Today: One thing’s for sure: When Half-Life 3 is finally revealed, it will feature a certain light blinking pattern — Help nature heal in Terra Nil — Bloober Team is brining The Medium to PlayStation 5 this fall
Issue Contents
TOP STORY
Breath of Wild sequel secret for a reason
Nintendo hasn't officially announced the name of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel yet. What could the big secret mean?
At the very least, it seems reasonable to assume that it won't be called The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2. The secrecy is probably a ploy to both keep fans speculating but also to keep them from figuring out too much about the game's plot.
Say my name:“You’ll just have to stay tuned because, obviously, Zelda names are kind of important,” Nintendo Treehouse’s Bill Trinen told IGN. Giving away the full title would risk spoiling the surprise.
What's in a name:“It’s natural for people to want to find a shorthand way to frame it,” he said about people calling it Breath of the Wild 2. Nintendo is simply calling it "the sequel", so that's all we have to go on for now.
DAILY QUIZ
Which movie star got his break advertising Pitfall for Atari 2600?
a) Jack Black
b) Chris Pratt
c) Alan Rickman
d) Henry Cavil
The answer will be revealed at the bottom of today's issue. Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss what the answer could be.
FACT OF THE DAY
This villain didn’t even bother turning up
Spyro: Ripto Quest was a mobile game by KAOLink, with a slightly misleading title. Despite prominently featuring in the game’s title, the villainous warlock Ripto does not actually appear in the game.
With a title like that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that Ripto might appear as the final boss or something, but no: The final confrontation is between Spyro and … a snake. Spyro the mongoose?
Join our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss today's fact.
POKEMON NEWS AND EVENTS
Latest Pokémon events and merchandise
Pokémon Unite news is coming later today and Pokémon Go Fest is nearly upon us, which means loads of brand new merchandise like T-shirts and a special Professor Willow Pokémon TCG card.
Pokémon Café Mix
Latest update added 15 new stages
Sobble Special Customer Event repeats until June 30th
Pokémon GO
Solstice Event (June 17th to 20th)
Regigigas with Shiny variant in 5 star raids June 17th to July 1st
Lunatone, Solrock, Spheal, and more in the wild
North hemisphere: Yanma, Chimchar, Summer Form Deerling, and more
Raids: Alolan Marowak, Yanma, Petilil, and more
South hemisphere: Snorunt, Snover, Winter Form Deerling, and more
Raids: Lapras, Piloswine, Snorunt, and more
Worldwide raids: Lunatone, Solrock, Klink, and more
Bidoof Breakout (June 25th to July 1st)
More Bidoof with Shiny variant in the wild, in raids and in encounters
Charged TM can teach Bidoof new moves from July 1st
Elite Charged TM can teach new moves post event
Encountered Bidoof will know following attacks:
Shadow Ball: June 25th-26th
Thunderbolt: June 27th-28th
Ice Beam: June 29th-30th
Double catch XP on June 25th-26th, Triple on June 27th-28th, and quadruple on June 29th-30th
Pokémon Trading Card tie-in event
Special Research featuring Meltan with special code in US and Japan
European Trainers can redeem TCG card completing Special Research
Pokémon Masters EX
Town Square Street Fair updated with new Fire-type stages
Sync Pair Scout for Hala & Crabominable
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QUAKE LIVES ON
A world-class example of code reuse
If it ain't broken, don't fix it. A tried and true adage, and clearly one that Valve follows to a fault, because they're still using light flickering code from Quake in Half-Life: Alyx.
The flicker patterns match perfectly, and pretty much proves that Valve reused not just code but also data from the late 90s in Half-Life: Alyx.
Illuminati:“The effect is handled by assigning a string of letters that indicates the sequence of brightness changes, with a being fully dark and z being fully bright,”a reddit user explained.
Code archeology: The original Half-Life was powered by a heavily modified Quake engine called GoldSrc, which served as the foundation of the Source engine and its descendant Source 2. The light flickering code from Quake has survived three long and arduous generations of engine development at Valve. That's pretty thrifty, don't you think!
VR BITS
Next-gen PlayStation VR for holiday 2022
Sony is planning to launch the next-generation PlayStation VR late next year according to Bloomberg. The new headset will feature OLED panels from Samsung, with a resolution of 4000×2040 with eye-tracking, and will support foveated rendering.
New Blood Interactive has secretly been working on a virtual reality version of Amid Evil, which is now almost ready and should hit your favorite VR platform in the near future.
GAME SPOTLIGHT
Reclaim the Wastes with Terra Nil
Terra Nil has a straightforward, engaging premise: It’s a reverse city builder where you save the environment from destruction. Post-apocalyptic games typically trade on despair and anguish, but Terra Nil is all about hope and acknowledging that life always finds a way.
You clean up a damaged, polluted world by turning waste into soil, where plants can grow, and once the woodlands are back in business you can start increasing biodiversity. Once the ecosystem is sustainable, you recycle the buildings you used to build an airship and move on to the next wasteland.
You scrub the world of pollution and corruption using technology powered by windmills, but not all your actions are totally green: If you need to dig a river, you'll release toxins into the ground and will need to clean up after yourself. There is a consequence for every action when dealing with ecosystems, but fortunately, you have a wealth of data to support you.
Terra Nil's UI is helpful to a fault and can get a bit hand-holdy, but that's not a bad thing. All your buildings and actions have an environmental cost, and you need to both manage resources and environmental impact to succeed. Your primary goal is to make the world green again, while the secondary goal is to balance the atmospheric temperature and humidity. Perfectly balancing the biosphere requires careful management, but is not necessary to progress.
The demo features a single level that can be completed in about an hour, and does a splendid job of introducing Terra Nil's unique gameplay. If the full game can offer even more variety, challenges and beautiful landscapes, then it will be well worth waiting for. There’s no release date yet, but we’ll keep you posted.
My Time at Sandrock demo available at Steam Next Fest with 4 hours of playtime
Rockstar ends PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 online support for L.A. Noire, Max Payne 3 and GTA Onlineon December 16th
QUIZ ANSWER
Which movie star got his break advertising Pitfall for Atari 2600?
ANSWER: Jack Black!
Pitfall was a landmark game, one of the best-selling games for Atari 2600 – and arguably launched Jack Black's career. At the tender age of thirteen, Jack Black starred in a TV commercial for the game.
The ad is very much of its time, featuring various talking heads in pith helmets excitedly explaining the adventure and excitement while offering brief glimpses of the rather limited graphics. Videogames would stay close to Jack Black's heart, and he starred in 2009's Brütal Legend as well as singing in one of the Psychonauts 2 trailers.
Today's issue of DailyBits was written by Gavin Herman, Nick Akerman, Erlend Grefsrud, Simon Priest, and Jamie Davey. If you have any feedback or news tips for the team, please email us!
