busting Tactical Action To Switch Next Month
Tactical role-playing title Banner of the Maid finally has a confirmed release date: August 12th, 2020. It will cost $16.99 in North America.
Set during the French Revolution and starring Pauline Bonaparte, sibling of the famous Napoleon Bonaparte, the game mixes real-life characters and events with fantasy trappings.
Pauline is a newly-graduated member of an illustrious military academy who, like her brother, dreams of bettering herself and becoming part of France’s upper class. She is dragged into the revolutionary war and must use her tactical smarts to overcome a series of skirmishes, each more challenging than the last.
Banner of the Maid was developed by Chinese firm CE-Asia, which is also handling publishing duties.
Review: Rock Of Ages 3: Make & Break – Between A Rock And A Hard Place
Some games just aren’t a good fit for the Switch. It’s a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless. Rock Of Ages 3: Make & Break falls into that category, we’re sorry to say. The most egregious problem to be found in this Nintendo Switch incarnation is, quite simply, a lack of suitability to the handheld format.
It’s the text. There’s plenty of it here, and it’s all entirely too small. We found it almost unreadable even in docked mode, but undocked? Eyestrain city. Forget it. We checked the menus to see if it could be increased in size, but as far as we could tell, there’s no such option (unless it’s there but written even smaller, invisible to the naked eye).
That’s just the HUD, tutorials and objectives, of course. You could muddle through without them, if the actual game were fun enough to make that an appealing proposition. Sadly, it isn’t, and – again – a large part of that is down to the ill-fitting nature of the thing. What do you do in Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break? Ultimately, it’s a bizarre combination of Super Monkey Ball-esque obstacle courses with a relatively rudimentary tower defence component, and neither element is satisfactory.
Let’s talk about the presentation; in a word, it’s exhausting. It’s got a Terry Gilliam-style Monty Python cut-out kind of vibe that’s certainly unique, but ultimately compounded our frustration with the game by being a little charmless. The cutscenes in the “Break” mode (effectively its campaign – we’ll talk about “Make” a little later) might have been pleasant if we knew they would be followed by a solid video game, but as it stands they’re just wearying reminders that not only are we still playing Rock of Ages 3, but we’re not even really interacting with it.
The rock-rolling sections of the game run well enough, but aren’t particularly fun. Weaving around the courses in order to cross the finish line first requires speed, but even the earliest stages have deceptive corners and feel designed to trick you into careening your rock over a cliff, effectively removing any chance of your finishing the stage in time.
It’s tricky to balance your speed with your manoeuvrability, and sure – that’s the game. But it’s more frustrating than anything, with hazards all over the tracks feeling arbitrarily placed and designed to irritate. There are plenty of variants and modes (time trials, for example) in this campaign, but none of them really solve the game’s problems. It can occasionally be momentarily exhilarating when you successfully navigate a particularly fraught path, but it’s just leading to more of the same.
The tower defence component feels like an odd match, but here it is. It’s often a pretty rudimentary take on the genre, with you building your indeterminate-looking defences to prevent enemy rocks from reaching your castle, then challenging the enemy’s course in the more standard rolling mode. We found it a very awkward slice of gameplay indeed, with it being pretty unclear how to even get started.
There’s a tutorial, sure, but it’s not very extensive. Eventually, we figured it out through trial and error, and we’re disappointed to report that this didn’t make the proceedings any more enjoyable. The graphics here are so muddy, it’s a challenge just to figure out what’s going on. Fussy controls make putting together your defences a chore at almost all times, too. Again, there are different variations on the basic tower defence theme, but not one of them is without these same frustrations.
It’s not just “Break”, of course, there’s also “Make”; effectively, a powerful and relatively easy-to-use level editor that lets you share your creations with other players online. It serves its purpose but said purpose is creating new stages for a game that isn’t very much fun. We don’t think it’s going to set the world on fire, exactly, but credit where it’s due; the editor is surprisingly versatile and friendly. You can jump into your levels and test them quickly and easily, but – again – we’re not sure why you’d want to. Still, if you find yourself enjoying Rock of Ages 3, this at least guarantees a way to access a theoretically unlimited reservoir of stages – as long as the servers stay up.
Graphically we found the game samey, unimpressive, and often blurry. The visual design – while not to our personal taste – deserves praise for delivering something different, but it’s all just so self-consciously “quirky” that we couldn’t help but find it irritating. The music is rather good, with strong arrangements of classic music. One of the said arrangements is a version of Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca, which just made us wonder if we’d ever be seeing Lemmings on the Switch.
Conclusion
Rock of Ages 3 failed to impress us on almost any level. It’s definitely a game with character, and it could feasibly work its charms on you, but in its drive to be different and unusual it seems to have neglected to be fun. Still, it certainly has an audience; broadly speaking, you don’t get to a second sequel without your game mattering to someone. If you can muscle through the frustrations, you might be able to roll with Rock of Ages 3, but with so many other worthy titles on Switch, we can’t say we’d recommend it.
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