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A new version of Stardock's cosmic empire wrangler Galactic Civilizations IV, titled Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova Edition, will release out of early access on Steam and the Epic Games Store on 19th October - which also happens to be Stardock's 30th anniversary. It's "by far the biggest expansion Stardock has ever made", according to company founder Brad Wardell, who claims this latest dollop of interstellar tyranny will "transform the gameplay in ways not seen in a 4X game before". By which he chiefly means that the Supernova Edition uses large language learning models to generate civ backstories on demand. Let's dig in!

There's a catch, though. Because of the lightweight and portable design of this thing, there isn't much space for super high-performance computing. If you were hoping to max out all of your games in a device that fits in your backpack, your best bet is still going to be one of the best gaming laptops. However, where the ROG Ally shines – much like the Steam Deck – is in playing the indie games that make PC gaming so magical in the first place.

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The Asus ROG Ally Z1 is equipped with a 7-inch FHD display, which is much better than the 800p display on the Steam Deck. However, while the ROG Ally Z1 has a slightly more powerful APU, the extra resolution is going to cause some performance problems if you're not careful – more on that later.

The problem here is that you're going to want to take full advantage of this display. It's a 7-inch IPS beauty rated at 500 nits of brightness and can theoretically reproduce 100% of the sRGB color spectrum. It's absolutely stunning, especially when the brightness is turned up.

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Star Citizen’s long-running development has inched forward yet again, this time to the Alpha 3.20 stage. The latest update, dubbed “Fully Loaded”, overhauls the Arena Commander mode, adds new PvP modes, maps, and racetracks, and adds new missions and ships to the Persistent Universe portion of the space sim.

This is the largest update to Arena Commander since its introduction in 2014, developer Cloud Imperium Games said, and delivers “more focused, bite-sized gameplay with diverse content for racers, fighters, and competitors climbing the leaderboards”.

The update also adds the MISC Hull C ship, the “titan of the cargo hauling profession with room for a crew of up to four players”, and the Fury LX, a racing variant of the recently added Mirai Fury snub fighter. New features include automatic cargo loading and unloading at space stations to support the Hull C’s expansive cargo capacity.

YouTube Trailer

... The First Descendant, whose open cross-play beta is currently enjoying a healthy spot on Steam's most played games list. At the time of this writing, The First Descendant has over 77,591 concurrent players, and that figure continues to rise. It's easy to imagine it landing into the top 10 by the end of the day.

So what is it? Well, The First Descendant is a free-to-play, sci-fi, third-person, co-op shooter that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. But instead of one where rogue machines destroyed human civilization, you fight off monsters to ensure the survival of humanity's remains following an alien attack.

The First Descendant is developed by Nexon (Korea's Tencent, basically). The beta is live until September 25, but the full game doesn't have a release date. Even in these busy weeks for major video game releases, the game already has a sizeable audience. Obviously, it remains to be seen whether it can bring all those players back at launch.

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Steam Page

SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet constellation has lost more than two hundred satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) since July, according to data from a satellite tracking website. This is the first time that Starlink has lost a significant number of satellites in a short time period, and these losses are typically influenced by solar flares that cause changes in orbit and damage or destroy the spacecraft. The nature of the satellites, i.e. their model, is unclear, and if they are the newer Starlink satellites that SpaceX regularly launches, then the firm will have to conduct at least nine Falcon 9 launches to make up for the satellites lost.

Since it is a SpaceX subsidiary, Starlink has rapidly built the world's largest LEO satellite internet constellation and the world's largest satellite constellation by rapidly launching them through the Falcon 9 rocket. However, upgrades to the spacecraft and constraints with the Falcon 9 have reduced the number of satellites that the firm can launch, with its latest launches seeing roughly 22 satellites per launch for a nearly one-third reduction over the 60 satellites that SpaceX launched during the early days of the Starlink buildout.

The newer satellites are second-generation spacecraft that SpaceX received the launch authorization from the FCC less than a year back. They are more powerful and are thus larger and heavier than the earlier satellites, which limits the Falcon 9 ability to squeeze large numbers inside a single payload fairing.

Satellites in orbit or space have to face off against various hazards that can damage or put them out of commission. SpaceX faced one such event in February 2022, when a solar flare damaged at least 40 of the recently launched satellites. SpaceX confirmed this and shared that the heat from the solar flare increased atmospheric density and made it impossible for the satellites to maintain their trajectory.

AMD has updated its Radeon Adrenalin driver with the latest edition, 23.9.2. The newest version brings unified driver support for AMD Radeon RX 7700 and RX 7800, which the previous driver lacked, and there was a separate download for these two SKUs. Besides merging into a single unified driver, the new update brings Lies of P, Party Animals, and The Crew Motorfest game support for AMD Radeon graphics. In this driver release, the AMD Radeon Anti-Lag+ feature is introduced for Starfield, Witcher 3, ELDEN RING, Immortal of Aveum, and an Anti-Lag+ screen overlay for system latency. AMD fixed some issues like application crashing while playing Baldur Gate 3 with Vulkan API on RX 7900 XTX, limited GPU clock tuning on RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT, application crash while playing SMITE on RX 7900 XTX, and application crash or driver timeout while playing F1 2023 on RX 7800 XT. There is no Cyberpunk 2077 update yet in this driver release.

You'll need just 40GB of storage to install Mirage, with a variety of CPUs and GPUs supported for running the game somewhere between 1080p 30fps and up to 4K and 60fps.

On the low end, you're looking at a Nvidia GeForce 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 570 with 8GB RAM. On the high end, you'll need a Nvidia GeForce 3080 or AMD Radeon 6900 with 16GB RAM.

Terraria developer Re-Logic is donating $100k to two open source engines in the wake of Unity's recent policy changes.

Re-Logic does not even use Unity, but in a statement via X (formerly Twitter) the developer said it felt it "cannot sit idly by as these predatory moves are made against studios everywhere".

Godot and FNA will receive $100k each, and Re-Logic will also continue sponsoring both with a further $1k per month. "All we ask in return is that they remain good people and keep doing all that they can to make these engines powerful and approachable for developers everywhere," said Re-Logic.

Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 is coming soon - the first showcase for DLSS 3.5 ray reconstruction, integrated into a full DLSS package including super resolution and frame generation, all combining to produce a state-of-the-art visual experience. In this roundtable discussion, we discuss how ray reconstruction works, how it was developed and its applications outside of path-traced games. We also talk about the evolution of the original DLSS, the success of DLSS in the modding community and the future of machine learning in PC graphics.

Many thanks to all participants in this roundtable chat: Bryan Catanzaro, Vice President Applied Deep Learning Research at Nvidia, Jakub Knapik VP Art and Global Art Director at CD Projekt RED, GeForce evangelist Jacob Freeman and Pedro Valadas of the PCMR sub-Reddit.

00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:10 When did the DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction project start and why?
00:04:16 How did you get DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction up and running?
00:06:17 What was it like to integrate DLSS 3.5 for Cyberpunk 2077?
00:10:21 What are the new game inputs for DLSS 3.5?
00:11:25 Can DLSS 3.5 be used for hybrid ray tracing titles and not just path traced ones?
00:12:41 What is the target performance budget for DLSS 3.5?
00:14:10 Is DLSS a crutch for bad performance optimisation in PC games?
00:20:19 What makes machine learning specifically useful for denoising?
00:24:00 Why is DLSS naming kind of confusing?
00:27:03 What did the new denoising enable for Cyberpunk 2077's graphical vision?
00:32:10 Will Nvidia still focus on performance without DLSS at native resolutions?
00:38:26 What prompted the change internally at Nvidia to move away from DLSS 1.0 and pursue DLSS 2.0?
00:43:43 What do you think about DLSS mods for games that lack DLSS?
00:49:52 Where can machine learning go in the future for games beyond DLSS 3.5?

A self-proclaimed white supremacist pleaded guilty Tuesday to making online threats toward the jury and witnesses at the trial of a man who killed 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the U.S. Justice Department said.

As part of his plea agreement in federal court for West Virginia’s northern district, Hardy Carroll Lloyd admitted that the actual or perceived Jewish faith of the government witnesses and victims in the trial of Robert Bowers prompted him to target the jury and witnesses.

Lloyd, 45, of Follansbee, West Virginia, faces more than six years in prison if the plea agreement is accepted by the court.

The Justice Department described Lloyd as a self-proclaimed leader of a white supremacy movement. Prosecutors said Lloyd, who was arrested on Aug. 10, sent threatening social media posts and emails along with comments on websites during Bowers’ trial. Lloyd pleaded guilty to obstruction of the due administration of justice.

What began as a routine band performance of Talkin' Out the Side of Your Neck by Cameo at an Alabama high school football game ended in a troubling confrontation when a police officer tased the marching band director for refusing to stop the music.

The altercation occurred Thursday around 9 p.m. local time after a game at Jackson-Olin High School in Birmingham, Ala.

Minor High School band director Johnny Mims, 39, and his ensemble of 145 students were about a minute away from being done with their final song when a police officer approached the podium. According to both Mims and the Birmingham Police Department, officers asked Mims to stop the performance so they could clear out the stadium. Mims responded that the song was about to end and the performance was agreed on by both schools.

"Nothing we were doing at the time was being a danger to the community, fans or the school," Mims told NPR on Monday. "Everyone was enjoying themselves. That's the part I'm having a hard time grappling with."

As the students finished their performance, officers attempted to arrest Mims for not complying. Police said the band director "refused" to place his hands behind his back and allegedly pushed an arresting officer.

Dwarf Fortress from Bay 12 Games and Kitfox Games has a fresh update available on Steam today, and this brings with it their official Native Linux support.

With the latest update now out they said they're going to continue working in parallel on different parts of the game like the adventure mode, with more to show on that coming soon. More user interface work is being done too and more work on the fort mode.