This year marks the 90th anniversary of Monopoly, one of the most popular board games in the world. Hollywood has been attempting to make a Monopoly movie for the better part of the last two decades, but the project has finally picked up some momentum by adding the screenwriters and directors of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.Via The Hollywood Reporter, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein are closing their deals to write the script for Monopoly. However, their deal doesn't appear to include an option to direct the film as well. Daley and Goldstein co-wrote Horrible Bosses, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Vacation Friends, in addition to directing Vacation, Game Night, and the upcoming Apple Studios movie Mayday.Margot Robbie joined the Monopoly movie last year as a producer through her production company LuckyChap, which is working with Hasbro Entertainment and Lionsgate on the project. The movie doesn't currently have any cast members attached to it.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Some Helldivers 2 players have complained about how Major Orders work, wishing that the rewards for successfully completing them were given only to players who participate in the mission, but Arrowhead responded that this approach could be problematic. Major Orders are large-scale objectives that require community participation to complete, though it's not entirely necessary to take part, as Helldivers 2 still rewards all players.

A Genshin Impact leak has revealed that the upcoming five-star Electro user, Varesa, has received a couple of powerful buffs. Genshin Impact has officially released Varesa's splash art and introduction, which is its way of announcing a new character for the next update.

A colony sim where you build, manage, and expand across an open galaxy. Keep NPCs occupied, or theyll develop autonomous behavioursleading to crime, chaos, or rebellion. Balance industrial growth with environmental preservation, enforce laws, and defend your colony from extra-terrestrial threats!

This passed the assertionint foo_handle_id = m->GetTypeIdByDecl("foo@");assert(is_objhandle(foo_handle_id));But this didn'tint foo_handle_id = m->GetTypeInfoByDecl("foo@")->GetTypeId();assert(is_objhandle(foo_handle_id));The is_objhandle(int type_id) tests the asTYPEID_OBJHANDLE bit.

Trying to figure out whats causing slow frame rates in a PC is sort of like solving for a mysterious leak in your home. It could be the graphics card, or it could be slow storage, outdated RAM, the CPU one, or all of the above. While doing a complete overhaul is a surefire way to solve the problem, its expensive and not financially savvy in the slightest. Ideally, you isolate the issue, then methodically make upgrades as needed.So, yeah, my PC is getting old. The Monster Hunter Wilds graphics benchmark made me realize I would need some upgrades sooner than later (ideally, before Grand Theft Auto 6 and The Witcher 4), as it chugged and textures were slow to load in. My RTX 3070 Ti is an unlikely suspect, being the newest component in my setup, and otherwise not having issues running most games pretty well at 1440p resolution. On the other hand, my 2018 Intel Core i5-9600K is probably the culprit, having fallen below the minimum required specs in many new, graphically demanding games coming out.With the RTX 5070 Ti showing up at my doorstep, I didnt feel like I could fairly assess it with my preexisting hardware. So, this review took me on a journey during which I explored multiple hardware scenarios, ultimately ending up with a near-total rebuild of my PC. My testing illustrates how a new GPU can inject life into an outdated build, and how sometimes thats not the case. Additionally, I explored how much just refreshing the hardware surrounding the GPU can improve gaming performance, even if you have an old-ish graphics card. Plus, unlike fixing a leak, these are issues that I actually had fun solving.I compared anecdotal performance in Avowed and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, then checked out controlled benchmarks in Cyberpunk 2077 and Monster Hunter Wilds all in 1440p and on the highest possible settings, including ray tracing when possible.Giving my old PC a $750 implantHooking up the $749.99 Asus Prime RTX 5070 Ti to my preexisting rig required just a bit of tweaking; I needed to plug in an additional PCIe power cable into my 750 W power supply to connect to the GPU. My 3070 Ti uses just two PCIe cables from the power supply, while the RTX 50-series cards released so far require three. Once I powered it on, I reinstalled the Nvidia GPU driver and got to gaming. It was illuminating in ways I didnt expect to run games with the RTX 5070 Ti installed, as some titles performed much better than before, while others didnt improve enough over my RTX 3070 Tis performance to warrant the 5070 Tis high cost. It simply depends on what you play.In Avowed, which is a very CPU-intensive game (my 2018 CPU just made the cut for minimum spec requirements), the RTX 5070 Ti made it possible to get about 10 more frames per second on average than I was getting before. It went from a relatively stable 40-50 frames per second (with dips to about 35) in the 3070 Ti to a more stable 50-60 in the RTX 5070 Ti. Performance improved more once ray tracing was turned off, of course. Based on the miniscule performance gains in this title, Id be kicking myself for having paid for the RTX 5070 Ti.Cyberpunk 2077 is more reliant on the GPU than other open-world games Ive tried. And so the 5070 Ti delivers considerably improved performance despite being installed in my older system. With Frame Generation (FG, a feature exclusive to RTX 40- and newer GPUs) turned off, the 5070 Ti achieved an average of 57 frames per second in the games benchmark with ray tracing set to Psycho mode and the very intensive path-tracing graphical mode on (which does an even better job than ray tracing in terms of showing how light bounces realistically) more than doubling what my 3070 Ti could do. With FG turned on with the 5070 Ti, the frame rate shot up to 100. Having FG at my disposal is an incredible asset (especially in this aging PC), letting me keep the quality cranked up without sacrificing frame rate. But big graphically demanding games that are primarily taxing to GPUs, and not to CPUs as well, arent so common.To my surprise, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle ran well enough on my old rig with the 3070 Ti that I could have gotten through it without too much trouble. Despite bypassing errors about not having enough VRAM to run high graphical settings, it ran comfortably between 60-70 frames per second. With the RTX 5070 Ti, primed to take advantage of the new DLSS 4 update, there were plenty of new options to turn on, including path tracing, quality toggles for various ray-tracing effects, and Multi Frame Generation (MFG, exclusive to RTX 50-series cards, can display up to three AI-created frames for every one frame rendered traditionally). Performance shot up to about 130 frames per second without path tracing, and about 75 with it on.The most brutal test for my old system, as mentioned before, was none other than Monster Hunter Wilds. No matter the GPU, this game and its hardware benchmarks did not want to play nicely with my machine. The Intel i5 9600K is one generation below Wilds minimum specifications, and the downsides of not meeting it were less forgiving than I expected. Textures often loaded in slowly, and frame rates were anything but stable even with the RTX 5070 Ti installed. Neither GPU could achieve a stable 60 frames per second with all settings turned up, with the newer GPU adding just a handful of frames onto what the 3070 Ti could do. Frame Generation in the 5070 Ti greatly improved the performance, going up to 94 frames per second.In most cases, the RTX 5070 Tis improvements were noticeable in my old machine. But if I didnt have a near-total PC rebuild on the horizon, Id definitely regret buying it. As previously mentioned, I (responsibly for this review, but irresponsibly for my budget) lined myself up with some key upgrades to get the most out of the new GPU. I got an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X processor, 32 GB of much faster DDR5 RAM, and a modern motherboard totaling $399.99. I kept my old case, the power supply, and my PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSDs (full setup here).Naturally, the first thing I did with this brand-new setup was slot in the older RTX 3070 Ti. I wanted to see just how much a new CPU could uplift performance in the games I was playing, or not.New system, old GPUAvowed on this new system was a much smoother experience with the RTX 3070 Ti installed. The frame rate hung around in the 70s no matter the location (to reiterate, this is better than the performance I got with the 5070 Ti installed in my old system). If I was keen on keeping my GPU, or having a difficult time finding an RTX 5070 Ti in stock, Id be ecstatic with this improvement, to the point that I might not upgrade to this 50-series generation.That enthusiasm wore off quickly because, in Cyberpunk 2077, my upgrades made next to no difference to the frame rate. Good to know, but not surprising. Same goes for Indiana Jones; there were minor improvements, but nothing to write home about.Monster Hunter Wilds yielded some interesting improvements with the combo of the faster processor and memory. The jittery performance and texture pop-in was eliminated, and I was thrilled to wave goodbye to that mess. That said, it averaged out to a similar, but smoother-appearing frames rate as my older PC configuration. Whereas Id be miserable enduring the choppy gameplay I noted earlier with either GPU in my old build, I think I could tolerate this experience with the RTX 3070 Ti.Probably the part youve been waiting to readI finally let the RTX 5070 Ti get to work in the new configuration, and it felt like such a long time coming, what with all of the permutations Id been testing (and the fun but stressful weekend of PC building).There were monumental frame rate improvements in all of the games Id been testing. Avowed soared above 100 frames per second. It feels wonderful to play without staring at the frames per second counter. The 5070 Ti made short work of Cyberpunk 2077s most intense graphical settings, running it with path tracing, Psycho ray-tracing settings, and Multi Frame Generation (set to two frames generated by AI) at 124 frames per second. Doubling MFG to four frames resulted in performance going up to a whopping 219 frames per second. If you have a high-refresh-rate monitor that goes above 144 Hz, the 5070 Ti will let you squeeze more value out of your tech.Indiana Jones many ray-tracing features include extensive path tracing along with MFG, making it possible to experience the best visuals and a high frame rate. With all settings switched to their maximum values, I was able to get about 100 frames per second. Some people may be sensitive to the latency introduced by MFG, but so long as I kept it at 2x instead of 4x, things felt fine for me. Without MFG on, the 5070 Ti ran the game at a smooth 70 frames per second not bad.In the end, I solved my PC problems, and it runs better with or without the RTX 5070 Ti. Nvidia is positioning the RTX 5070 Ti as being a great card to update to from the RTX 3070 Ti, and The Verges review considers it to be on the level of an RTX 4080, but cheaper. I, too, can attest that its a great upgrade, and that itll be a good component to keep around for the next five years or so. But, for anyone out there whose PC components are already five or more years old, you might have bigger problems than just a GPU. And even a powerful GPU like this one cant magically make them go away.The Asus Prime RTX 5070 Ti is available to purchase from multiple retailers. It was tested using a retail unit provided by Nvidia. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can findadditional information about Polygons ethics policy here.

Its hard for me to believe that only 14 months ago, I didnt know what The Traitors was. But since I first smashed play on the Peacock reality series last January, Ive become obsessed watching every episode across five international versions, fan-casting future seasons, and even playing in a fantasy league for the currently airing third U.S. season. But all I ever really wanted to do is play the game myself. I spent much of last year brainstorming ways to try to turn family gatherings into an elaborate game of Traitors, a dream that I was never able to get off the ground. So, I resorted to looking into the official Traitors card and board games for easier options, only to determine that they fail to capture the true spirit of the game: yelling (largely baseless) accusations, making and breaking unsteady alliances, and most importantly unrestrained chaos.The Traitors is essentially a more theatrical version of Among Us, Werewolf, or Mafia, where a group of faithfuls are charged with banishing the hidden traitors, who themselves are tasked with choosing a faithful to murder each night. There are challenges to add gold to the prize pot, and to obtain shields, which guarantee players one night of safety from murder. But its the strategic murders and heated roundtables, where banishments are determined by majority vote, that make The Traitors so compelling, and that I wanted to experience firsthand.However, to recreate these elements means overcoming massive logistical obstacles one of the biggest being that in the show, murder victims are selected during secret meetings between the traitors while the faithfuls sleep. This is extremely difficult to pull off during a game that takes place over a matter of hours at someones apartment, as opposed to weeks at a Scottish castle-slash-airport Marriott hotel. (Having traitors coordinate through text was the best idea I came up with, and it was still a bad one.) Unable to think of a good solution, I had all but given up hope on living my Traitors fantasy until last fall, when my husband came home with Blood on the Clocktower, a massively popular social deduction game that I, admittedly, had never heard of.When he first tried explaining the rules in bed that night, I begged him to please, for the love of god, stop and let me sleep. But when I was well rested, he attempted again, and it became immediately clear that Clocktower was all the things I love about The Traitors (lying, yelling, roundtables, murrrrder) and none of the parts that bore me (challenges, shields).Clocktower follows the same basic format as The Traitors, Among Us, and other games of that ilk. To start, anywhere between five to 20 players are divided into two teams, good and evil, through a secret token draw organized by the person running the game, dubbed the storyteller. From there, Clocktower moves through all the familiar phases of gameplay: talking to fellow players and exchanging information during the day, gathering in a circle during the evening to nominate players for execution (Clocktowers version of banishment), and then shifting into the sleep portion, during which a member of the evil team (known as a demon) picks a player to murder while everyone else closes their eyes.While all of that is perfectly in line with The Traitors gameplay I longed for, once I played Clocktower for the first time, I was surprised to discover how much I loved the ways in which the game deviates. In Clocktower, every player is randomly assigned a character. This not only determines which team youre on, but each also comes with a special ability some of which have a shelf life or limited use, while others can be used for the duration of the game. A lot of the characters have abilities that are boons for their team such as the Undertaker, who learns the roles of players who are executed while other abilities further obfuscate the truth.For example, if youre the Fortune Teller, every night youre alive, you choose two players and learn if one is a demon. However, there is one good player that registers as a demon, meaning even the Fortune Teller cant trust their own intel. Then theres my favorite character, the Drunk, who is told theyre playing as another role, but is actually being fed misinformation from the very start. (Tom Sandoval would make an excellent Drunk, since hes already an expert in playing with a humiliating level of misplaced confidence.)Characters and abilities like these work to sow utter chaos, even when the players arent intending to do so. Youre never going to be able to bottle the special kind of mental decay that comes with playing a game in complete isolation for weeks like you see happen on The Traitors. This close contact and lack of distractions are how players become so delusionally convinced of their evidence (and I use that word loosely) against fellow players even if that evidence amounts to nothing beyond that another player didnt look surprised enough at the breakfast, or maybe they looked too surprised, or any of the other flimsy nonsense players stand on business for. But the roles in Clocktower do an impressive job of speedrunning this paranoia, with the various abilities giving players plenty of evidence (again, loose usage) to present during nominations with steadfast conviction, while also providing plenty of reasons other players shouldnt trust a word out of their mouths.This year, The Traitors U.S. and U.K. have introduced a similar mechanic to Clocktowers character abilities, granting one player the power of the Seer, which allows them to find out the alignment of another player. Unlike the Fortune Teller, the Seer has no doubt that their information is accurate. However, without anyone else to verify the Seers claims, pure havoc ensued when this played out on U.K., and Im hoping for the same when the Seer goes into play during Thursdays U.S. finale.Of course, Clocktowers characters arent just good for chaos. Theyre also where the best parts of strategy come in. There are endless creative ways to use your abilities, and the character youre given can have a big influence on who you choose to put your trust in. Figuring out how much to reveal about your character and to whom can also make or break your game. Many players choose to lie about their character and bluff being another, since outing yourself as someone with a powerful ability is a surefire way to find yourself at the top of the evil teams hit list. In my first game, I drew the Fortune Teller and early on chose to reveal my role to strengthen my case against another player. (I knew the risk, but I couldnt help myself. I got caught up in the drama!) Unsurprisingly, I was murdered that evening, with the added sting that I was wrong about the person I accused of being a demon.And thats where the biggest change from The Traitors comes in: Death isnt the end of anyones game. In Clocktower, once youre dead, you become a ghost. This means you still get to play the game, but with some restrictions, like only getting one vote to use for the entire rest of the game. Being able to play as a ghost brings further nuance to Clocktower strategy, as some players might even ask to be killed since they could gain information that way.Once I learned that in Clocktower, even dead players got to stay in the game, I knew Id finally found what Id been looking for. Because logistics aside, its hard to convince a group of people to come over knowing that they might spend more time commuting to play a game than actually playing it. And so, last weekend, I finally achieved my lifelong 14-month dream: I threw myself a Traitors-themed birthday party, with the centerpiece being a game of lightly reskinned Clocktower (think: ostentatious headbands, roundtable needle drops, a wall of player portraits, and a pyramid of gelt for the winners).Some of my friends are Traitors fans, some had heard of Clocktower but never played it, but everyone quickly picked up the game and fully committed. Alliances and strategies were formed, but thrown into flux or fully shattered after turbulent roundtables. Nobody was above slight emotional manipulation, and loved ones werent afraid to turn on each other. We yelled. We schemed. We doubted each other, and at times ourselves and rightfully so. During the final reveal, in which the remaining four players revealed their alignment, a chorus of screams erupted when we discovered wed all been duped, and the traitor walked away with a purse full of gelt.Playing The Traitors even if it wasnt even technically The Traitors was all the chaos and entertainment I had been dreaming of. Just like when I caught the Traitors bug last year, Im now down bad for Clocktower and this bug seems to be contagious. As soon as the game wrapped, almost everyone began asking when we could play again. This time I just hope Im the one doing the killing, and Im far from alone in that. It turns out murdering your friends is a popular love language.

This article is a sponsored by DebugBearThe Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) in Core Web Vitals measures how quickly a website loads from a visitors perspective. It looks at how long after opening a page the largest content element becomes visible. If your website is loading slowly, thats bad for user experience and can also cause your site to rank lower in Google.When trying to fix LCP issues, its not always clear what to focus on. Is the server too slow? Are images too big? Is the content not being displayed? Google has been working to address that recently by introducing LCP subparts, which tell you where page load delays are coming from. Theyve also added this data to the Chrome UX Report, allowing you to see what causes delays for real visitors on your website!Lets take a look at what the LCP subparts are, what they mean for your website speed, and how you can measure them.The Four LCP SubpartsLCP subparts split the Largest Contentful Paint metric into four different components:Time to First Byte (TTFB): How quickly the server responds to the document request.Resource Load Delay: Time spent before the LCP image starts to download.Resource Load Time: Time spent downloading the LCP image.Element Render Delay: Time before the LCP element is displayed.The resource timings only apply if the largest page element is an image or background image. For text elements, the Load Delay and Load Time components are always zero.How To Measure LCP SubpartsOne way to measure how much each component contributes to the LCP score on your website is to use DebugBears website speed test. Expand the Largest Contentful Paint metric to see subparts and other details related to your LCP score.Here, we can see that TTFB and image Load Duration together account for 78% of the overall LCP score. That tells us that these two components are the most impactful places to start optimizing.Whats happening during each of these stages? A network request waterfall can help us understand what resources are loading through each stage.The LCP Image Discovery view filters the waterfall visualization to just the resources that are relevant to displaying the Largest Contentful Paint image. In this case, each of the first three stages contains one request, and the final stage finishes quickly with no new resources loaded. But that depends on your specific website and wont always be the case.Time To First ByteThe first step to display the largest page element is fetching the document HTML. We recently published an article about how to improve the TTFB metric.In this example, we can see that creating the server connection doesnt take all that long. Most of the time is spent waiting for the server to generate the page HTML. So, to improve the TTFB, we need to speed up that process or cache the HTML so we can skip the HTML generation entirely.Resource Load DelayThe resource we want to load is the LCP image. Ideally, we just have an <img> tag near the top of the HTML, and the browser finds it right away and starts loading it.But sometimes, we get a Load Delay, as is the case here. Instead of loading the image directly, the page uses lazysize.js, an image lazy loading library that only loads the LCP image once it has detected that it will appear in the viewport.Part of the Load Delay is caused by having to download that JavaScript library. But the browser also needs to complete the page layout and start rendering content before the library will know that the image is in the viewport. After finishing the request, theres a CPU task (in orange) that leads up to the First Contentful Paint milestone, when the page starts rendering. Only then does the library trigger the LCP image request.How do we optimize this? First of all, instead of using a lazy loading library, you can use the native loading="lazy" image attribute. That way, loading images no longer depends on first loading JavaScript code.But more specifically, the LCP image should not be lazily loaded. That way, the browser can start loading it as soon as the HTML code is ready. According to Google, you should aim to eliminate resource load delay entirely.Resources Load DurationThe Load Duration subpart is probably the most straightforward: you need to download the LCP image before you can display it!In this example, the image is loaded from the same domain as the HTML. Thats good because the browser doesnt have to connect to a new server.Other techniques you can use to reduce load delay:Use a modern image format that provides better compression.Load images at a size that matches the size they are displayed at.Deprioritize other resources that might compete with the LCP image.Element Render DelayThe fourth and final LCP component, Render Delay, is often the most confusing. The resource has loaded, but for some reason, the browser isnt ready to show it to the user yet!Luckily, in the example weve been looking at so far, the LCP image appears quickly after its been loaded. One common reason for render delay is that the LCP element is not an image. In that case, the render delay is caused by render-blocking scripts and stylesheets. The text can only appear after these have loaded and the browser has completed the rendering process.Another reason you might see render delay is when the website preloads the LCP image. Preloading is a good idea, as it practically eliminates any load delay and ensures the image is loaded early.However, if the image finishes downloading before the page is ready to render, youll see an increase in render delay on the page. And thats fine! Youve improved your website speed overall, but after optimizing your image, youve uncovered a new bottleneck to focus on.LCP Subparts In Real User CrUX DataLooking at the Largest Contentful Paint subparts in lab-based tests can provide a lot of insight into where you can optimize. But all too often, the LCP in the lab doesnt match whats happening for real users!Thats why, in February 2025, Google started including subpart data in the CrUX data report. Its not (yet?) included in PageSpeed Insights, but you can see those metrics in DebugBears Web Vitals tab.One super useful bit of info here is the LCP resource type: it tells you how many visitors saw the LCP element as a text element or an image.Even for the same page, different visitors will see slightly different content. For example, different elements are visible based on the device size, or some visitors will see a cookie banner while others see the actual page content.To make the data easier to interpret, Google only reports subpart data for images.If the LCP element is usually text on the page, then the subparts info wont be very helpful, as it wont apply to most of your visitors.But breaking down text LCP is relatively easy: everything thats not part of the TTFB score is render-delayed.Track Subparts On Your Website With Real User MonitoringLab data doesnt always match what real users experience. CrUX data is superficial, only reported for high-traffic pages, and takes at least 4 weeks to fully update after a change has been rolled out.Thats why a real-user monitoring tool like DebugBear comes in handy when fixing your LCP scores. You can track scores across all pages on your website over time and get dedicated dashboards for each LCP subpart.You can also review specific visitor experiences, see what the LCP image was for them, inspect a request waterfall, and check LCP subpart timings. Sign up for a free trial.ConclusionHaving more granular metric data available for the Largest Contentful Paint gives web developers a big leg up when making their website faster.Including subparts in CrUX provides new insight into how real visitors experience your website and can tell if the optimizations youre considering would really be impactful.

The renovation of Sutton House in Sutton, Qubec by Pelletier de Fontenay does not just preserve history it transmutes it through its use of white cementitious coating, turning what was once a disparate collection of additions into a unified sculptural presence in the landscape. Rather than following the conventional preservation playbook of emphasizing material contrasts between old and new, the architects developed custom white mineral finishes that unify the buildings multiple iterations while allowing the underlying textures to remain legible. This approach creates a palimpsest effect where, like an ancient manuscript that has been written over, the original text still shows through.The decision to use hemp insulation a bio-sourced material known for its breathability and humidity control represents a marriage of traditional building techniques with contemporary environmental consciousness. This approach extends to the interior, where a sconce made of repurposed timber from the original structure serves as both functional lighting and a testament to the buildings history. The additions deep walls and thick roof echo the primitive heaviness of the original structure, while three distinct blocks frame views of the landscape.The house employs passive strategies that would have been familiar to the original builders thermal mass, natural ventilation, solar orientation but updates them with contemporary technology. The limestone flooring sourced from local quarries serves dual purposes it connects the building to its regional context while acting as thermal mass for passive solar heating.The designers expand by saying: The stepped configuration of the ground floor also helped lower the buildings overall footprint, while creating a natural airflow between the spaces towards the upper level. In the summer, this helps to naturally ventilate the common spaces, while in winter, the warm air is captured and redistributed through the house via the high-efficiency heat recovery mechanical system.Photography by James Brittain.

Most challenging (and disappointing) things about working in Content Design.Continue reading on UX Collective