*** NEW CONTEST ***

Win a monitor in the iiyama Faster than Thought Giveaway
https://hexus.net/tech/features/monitors/148136-win-monitor-iiyama-faster-thought-giveaway/

The prizes are:

• 27in QHD G-Master GB2770QSU-B1
• 27in FHD G-Master GB2770HSU-B1
• 24.5in FHD G-Master GB2570HSU-B1
• 24in FHD G-Master GB2470HSU-B1

Unfortunately, this contest is UK ONLY.

Tuesday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

Steam has two new daily deals, three Midweek Madness deals and a new range of weeklong deals:

• The first daily deal is Lost Castle / 失落城堡, 60% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/434650/Lost_Castle/
• The second one is ONE PUNCH MAN: A HERO NOBODY KNOWS, 84% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/991560/ONE_PUNCH_MAN_A_HERO_NOBODY_KNOWS/
• The first Midweek Madness deal is Snowrunner, 30% off until Friday: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1465360/SnowRunner/
• The Dark Pictures franchise is on sale, up to 67% off until the 27th: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/TheDarkPicturesFranchise
• The Escapists are up to 76% off until Friday 27: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/TheEscapists
• And here are some of the weeklong deals:
  • Ghost in the pool is 20% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/919330/Ghost_in_the_pool/
  • Star Traders: Frontiers gets a 35% discount: https://store.steampowered.com/app/335620/Star_Traders_Frontiers/
  • Underhero is 50% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/573320/Underhero/
  • NERVE gets a 60% discount: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1016000/NERVE/
  • Thumper is 70% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/356400/Thumper/
  • And the last one is Battle Ram, with a 88% discount: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1262060/Battle_Ram/

Fanatical has three new deals:

• The new Star Deal is Destiny 2 - Legendary Edition, 57% off during the next 24 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/destiny-2-legendary-edition
• Due to Gamescom, there's a Gamescom Deals Week with up to 91% discounts.
• And the new Reaper Bundle 9 comes with 9 games with a 97% discount: https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/reaper-bundle-9

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

-Empty-

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

This texture pack turns Minecraft blocks into Lego bricks
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/this-texture-pack-turns-minecraft-blocks-into-lego-bricks/
There are plenty of cool Minecraft texture packs that players can use to transform Mojang's blocky sandbox, but I think this one is my new favourite of the lot. MineBricks, created by Macio6 Productions, is a texture pack that turns Minecraft's classic blocks into Lego bricks.
Minecraft and Lego have joined forces in the past to create official physical sets, but the idea that you can now turn your in-game creations into Lego parts with this texture pack is awesome.
The detail is pretty amazing with each block having the Lego brick's four iconic notches. Not only that, but Macio6 has made the texture pack work with some of the most popular Minecraft shaders, including Sildur's Vibrant Shaders and SEUS Renewed, giving a spectacular sheen to each and every brick.
>> Available from its official website.

GAMING NEWS

Watch Dogs Legion Title Update 5.5 releases tomorrow, full patch notes
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/watch-dogs-legion-title-update-5-5-releases-tomorrow-full-patch-notes/
Ubisoft has announced that Title Update 5.5 for Watch Dogs Legion will release tomorrow, and revealed its full patch notes. According to the changelog, this update will release on August 24th at 6AM PST, 9AM EST, 2PM UTC, 3PM CEST.

15 minutes of leaked gameplay footage from Riders Republic’s Closed Beta
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/15-minutes-of-leaked-gameplay-footage-from-riders-republic-closed-beta/
Riders Republic’s Beta is currently underway and although there is an NDA for it, some players went ahead and shared gameplay videos from it. As such, you can find below a video that shows 15 minutes of gameplay footage from it.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy will support Ray Tracing and NVIDIA DLSS
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/marvels-guardians-of-the-galaxy-will-support-ray-tracing-and-nvidia-dlss/
NVIDIA has announced that Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy will officially support Ray Tracing and the DLSS tech on PC. According to the green team, the game will only feature ray-traced reflections. So don’t expect any RT global illumination, shadows, or ambient occlusion.

XEL is a new Zelda-like exploration/adventure game, coming to PC in 2022
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/xel-is-a-new-zelda-like-exploration-adventure-game-coming-to-pc-in-2022/
Assemble Entertainment today unveiled the latest title to join its award-winning roster: XEL. Developed by Tiny Roar, XEL is a vibrant sci-fi “Zelda-like” that will head to PC in 2022. In order to celebrate this announcement, the publisher has also released the game’s debut trailer that you can find below.

Team17 has announced a Fallout-like post-apocalyptic RPG, Broken Roads
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/team17-has-announced-a-fallout-like-post-apocalyptic-rpg-broken-roads/
Team17 and Drop Bear Bytes have today confirmed the development of Broken Roads; an original and narrative-rich, isometric, turn-based role-playing game set in an unforgiving, post-apocalyptic Western Australia.

Dying Light 2 Official Ray Tracing/DLSS PC Trailer
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/dying-light-2-officialy-ray-tracing-dlss-pc-trailer/
NVIDIA has released a new PC trailer for Dying Light 2 that showcases its Ray Tracing effects and DLSS tech. Thankfully, and instead of having RT reflections, Dying Light 2 will feature ray-traced reflections, global illumination and shadows.

Tuesday news, part two:

Fallout: London mod writer gets a job at Bethesda
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/fallout-london-writer-bethesda/
Back during this year's faux E3, we said that the event's best announcement was actually Fallout: London, a Fallout 4 mod that trades American shores for good old England. We're still waiting to see if its impressive trailer can make good on its promises of cockney mutants and whatnot, but evidently Bethesda is happy enough with the project to hire the writer.

Fortnite finally adds Morty to its Rick and Morty crossover
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/fortnite-finally-adds-morty-to-its-rick-and-morty-crossover/
When Fortnite season 7 launched, fans and pickle-obsessed nerds were thrilled to learn that Rick and Morty's titular drunk scientist grandpa was joining as part of the battle pass. If you were a fan of the young Morty, however, you had to settle for using a hammer-headed version of him from an alternate dimension...as a pickaxe.
No more. Check out the reveal trailer below for your first look at Fortnite's Morty skin.

Try Call of Duty: Vanguard's new multiplayer mode in September open beta
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/try-call-of-duty-vanguards-new-multiplayer-mode-in-september-open-beta/
Activision lifted the lid on Call of Duty: Vanguard last week with a big ol' infodump covering everything from the basic premise—an international super-squad attempts to hunt down Hitler 2.0—to how developers created the creepy red sky over the in-game Stalingrad. Now we've got the final detail that everyone's been waiting for: When you'll actually be able to try it.

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen teaser shows a very intimidating Savathûn, who is taller than Lady D
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/destiny-2-the-witch-queen-teaser-shows-a-very-intimidating-savathun-who-is-taller-than-lady-d/
Bungie is set to properly reveal the next major Destiny 2 expansion tomorrow, and in the lead up they've issued the above 15 second teaser trailer. As has already been established, the new adventure will prominently feature Savathûn as the antagonist, who has managed to get onto most Guardians' shit lists due to her apocalyptic treatment of the Last City. That's Savathûn in the trailer above, listlessly bathing in a lake littered with corpses. Nice.

EA is letting developers freely nick Apex Legends' ping system
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/ea-is-letting-developers-freely-nick-apex-legends-ping-system/
It's hard to imaging how we played multiplayer games before Apex Legends' ingenious ping system. But while games like Fortnite, Halo Infinite, and many others have implemented similar features, EA will now let developers freely copy Apex' pings wholesale as part of a wider push towards accessibility.

Destiny 2's The Witch Queen expansion continues to leak like a sieve
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/destiny-2s-the-witch-queen-expansion-continues-to-leak-like-a-sieve/
Bungie certainly knows what it's doing with Destiny 2, with the game seemingly in ruder health than ever and fans clamouring for upcoming expansion The Witch Queen (teaser above). One thing the developer has been less successful at, however, is stage-managing the reveals, with a steady stream of leaks providing information well before time—and on this occasion, it was the Australian Playstation Store that jumped the gun.

Final Fantasy 14 director has mostly bad news about the server issues
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/final-fantasy-14-director-has-mostly-bad-news-about-the-server-issues/
Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida has acknowledged that it's a bit of a nightmare to get onto a server in North America and Europe, but that isn't going to change anytime soon.

How to watch the Gamescom 2021 Xbox stream
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/how-to-watch-the-gamescom-2021-xbox-stream/
Microsoft is back with another Xbox games showcase at this year's Gamescom, which still remains an all-digital event. Hosted by Parris Lilly and Kate Yeager, the stream will highlight Xbox's latest game updates, upcoming releases, and additions to Xbox Game Pass.
The stream will be airing August 24, 10 pm PT / 6 pm BST / 7 pm CEST and you can watch it on Xbox's official channels including YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter. Microsoft says that English audio descriptions and American sign language are available during the stream for accessibility support.

Battlefield 2042 cheats are already being sold two months before launch
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/battlefield-2042-cheats-are-already-being-sold-two-months-before-launch/
Battlefield 2042 might not be out until October, but chancers in the cheating community have already begun selling exploits for the upcoming multiplayer shooter.
>> How much of a scumbag do you have to be to not only use cheats, but buy them?

GALAX re-releases GeForce RTX 3090 & RTX 3080 graphics cards with blower-type coolers

https://videocardz.com/newz/galax-re-releases-geforce-rtx-3090-rtx-3080-graphics-cards-with-blower-type-coolers

Not even Dell was brave enough to go blower style with their 3090s

LG delays 42-inch OLED TV launch till CES 2022 in January

https://videocardz.com/newz/lg-delays-42-inch-oled-tv-launch-till-ces-2022-in-january

Welp, looks like I am waiting until CES 2022 for my monitor upgrade!

Here’s A Bizarre Way To Enable AMD Ryzen ‘Zen 3’ CPU Support on ASUS X370 & B350 Motherboards Using ASRock 400 Series BIOS

https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-zen-3-cpu-support-asus-300-series-motherboards-using-asrock-400-series-bios/

Nvme doesn't work so may as well upgrade at that point.

Intel ARC Gaming Graphics Cards With Xe-HPG GPU Will Be Ready To Overclock Through Driver UI At Launch

https://wccftech.com/intel-arc-graphics-cards-xe-hpg-gpu-ready-to-overclock-through-driver-ui-at-launch/

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy to Support DLSS and Ray Traced Reflections; Chivalry 2, Dying Light 2 and Other Titles Are Getting DLSS and/or Ray Tracing

https://wccftech.com/marvels-guardians-of-the-galaxy-to-support-dlss-and-ray-traced-reflections-chivalry-2-dying-light-2-and-other-titles-are-getting-dlss-and-or-ray-tracing/

Personally, I think the way it's going to go down between upscalers is like this. DLSS will continue to be a popular option for at least the next few years as it's easy to implement as a plug in for all of the major engines, it brings unique upscaling to the industry and also Nvidia's influence. AMD will launch it's patented GSR for RDNA 3 which will be a true competitor to DLSS (they might call it FSR 2.0 but I doubt it) and that will essentially be their real "freesync" solution to DLSS and will eventually get adopted as the standard for upscaling. XeSS will get very little support unless AMD doesn't release GSR for some reason. Even if XeSS is open source, I don't see much of a reason for anyone to bother with it as DLSS and GSR will have bigger market share in both PCs and consoles.

AVX512 Instruction support for Zen4:

Sounds like Zen 4 will indeed be getting AVX512. Thank you Gigabyte for your shitty security which caused the leaks. Maybe their Network Firewall was powered by their PSUs and therefore died.

^And let's not forget that Intel's answer to DLSS will be open source, but only "once it's mature". We don't know what Intel understands as mature nor how long that may take. It could be week or even months (I really doubt it will be years).

Speaking of XeSS... Wccftech did an interview with Intel about it:

https://wccftech.com/intel-xess-interview-karthik-vaidyanathan/

The Intel XeSS Interview with Principal Engineer Karthik Vaidyanathan

I skimmed through it but this comment gives a good summary:

"Not DirectML based
Will have quality modes like DLSS/FSR
Faster on Intel specific (XMX) hardware
Cannot take advantage of inference hardware on other GPUs (No support Nvidias Tensor Cores)
No FP16 or FP32 fallback for hardware without XMX or DP4a support
[AMD: Vega 20, Arcturus, Navi 12 and later; Nvidia GP102 and later]
In development for 2+ years"

There is also a discussion about the fact that it could mean XeSS may not work on the 5700XT

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/par1s2/intel_xess_likely_wont_work_on_gpus_like_the/

But take it with a grain of salt for now.

Looks like the hype for XeSS is slowly fading away ...

Out of curiosity guys, given what we know of the stuff regarding the Apple and Google Play stores, wouldn't you like to see it pushed through at the Federal Level? I mean, the federal government somehow being able to force all machines (inc Consoles and platforms like Steam) to become open marketplaces?

I'm saying this because I remember reading some of this back a few pages and a few of you didn't seem happy about it. Why? I'd adore an scenario where I no longer have to fret about what some think is good curation given America doesn't know how to curate content at all. This is of course, assuming the Feds decide they had it and tell everyone to suck it up, and the SCOTUS takes it and confirms the Govt has a point and the big tech companies are all lunatics because most governments predating the last four would've actually broken them up instead?

Also, more so if the EU does the same thing?

I don't hate the idea of having other stores in closed machines but I do doubt they will allow alternate payment methods into stores in an "open" platform like on PC. I wouldn't even mind having alternate payment options on Steam than just the default ones but at that point, how would a place like Steam make money? I wouldn't mind if phones and consoles have alternate stores to drive more competition though.

I always thought stores could charge a "hosting fee" for those who didn't want to sell through those: they charge like an advertiser would. Essentially, you use Steam as an advert platform for your game.