Back From Vacation

It feels good to be home again.  Also, I turned 45 today.  Seems kind of crazy, but then most people probably get that feeling on their birthday.

I know the first thing you may be thinking... what can I get Venger for his birthday this year? 

Well, it's the same thing I want every year - reviews!  Although, technically doesn't have to be a review.  All the following would be acceptable: blog post analysis, play report, fan art, Q&A, or just your thoughts posted on an RPG forum somewhere.  I take what I can get.  ;)

What else?  Well, I'm wrapping up Kickstarter fulfillment and post-KS orders that have been coming in.  Want your hardcover Cha'alt?  Look no further.

Speaking of Kickstarter, I'm starting to think about the next one - the first official Cha'alt adventure.  Still groggy from 10 days away, so nothing is set in stone, except that it'll be just as awesome as Cha'alt itself... if that's even possible.  Maybe I can do one of those wild "break Kickstarter" ideas?

What content do you want to see?  I'm sure you have suggestions.  Let me hear 'em!

VS

p.s. Yes, in all seriousness, please post a review or something today, November 25th.  And let me know so I can gaze at your generosity whilst basking in the chartreuse glow of our Lord drowning in the radioactive wasteland of S'kbah's desert.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint Review (PS4)

Written by Anthony L. Cuaycong

Title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Genre: Action, Shooter
Price: $59.99
Also Available On: PC, XB1

---

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint picks up from where Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands left off. In fact, it's a lot like its predecessor — a tactical shooter in an open-world setting, but bigger. In its development, Ubisoft Paris clearly set out to make it a superior version. And the hard work shows in its presentation: As gamers explore Auroa, a fictional chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean, they are treated to an extremely vast and varied playing field that further underscores the importance of choice. The effort is especially significant in light of a sustained initiative to beef up the narrative; even side missions, and the conversations therein, serve to enrich the backdrop, thereby adding gravitas to the action.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint follows the exploits of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony "Nomad" Perryman. This time, he investigates military contractor Skell Technology on behalf of the United States Special Operation Forces. Soon enough, he gets to the bottom of the conflict: Disillusioned by the outcome of a mission in Bolivia, former Ghost operative Cole Walker has turned, and is bent on using cutting-edge drone technology to seek retribution for perceived sins. In his effort to set things right, he gains the assistance of former US Marine Mads Schulz, leader of the Homesteaders (island farmers forced to seek shelter in the Erehwon cave system), tech libertarian Jace Skell, Skell Tech Artificial Intelligence Program head Christina Cromwell, and mathematician Maurice Fox.

En route to meeting the ultimate objective, gamers are treated to edge-of-seat interplay. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint makes sure to stay fair while presenting a bevy of alternatives, whether in solo or multiplayer mode. Player-versus-player scenarios can be a technical challenge for online shooters; in this case, however, Ubisoft manages to rely on knowledge gained from Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands to make the experience run as smoothly as possible. Three months removed from the day it first reached store shelves, it's a polished title that rewards patience and investment; to facilitate progress and ensure competitiveness, for instance, it imposes loot-level caps that normalize damage.

All told, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint figures to keep both loyalists and newbies to the series going back for more. Forget about the initial middling reviews and underwhelming sales figures. It runs extremely well on the PlayStation 4 Pro, and continual improvements have made it a release worthy of the Ubisoft name.

---

THE GOOD:

• Strong narrative
• Gameplay improves upon its predecessor in every way
• Edge-of-seat interplay stays fair while presenting tons of options
• Runs smoothly

THE BAD:

• Gives off a been-there, done-that vibe
• RPG elements an acquired taste

---

RATING: 8/10

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Brainstorming With Reversal

In the previous two posts I described how I sometimes approach a problem by trying to arrange it into a matrix. Sometimes that doesn't work and I instead try to look at the problem backwards. As an example, consider procedural map generation. I often start with a noise function, adding octaves, adjusting parameters, and adding layers. I'm doing this because I'm looking for maps with certain properties.

It's fine to start by playing with parameters, but the parameter space is rather large, and it's unclear whether I'll actually find the parameters that best match what I want. Instead, after playing around a bit, I stop and think in the opposite order: if I can describe what I want, it might help be find the parameters.

This is actually the motivation I was taught for algebra. Given an equation like 5x² + 8x - 21 = 0, what is x? When I didn't know algebra, I would've solved this by trying a bunch of values for x, jumping randomly at first, then adjusting it once I felt I was getting close. Algebra gives us the tool to go in the other direction. Instead of guessing at answers, it gives me tools (factoring, or the quadratic equations, or Newton's iterative root finding) that I can use to more intelligently find the values of x (-3 or 7/5).

I feel like I often am in that same situation with programming. For procedural map generation, after tweaking parameters for a while, I stopped to list some things I wanted for the game worlds in one project:

1. Players should start far apart on the beach.
2. Players should move uphill as they level up.
3. Players shouldn't reach the edge of the map.
4. Players should join into groups as they increase in level.
5. Beaches should have easy monsters without much variation.
6. Midlands should have a wide variety of monsters of medium difficulty.
7. Highlands should have hard "boss" monsters.
8. There should be some landmark to help players stay at the same difficulty level, and another landmark to help players go up or down in difficulty level.

That list led to some constraints:

1. The game worlds should be islands with a lot of coastline and a small peak in the center.
2. Elevation should match monster difficulty.
3. Low and high elevation should have less biome variation than middle elevations.
4. Roads should stay at a fixed difficulty level.
5. Rivers should flow from high to low elevation, and give players a way to navigate up/down.

The constraints then led me to design the map generator. This led to a much better set of maps than the ones I got by tweaking parameters like I usually do. And the resulting article has gotten lots of people interested in Voronoi-based maps.

Another example is unit tests. I'm supposed to come up with a list of examples to test. For example, for hexagonal grids I might think of testing that add(Hex(1, 2), Hex(3, 4)) == Hex(4, 6) . Then I might remember to test zeros: add(Hex(0, 1), Hex(7, 9)) == Hex(7, 10). Then I might remember to test negative numbers too: add(Hex(-3, 4) + Hex(7, -8)) == Hex(4, -4). Ok, great, I have a few unit tests.

If I think more about this, what I really am testing is add(Hex(A, B), Hex(C, D)) == Hex(A+C, B+D). I came up with the three examples based on this general rule. I'm working backwards from this rule to come up with the unit tests. If I can directly encode this rule into the test system, I can have the system itself work backwards to come with the instances to test. This is called "property based testing". (Also see: metamorphic testing)

Another example is constraint solvers. In these systems you describe what you want in the output, and the system comes up with a way to satisfy the constraints. From the Procedural Content Generation Book, chapter 8:

In the constructive methods of Chapter 3 and the fractal and noise methods of Chapter 4, we can produce different kinds of output by tweaking the algorithms until we're satisfied with their output. But if we know what properties we'd like generated content to have, it can be more convenient to directly specify what we want, and then have a general algorithm find content meeting our criteria.

In Answer Set Programming, explored in that book, you describe the structure of what you're working with (tiles are floors or walls, and the tiles are adjacent to each other), the structure of solutions you're looking for (a dungeon is a bunch of connected tiles with a start and an end), and the properties of the solutions (side passages should be at most 5 rooms, there are 1 or 2 loops, there are three henchmen to defeat before you reach the boss). The system then comes up with possible solutions and lets you decide what to do with them.

A recent constraint solver got a lot of attention because of its cool name and demos: Wave Function Collapse. You give it example images to tell it what the constraints on adjacent tiles are, and then it comes up with more examples that match your given patterns. There's a paper, WaveFunctionCollapse is Constraint Solving in the Wild, that describes how it works:

Operationally, WFC implements a non-backtracking, greedy search method. This paper examines WFC as an instance of constraint solving methods.

I done much with constraint solvers yet. As with Algebra, there's a lot for me to learn before I can them effectively.

Another example is when I made a spaceship where you could drag the thrusters to wherever you wanted, and the system would figure out which thrusters to fire when you pressed W, A, S, D, Q, E. For example, in this spaceship:

If you want to go forwards, you'd fire the two rear thrusters. If you want to rotate left, you'd fire the rear right thruster and the front left thruster. I tried to solve this by having the system try lots of parameters:

It worked, but it wasn't great. I realized later that this too is another instance of where working backwards would have helped. It turns out the movement of the spaceships could be described by a linear constraint system. Had I realized it, I could've used an existing library that solves the constraints exactly, instead of my trial-and-error approach coming up with an approximation.

Yet another example is the G9.js project, which lets you drag the outputs of some function around on the screen, and it will figure out how to change the inputs to match your desired output. The demos of G9.js are great! Be sure to uncomment the "uncomment the following line" on the Rings demo.

Sometimes it's useful to think about a problem in reverse. I often find that it gives me better solutions than if I only consider the forward direction.

Article: The Strategic Use Of Smartphone Features To Create A Gaming Experience Of Mystery: The Mind Alone Case

As I said in the last post, in July I attended the Human Computer Interface Conference at Orlando (Florida). Today I want to share my article (click here) and invite everybody to buy the conference's book with all the articles related to the subject "games" (click here).



#GoGamers

Storium Basics: Card Spending And Refresh

Welcome back - today, as we continue discussing the basics of Storium, I'm going to spend a little time on the concept of Refresh.

First, though, a bit about card spending: As you play Strength and Weakness cards, you'll notice they become unavailable for selection on future plays. Even once you reach the end of a scene, you'll find you won't have the cards that you already spent available to play again.

This is how Storium manages helping you tell the ups and downs of a character's tale. As you spend Strengths and Weaknesses, they become unavailable for use. You don't get any of them back until you've spent all of them. That is, you have to spend all your Strengths and all your Weaknesses before you get any of them back.

This is another reason I've said it is best to not play Storium tactically—the system is geared towards storytelling, and in storytelling, characters have ups and downs. This is actually really cool for developing a character arc, but that's somewhat beyond the basics - for more on that, see the links below.

So, say that you've spent all your Strengths and all your Weaknesses...now, it's time to Refresh.

At the beginning of the next scene, you'll get to Refresh your cards. When you click the button to do so (which replaces your button for writing a move), you are presented with a list of all the Strengths and all the Weaknesses that you've played in the game so far. You select some of each, and those become your new hand of Strength and Weakness cards. Simple as that!

Note that the number of cards you get to refresh is determined by settings for the individual games

But though it's a simple concept, don't just rush through.

This is your opportunity to define what is important in your character's story now. That may not match up with what was important in the beginning. Refreshes are a great way to show how your character has changed, or to show what elements of your character are stable. Pick the cards you want to focus on for the next chunk of the story.

Take some time to really think it over - what is important now? What do you want to say about your character now? Who is your character now? That's what a Refresh is about - not who you've been, but who you are now. Who you are going to be as the story moves forward from this point.

So...sure, who you are now might be just who you were in the past - you might just pick your starting Strength and Weakness, maybe something closely related to them too, and call it a day. But maybe things you've revealed about yourself since then have become more important. Maybe your Toughness was central to your character at the beginning, but since then, you've become focused on Leadership and Empathy, like I mentioned last time.

This is the point where you get to show that...so take some time to think it through.

And remember: As with character creation, pick cards you want to play...not just cards you're willing to play. Just like at the start of the game, you want to pick things that excite you about using them. These cards are the things you will have in your hand, so they're the things you will have to play before you can Refresh again. So make them things that you want to play, not just things that you grudgingly put in your hand again.

For more on Refresh, see the below posts - but please be aware that since I wrote some of these, the Refresh rules did change somewhat. The philosophy still applies, but some of the mechanics will sometimes be a bit different. In particular, I believe you can now pretty easily choose to get rid of your starting Strength / Weakness in a Refresh because - if I'm recalling correctly - you can now choose any card multiple times in a Refresh. In the old days, that wasn't the case, so you'll see references here for how it will take multiple Refreshes to get a starting card out of your hand.

Similarly, these were written before custom card settings were a thing.

Still, I believe the philosophies discussed here can be helpful:

• Great Ideas: Easy Resource Management (Storium) 
• Okay, that one is just about why I love the way Storium handles card spending and Refresh.
• Establishing Character Arcs
• Character Arc vs. Game Arc
• No Card Play is "Wasted"
• Character Development Through Wild Cards
• Refreshing Cards - "What's Important Now?"
• Situational Strengths and Weaknesses
• Building Character
• Choose Cards You Want to Play
• Build Towards Something

SCOOBY-DOO COLLECTION

Not too long ago, the Scooby Gang turned 50 years old and it's still as much a part of the pop culture as ever. To kick off this October, let's take a look at the majority of their video game adaptations. Spread over 11 systems, there are 19 games to get through in this Scooby-Doo collection so let's get started!

Read more »

DE: Don't Lose Focus When Building Your Army

Stop making bad army lists!

First, I'd like to welcome a lot of the newer players joining the Dark Eldar.  We got a fantastic new book and there's a lot of things to learn.  However, one of the things I want to warn you about is that Dark Eldar is NOT a beginner's army.  There is a lot of tricks and nuances to the army that when managed poorly, will cause you lose many games.  Take it from me, I started with DE back in 3rd Ed. 40K and I actually received most of the army from a friend that was quitting it.  He warned me that the army was tough as shit and that he was tired of losing.  Thankfully for me, I've always wanted to start playing them and I absolutely love a challenge.  Coming from a competitive RTS background, 40K was basically a Power Point presentation of StarCraft.

OK, fast forward almost two decades and here I am.  Still playing the Dark Kin but with much more experience.  The next couple of paragraphs will be me trying to explain how to be a more successful Dark Eldar player in 8th Ed.  This is something you just have to trust me when I tell you:  The army is very simliar to previous editions, but the edition itself is very different.  Things die a lot quicker now and the alpha damage potential from other armies out there can be just as mind-blowing as ours.  In some cases, it might even be more potent, so you just gotta listen up, check the ego, and brace yourself for something that might sound harsh, but it will win you a lot of games.

STOP losing focus when building your army

This starts at list creation and this is a byproduct of having really cool units and being spoiled by choice.  I'm not saying that Dark Eldar have unit choices up the ass, no, that's not what I mean.  I mean that one of the biggest mistakes that newer players make is building their army in multiple different directions that branch away from their army goals.  Before you build a list, you must have goals in mind.  The goals should not be something as broad as "go kill your enemy", it should be something more specific with the exact tooling that you will need to get the job done.  Maybe it's just my min-maxy ways as a competitive RTS player, or maybe it's my Program Manager genes being tossed into a game, but I'm telling you right now that whatever list you bring, it must have purpose.

What do I mean by this?  I mean if you intend your army to shoot the enemy dead, it must do that and do it very well.  If you want to assault the enemy dead, it must do that and do it very well.  When you start building your list to do a little bit of everything, that's when things go to shit.  The new 40K articles and Realspace Raid requirements for all these little fucking patrols all over the place doesn't make things any better.  I'm absolutely serious about this:  Go read some of my earlier articles where I'm constantly complaining about HQ tax.  HQs, in our army is not very cheap, especially when you look at the Archon and the Harmonculi who are ~70 points.  I wish I can link you guys to some army lists I've seen on the internet so far with naked Archons all over the place without transports.  What's the fucking point?  You're literally spending 70 points for the dude to sit there and look stupid or the rest of the battle.  Succubus are the only HQs I would recommend for a cheaper HQ unit that can do some work, but that's not the point here.  The point here is that your list must be focused to do something well, and do it exceptionally well.  This is why I think that my pure Kabal all shooting army is still my strongest variant of the Dark Eldar and that my Kabal/Cult Succubus whip-my-hair-back-and-forth list is just for fun.  I know that it is weaker because it doesn't do anything exceptionally well.  Remember again, if you pay for something, make sure it does something.

Let's break it down some more.  You can start by looking at the damage potential that the list provides from a firepower perspective and then you can examine it from a melee perspective.  Can your melee components outfight other armies melee components?  I don't think so.  It does a pretty decent job at it, but Wyches aren't exactly a unit I would write home to mom about.  What about shooting?  Well, because you subbed in Wyches, you are taking away from your shooting component so it's definitely not as strong as a pure shooty force.  This makes you extra succeptible vs. the likes of Tau, AdMech or other pure shooty armies with a higher Alpha than you.  This puts you at an immediate disadvantage and forces you into a shooting attrition war which you will almost certaintly lose.  Playing defensive is not Dark Eldar's speciality, and even if they have some units that can do that, they are considered the outlier for what the army IS truly good at, and that's shooting.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all doom and gloom yet.  I will talk about some awesome and cheap melee units that we can bring forth shortly.

Yup, this can be you!

STOP using CPs as list-building requirements

Stay the hell away from those multiple Patrol armies with overinflated HQs.  Do NOT fall into the trap of building up Patrols with a bunch of useless HQs because you want the CP.  That's almost as bad as building a Brigade just to realize that you bought a crap ton of units but don't have the points to equip or use them properly so they end up being fuckall useless once they hit the battlefield.  Remember:  For every unit you buy, make sure it counts for something.  I'm not saying to be allergic to melee or not branch out into Coven units to hold objectives.  I'm saying don't go overboard and be mindful that more you pull your army into different directions, the weaker it will be at doing any one thing.  If you do want to make your army multi-faceted, make sure that it does both of these things as well as it can.  Just don't try to go in all 3 directions that the DE book is painfully telling newer players to do with all this Patrol garbage.

Don't believe me?  Do this:  Try and CP whore and build a Brigade army list for DE, as competitive as you can.  Then show me the firepower that the list can put out with respect to range vs. what the total number of wounds look like with respect to toughness and saves.  I am willing to bet that that army cannot fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag.  When I try and ask people why the hell they need CPs as a requirement to build an design armies, they always give me the same piss-poor answer:  CPs win games (thinking multiple uses of Agents of Vect).  Yes, you're correct, well-timed and properly used CPs can win games, but I don't see Agents of Vect shooting or actively killing your opponent's units from the start of the game.  The only thing that can do that effectively are your units and you should not be handicapping yourself by locking into some rigid army structure just for CPs.  Agents of Vect is not going to save your ass from a Admech gunline, so you might as well drop all the shitty MSU Scourges and Reavers that are just going to explode and do nothing for you.  Not to mention you can get close to Bridgade level CPs with some good list tweaking.

Likewise, I'd like to see a triple Patrol list with Kabal, Wyches and Coven in there and it try to be competitive.  It will be decent at best, but never as good as a list with just Kabal/Cult simply because you're trying to do too many things at the same time.  Real talk though, let's take some of my own shit and dissect it on a Haemoculi table.

Check it out.  It starts with an idea, and then I'm going to braindump onto this page:

• I've been throwing out the idea of taking Flayed Skull recently just so I can play with a killy Archon AND a killy Succubus.
• I'm going to accept the risk that I will be losing some firepower in this list, but hopefully two killy HQs will allow me to make up that killing power.  I just need to make sure I can keep this HQs cheap and killy.
• Let's take an existing Skeleton list that I have and then turn it into something that has a strong melee component that has good synergy with the rest of the list.
• The entire army has to move fast and apply good pressure so it can overwhelm the enemy's fire priorities.  It's a go big or go home list.

OK, now let's break this down into actual game terms:

• Killy Archon for me is the Famed Savagery + Djin Blade that can get 8 attacks at S5 AP-3 D3 wounds that hit on 2s with re-rolls to hit.
• Killy Succubus for me is the Blood Dancer + Triptych Whip, Strife and Adrenalight that gives me 9 attacks at WS2+ re-rolling 1s and every hit of a 6 turns into 3 hits with an Agonizer.
• I'm going to trim down as much as I can from my firepower to make room for these badasses and give them a full retinue of Wyches to accompany them in Raiders.
• I need extra weapons and Warlord traits, so I'm going to need more CP to activate Alliance of Agony for the Blood Dancer and possibly more Prizes from the Dark City.
• Now, let's make the entire army move FAST.  Really fast, so we're going full YOLO over here.  Keep in mind that through playtesting, I can move these boats under the Black Heart Spearhead to get those additional FNPs.

1999 // 10 CP

Flayed Skull Battalion +3 CP

HQ:

Archon, Djin Blade, Blaster = 93

Trait: Famed Savagery

Archon, Huskblade, Blaster, PGL = 96

TROOP:

10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, SCannon = 104

10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, SCannon = 104

10x Warriors, 2x Blaster, SCannon = 104

PARTY BOATS:

Raider, Dark Lance = 85

Raider, Dark Lance = 85

Raider, Dark Lance = 85

Raider, Dark Lance = 85

Raider, Dark Lance = 85

+++

Strife Battalion +3 CP

HQ:

Succubus, Adrenalight, Whip = 54

Trait: Blood Dancer

Succubus, Painbringer, Agonizer = 54

TROOP:

8x Wyches, Grave Lotus, Agonzer, BP, Shardnet = 83

8x Wyches, Serpentin, Agonzer, BP, Shardnet = 83

5x Wyches, Hypex = 40

+++

Black Heart Spearhead +1 CP

HQ:

Archon, Living Muse, Agonizer, Blaster, PGL = 94

FLYER:

Razorwing, 2x Dark Lance = 145

Razorwing, 2x Dark Lance = 145

HEAVY:

Ravager, 3x Dinsintegrators = 125

Ravager, 3x Dinsintegrators = 125

Ravager, 3x Dinsintegrators = 125

>>>

Firepower:

9 Dark Lances at BS3+

9 Disintegrators at BS3+

6 Blasters at BS3+

3 Blasters at BS2+

2 Razorwing Missiles at BS3+

3 Splinter Cannons at BS3+

25 Splinter Rifles at BS3+

The TLDR is this:

• Don't branch out too much, you will lose focus and detract from your army goals.
• Trying to be too many things will make your army suck and do nothing well.
• Stop building shitty army lists focused on CPs.  Units win games, not CPs.
• If you must branch, do 2 things decently well instead of 1 thing really well.

I realized this was part-guide and part-rant, but it needed to be done.  Have a good night all.

Assetto Corsa Competizione Intercontinental GT Pack Free Download

Assetto Corsa Competizione is the new official Blancpain GT Series videogame.

Thanks to the extraordinary quality of simulation, the game will allow you to experience the real atmosphere of the GT3 championship, competing against official drivers, teams, cars and circuits reproduced in-game with the highest level of accuracy ever achieved. Sprint, Endurance and Spa 24 Hours races will come to life with an incredible level of realism, in both single and multiplayer modes. Assetto Corsa Competizione will feature Blancpain GT Series' 2018 Season, and will also include Season 2019, that will be provided as a free update during Summer 2019.

Assetto Corsa Competizione is born from KUNOS Simulazioni's long-term experience, and it takes full advantage of Unreal Engine 4 to ensure photorealistic weather conditions and graphics, night races, motion capture animations, reaching a new standard in terms of driving realism and immersion, thanks to its further improved tyre and aerodynamic models.

Designed to innovate, Assetto Corsa Competizione will be set to promote eSports, bringing players at the heart of the Blancpain GT Series and putting them behind the wheel of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens and many other prestigious GT racing cars, all reproduced with outstanding level of detail.

GAMEPLAY AND SCREENSHOTS :

 


DOWNLOAD GAME:

♢ Click or choose only one button below to download this game.
♢ View detailed instructions for downloading and installing the game here.
♢ Use 7-Zip to extract RAR, ZIP and ISO files. Install PowerISO to mount ISO files.

Assetto Corsa Competizione Intercontinental GT Pack Free Download

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS GAME

➤ Download the game by clicking on the button link provided above.

➤ Download the game on the host site and turn off your Antivirus or Windows Defender to avoid errors.

➤ Once the download has been finished or completed, locate or go to that file.

➤ To open .iso file, use PowerISO and run the setup as admin then install the game on your PC.

➤ Once the installation process is complete, run the game's exe as admin and you can now play the game.

➤ Congratulations! You can now play this game for free on your PC.

➤ Note: If you like this video game, please buy it and support the developers of this game.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
(Your PC must at least have the equivalent or higher specs in order to run this game.)

Minimum:
• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1
• Processor: Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD FX-8120
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce GTX 460 2GB, Radeon HD 7770
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 50 GB available space
• Sound Card: Integrated

Recommended:
• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-8600K or AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB, Radeon RX 580 8GB
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 50 GB available space
• Sound Card: Integrated

Supported Language: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish language are available.
If you have any questions or encountered broken links, please do not hesitate to comment below. :D

Brave Browser voted the best privacy-focused product of 2019

Out of all the privacy-focused products and apps available on the market, Brave has been voted the best. Other winners of Product Hunt's Golden Kitty awards showed that there was a huge interest in privacy-enhancing products and apps such as chats, maps, and other collaboration tools.

An extremely productive year for Brave

Last year has been a pivotal one for the crypto industry, but few companies managed to see the kind of success Brave did. Almost every day of the year has been packed witch action, as the company managed to officially launch its browser, get its Basic Attention Token out, and onboard hundreds of thousands of verified publishers on its rewards platform.

Luckily, the effort Brave has been putting into its product hasn't gone unnoticed.

The company's revolutionary browser has been voted the best privacy-focused product of 2019, for which it received a Golden Kitty award. The awards, hosted by Product Hunt, were given to the most popular products across 23 different product categories.

Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt said:

"Our annual Golden Kitty awards celebrate all the great products that makers have launched throughout the year"

Brave's win is important for the company—with this year seeing the most user votes ever, it's a clear indicator of the browser's rapidly rising popularity.

Privacy and blockchain are the strongest forces in tech right now

If reaching 10 million monthly active users in December was Brave's crown achievement, then the Product Hunt award was the cherry on top.

The recognition Brave got from Product Hunt users shows that a market for privacy-focused apps is thriving. All of the apps and products that got a Golden Kitty award from Product Hunt users focused heavily on data protection. Everything from automatic investment apps and remote collaboration tools to smart home products emphasized their privacy.

AI and machine learning rose as another note-worthy trend, but blockchain seemed to be the most dominating force in app development. Blockchain-based messaging apps and maps were hugely popular with Product Hunt users, who seem to value innovation and security.

For those users, Brave is a perfect platform. The company's research and development team has recently debuted its privacy-preserving distributed VPN, which could potentially bring even more security to the user than its already existing Tor extension.

Brave's effort to revolutionize the advertising industry has also been recognized by some of the biggest names in publishing—major publications such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, NDTV, NPR, and Qz have all joined the platform. Some of the highest-ranking websites in the world, including Wikipedia, WikiHow, Vimeo, Internet Archive, and DuckDuckGo, are also among Brave's 390,000 verified publishers.

Earn Basic Attention Token (BAT) with Brave Web Browser

Try Brave Browser

Get $5 in free BAT to donate to the websites of your choice.