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Call of Duty: Mobile - February 5th Community Update & Public Test Build
https://preview.redd.it/pd0xmv18trf61.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=7797a4cfe50c33a06ab65ed46ccd00c204fffe8a Greetings Call of Duty: Mobile Community! We are back today with your usual type of community update filled with info about recently released or upcoming events and modes, but this time we are also happy to share that the next public test build is here! We’ll have that in first section following the events schedule, but it is being released far earlier than normal, especially for one that is filled with content from the next major in-game update. However, for Season 1: New Order the biggest release this week is the featured event, Fight For Humanity. https://reddit.com/link/ldpeki/video/tei7fdebwrf61/player This new event, released yesterday, asks you to pick a side and join the fight alongside your fellow players while you earn points in an attempt to control territories. There are many unique rewards to snag this time, both as a team and solo, and we’ll have more details about that event below in its own section of the update. In this update we also have responses for recent feedback and bug reports alongside various event, store, mode, and playlist updates that recently released or are coming soon. First off though, we want to say thank you to the many players who have reported a variety of bugs and created discussions to give feedback about new features, modes, balance changes, or other aspects unique to this season. Members of our development teams who create these events, make balance changes, add new pieces of content, game modes, and more, also read your responses and feedback. Thank you all for your dedication, passion, and commitment to making this game better through so many different ways. With that said, let’s jump into this update! https://preview.redd.it/nhr33madwrf61.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=d92f9a5116c867106b75da4711ad83cde764de4a Here is a quick look at all of the new events starting today and others launch soon:
02/03 – 02/09 ~ 10v10 Collection (MP)
02/03 ~ Two New Seasonal Challenges
Deadly Mist (Gas Grenade) and Premier Operator
02/05 – 02/11 ~ 3v3 GunFight (MP)
Check out the Gunfight Trio event
02/05 – 02/11 ~ BR Sniper Only
02/05 – 02/19 ~ Fight For Humanity event
02/05 – 02/18 ~ System Overload Draw
The brand-new Ether – Network is here!
02/08 – 02/14 ~ Grind Baby, Grind! (MP)
02/10 – 02/16 ~ Russian Nuketown 24/7 (MP)
Coming Soon – Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year store content
*All Dates UTC We covered a number of these topics in the last community update, but we’ll go over some again if it is launching today or if we have some new information to share. First though, just a reminder that for Battle Royale we have limited modes launching every week in February and the newest mode, Blitz, will be back later in February. https://preview.redd.it/9v3crd9vwrf61.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=3d2f76132c10f62ea1ccf812db1329dc2724f4c8 February 5th - Public Test Build We are back quite early in the season with a public test build ready to go for our next update, which does not release until March. This test build will be larger than the last couple in relation to the player limit and new playable content, much of which may release in one of the next two seasons. We are thrilled this time to announce that we have added iOS to the mix! You'll need Test Flight to access it, but otherwise it should be a relatively straight forward install. Here are all of the usual details, but please note that we have two different APKs to download this time.
Begins today on February 5th (PT)
Test end date not specified
Available for Android and iOS devices
Download Size: 2 gigabytes, Wifi connection is highly recommended
Player Registration Limit: 40,000 (30K Android, 10K iOS)
Content suited for ages 16+
All information and player data collected during this test will be deleted
This time around we have two different versions, 32 bit and 64 bit. For anyone unfamiliar, 64 bit is more suited for higher-end/newer devices while 32 bit is generally more suited for lower-end/older devices. We recommend that you only download the 64 bit version if you have no issues running the current version of CODM on the more demanding (high/highest) graphical settings. With all of that said, the 64 bit version is the ideal version we would like players to test during this specific public test build. If you can, please download and use that version of the build. Please find all of those download links below along with the player registrations limit per version.
(Priority) Android - Downloadable via 64 Bit APK here: (Registration Full)
20,000 Player Limit
Android - Downloadable via 32 Bit APK here: (Registration Full)
10,000 Player Limit
For iOS players, you’ll just need to have Apple’s Testflight application installed on your phone and this link below should take you to the correct page to download the test build.
iOS Testflight Link:(Registration Full)
10,000 Player Limit
We do have a general cap (as listed above) on how many players can enter into both the iOS and Android versions of this test. You unfortunately won’t be able to see if that limit has been met until you try to register an account at the login screen. We’ll update the page here once registration is closed, but this is just a heads up for anyone who manages to download after we’ve hit that limit. In this build you’ll be able to find a variety of new content, but some of the main ones you might notice are: Shoothouse (MP Map), Shipment 2019 (MP Map), updated Night Modes, Sword & Stones mode, the Truck in BR, new perks, and the new Bull Charge Operator Skill. Of course, there are plenty of smaller changes or new additions hidden in there too, but this is just a glimpse at what you’ll be able to try out. Some general tips for downloading this rather large file:
Do your best to make sure you on a secure uninterrupted connection so that the whole package is downloaded without any issues
Try to turn off or stop your device from going into any kind of rest mode
If you are running into issues download the file, try using a different browser
Make sure you have 5-6 gigabytes of data free on your device
This file and build is independent of the main build, you do not need to remove or do anything with your main CODM application. It will install as another application that is executed separately. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to help us test out this new content and please make sure to report any feedback or bug through the in-game options, like the in-game survey that may not be available right off the bat but will show up once the beta has been out for a while. Fight for Humanity Sides have been drawn, the field of battle has been laid bare, and the Fight for Humanity has begun! Your first choice is simple, Atlas Corporation or Cordis Die, where will your loyalties lie? Pick one of the two sides, open up the map, see what territory is currently being fought over, and what tasks you can complete to help your side win that battle. https://preview.redd.it/zab957iyxrf61.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=d12d6a7edf27d89ac7cf5ffac1bbd2f15d67602c Each side will have its own set of Faction rewards available and they are broken down into milestones, winning prizes, and leaderboard rewards. Each faction has its own version of the Cordite to grab (seen above) and the Russian Merc operator. Additionally, the faction that wins it all will snag the ATV – Override and the those who reach the top of the leaderboards can snag the Legendary Calling Card — Rupture. Through all of those different methods there are many rewards to grab by participating in this global battle of territory control! Lastly, you can boost your points by using various weapon sets that are indicated in the top right of this event page in-game. If you’d like to get the upper hand with some tips and tricks then head on over to our Fight For Humanity blog post. Good luck out there and may the best faction win! Seasonal Challenges Two seasonal challenges are already out in the wild as of last week and now this week two are more coming your way! The first challenge, Premier Operator, is more of your usual type of seasonal challenge with a variety of rewards and tasks, while Deadly Mist is a unique one due to the fact that you can earn a new piece of a tactical equipment the Gas Grenade by completing it. Find the details below! Premier Operator This six-part seasonal challenge is all about using different operators in Battle Royale and Multiplayer modes. The tasks all vary, ranging from just playing BR matches to getting kills with the S36 while using Outrider. You can earn nearly 20K Battle Pass XP for completing these tasks plus the following rewards:
(Uncommon) Mechanic – Warp
(Uncommon) S36 – Warp
(Rare) Charm – E-Chatter
(Rare) Special Ops 5 – Trance
Deadly Mist This five-part seasonal challenge went live a few days ago and it is your rare chance to grab a brand-new piece of equipment. The gas grenade is a tactical grenade that slows down your enemies with debilitating smoke that also provides cover. Complete a variety of tasks related to equipment, scorestreaks, and perks, and you’ll be able to snag this new tactical grenade along with the following items:
(Uncommon) Smoke Grenade – Warp
(Rare) Calling Card – Dystopia on TV
(Common) Gas Grenade
https://preview.redd.it/q44od4330sf61.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=afcc9e6aac686ea0447b4f8763ed595860013219 3v3 Gunfight Mode This tactical showdown played on perfectly symmetrical small maps has returned, but this time around each team is bringing an extra teammate with them for this competitive challenge. This team-based mode released yesterday on 2/5 (UTC) and for anyone unfamiliar with it we have a new video just to show off the basic rules and objectives. Take a look! https://reddit.com/link/ldpeki/video/uqcb2ql60sf61/player While you are playing 3v3 Gunfight make sure to check out the Gunfight Trio featured event in order to earn some rewards while you are challenging yourself to intense tactical gameplay. There are eight tasks to this event and they are all straight-forward, like get kills or play matches, and by completing these you can earn the following rewards:
(Uncommon) Frag Grenade – The Numbers
(Uncommon) Knife – Warp
(Rare) Kilo Bolt-Action – Cosmic Wave
(Epic) Cyber Clown Frame
System Overload Draw While we rarely highlight any draws, crates, or bundles through these community updates, it is hard not to bring up the System Overload Draw. This draw brings with it the second blueprint for the newest assault rifle, the FR .556 - Superhighway, and of course the highly sought-after new operator, Ether - Network. Here is a glimpse at those two main new pieces of content: https://reddit.com/link/ldpeki/video/txshs60b0sf61/player Another unique aspect of this draw, related to the Fight for Humanity event, is the Breach Set. If you acquire the three breach camos for Outlaw, the EMP, and the Karambit then you’ll receive a weapon set bonus for that featured event. That specific weapon set increases the points earned from battles between factions by 50%. You can find all of the information in-game on this new draw or in the featured event. Get a jump on it while everything is still active. Feedback Since the Season 1 launch we’ve primarily been focused more on reporting bugs, but there are still a few feedback-related topics we’ve seen come up and have been trying to respond to on a one-to-one basis whenever we are able to. Let’s jump in!
Voice Overs – We’ve brought up this topic numerous times in previous updates or on social media channels, but we keep seeing interest in upcoming voice overs, updating current (or missing) voices, and of course brand-new operators. We are of course working on all of those, just like we released many updated voice overs alongside some new ones in Season 1, but we are also working on ways to provide more visibility about all of that in future updates.
China Version Content – As you may see in the public test build (if you manage to snag a spot before it is full) we have some content coming in future updates that is also in the Chinese version of CODM, like Trucks in BR. Most likely, we won’t always keep content the same in each version of the game, but the teams managing the game are always working together to coordinate, discuss, and decide what content should release in each version.
Cheater Reports – For whatever reason, most of the time we release an update we see an increase in cheater reports. These have traditionally tapered off one or two weeks into the season, but we have seen no abnormal increases in cheaters. We will always keep an eye out for reports in community areas, so please keep sharing, but also please keep reporting in-game as well and we’ll keep monitoring and acting to make sure your experience isn’t compromised.
Master of All Event – A special shout-out to those who have been giving feedback back about the unique rewards on this event (6000 credits and BP XP as the final reward). The team was looking to see if this type of reward felt valuable to players and so far all we’ve seen is positive feedback about it, which may pave the way for similar reward setups in the future.
Next Update – While we cannot confirm any dates for our next season or update, it is always a moving target for a variety of reasons, we can confirm that the next update will be in March.
Bug Reports We’ve been going through many smaller bug reports lately thanks to threads, PMs, and posts sharing details, videos, or screenshots explaining the issue. We don’t have any huge issues to bring up this week, at least nothing new or seemingly troublesome, but we are working with our teams to investigate many of those smaller issues and please do keep sharing. It is always appreciated!
Battle Royale Bugs – We’ve seen a variety of BR related bugs come in over the past two weeks and they vary greatly in relation to the types, the severity of them, and how widespread they seem to be experienced. While we can’t list it all here, we just wanted to give a general shout-out and thank you to several community members who have spent a significant amount of time making videos, screenshots, and posts to highlight these issues clearly.
Black Screen Issues – We are happy to say that we have seen fewer reports of these types of issues after the Season 1 release after we implemented some general stability improvements for all players in that update. We’ll have more on that front coming in the next major update (next month) and we’ll be monitoring both in-game and external channels for reports.
Blitz Mode Performance – We have seen various discussions about performance issues in Blitz mode due to the changes made to put more players and items in a smaller area. This seems to be a similar issue to why some devices struggle with Warfare mode. We recommend experimenting with different graphical settings before jumping into these modes to see if that helps performance, but we’ll also see if there is anything we can do to help improve performance in these types of modes.
Support Options Lastly, thank you to everyone who have been reporting various issues since Season 1 released and please do keep using our support channels on top of community areas to repot issues. In the off-chance you haven’t seen this information in every single one of our community updates 😉, here are our main support channels:
https://preview.redd.it/5e5mlmwm0sf61.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=8041bf5e80de983c00bcb5cf20bbbe42664d8bb5 One of our greatest pleasures each week is looking through various community areas to see the latest and greatest in CODM memes, but also to see the latest and greatest art designs created by some extremely talented community members! This week, we are thrilled to be able to highlight Sarcstoon, who you may know as Sagar in certain community areas. Urban Tracker by Sarcstoon Sarcstoon is a character artist and their online portfolios are filled to the brim with impressively detailed pieces of art that range from CODM operators to commission pieces for real life couples. One thing is clear through all of their pieces, their style is unique and in particular for faces and expressions. Park Safehouse by Sarcstoon Whether it is Helen Park or Urban Tracker, they’ve blown us away with their vibrant, welcoming, and charming pieces of work that make us proud that CODM is lucky enough to be a receipent of their designs. If you’d like to see more of Sarcastoon then you have plenty of options to see their work:
Thank you all once again for being the type of community that supports artists and designers by providing positive feedback, supportive words, or even just upvotes or positive reactions. There are so many talented folks in the community and we are always eager to look for more each week. With all of that said, we’ve come to the end of yet another community update! We plan to return next week with more and with some info on our upcoming Valentine’s Day events & activities. You know us, we love to use holidays as an excuse to design new content, create giveaways, or just create engaging events with the general community. We’ll see you all next week and for those of you in the public test build make sure to jump on that before we hit that player limit! Thank you all and stay safe out there. -The Call of Duty: Mobile Team
Hey all...I've been pretty exhaustively trying all the current streaming services. I know this is a Stadia group but I thought if anyone out there is curious about what the experience is like on other services, perhaps you could benefit from a layman's experience using each service and trying to make it my "main" service. Like I said, I'm a layman, not a professional reviewer, so there's a lot of things I'm still learning, but having tried all three of the major services, here's my thoughts. Edit: Please bear in mind this is not an exhaustive list, just some thoughts based on a couple of months of on and off testing. I'm certainly not trying to sway or influence anyone's purchasing decisions, just giving some general thoughts that might help when trying to decide which service to look into. I know not everyone can get ahold of / rush out and buy all of the devices I have listed here - I happen to work for a tech company so I have a lot more devices floating around than most other people. Your mileage, of course, may vary! I know there's also Steam Link, but since that requires you to have a PC capable of playing the game in the house somewhere, I'm not considering that a streaming service. Testing Devices:
ChromeCast Ultra (Stadia Only)
iPad Pro 2020
Asus G14
Pixel 2 XL (xCloud only)
iPhone 12 Pro Max (Stadia only)
nVidia Shield (GeForce Now only)
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook (Stadia only)
Amazon Luna
Notable Games: Control, lots of highly rated indie titles (Blasphemous, Bloodstained, Iconoclasts) To be fair, I only have about 6 hours on Amazon Luna, but they've been pretty excruciating. My wifi averages about 75-90 MBps, and about half of the games I tried suffered from lag and graphical smear, mostly the Ubisoft+ games. The indie games played fabulously well. Luna is probably the service I have the least to say about. It's $6 a month for Luna on it's own, so it's kindof like the "also-ran" effort - it's cheap, but might be the most forgettable of the bunch. The user interface is better than GeForce Now, worse than Stadia, and unlike Stadia it doesn't seem like Luna can be enhanced with browser extensions. I have Ubisoft+, so I tried to play Immortal: Fenyx Rising on Luna and it was absolutely horrible. Smeared graphics, dropped frames, input lag, the works. It was the only experience across all of the big three services that was literally unplayable. This seemed to be a problem only with the Ubisoft games, however, I have to stress. Pros
Netflix-style game selection, with lots of indie titles you don't see many other places. Control is the only standout AAA title, and it looks and plays fantastically. Indie games were great too.
Integration with Ubisoft+ is seamless and the games just become part of your library.
Twitch integration is pretty cool - nice to see streamers who are playing the game live when you jump into the game page.
Runs in the browser but also has dedicated apps - a plus for me.
Luna is probably the best service for Twitch streamers - it's integrated right into the UI. I don't stream so I wasn't able to test it, but it seems pretty easy.
Cons
Seems to be in Early Access, so I literally don't know anyone else who has gotten an invite.
The pro of having niche indie games is offset by the con of not having a wide game selection. Of all the services, seems like Luna has the least, but broadest, selection.
Seeing an ad for Luna, WHILE PLAYING LUNA, was irrationally annoying. Amazon just can't freaking help themselves I guess.
I signed up for Luna fully expecting to play all of my games claimed through Prime Gaming...literally none of those games are available.
If there's a way to find Luna from the main Amazon home page, they've hid it pretty well. I'm sure it's buried in one of their dozens of menus but I could not for the life of me find a quick and easy way to get to Luna from Amazon dotcom.
This is a very minor point, but Amazon Luna ONLY works on Chrome, while Google Stadia works in either Chrome or Edge Browser (since it's built on Chromium). Probably doesn't make a difference for most people, but to me Edge seems to run better, so I'm docking a point.
GeForce Now
Notable Games: Cyberpunk 2077, Control, Immortals: Fenix Rising, Metro series, Destiny 2 (all paid) I picked up an nVidia Shield specifically for GeForce now, but my wife and I have ended up using it primarily for Kodi and to watch Netflix more than playing any games on it. I'll just say it straight out - GeForce Now sucks ass. It's a broken, shoddy, inconsistent mess. It's actually WORSE on the Shield than it is on PC, because there are so many times when I needed a keyboard to do anything. I tried playing Immortals: Fenyx Rising on GFN on my Shield which required me to log into Ubisoft+. I'm fine with that, since you only have to do it once...but using the Shield remote that came with my Shield, the on-screen keyboard never popped up, forcing me to track down a second keyboard from in my garage and plug in. After I plugged in the physical keyboard....THEN the onscreen keyboard popped up and just mirrored what I pressed on the physical keyboard. What? Why? Games are all over the place as well. Witcher 3 was a nightmare - every time you try to play the game, it wants to install the DLC packs onto whatever virtual machine you've been assigned. Then when you can play, it dips so far under 30 fps it's literally better to just play it on a budget PC with Hairworks off. Plus the Shield ain't cheap - it was like $200 at Best Buy, and didn't include a controller. $100 more gets you a Series S, and $100 LESS gets you a Stadia-enabled Chromecast WITH a solid as hell controller, just for comparison's sake. Pros
Raytracing, I guess. Control looks great?
Links with Steam, GOG, and Epic, so you keep your games if the service goes down at some point in the future. Also technically "cheaper" overall than Stadia cos you can find cheap keys online or Steam sales (which seem to be more frequent than Stadia sales) and still get the game in your GeForce Now.
GFN seems to have the widest selection of enabled games. Not all that impressive since you have to own the game already, but this does give it somewhat of an advantage.
Links to Epic library, which is cool. 80% of my games on Epic were not GFN enabled, which is not as cool.
Cons
Literally the hardest of the big three services to use. Not a "pick up and play" experience. Requires a lot of effort to get working, and even then, inconsistent across platforms.
Even on nVidias own hardware, it can be tricky to figure out what games actually are on GeForce Now and which aren't and get them running right.
Some games just don't play well. Witcher 3 is a buggy, low framerate mess...while Control is smooth as butter. No rhyme or reason as to why. I couldn't get Mankind Divided to play full-screen - it always wanted to play in a window.
Since you're just running a virtual machine, you still have to fiddle with graphical settings. Some games don't look right when first started, and you have to remember to go into the settings and change things to match whatever screen you're on.
Twice I still had to wait in a queue to play even though I paid for the Founder's subscription. Insanely frustrating.
One hour limit to gameplay if you don't pay for the Founder's subscription, and you're stuck waiting in a queue. There were times where I was in a queue of over 300, which translated to upwards of 18 minutes one session, waiting to play. I would go as far as to say, if you don't pay for Founder's, don't bother with GFN at all.
Also, just because I don't have anywhere else to put this, Ubisoft's Cloud Save system is atrocious. This isn't nVidia's fault, I just want to complain about it.
Google Stadia
Notable Games: Cyberpunk 2077 (paid), Hitman: World of Assassination (Pro), Destiny 2 (Pro), Red Dead Redemption II (Paid) Stadia is easily the best overall, but it still has its cons. I came to Stadia thanks to Cyberpunk 2077 so I have the most hours played on Stadia of the big three services. Stadia on the Chromecast Ultra seems to me to be the hands down best way to play streamed games currently. Of all the services, Stadia was the one that felt the least like a "me-too" service and more like a dedicated platform. Almost all of the other services felt like a way for corporations to dip their toe in the water and figure out if there's money to be made, while Stadia feels like someone who really grasps and cares about gaming is at the helm. Pros
Least barrier to entry. Download Chrome or Edge Browser, grab any bluetooth controller, and you're off the races.
No subscription required. You can play any game purchased on Stadia without a subscription with no queue system, no picking a virtual machine, no Steam big picture mode...it's just, hit the Play button and go.
This is a big one for me - seems to have the best "capture" integration. Though, the iOS / Android app could use work (just let me download the image and share it? Why do I need to share a link?) overall, sharing your snaps and vids is pretty easy on Stadia.
Playing with the Stadia controller on my TV after picking up a Chromecast Ultra felt like magic.
Similarly, being able to "pick up and play" games like Cyberpunk 2077 on a Chromebook felt similarly magical. The game looked its best, believe it or not, on a Samsung Chromebook that I tested at Best Buy. Random side note but the Google guy at Best Buy was SO EXCITED that I wanted to check out Stadia on a Chromebook. He was over the moon.
The game selection for Pro does have some interesting titles that I wouldn't have picked up otherwise. But see Con 1 below.
Cons
The game selection for Stadia Pro is a tad lackluster at the moment. Definitely enough to keep me playing, but there wasn't really a "must have" title that jumped out at me. Bunch of average, quite playable titles
The game selection for purchases is a little thin as well, seeing as how the service is over a year old at this point. I know it’s on literally every other platform but I would have loved to do a second play through of Control on Stadia, and stuff like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Hades, even some older indie titles like Transistor or Pyre, some of the Lego games...
UI seems like an complete afterthought, which is a little weird since this is a Google product. This is solved a little bit by extensions like Stadia Enhanced, but that's a third party fix so I'm still listing it as a con. No search? Captures seem deprecated?
Probably the highest "cost" to play, since you have to buy the games outright, and sales seem few and far between. If Stadia just vanishes at some point (which, let's be fair, Google has a track record of doing with their services) they haven't really outlined what happens to your library.
No raytracing yet. Not really a con for me personally, but other services offer it.
This may just be a bug but I'm listing it as a con - a number of times the Stadia homepage just wouldn't load. I was left staring at the Stadia logo wondering what was going on for minutes at a time. I'd have to close out of the browser and restart. Not sure if that's an issue with Chrome, but it seemed to happen on Edge browser as well.
Stadia-specific versions of games. Now, hear me out - usually this is a PRO not a con, but in Stadia’s case it seems to be a con as making a wholly new build of a game for a specific platform probably just isn’t in the cards for a lot of developers. That could be what’s slowing down a lot of games coming to Stadia - the time and money required to build a new version of the game. Hopefully we see some “Stadia first” games that will convince other developers to jump on board.
Xbox Game Pass / Game Pass Unlimited / Gold / Live / Play Anywhere / xCloud / Whatever it's being called these days
Notable Games: Nier: Automata BAG Edition, Dragon Quest XI S, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda Xbox Game Pass gets added to this list on a pure technicality. So, technically Xbox Game Pass isn't a streaming service, but I include it because on Android, there actually is a "cloud" option for playing your console Game Pass library. The Cloud streaming works surprisingly well, but you're limited to either an Android tablet or phone because it doesn't seem to work properly on Android TV. I've heard you can sideload onto the nVidia Shield, but that was beyond the scope of what I was trying to accomplish with these reviews...I just want something I can pick up and play. So, yeah if you don't mind playing on your phone, Game Pass Cloud is actually probably the best of the bunch in terms of ease of use and game selection. There are so many things I want to play on Game Pass it's actually a little overwhelming. However, I don't want to stare at a 5" screen for hours to do so. Pros
Wide game selection with lots of games being added every month (almost every week, seems like)
Broad game selection - seems to be some standouts from just about every game genre. I know this seems like a repeat of point one, but they're very different things - it's one thing to just throw a ton of games on your service, its another to make sure you're representing every genre out there, which Game Pass seems to do more admirably than any other service.
Streaming seems to work just fine. I was able to play Dragon Quest: Inquisition on my Android phone with very little issue. Couple of times the connection dropped, but it was no better or worse than Stadia.
It seems like services are stumbling all over themselves to get included in Game Pass.
Cons
Again, inconsistent experience. Offerings are different on console than on PC...why is Torchlight III a console exclusive? Why are all the good games pushed to console and cloud, with PC being an afterthought?
Games seem to come and go randomly - some popular games pop up for a few months and are gone, other seemingly niche titles have been on the service since launch
Probably the biggest con - no streaming on PC, iOS, or Android TV. Baffling choice. Maybe there's business reasons I'm not aware of, but as a user, it's maddening.
Minor point, but good lord Microsoft needs to simplify EVERYTHING related to Xbox. No one can figure out what the hell service we have when I try to talk to people about it - there's Game Pass, but there's also Games with Gold, then there's Live, then there's Game Pass Ultimate, but there's also Play Anywhere, which isn't really a service, just some sort of cross-play, And the number of times people thought I have a Series X when I actually have a One X was insanely frustrating as well. I know this doesn't have anything to do with the service, but jeez man why is everything Microsoft does so haphazard?
Whew! I actually had way more to say on this topic than I thought, I guess. I've probably spent more time and energy on this than I should have, but working from home has given me a lot of time on my hands, so hopefully my experiences can help save someone else some time and effort. Would love some counterpoints as well!
[Serious DD] TSMC - A Hidden Gem Offering Free Money
While there are many more companies that are discussed much more than TSMC (NYSE:TSM) on here, such as Apple, AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, etc, TSMC is a hidden gem that is getting ready to take off over the next few years. Here's why:
TSMC was founded in 1987 with the intent of bringing Taiwan into the global tech market. Morris Chang, who previously worked at Texas Instruments for over 30 years, is the founder and former CEO of TSMC and widely regarded as the "godfather of computer chips". TSMC is currently the world's largest semiconductor producer, with over half of semiconductor revenue from TSMC. Other notable competitors include GlobalFoundries (AMD used them for Zen and Zen+, switching to TSMC for Zen 2 and Zen 3), Intel, and Samsung. TSMC is a pioneer in the pure-play foundry business, meaning that they do not produce any chips for their own products. Instead, they manufacture and sell chips to companies, meaning that those who choose to source chips from TSMC do not have to build expensive silicon fabrication plants to manufacture their own chips. TSMC currently operates 10 different silicon fabs, manufacturing over 10,000 different products using over 250 distinct technologies to cater to 499 different customers in 2019. Not only is TSMC the largest semiconductor foundry, it is also a pioneer in advancing semiconductor production and performance. Currently, TSMC has 7 customers for its new 5nm chips, including Apple, for A14/X chips and ARM-based chips for Mac products, Qualcomm and MediaTek for 5G smartphone chips, AMD, for next-generation Zen 4 CPUs, Bitmain, Intel, and NVIDIA. TSMC is also currently engineering its N4 chips, built on a 4nm process node, its 3nm chips, and its 2nm chips, which will use new GAAFET (Gate All Around Field Effect Transistor) technology instead of the traditional FinFET technology. So who are some of TSMC's biggest and most notable customers?
Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Apple is the world's largest company in terms of market capitalization (2.17 Trillion), and has become widely popular due to its heavy and cohesive integration between its products and widespread use by many prominent figures. Currently, it offers many products such as laptops, phones, smart watches, smart TV products, fitness products, and more. It also offers many services and software products, which all integrate with each other via iCloud, continuity software such as Handoff, and more. Recently, Apple has confirmed that they are cutting support for Intel CPUs on their Mac products in a few years, meaning they will shift to using entirely Apple Silicon chips for all of their Mac products. This is in addition to Apple using their own chips for all other products that they currently produce - iPhones, iPads, smart watches, etc. Apple is one of TSMC's largest customers, and that is only expected to grow as they ramp up production for their M1 and next generation ARM chips for Macs. Apple's M1 chips are a strong competitor to AMD and Intel CPUs, especially if they can scale well up to 32 and 64 cores. They are extremely efficient and consume drastically less power than x86-based CPUs (Intel and AMD CPUs), meaning that thermal requirements are much lower. Macs have typically been targeted by PC enthusiasts as an overpriced, underperforming lineup, but we may see that change as Apple's new chips perform extremely well. Apple reported a yearly revenue of 274.5 billion US Dollars in 2020, roughly a 5% increase from 2019. Since Apple relies on TSMC for their chips, and Apple's Mac lineup is likely to become more popular, I would expect that TSMC's revenue from Apple will increase more than we've seen in previous years.
Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD)
AMD has certainly made a huge return since Lisa Su became CEO in 2014 and the production of Ryzen, which was widely popular due to its high core counts and high price to performance compared to Intel. Now, Ryzen has developed into a strong all-around player, sporting high core counts and great single thread performance. Currently, AMD Ryzen 5000 desktop CPUs outperform Intel's current generation Comet Lake CPUs in games, which is the first time that AMD has surpassed Intel in gaming performance. AMD has slowly been regaining market share, both in the PC enthusiast side and the server side. In the past two years, AMD has doubled their server market share from 4.5% to 8%. This may not seem like much, but considering that server upgrades are not frequent and those who buy Intel server CPUs are more likely to stick with Intel, that is a massive increase. On the PC enthusiast side, AMD CPUs have accounted for 84% of CPUs sold on mindfactory.de, a German PC Retailer. This is a massive increase considering that in 2016, before the release of Ryzen, Intel accounted for roughly 75% of CPU sales on mindfactory.de. AMD launched their Zen 3 chips in 2020, which was followed by huge demand and a shortage of these CPUs. This was in part due to demand at TSMC not being able to keep up with AMD's orders. Zen 3 CPUs perform extremely well, and next-generation Zen 4 CPUs, which will be on TSMC's 5nm process, point to a shortage of fab space at TSMC.
Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM)
Qualcomm is a semiconductor company that creates wireless technology chips, CPUs, software, and services related to wireless technology. Their most prominent products include their Snapdragon CPUs, used in phones from some of the largest smartphone companies such as Samsung, LG, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Motorola, and more. They also produce application specific processors for things like cameras, IoT devices, kiosks, robots, and a lot more. Additionally, Qualcomm offers desktop CPUs, such as their Snapdragon 8cx. Qualcomm also produces various connectivity chips for things such as WiFi (onboard chips in laptops, desktop Wifi cards, routers, modems, etc), Bluetooth, and internet connectivity chips on smartphones. Currently, Qualcomm relies on TSMC for the production of its Snapdragon chips. Although Samsung beat out TSMC for the production of Qualcomm's upcoming 5G chips, mobile chips accounted for 44.8% of Qualcomm's total revenue in 2020, while RF Front End chips (smartphone internet connectivity chips) accounted for just 9.8% of Qualcomm's total revenue.
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)
NVIDIA has been a long time customer of TSMC, dating all the way back to 1998 when NVIDIA switched over to TSMC's 350nm process for the Riva TNT. Since then, TSMC has manufactured nearly every NVIDIA chip up until RTX 3000 series, also known as Ampere. NVIDIA decided to switch to Samsung's 8N 8nm process node, likely due to financial reasons or fab capacity reasons. However, NVIDIA is allegedly moving back to TSMC to manufacture more Ampere GPUs using their 7nm process. There could be a few reasons for this - TSMC might have offered NVIDIA a deal, or capacity for 7nm fabs may have opened up due to large customers such as Apple and AMD shifting more focus towards TSMC's 5nm process. NVIDIA's RTX 3000 series GPUs, also known as Ampere, are a massive improvement in the GPU space compared to previous generations and just for performance in general. The RTX 3070 performs similarly to an RTX 2080ti, where the former has an MSRP of 499 USD and the latter has an MSRP of 999 USD. In addition to much greater price/performance, Ampere GPUs also heavily increase ray tracing performance so games that can take advantage of ray tracing hardware are actually playable. They are extremely popular, and currently Ampere GPUs are selling anywhere from 200 to upwards of 1500 dollars of their MSRP. NVIDIA is also huge in the AI/Computing space, teaming up with NIO for AI-based self-driving computation, Photoshop, for neural filters, and also powers some of the fastest supercomputers in the world. In regards to AMD, NVIDIA blows the new RX 6000 series GPUs out of the water for things like streaming performance and workstation performance.
Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)
While Intel has traditionally manufactured most of their products (Internet connectivity products, processors, chipsets, etc), Intel is reportedly shifting a fair amount of their chips to TSMC. Recently, Intel announced they would use TSMC for 7nm Xe graphics chips on their CPUs. In October of 2020, Intel CEO Bob Swan said Intel would decide by January whether it was going to expand its 7nm production, outsource it to a foundry, or both. Intel has severely underperformed in the CPU space compared to AMD, but if they decide to shift some production to TSMC, this could mean that Intel will make a strong return into the CPU space and strong entry into the GPU space.
Cool, but what does this mean?
Again, TSMC is the largest foundry, outclassing the likes of Samsung, GlobalFoundries, and other similar companies. There is an insane amount of demand for TSMC's chips, and they are extremely competitive compared to other manufacturers. TSMC has customers such as Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm, which all have great products and are only expected to grow with the release of new technology such as CPUs or 5G networking. Many of its customers are expected to have massive growth over the coming years, meaning that TSMC will reap some of those profits.
Ok, but why should I buy now?
I mean, TSMC is already up over 100% over the past year, isn't it too late to buy in? When you consider its most important clients, all of them are going to use TSMC for future products that are important to their respective segments. Apple has just begun their venture into producing their own CPUs for Mac products, the release of DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 is right around the corner with AMD's Zen 4 processors, set to release late 2021 or 2022, Qualcomm producing next generation Snapdragon CPUs (and we may see 5G production shifted to TSMC), Intel actually producing competitive CPUs once again (which might be with TSMC), and NVIDIA continuing to dominate in the computing space and the GPU space. Considering that all of these things are happening in the next few years, TSMC is getting ready to take off. 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 TL;DR: TSMC has a lot of very large customers (Apple, AMD, QualComm to name a few) which are all producing technology that looks very promising. All of these things are coming up in the future, which mean that TSMC is going to the moon. BUY CALLS AND LEAPS LET'S GOOOOOO Positions: Currently holding 4/21 calls, will definitely roll calls and load up on more once we get closer to expiry
HI THERE! I’ve re-created this list, cleaned up some mess and placed many links to their respective sections. This list contains only FOSS apps and most of the links provided here will take you to GITHUB, GITLAB, F-DROID and PLAYSTORE. I'll be adding some hearts beside each application 💖--App is active and is being updated frequently 💚--App is active but updates are a little slow. (Not THAT slow and definitely not dead) 💔--App is abandoned/dead. (Why are dead apps here? Answer: There are some humans out there who love to dig out a corpse and examine it😸) 💛--This link will take you to Playstore 💜--This app...is...uhhh...its either abandoned or the updates are slow as a sloth. IDK what's happing with these apps. (Sometimes its hard for me to point out the app if its abandoned because of the updates....some apps receive updates after a very long time and are not dead. The devs should archive the repo if they're not gonna continue developing it further) These hearts will be added beside each username 💙--The user who suggested that particular app ❤--The DEV of that particular app 🌟SUGGESTIONS TO MORE FOSS APPS ARE WELCOME, when sharing the link for a FOSS app, place the colored heart beside it. I don’t wanna end up placing the wrong colored heart🌟 🌟If any application has a wrong heart beside it OR any link is incorrect OR any app is placed at the wrong section OR if any app goes closed source or turns shady then please do let me know. I'll fix/remove/correct it asap🌟 🌟One more thing...the apps under the sections are listed randomly. Neither of the apps in these sections are ranked from best to worst🌟 ★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆ BROWSERS
AURORA STORE and AURORA DROID💚, this link will take you to auroraoss download section from where you can download both Aurora store(Playstore client without google tracking) and aurora droid(F-droid client).
APPS THAT SAVE BATTERY, ENCRYPTS, HIDES AND LOCKS PERSONAL STUFFS OR EVEN INFORM/ALERT THE USER ABOUT IN-APP TRACKERS OR OTHER FISHY STUFFS COMES HERE 👇
FEED READER💔, Modern desktop application designed to complement existing web-based RSS accounts---u/rat_tat_2_e 💙
FLYM💚, Flym News Reader is a light Android feed reader (RSS/Atom) ---u/Born_Science 💙
FEEDER💖 is a no-nonsense RSS/Atom/JSON feed reader app for Android---u/Some012345💙
READROPS💚 is a multi-services RSS client for Android. Its name is composed of "Read" and "drops", where drops are information drops in an ocean of news---u/Some012345💙
🔴🔵⚫⚪🔴🔵⚫⚪🔴🔵⚫⚪🔴🔵⚫⚪🔴🔵⚫⚪🔴⚫ SIMPLE MOBILE TOOLS💖💛-- Tibbbi❤️ almost all the mostly used applications ranging from Dialer to Gallery is available, they’re all available for free in Fdroid . The playstore version unlocks more and also supports the dev---u/kobeislegend 💙 A friend of mine made a list as well that contains open source applications, there are some apps here in his list which isn’t available in my post. And instead of listing them one by one here’s the LINK to his list, it will lead you to github. This is him: u/Petomeansfart
I Made a Free Multiplayer Online Version of Spirit Island with both Branch and Claw and Jagged Earth
Disclaimer: This is an unofficial adaptation of the game, subject to be shut down upon request. I am in no way affiliated with with Greater Than Games, LLC. All materials belong to Greater Than Games, LLC. If you read nothing else in this long post, I strongly encourage you to go and carefully read Eric Reuss's comment on this below. He has not given official permission for this adaptation. For now he has permitted that it remains up, but it is very important to stress that this is not equivalent to it being endorsed by him. The only official versions of the game are the digital version developed by Handelabra and the board game itself sold by Greater Than Games LLC. The pandemic has brought about unprecedented circumstances and isolation and it is my hope that this will alleviate some of that. That being said, it is absolutely within the right of Reuss or a representative of one of the aforementioned companies to request this game be shut down, and I am on their side in this matter. I have removed the Google Drive with the images of all the spirits and cards, that was perhaps my biggest oversight in the original post. It is not right to distribute that copyrighted material in such a public and easily accessible manner. You can access all of those materials on the wiki or in other sites. Thank you to the members of the community that expressed concerns over this adaptation, I was in the wrong in posting this without talking to Reuss first, and I'm glad that people in the community steered me towards a better path. Moving forward I will pursue an approach that respects the wonderful work the creatives behind this game have done. As you can see, this is a super long post, but I broke it into sections so you can read what you want. I included what is basically a user manual for how to play the game, it’s quite intuitive though, I made it such that my non-tech savvy parents and friends can play it with ease, so I think you could figure it out without this, but I like to be thorough. To provide background for what I did and did not do, a team of people have been developing an online platform to host board games called virtualtabletop.io. You may have heard of playingcards.io, it got some buzz early on in the pandemic; virtualtabletop improves on many of the features of that platform. I just made the game on the site not the actual platform itself (I’m not that tech savvy XD). Check out PlayingCardsIO for more details on all this, and more games that you can play. I've also made a version of Robinson Crusoe if you're interested. There's also a discord if you have any questions https://discord.gg/CEZz7wny9T . A case for how this can be better than the Steam version and the Tabletop simulator version I greatly appreciate the work that those teams have put into those online versions of the game. In fact, I got all the images and resources for my version from tabletop simulator mods. I think one major advantage of virtualtabletop is that it’s really user friendly. I’ve played a game of spirit island with my parents and while my dad is a software engineer, my mom is not the most tech savvy person. I can’t see either of them wanting to go through the effort of downloading steam and getting that all set up, even though my dad probably could. The beauty of virtualtabletop is that you just send people the link and they can join the game instantly. And it’s free, which is always a big plus. You could use this to introduce people to the game who aren't sure whether to make a purchase of anything on steam, or if you yourself are a newbie, this is a great place to try it out for the first time. This can never replace the experience of owning a tactile board game, but it can help people make a decision whether to make that purchase. It also contains everything that has been released up to this point, all 24 spirits and all cards that were released in Branch and Claw and Jagged Earth including scenarios and adversaries. The game is not super resource intensive as far I know, so even people with not the fastest WiFi would be fine. Another thing that's great about the website is that it feels slightly more tactile because you are in control of moving everything. While the initial cards are dealt out for you, you still have to set up the boards with Dahan, cities and towns. You still move around pieces wherever you want, there's no scripting that controls things for you. It's about as close as you can get to playing the game in real life in an online form. TLDR: My hope is that this provides another, easier to use option for people who miss playing Spirit Island with their friends while in lockdown. How it Works I’m going to try and walk you through the full process of setting up a game, but I also tried to make the game as intuitive as possible. You can use the link I provide at the bottom of the post which will give you access to the game file for your own use. When you go to virtualtabletop, you can customize your link, so that’s it’s even easier for friends and family to remember, just edit the text after the slash. This is what the website looks like when you open it. On the left you can enter the link that I'll also give you. What's great about virtualtabletop is that you can put other games that you can find in PlayingCardsIO into your room and build a library of games for your friend group. The chess piece symbol in the top left corner is where you add in new games and load them. You can pretty much ignore the other buttons, those are for adding in new widgets and editing games for creators. Once you have the game loaded you will see 3 options: the core game, Branch and Claw, and Jagged Earth. Side note, Jagged Earth automatically pulls in everything from Branch and Claw because I assumed that people would want to have a way to play with all the game content, let me know if you’d like a way to play with just the base game and Jagged Earth expansion and I’ll see what I can do. When you click on the version you want to play you can then select how many players to play with. I was not able to support any more than 4 players, the boards would have had to be shrunk to an insanely small size to fit on the screen. You still need to send a link out to people, which button you click just determines how many boards will appear on the screen. Opening Menu with option to pick core game, B&C or JE Then you will be directed to choose an adversary and level. Once an adversary is clicked, you will be given the option to pick a level Finally you are brought to the main board screen. I was not able to include the option to use thematic boards, but I think they would be harder to use on this platform anyways since things do end up on the smaller side. You will notice two buttons on the right, one labeled Spirit Panels and the other Adversary and Scenario cards. This was my way of fitting everything into the game. Click on Spirit Panels and you’ll be brought to a spirit selection screen. Each player can pick a corner and choose the spirit they want to play. Main Board, note the two arrow buttons. The one next to the Dahan and explorers in the left corner opens a drop out menu with the elemental markers. The one in the bottom corner, next to blight opens the scenario markers. Spirit selection screen with all 24 spirits. The arrow button opens a drop down menu with elemental markers. You'll see that each spirit has its own discard and reclaim button that lets them maintain their own pile. All cards will come from and go to the card holder in the center of the board, which I set to be invisible, but will highlight up as soon as you drag a card there. Try drawing a power card to get a sense of where it is. Beneath the Major and Minor power card buttons is its own discard button to maintain two separate piles, along with a reshuffle button for when you run out of cards. Once that’s done you can toggle back to the Main Board using the button in the middle. This might be the biggest disadvantage of this version, you cannot look at the board and your power cards at the same time. Some people may hate this depending on their play style which I completely understand. In my experience playing with my family it wasn’t too bad. There is an added level of etiquette when using the buttons because you need to warn people before you switch away, but it isn’t too bad. I usually go into the board know what cards I have so I just need to identify places to defend or dahan to move etc. Or you can identify key problem areas and say to everyone “we need 8 defense on that jungle, when I switch back to the spirit panels look for what you can do with your powers.” This same toggling system applies for the Adversary and Scenario cards as well. When you start up I game, I’ve set it to automatically deal out the correct number of terrain cards, fear cards, and the blight card. Any special things you need for an adversary should appear as well, let me know if you notice anything missing or wrong. Anytime the terrain order changes, I’ve done that automatically. I remember one adversary require you to put the Coastal terrain in a specific place, I’ve done that for you. Other times I got lazy and you’ll have to place stuff yourself such as the Slave Insurrection event, which will just appear face up on top of the deck. You’ll also need to place the terror level cards into the fear deck accordingly. I’ve made them so they will expand when you click on them to make them more visible when you pull them out and put them in the top right corner. You can choose a scenario in the Scenario card screen, and the correct adversary card should already appear there. The only scenario I didn't include was The Great River because it requires you to change the orientation of the boards, which was a bit complicated, and tbh I got a bit lazy. Plus two rows of 6 looks better 😛. If people really want it, I'll see what I can do. The Adversary and Scenario card screen I think that about covers everything. I did try and make the game as simple and intuitive as possible. Click around a bit, see what stuff does. I made the Dahan, towns, and cities have a way of showing their health if you click on them (i.e. they rotate). Let me know if you find anything difficult to do or if something is missing or wrong, I'll definitely try and patch anything up. Files Demo Room - This is a public link now, so you won't want to actually play a game with people here, but it's a good way to quickly check the game out. https://virtualtabletop.io/s/sor5s9hp/Spirit_Island__An_Unofficial_Fan-Made_Adaptation.vtt- here's the game's share link if that's easier for you, just copy and paste this link into the enter link option that appears when you open a new room. Feel free to ask me questions if you have any! I really do hope this helps some people out during the pandemic and gives you a way to play this amazing game with people, wish I could've done it sooner :D.
PSAs for Stadia Cyberpunk 2077 + new country newcomers
There's only a few hours left until Cyberpunk 2077, so I thought I'd make a post for people using Stadia for the first time due to the promo and the new countries that have been added. Feel free to ask stuff in this sub - people are quite helpful here - and welcome to the community! Do I need the Premiere bundle to play on Stadia? No, the Premiere bundle is only the official method of playing on a TV. You can play Stadia on your desktop browser using your keyboard/mouse or a controller and you can play on your mobile devices using a controller. Android users can download the Stadia app from the Play Store. Official iOS support is on the way, but there are alternative methods. When will I receive myfree Premiere bundlefor purchasing Cyberpunk 2077? If you pre-ordered the game, you should receive a code in your email within the next week (by December 17). You can also still receive a free Premiere bundle if you order within the next week. Codes will be, at the latest, sent by mid-January. Keep your eyes peeled! As far as I'm aware, we don't know in what order the codes will be sent or how long "supplies will last." How will Cyberpunk 2077 perform and look on Stadia? We won't know until the game releases in a few hours. I think others have stated here that Stadia typically performs similar to, if not better than, the PS4 Pro or Xbox One X, but it comes down to how well the developer optimizes the game. Is there a monthly payment for using Stadia? There are 2 tiers of Stadia: the base tier and Stadia Pro. Any game that you purchase, you can play without a subscription - such as Cyberpunk 2077. Yes, that's right, it's like having free gaming hardware that you can take anywhere. The base tier tier, however, is limited to a resolution of 1080p. If you would like 4K, HDR, and 5.1 surround sound, you can subscribe to Stadia Pro. This brings me to Pro games. How do Stadia Pro games work? On the 1st of each month, Stadia offers games for Stadia Pro subscribers to claim for free. Once you claim a game, you can play it as long as you are subscribed to Pro - even if it leaves the current Pro game lineup. If you cancel your Pro subscription, you temporarily lose access to any claimed games. If you resubscribe you can go right back to playing them where you left off. This means that the longer you stay subscribed to Pro, the more games you accumulate over time. Games that leave the Pro lineup do not leave Stadia, they can always be purchased just like any other game. Are there sales on Stadia? Oh yes, there are plenty of sales on Stadia. For example, you can pick up the Borderlands 3 Ultimate Edition right now for $10.99 USD. All members (whether base tier or Pro) get access to the sales, which are usually updated on Tuesdays. Another perk of Stadia Pro members is often a larger sale on some deals. Can I return games on Stadia? Yes, if the game was purchased less than two weeks ago and you have played less than 2 hours of it, you can request a refund. Why am I experiencing lag or input delay? Each person's experience with Stadia is primarily dependent on their home internet setup or internet service provider. The minimum internet speed is 10 Mbps for 720p and 35 Mbps for 4K, but anything from a faulty router to other people streaming content can impact your gameplay. The golden rule is Chromecast Ultra plugged into ethernet. If you're playing over Wifi, try to use the 5 gHz band. If you're on your desktop browser, turn off location services and check if your computer is capable of decoding VP9. The Stadia Help Center is a great troubleshooting website. I have played hundreds of hours on Stadia with ~60 Mbps over Wifi and I can't tell that it's being streamed at all. Also, as many of you may be aware, reviewers have noted bugs and issues with Cyberpunk 2077. If you are not sure whether any issues are being caused by your internet or the game, hold down the Stadia capture button (F12 on keyboard) for a few seconds. This saves a 30s video clip straight from the Stadia server to your account. If the glitch you noticed is also in the video, it was probably an issue on the game/Stadia's end. If the glitch is not in the video, check your internet setup! Have fun! Those are just some questions I've seen people are often confused about, so feel free to share this post. I've been on this sub for most of this year and have put hundreds of hours into Stadia, and the entire experience has been awesome. So have fun, tell your friends, and enjoy! EDIT: u/inan0812 made a great point that if you would like to test out your network and setup prior to Cyberpunk 2077 releasing, you can play Destiny 2 completely free (no subscription needed) on Stadia and see how smooth it is.
Observations of someone who switched from eero to Ubiquiti/UniFi
I was an eero user for a little over two years and decided to try out Ubiquiti’s UniFi line of networking gear. I’ve had my UniFi setup for about two weeks and thought I’d share my experience. Motivation: The reason for me moving over to UniFi was not for stability as one might expect. For my eero setup I had a Gen 2 Pro and two beacons and a Gen 2 cupcake that had a hardwired backhaul. So I didn’t experience all of the stability issues that the eero 6 people had (are having). The main reason for me moving was because I wanted more control and insight into my network. Over the last year I’ve gotten into home automation and have accumulated dozens of WiFi light switches, plugs, locks, etc. All in all I have about 60 clients connected to my network at any given time. Managing these clients, seeing what they’re doing, what they’re connected to, etc. was virtually impossible to do in the eero app. And because I had all of these IoT devices, I wanted to make sure they were as segregated as possible from my main network. I thought about using the guest network in eero but that’s an all or nothing network and I still needed to have some targeted connectivity to the main network. UniFi Setup: My house is not that big (~1800sqft single story) so my coverage needs are not that big. I do have a detached office that I built as my COVID summer project which has CAT6 run to it (the office is what had my eero cupcake). Another important point is that wireless speed is not that important to me. Most devices that I have that need the speed (server, iMac, work laptop, game consoles) are are all hardwired into Ethernet ports in my office. I decided to go with a UniFi Dream Machine (UDM) as my main router. It includes a gateway/router, a wireless AP, a 4-port switch, and a cloud key controller (the software component that monitors and controls your network). This is placed dead center of the house and provides good coverage for pretty much every room. For my office I got the USW-16 PoE switch to handle all of my servers, desktops, and other hardwired connections. Finally, I got the UAP-AC-IW access point to give wireless connectivity to the office and backyard (this, like most UniFi AP’s, is powered via PoE). Setting these up was surprisingly easy. I did the initial configuration of the UDM while attached to the eero network and just did a double NAT. I created three wireless networks (main, IoT, and NoT) and initially configured them to be on the same vlan for simplicity sake. I added all of my clients to the new networks and then cutover, removing the eero and connecting the cable modem directly to the UDM. I then installed the 16 port switch (replacing an old unmanaged TPlink switch) in the office, connected everything, and the UDM immediately saw it allowed me to “adopt” it into the network. I then installed the AP in the office and again, it was immediately recognized and adopted. The most time consuming part by far was getting all of the clients connected to the new network because they were different SSID’s and passwords. Had I kept the same SSID/password as my eero, the whole process would have taken less than hour. Pros of the UniFi: 1. Control. OMG the control you have over your network is amazing. The ability to create multiple SSID’s and attach them to different networks provides security for the IoT devices that you’re just not sure about. You can create complex firewall rules at multiple levels to make sure traffic doesn’t get in/out when you don’t want it to. 2. Insights: You can easily search on any attribute (IP, name, MAC address) and you see real time stats and info on your devices. You can easily force a device to connect to a specific AP or force a disconnect if you’ve roamed and want your client to pickup a new AP. And you can do this from your phone or computer. 3. Threat Management: if something suspicious either tries to enter or leave your network, it’ll tell you. I gotta say, I was a little freaked out when I saw potential exploits being aimed at my IP (mostly all automated) as soon as I was connected but the UniFi simply drops the packets at the front door. And if it’s a false alarm, you can easily suppress that particular signature without disabling all together. 4. You schedule when you want firmware updates to happen (need I say more?) 5. No reliance on cloud. You can use their cloud service to connect to your network and configure but it’s not mandatory. You can easily turn that off and just have local access. 6. Everything is modular. If I decide I want a WiFi 6 AP, I just have to add the AP. I don’t need to buy a whole new routesystem. Cons of the UniFi: 1. This is enterprise grade software/hardware in that it gives you more configuration options than you probably need. While initial setup was basic, it does get pretty daunting when you look at all the the things you can do. You do need more than just a basic level of network admin experience to get the most out of it. 2. Stability is a problem for UniFi too. You can tell they jam as much functionality as they can as fast as they can. Not all firmware is rock solid. I updated the switch’s firmware a few days after I had everything installed and I started getting random reboots. After trying to troubleshoot I eventually downgraded the firmware (yes you can do that!) and things seem to be better now. 3. The network stats/insights don’t seem to be that accurate. At one point it said my iPad had downloaded 200GB in less than 5 minutes. 4. Tons of products and it’s not clear what you need. I never thought I’d say it but this is a case where there are almost too many options. Go look at their website and just browse the AP’s...they over 20 different AP’s you can buy. This is partially why I went with the UDM...so I didn’t have to make too many decisions. Conclusion: So far I’m pretty happy with the switch and I’m enjoying playing around with the new features. As I said it’s only been a couple of weeks so we’ll see if that remains. I have three kids at home doing school so stability is everything to me. I still have my eero hardware and won’t hesitate to go back if things start going south. If you’re thinking of switching and have a knack for networking, I would definitely recommend giving Ubiquiti a try. Just be prepared. If all you want is a turn key, set it and forget it network, I would still recommend eero to all my non-techy family and friends.
Proving that Bowser is the most carried character in this game using facts and logic
Bowser is carried. This is an evidence supported fact that I can prove with the help of facts and logic, and I will. So here you go: Exhibit A: Weight. I think the most obvious thing Bowser has going for him in this game is his fat ass. Science can prove this, of course. If we take a look at all of the weight values in this game (which can be found here), we can see that Bowser has a weight value of 135. To put this into perspective, the average character has a weight value somewhere between 90 and 100, with some characters (such as Meta Knight, Kirby, Fox and Mewtwo) having a weight value bellow 80. Okay, so clearly Bowser has a lot going for him in the weight department, but what do all these numbers really mean? The formula for knockback in this game is fairly complicated and I won't pretend to fully understand it (it can be found here if you're interested). What I do understand are results. Using the Smash Ultimate KO Calculator, I did some testing using knockback. As a reference point, I had Chrom hit a few different characters from the center of FD with an uncharged F smash. Rosalina died at 87% (94% with best possible DI) Marth died at 91% (98% with DI). Bowser did not die until 115%, or 127% with a good DI. Between Marth and Bowser, that's a difference of 24%. It may not seem like a lot, but if we keep in mind that most matches are played with 3 stocks, that becomes a difference of 72%. These are all very rough numbers of course, but I think it goes to show the advantages of being the heaviest character in the game. Exhibit B: Damage. In addition to being the heaviest, Bowser also has some of the highest damaging moves in the game. I think this one is already pretty obvious for most people, so instead I'll just give you some examples (the raw numbers are here if you want to do your own research, which you should). Remember when I told you that Chroms F smash kills Bowser at 115% from center stage? Well, Bowser kills Chrom with his F smash at 61%. Lets look at some other bullshit, shall we? Up smash kills Palu at 74%, Bair kills Ness at 96%, Down smash kills Ike at 98%. All of this is from center stage on fucking FD. This isn't even mentioning the raw damage he does; down smash deals 15%, up smash 22%, f smash 23% and his infamous neutral b that deals 30+ on its own. So what we have so far is a character that consistently lives past 100, can kill you well before 100 and has some of the highest damaging moves in the entire game. Sounding carried yet? Just wait, there's more. Exhibit C: Movement. Okay this one will be brief but I think it's important to point out. Bowser has a running speed of 1.971. Not only is that above average for a heavyweight, it's really fucking fast in general. This makes him faster than Marth, Inkling, Toon Link, Donkey Kong, Rosalina, Mario, Pit, Lucario, Lucas, Corrin and Wolf just to name a few. You would think at least one of the characters above would be able to outrun a literal turtle yet here we are. The logical conclusion here? Bowser is an easy as balls character designed for beginners so they stand a chance against people who can play the game. But we aren't finished yet. Exhibit D: Up B out of shield. Up B out of shield. Exhibit E: The effects of lag. Ever lost to Bowser online and thought "wow, that was pretty bullshit"? Here's why: Reaction time, meaning the amount of time it takes for you to react to a move and shield, is 18 frames. If you're wondering where this number comes from, watch this video. Using this here are Bowsers "reactable" moves. (moves with over 18 frams of startup): Neutral B, Down B, Forward smash. If we add 6 frames of input lag from online, neutral B and F smash become "unreactable". Now, I'm putting quotations over these words because it doesn't actually mean you can't react to them. By this logic, 90% of the moves in this game are unreactable. You can react to them simply by predicting what they are going to do. Think the opponent is going in for an attack? Put up shield. Are you sensing a grab? Throw out an attack to cancel it. The entire game is balanced around this, so an "unreactable" move is actually perfectly reactable. Well, offline anyways. Remember when I said that Neutral B and F smash become "unreactable" on wifi? There's our problem. These moves, unlike Bowsers other unreactable moves, were intentionally designed to be reacted to easily. It makes sense too, considering how strong they are. If you play offline you know that you can block these moves easily, so you don't have to worry about them being thrown out in neutral. Online, the move functions differently. If you cannot predict that Bowser is going to throw out F smash in neutral, your fucked. And don't think you can just get used to playing on wifi either, we all know that connection is about as stable as the average smash fans emotional state. Sometimes input lag is 8 frames, sometimes 11, sometimes your opponent decides to cover their router in molasses and then play in handheld mode. Exhibit F: Tough guy. Bowser has super armor on everything while at low percents. If you are not convinced this character carries his players harder than ice cream carries me through depression, I'm sorry but you're wrong, nitpicking and biased. I win you lose bye bye.
The Nintendo Switch port of Genshin Impact is most likely dead for now. [see inside]
So I was inspired by my own comment on whether or not the NX will get a port of our favorite dopamine addiction and I went and looked up the technical reasons on whether or not it will happen. There's also other reasons that aren't as likely but still a possibility, I listed them for completion's sake. Abbreviations used: NX = Nintendo Switch NSO = Nintendo Switch Online RAM = best girl GB = Ganyu's Butt UI = Unfunny Idiot, OP Before I go into why, I'm just going to give a verdict right now: Genshin is currently unplayable by Nintendo and miHoYo's standards on the current model of the NX and if a new model is released it will be on that. This is most likely the only reason it hasn't been released yet. 5.5 Reasons Why The Hardware Aspect: The biggest issue is the one that cannot be overcome with clever programming unless you're the wealthiest tech company on the planet. topkek, that specific battery is a diy bomb in waiting The NX has a whopping (/s) 4 GB of RAM. Of those 4 GB, only ~3.8 are actually usable by games/applications due to system processes. For reference, the iPhone 8 and lower use a total of 3.5 GB of 4 GB of RAM but can only get away with it due to Apple's black magic in regards to iOS 11 and even then there are crashes every 30-45 minutes. Nintendo does not have Apple's level of talent when it comes to software and hardware harmony. 4 GBs are the bare minimum requirement to run Genshin Impact on devices with mobile oriented OSes. The NX's OS is a heavily modified version of Samsung's brand of Android. u/Uzephi13 provided a link towards Horizon, NX OS. >tfw pc isn't master race for once i'm still on iphone 7 ;_; Those of us who play on phones with the bare minimum of RAM can attest to crashes and overheating. The NX is known to occasionally overheat when playing in handheld mode if the game being played is graphics intense despite downgrades in resolution. There is also another issue mobile players can attest to and that is lag. Genshin Impact can be really laggy on mobile sometimes due to not having a wired connection. Those of us who play games that use NSO can go into long winded tirades over the Q U A L I T Y that is Nintendo's online services. "Well, we can deal with some lag, right OP?" No, we can't actually. The NX's wifi card is located right under the vent for the system's fan. All of the NX's lag issues are due to a hardware concession resulting from that slim shell everyone loves. And the overheating issues will only make it worse. And yes, I am aware that f2p games have free internet access on NX. For context in regards to overall system strength, the PS4 is slightly stronger (51/49, PS4's favor) than the NX and it can just barely run the game. The Fluff Aspect: MiHoYo has zero experience with the NX and the stupidity that is getting JoyCons (w/ motion control) to work with games. Problems include easy use and integration into gameplay, if desired or required by Nintendo. Other homebrewers and or even devs can comment on this more than I can, but its confusing and frustrating from what I've read. Why do I mention this? miHoYo has only ever reformatted controls for WASDm1, mobile touchscreen, and PS4/5 controllers. Nintendo will most likely force ergonomic control mapping onto miHoYo as not everyone owns a pro-controller ($80, why?) nor wants to play in handheld 24/7 (1080p -> 720p/480i). The Software Aspect: Unity...Unity, Unity, Unity.... I hate this game engine with a passion. Games that run it are almost always a mess in regards to stability due to its simplicity (in devs screwing things up) and memory leak issues. In all likelihood, you probably can't even start the game up on the NX without a crash 10 minutes or so into the opening sequence without the system aborting active processes for hardware safety reasons. The Political Aspect: Tencent is Nintendo's proxy in China. Everything released there has to go through them (yay, corruption and hyper nationalism). Tencent has stolen assets from miHoYo before so I'm sure they still have animosity. I wouldn't put it past the CCP's bitch to block release in China and therefore block a potential global release. There is also a possibility that Sony has exclusivity for a year or two due to bigger pockets. (more likely) The Consumer Protection Aspect: Genshin's pulls are expensive and Nintendo has blocked some gacha games before for being too pricey. Summary: When/if there's a new NX, Genshin might be on it as a launch f2P game. For now, its highly unlikely Nintendo will allow it to be released in the NX's current state.
Q:Any updates about the space lasers? How much better can the latency be with them? How much better can transcontinental connections be with them? When will real world testing begin?
A: The speed of light is faster in vacuum than in fiber, so the space lasers have exciting potential for low latency links. They will also allow us to serve users where the satellites can't see a terrestrial gateway antenna - for example, over the ocean and in regions badly connected by fiber. We did have an exciting flight test earlier this year with prototype space lasers on two Starlink satellites that managed to transmit gigabytes of data. But bringing down the cost of the space lasers and producing a lot of them fast is a really hard problem that the team is still working on.
Q:Top on my list: Data caps. Yes? No? Hard limit or fuzzy limit?
A: At this time, the Starlink beta service does not have data caps.
Follow-up Comment:The vagueness of this answer is worrying. I like how the SpaceX reply bellow has more upvotes than this
A: So we really don't want to implement restrictive data caps like people have encountered with satellite internet in the past. Right now we're still trying to figure a lot of stuff out--we might have to do something in the future to prevent abuse and just ensure that everyone else gets quality service.
Q:I live in Canada and the winters can hit -45C, do I need to worry about the dish at those temps?
A: Wow that's cold! While we've performed life-leader testing down to these cold temperatures with no issues the dish is certified to operate from -30C to +40C.
Q:Do you know what the target date for a fully open, non invite based, release is?
A: Steadily increasing network access over time to bring in as many people as possible. Notably we're planning to move from a limited beta to a wider beta in late January, should give more users an opportunity to participate.
Q:How do you think the speeds we're currently seeing from beta users will hold up once Starlink goes public and a lot more people are subscribed?
A: This is not going to be like your regular satellite internet where it gets way too crowded--as we launch more satellites over time the network will get increasingly great, not increasingly worse.
Q:Could you settle the debate over whether the dish has a heater?
A: The Starlink does have self-heating capabilities to deal with a variety of weather conditions. In fact, we'll be deploying a software update in a few weeks to upgrade our snow melting ability with continued improvements planned for the months ahead.
Q:How are beta users chosen and what's a good bribe amount?
A: No bribes necessary, our goal is serve everyone eventually. If you really want to help drive that the best thing you can do is send great software engineers over to Starlink to help make it happen.
Q:My question is regarding mobile use. I understand that currently the system is designed and optimized for use in a fixed location. However, I live on and work from my 47ft sailboat, currently tied, literally and figuratively, to a dock in South Florida. A mobile system that gives me reliable connectivity will truly set me free to roam the coastal US, Bahamas, and eventually beyond (once the inter-satellite laser link capability is ready). There's a lot of speculation as to whether the current hardware could handle a mobile platform using the phased array antenna and existing mechanical pointing capability, or whether more extensive active stabilization would be required. Anything you can share about this would be most welcome, including, especially, when mobile Starlink might be a reality.
A: Right now, we can only deliver service at the address you sign up with on starlink.com You might get lucky if you try to use Starlink in nearby locations, but service quality may be worse. Mobility options - including moving your Starlink to different service addresses (or places that don't even have addresses!) - is coming once we are able to increase our coverage by launching more satellites & rolling out new software.
Q:The dish seems to consume a 100w at this point which is pretty great for normal use however on most small to medium sailboats that's a lot of power to be using. Any plans to build out a more efficient system in the future?
A: We have a couple of items in progress to further reduce power consumption. We are working on software and network updates to allow your Starlink to go into a deeper power savings mode to drop power consumption while still remaining connected to the network. Power reductions are a key item we are focusing on for the future.
Q:I'm super curious how the Starlink terminal locates the satellites. Presumably it has a built-in catalog of TLE's and/or state vectors or some other description of where the satellites are, which it can download from the Starlink network itself. But how does it make first contact? Does it use the phased array in a particularly low-directivity manner to just shout out "hey, can any satellites hear me? I need to know where you are!"? Does it come with satellite locations preloaded from the factory (seems unlikely, satellite elements go stale).
A: Good question! The Starlink actually has no knowledge of the satellites when it powers on; the constellation is updating all the time so this would be difficult to keep up to date. The Starlink is able to electronically scan the sky in a matter of milliseconds and lock into the satellite overhead, even though its travelling 17,500 mph overhead. When it detects a satellite the Starlink hones in on its position and makes a request to join the internet. After that the dish is able to download a schedule of which satellites to talk to next and with that it can point right at the satellites when the time comes.
Q:Once there are more satellites deployed, how important will it be to have an absolutely obstruction-free view of the sky?
A: You should think about communication between the Starlink dish and the satellite in space as a 'skinny beam' between dishy and the satellite. So, as the satellite passes quickly overhead, if there is a branch or pole between the dish and satellite you'll usually lose connection (not - obstructions generally cause outages and not reduced speeds!). We're working on some software features that are going to make this much better and, long term, the clearance you'll need is going to shrink as the constellation grows. So this will get much better! Also, hot short-term tip! The satellites clump up around 53 degrees latitude (north and south). So I would focus on keeping that part of the sky clear as we keep improving this!
Q:What part of the project invited the most creativity from the starlink engineers?
A: Creating Starlink has come with tons of exciting challenges, but top few that come to mind:
Selecting full phased arrays for the satellite and dish. It was a major leap of faith to start down this very technically challenging path and hope that we could arrive at an affordable and scalable implementation.
Creating a truly "plug-and-play" experience for customers. We've spent a lot of effort and have gone thru tons and tons of creative ideas on how to make this as simple of an experience as possible - including mounting solutions, automated pointing of the dish, and general unboxing. Any and all ideas welcome!
We've also had to be creative in how we operate what is now the world's largest satellite constellation. We have a very small operations team, so automated orbit guidance and collision avoidance was a must have feature. We tell satellites what their final orbital slot is and they figure out how to get there. For collision avoidance, we upload data on close approaches to relevant satellites multiple times a day, and the satellites then calculate on their own when and how to dodge something, if necessary. (Shout out to the 18th Space Control Squadron for being really awesome partners here!)
Q:Will starlink be supported in a situation where you can move it to where you need it? If I have a summer cabin that I visit, would it be okay to move it to the other location when we are there?
A: Mobility options - including moving your Starlink to different service addresses (or places that don't even have addresses!) - is coming once we are able to increase our coverage by launching more satellites & rolling out new hardware and software.
Q:How are the efforts to bring down Dishy's production costs going? Can you tell us how much it costs to manufacturer?
Q:What wind speeds is the dish tolerant of? How much shelter from the wind does it need? Is this something that should be taken in before a storm, or could you mount it on the tail of a flatbed trailer flying down the interstate into a collapsing thunderstorm? How does the presence of occasional strong winds, (greater than 30mph/48kph), effect the projected service life of the UFO?
A: We definitely don't recommend that you mount it on your flatbed and fly down the interstate into a storm! The dish is not designed for tropical storms, tornadoes, etc. For high wind events it’s always the safer option to bring the dish inside if you have any concerns .
Q:what’s the most misunderstood part about starlink??
A: That we have it all figured out :) We are super excited about the initial response and future potential of Starlink but we still have a ton to learn. If you know any great people who can help us with that, please have them email their resume to [[email protected].](mailto:[email protected].)
Q:IPV4, IPV6 both? Does it matter? I've not seen info about this yet from testers.
A: We're testing out IPv6 now, and will roll it out soon! Once it's ready, you'll get both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address. IPv4 addresses are a limited resource – IPv6 is the future.
Q:Do you have a target latency that you would like to hit in the future? What is the timeframe when this goal would be met?
A: We challenge ourselves every day to push Starlink to the fundamental limitations of physics. Current Starlink satellites operate at 550 km, where light travel time is 1.8 milliseconds to Earth. The roundtrip from your house to a gaming server and back is at best 4 times 1.8 milliseconds at these altitudes, or under 8 milliseconds. There are many obstacles that get in the way of achieving these latencies. For examples,
When satellites are not directly overhead, your data must travel through the air for more time.
Small levels of packet buffering are helpful for a stable service, but hurt latency.
Starlink traffic travels through fiber on the ground. This is an indirect pathway that is 1.5 times slower than photons in vacuum.
We will continually fight to provide the best latency possible, especially to provide a stable and reactive experience for gamers. We need experts who are passionate about pushing the boundary of physics and breaking expectations about what is possible with the internet! Send your resumes to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) :)
Q:Any updates about the space lasers? How much better can the latency be with them? How much better can transcontinental connections be with them? When will real world testing begin?
Hello, so I've been having this issue for some time, basically I'm trying to play Cyberpunk on my iOS devices, iPhone or Mac, but the connection is never stable. I thought, okay, my wireless router is pretty old, let me change it, but even now, i can't get a stable game over WIFI. I don't know if it's because I need to run the game over the web browser, and theres no official app yet, but there is always frame rate drops, down to maybe 10 FPS. It's random. And it's across both my devices. I could play wired in, but then whats the point of having the ability of playing mobile? I'd much rather be able to take my phone or laptop anywhere I go and keep playing. Anyhoo, I digress. Here's my specs: NEW TP-Link WiFi 6 AX3000 200 - 230 MBPS down, 5 up I've messed with the router on the QoS settings, maxing out the "GAMING" "STREAMING" and "WEB SURFING" (because I'm playing thorough the web browser) options, individually, but nothing seems to get me a smooth game sesh. I keep getting lagged down during high action areas. I've checked my WIFI settings as recommended on another thread on here, but most of my settings were already to the recommended specs. Any suggestions are appreciated!
Wireless Router for a row house in a heavily populated area.
Hello, and thanks for reading this. I'm looking for a router that will cover my row house and hopefully reach the deck on our roof. I'm going to try to be brief with what I would like the router to handle. Right now, we are using the standard router from Comcast that provides a weak signal to the second floor to the back of the house where my office is. Usage - Both my wife and I work from home for the gov't . This requires network access over VPN for her and remote desktop for myself. She works in the basement and I work in the back of the house on the second floor. All of our devices connect to the router. We usually have multiple video streams going, plus our phones, iPads, watches, and the such. We also connect our IoT devices like door locks and thermostats. I play XBox and usually remote play in which allows me to play on my iPad. This works fine if I'm in the same room and line-of-sight of the modem/router. I do play online (Fortnite, Call of Duty, GTA) and when my kids come to visit, they bring all of their online gaming devices as well. Router Placement and House Dimensions - I live in a 12ft wide by 50ft long row house. It's two-stories with a roof deck. The deck is about 40ft away from the router, vertically. The signal would need to get through a second floor and whatever the roof is made of. Routers I am considering - Expecting high-usage when my kids get here, I would like to have something with some throughput (if that's a thing) and range. I'm looking into the ASUS WiFi Gaming Router (RT-AC5300), ASUS ROG Rapture WiFi Gaming Router (GT-AC5300), or the TP-Link AC5400. Does anyone here have any recommendations? It would be a bonus if I could attach a USB drive for network access and save me from building out this ubuntu machine.
Hi guys, as already stated in this post, here is the addition, containing my tipps for PWK and OSCP exam preparation.
Tipps
Tipps for Tooling
I bought an external SSD which I encrypted with LUKS and where I stored all my needed data (VM, notes, exploit scripts, reports, PDF, videos, etc.) on. So I was able to take it to with me and work on the labs during lunch break, etc.
For note taking I used joplin and synchronized it to a VPS running nextcloud, so I could access my e2ee notes on mobile.
For backups, I used borg and deja-dup to a cheap VPS.
For virtualization I used VirtualBox.
Make sure to flatten your VM-image from time to time since many snapshots degrade performance.
Automate the hell out of everything what costs you mental energy and the human mind can't handle well. I really found "autokey" to be useful to do stupid and errorprone tasks, like inserting my tun0 IP or the IP of the target system I was currently working on at the current cursor position. I also automated upgrades of simple reverse shells with autokey, so I would not have to type the same commands over and over again. You can find some basic scripts here: https://github.com/stens-sec/autokey
Learn tmux and it's awesome features. Also learn how to make "textual" screenshots and outupt capturing with tmux, allowing you to save everything from your terminal to files. This will be very valuable during the exam, when you need to find commands or output you have done before.
I made a small bash tool to spawn different server types, like HTTP, netcat, SMB, FTP, etc. It was really a joy just to type "msrv http 8080" instead of "sudo python3 http.server 8080". You can find it here: https://github.com/stens-sec/msrv
Make lots of screenshots and automate the process as best as you can. I used "autokey", a dedicated mouse-button and some custom scripts to automatically save all the screenshots I have taken during the exam to a dedicated folder for each machine on my kali system with a single mouse-click.
Set-up some vanilla Linux- and Windows-VMs and investigate their services and filesystem contents. Run your favourite PE tools (winpeas, linpeas, etc.) against the vanilla systems and take notes on what is "normal" on a freshly installed system. From this you will get a good feeling on what might be added or misconfigured on a system you approach.
Use the kali VM image OffSec recommends. Don't dist-upgrade it, because some packages break stuff. I know, you want all the new and fancy tools, but the ones the image ships are well tested and work. Be cautios on what software you install and take regular snapshots, just in case you need to revert.
Use python virtualenvs if you have to install dependencies via pip. This will not break your system and with virtualenvwrapper you can easyly switch between different environments.
When doing the PDF and learning how to BoF, create a template script you can use during the exam. You can find mine here, but create your own one to fully understand the process: https://github.com/stens-sec/oscp-bof-template
General Advice and Unpleasant Truths
Don't quit your job. Really, don't do it just because you see your future self in a pentesting role. This is just a fantasy right now.
OSCP is not a guarantee for a job offer. Seriously, it shows that you have foundational and practical knowledge in a very complex and coveted field, but unfortunately it does not prove that you have the working experience and support-network most employers seek for.
Take everything I wrote and what you read here with a grain of salt. You will have to make your own experiences to get a picture of the whole thing.
Don't measure your success on others. It is your journey and the progress along the way you make, what counts. Compare yourself to your past self and what you achieved until this very moment. Be proud of yourself.
Keep in mind that some people might not tell the truth here or find joy and satisfaction in degrading the efforts of others (looking at these "I passed the exam with two broken arms in 8 hours with no prior experience and 10 days of labtime" posts). I think these people are clowns.
Getting help or failing is no weakness. If you get your ass kicked, get up and learn some karate. Then kick back.
Learn how to learn. This is an underrated aspect, because PWK and OSCP require you to have a lot of motivation for self learning and self improvement.
Know your limits. Take some days off and make breaks if you feel exhausted or are fed up with everything. In the end, I struggled a lot to keep myself motivated, after I finished PWK. This will be a tough time and you will need long term motivation over a peroid of a couple of months. Get a hobby like gaming or NetFlix, which doesn't stress your mind too hard after exhausting days.
Talk to your partnespouse before starting your journey. They will also be impacted by your decision and it is only fair to give them the possibility to also prepare for the next months. If you have kids, make sure they don't see you crying in front of your PC ;).
Prepare to suffer and live through a lot of emotional ups and downs during the next months.
Tipps for Preparation
Read and understand the course and exam syllabus.
Learn some bash and python in advance. There are lots of free and great resources out there.
Learn some networking fundamentals in advance. There are lots of free and great resources out there.
Kali Linux is an awesome tool and will be your best friend during the next months. Make sure you know it very well.
Read posts in this subreddit and search before you post any questions. Don't expect anybody to answer your 10000th "How to start?" post, if you are too lazy to do the research on your own. You will have a hard time during PWK and the OSCP exam if you can't research topics on your own!
Read and understand the course and exam syllabus.
Create your own cheatsheets and notes, don't rely on other's. One of the key aspects here are building muscle-memory, learning from mistakes the other person didn't told you and the "deja-vu"-effect when using tools, or encountering services.
Check out HTB and ippsec. This guy is awesome and I couldn't thank him enough for making his high quality content which helped me to get a foot in the whole topic. But try to avoid the CTFy-boxes, since they teach you unneccessary CTF-stuff, you won't need during PWK and the exam.
Check out OffSec's Proving Grounds Practice and spend the 20$. I used it after my PWK was over and the machines were much less CTFy than other platforms, meaning they had no stupid riddles, steganography or other things that teach you the absolute wrong methodology. PG machines contain a lot of real-life exploits, service misconfigurations and lots of evil rabbit holes. I was able to further improve my own methodology before the exam, thanks to PG.
Share your scripts and experiences with the community. As you profit from others, it is only fair to give something back that helps others. InfoSec is a ride "on the shoulders of giants". One day you might be one of them, too.
Search for discord study groups, or create your own. They exist and they are very helpful for you and others.
Learn how to use Google. Seriously, this might seem like a joke, but you must know how to efficiently use Google to find information about exploits, methodology and the experience from others. Sure, you know how to google for SQLi, but - as an extreme example - can you find information on blind error-based SQLi for firebird databases?
Take notes, lots of good notes. Backup your notes. Write down every tool, command, service, web resource and methodology you encounter. Tag and refactor your notes from time to time.
Play around with the tools you use during your preparation. Make sure you read their manpages and help-text to unleash their full potential.
Read and understand the course and exam syllabus.
Make sure you have a good backup strategy. This means, backup your data (snapshots are not backups) regularly on different mediums and to different locations. House fires or water damage can happen and you don't want all you hard worked effort to be lost. Don't consider to have any backups until you tested the restore process.
Read and understand the course and exam syllabus.
Watch your OpSec. This means, encrypt everything you get from OffSec. Your course materials, your notes, your reports. Encrypt everything, because you don't want your materials to be stolen and leaked and risk a permaban from OffSec for life because of a weak password or a data leak from a cloud provider.
Learn to identify and avoid rabbitholes. This is tricky, but the more different software and services (and their different versions) you approach, the more you get a feeling for what is "normal" and what seems to be misconfigured or suspicious. You will get an eye for stuff that stands out only if you experiment with the software and understand some of its internals.
Take 90 days of lab time if you can affort it. 60 usually should be enough, but it sure depends on how much time you can invest.
Do the lab report if you can affort the time. Seriously, don't be lazy, it might cost you your OSCP and you will bite your own ass later.
Develop a strategy on how to approach the PDF, the lab report and the lab machines.
Reset the machines before you start and once you finish them. I sometimes found remains from other people, giving hints and spoilers on how to PE the system. That sucked.
Help others on the OffSec forums. Everybody struggles, don't be a "Try harder!"-guy and don't be a "OMG! Easiest box of my life!"-peenwaver.
Try to do the other subnets. Pivoting is a real brainpain in the beginning but once you got it, it will be fun and educational. Also the machines in the other subnets have some great exploits.
Try to avoid Metasploit at all costs and do your research on what an exploit is doing. This is not always possible, but if you have to use msf, try to proxy it trough burp to learn about what it does behind the scenes. Check out the source of the msf exploit scripts.
The lab machines are somewhat old, meaning that on some of the boxes a Kernel Exploit leads to PE, although this is sometimes not the intended PE vector. Do yourself a favor and try to avoid PE with KEs to learn something valuable.
Check the forums for solutions after you finish a box. There might be other and better ways than what you did.
Search for hints in the forums if you don't get any further, have tried everything from your notes AND googled for exploitation of the port/protocol/software you have had no luck yet.
If you are working full-time, I feel you. And if you have a family on top, you will have to develop an even better routine on when you can work on your goals. Spending the only two free hours of your day on pentesting can quickly become a frustrating chore. Make sure you use your time as efficient as possible.
Don't stop after you got proof.txt. I know that the endorphines kick hard after you rooted a box and HTB and the other platforms train you to submit the hash and get a reward. But make sure you do proper post exploitation to find hints and credentials for the dependent machines on any lab machine. You are now root/Administrator, enumerate everything on the system you had no prior access to, like databases, password-hashes, SAM, user directories, etc.
Take good notes on every tool, software, service, protocol, methodology, helpful command, shell-command, etc. you encounter during the lab time. Your notes are the backbone of your failure or success.
Investigate and play with services you encounter. Like, take half an hour to get a basic understanding of the MSSQL service after you exploited it.
Tipps for the Exam
Book your exam early and search the best timeframe for you. Weekends and morning hours are usually long gone. Know at which time you are most productive and book the exam in that timeframe.
Make a strategy: it doesn't matter when you do which machine, but just take the time before the exam and think of it. For me, BoF -> 25 -> 10 -> 20 -> 20 was the plan, until I wasn't able to find anything on the 25 pointer.
"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson. Keep in mind that your plan might not work and have some strategies ready on how to improvise, adapt and overcome.
Don't eat or drink things you usually don't eat or drink on exam day (looking at you, 3-RedBulls-in-a-row-for-the-first-time-in-10-years-guy).
Don't do stress eating or overcaffinate yourself (I ate way too much nuts during the first 3 hours, resulting in unneccessary stomach pain). Make sure you have nutricious and light snacks and drink enough water.
Once connected to the exam VPN, read the instrucions from the control panel. Don't make any assumptions! Read them carefully until you understand them.
Set yourself a timer for one or two hours (I used xfce's panel-timer). If the timer ends and you didn't find anything useful, you probably fell into a rabbithole. Take a break and switch to another machine.
Don't work on multiple machines in parallel. Focus on one machine and if you can't get any further, approach the next one after you have tried everything from your mind and notes.
Document everything you tried and found for every machine. You will come back later and don't want to waste time on doing the same things over and over again.
Take regular breaks, but not in front of your PC! Go out for a walk, or get some fresh air otherwise. Everybody here says it and it is true: taking breaks helped me to identify things I had not been thinking of in front of my PC. I took breaks around every hour or two.
Read the exam guide over and over again, until you know what they want from you.
Make backups and copies of your kali VM, prepare a fallback notebook or PC, in case yours strikes the day before your exam.
Test your webcam before the exam. Get a second as a fallback.
Make sure you use a cable connection on your router, no WiFi. Buy and use a long cable if neccessary. Also have a mobile tethering WiFi as a backup for the exam day.
Book a test session to make sure the proctoring software works on your system.
Prepare your workspace beforehand, you will spend a lot of time there.
Stick with the tools you have been using before. The exam is the wrong time to switch to unknown tools for enumeration, or PE! They worked for you in the past, they will work for you during the exam.
Prepare some scripts for enumeration of all the target machines before the exam starts. So you can easily do the BoF and let your script do the hard work in the background. Once you are done with the BoF, you can analyze the output and go for the low hanging fruit. Make sure your scripts are well tested and work, maybe start developing and using them in the labs where you have a lot of potential targets. I made two scripts, one used rustscan for a quick portscan and nmapAutomator for a detailed scan in a loop to iterate over all machines. The other script then used autorecon in a loop over all machines. It was good to have the information from different tools to compare them. And indeed, I found open ports that were missing previously. NmapAutomator has been proven for me to be the most reliable tool.
Scan the machines sequentially, not in parallel. This is a difficult topic, but I was convinced by others that massive parallel scanning might have an impact on the TCP-in-UDP-encapsulation of the VPN. Better spend one hour more of scanning time than missing any ports or services because of unreliable heavy network traffic.
Take lots of screenshots. Ideally take screenshots of every step you take and every software/service you encounter and how you tackle it. You might need them later. Try to take them during your encounter, not afterwards. If not possible, try to repeat all the steps from your notes on a machine and take screenshots then.
Make checklists before you start the exam on all important stuff (ID, webcam, backups, fallback system, ...). Use the exam guide!
Make checklists for every port, software and protocol you encounter on the exam machines and enumerate them well. Google software and services you don't know yet. These will be definetly there. Don't make any assumptions about ports, versions and services.
The exam not only tests your technical competences, but also your abilities to improvise, adapt and overcome problems and challenges in a high pressure setup.
The machines are designed to be exploitable. There is a way in and a way to PE. Keep that in mind, you won't have to develop your own exploits, or do overcomplicated things like finding a bug in the kernel network stack.
If an expliot does not work, read its code and make sure you understand what it does. Insert some print()-statements on the parts where you expect the code to be broken or not working, so you can e.g. print and debug the response from a webserver. Maybe a typo occured, or the author just forgot to prefix the request with "http://". You will only know if you are able to read and understand the internals.
Not all vulnerabilities come from exploitable and outdated software. Misconfigurations and careless admins are also exploitable.
Prepare scans/copies of your ID on photo, just in case your webcam can't correctly focus it and the proctor wants to see an image.
Prepare a BoF-script you develop during the learning process, so you can quickly go over it. BoF is the only easy win, if you do it correctly.
There will be no easy wins like EternalBlue or dirtyc0w, sorry.
Enumerate, enumerate, and the enumerate again.
Reset machines when you can't find anything and then enumerate again. Compare the results of earlier scans.
Don't rely on a single tool! Learn and use different tools for portscanning, fuzzing, dir busting, etc. Use different wordlists.
Check every single port if it really hosts the service you are thinking.
Don't make any asumptions on services and versions.
Try exploits for other versions if a service you found seems not to be a vulnerable version.
Know your shells! This is freaking important, because there is no worse feeling than getting a reverse shell which immediately dies after connecting back. Learn and try different types: reverse shells, bind shells, download and execute elf-binaries via command shells, "msfvenom-CMD" with a simple bash reverse shell, etc. ...
Think of possible firewall policies and blocked outgoing ports. Try different ports for your reverse shells, before giving up. Take notes on everything you tried.
Double check your local.txt and proof.txt contents and screenshots.
Stay calm. Don't stress yourself out and stick with your notes and your methodology. In my country we have the saying: "The fear of the dentist is always greater than the pain during the visit."
Again, double check your local.txt and proof.txt contents and screenshots. You don't want to fail because you forgot them.
Tipps for the Report
Read OffSecs requirements on the report until you understand what they want from you. Then read it again and make a checklist.
Train the report on the lab machines (ideally when doing the lab report), so you have everything you will need in mind and the tools and templates ready. When your brain has molten after the exam, you don't want to deal with how to format the report or how to layout it. Do not underestimate the time and effort this takes and this can easily be prepared beforehand.
The report takes much time and effort. Don't underestimate that. Especially when you are excited and exhausted, you will be making mistakes that could cost you the exam.
Prepare your report, notes, screenshots, etc. as best as you can during the exam. Make - you guessed it - checklists.
The best would be to organize your notes during the exam in a way, you will later write in the report. I trained this in the labs, making the following sections for every system I encountered: General Enumeration, Service Enumeration, Exploitation/initial Shell, Privilege Escalation Enumeration, Privilege Escalation Exploitation (Post Exploitation). Document every command you used and a what you found from it for every phase.
There are very good posts on the topic here, search for them.
Use a markdown template if you are okay with that. It was a little work for me to find out, how to use it, but in the end it saved me a lot of time and struggle when I just rendered it after finishing the lab and exam reports. Watch out for "\"-instructions of pandoc (like when you document badchars), because they get interpreted and I was struggling a lot with finding out the problem after my report did not render anymore because I wasn't aware that you have to escape backslashes for pandoc ("\x00" becomes "\x00") This guy fucks and did an awesome post on the topic. Thank you very much!
Thanks to OffSec for this awesome journey and thanks to all folks here who took the time to share their experiencs (passed, or not) and their tools. This would not have been possible without you! Good luck and all the best for your exam!
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