Ark server switch: Optimus — ARK: Survival Evolved (Nintendo Switch) Co-Op Information

Worthplaying | ‘Ark: Survival Evolved’ Ultimate Survivor Edition Comes to Nintendo Switch Next Week

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Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Genre: Action/Adventure
Publisher:

Studio Wildcard

Developer:

Abstraction Games

Release Date:

Nov. 1, 2022

PC gamer, WorthPlaying EIC, globe-trotting couch potato, patriot, ’80s headbanger, movie watcher, music lover, foodie and man in black — squirrel!

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‘Ark: Survival Evolved’ Ultimate Survivor Edition Comes to Nintendo Switch Next Week — Trailer

by Rainier on Oct. 27, 2022 @ 2:42 p.m. PDT

Ark: Survival Evolved is an open-world dinosaur survival game where players fight for every breath amongst the most ferocious creatures to ever walk the earth.

Powered by Unreal Engine 4, Ark: Survival Evolved takes on the survival genre with a unique blend of emergent multiplayer cooperation and competition.

In ARK: Survival Evolved, survivors wake up stranded, naked, freezing, and starving on a mysterious island where they must hunt, harvest, craft items, grow crops, and build shelters to survive in every biome. Survivors will tame, train, and ride more than 100 stunning dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, including gargantuan creatures on a scale never before seen in video games! In every available biome — Jungle, Snow, Swamp, Redwood, and Desert — you’ll be able to fly an armed Pteranodon squadron over the snow-capped mountains, race through a thick jungle with your pack of trained Raptors, tromp through a fortified enemy base with a convoy of gigantic Brontosaurus, or chase down prey on the back of a raging T-Rex.

Use cunning strategy and tactics to tame and ride the many dinosaurs and other primeval creatures roaming the dynamic, persistent ecosystems across land, sea, air, and even underground. Build your character’s strengths and gain items, skills, and pet creatures using in-depth role-playing systems. Start a tribe with hundreds of other players to survive and dominate competing tribes…and ultimately discover the ARK’s true purpose.

 ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition on Nintendo Switch ($49. 99) and the free major ARK update will release worldwide on November 1, 2022.

The major “overhaul” update for ARK: Survival Evolved on Switch vastly improves visual quality and performance, drastically reduces loading times, adds numerous QoL features like a virtual cursor for improved inventory management, and much more. ARK: Ultimate Survival Edition is the definitive collection on Switch that includes all upcoming patch improvements as well as all ARK expansion packs, launching Day 1 with Scorched Earth; with Aberration, Extinction, and Genesis Parts 1 & 2 coming in subsequent months.

Exclusive to Nintendo Switch! ARK: Dinosaur Discovery mode is tailor-made to guide younger players through the world of ARK in a kid-friendly, non-violent, dino-facted-filled adventure! Featuring simplified controls that can be played on a single Joy-Con, young gamers can learn about the real-life dinosaurs featured in ARK and unlock illustrated Dino Books filled with facts narrated by actress Madeline Madden as the voice of HLN-A.  ARK: Dinosaur Discovery will be offered as a free download for all ARK: Survival Evolved owners on Switch. A separate downloadable version of the game will also appear on the Nintendo eShop.

Additionally, everyone who already owns the ARK: Survival Evolved base game on Nintendo Switch will receive this complete revamp of functionality, graphics, and optimization. Studio Wildcard has contracted with a talented third party developer who is rewriting the entire ARK Switch code from the ground-up, developing it on the latest version of Unreal Engine 4. All existing Switch player progress and Save data will be maintained.

The ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition is completely updated with all of the content and functionality from the home console versions of the game, adding thousands of hours of gameplay!

Development of the Switch title has been taken over by Grove Street Games. We’ve been working on this improved version of ARK: Survival Evolved all year long and are excited for players to get their hands on it. We’ll be supporting this game with content updates and necessary fixes for a long time to come. If you need help with anything, then please visit here where you can access our Knowledge Base and fill out a Support Ticket for assistance with a specific issue.

Save Data — We have gone to great effort to ensure that all save data carries forward to the new, patched version of the game. As a precautionary step, we recommend that you do the following before downloading the patch:

  • Remove items from Hot Bar slots 9 & 10
  • Do not have any in-progress tames or crafting recipes

Players will keep all of their items, tames and structures. Players may experience the following issues due to the change in save data files:

  • Foliage may re-appear inside your base
  • You may lose any custom Options settings
  • Any structures left ‘on’ will automatically be turned ‘off’
  • Fog of War will be reset on your in-game map
  • Your Level Up & Engram Points may need to be reapplied
  • You may need to re-discover any previously unlocked Explorer Notes

Servers — Prior to launch, we are adjusting the maximum player count of all Official Servers to 40. This is to ensure a smooth multiplayer experience for all players at launch. We will be paying close attention to server performance and will consider raising the player cap post-launch.

Official Servers will not be wiped. They will be temporarily taken offline 24 hours prior to launch to be updated. A precise time and date will be announced shortly.

Unofficial Servers will be available for rent from Nitrado at the game’s launch. 

The Host/Join Menu has been renamed to Single Player, where we have refined the menus to provide a more streamlined experience to starting a Single Player game. While Single Player is fully present, please note that Local Play and Non-Dedicated Sessions are removed from the game at launch. They need a little more time in development to work out some issues, and we intend to bring them back in a post-release patch.

Studio Wildcard/Grove Street Games plan on releasing Aberration in December 2022, followed by Extinction in Q1 2023 and then Genesis Parts 1 & 2 in Q2 2023.  

Key Features

  • TAME, TRAIN, RIDE, and BREED DINOSAURS: Command the most amazing creatures from throughout Earth’s biological history, with more than 100 dinosaurs and creatures planned for full launch. Use cunning strategy and tactics to tame and ride the many dinosaurs and other primeval creatures roaming the dynamic, persistent ecosystems across land, sea, air, and even underground.
  • CRAFT AND BUILD: Using any means necessary to survive, players will craft weapons, clothes, and items, and build shelters. Plant, harvest, build, level-up, and customize everything visually and functionally, including procedurally-generated RPG statistics for creatures, characters, resources, clothing, gear, and weapons both primitive and modern.
  • DISCOVER: Explore a massive living ecosystem and find the means to survive, thrive, and possibly escape the ARK Island.
  • TEAM UP TO SURVIVE: Start a tribe with dozens of other players in a large-scale multiplayer online first person environment to survive and dominate competing tribes. ..and to ultimately discover ARK’s true purpose.
  • JOIN A TRIBE: The ‘Tribe’ system encourages cooperation, by supporting dynamic parties to share resources, XP, and re-spawn points. Other players are organizing rebel tribes to accumulate resources, experience, re-spawn points, and to construct sprawling villages and cities, with technology spanning the primitive stone-age to the modern electric-powered era and beyond. And they will fight to destroy anything they see as a threat.
  • A LARGER UNIVERSE: Travel between Online ARKs to meet new players, face new threats, and discover new civilizations!

ARK: Survival Evolved is available for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC (Steam).

More articles about Ark: Survival Evolved

ARK Ultimate Survivor Edition devs on packing the whole game into a Switch port

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  • Interview
  • Video

We spoke with Grove Street Games producer Jordan Kleeman at PAX West 2022 about bringing everything in ARK to the Nintendo Switch.

1

ARK: Survival Evolved has been around for quite a few years now on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation consoles and amassed quite a bit of expansions and added content as part of the fun. Original developer Studio Wildcard is even prepping the next iteration with ARK 2. That said, there’s still plenty of fun to be had in the original and even Switch players will be able to enjoy it soon with ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition. We recently spoke with the Switch port developers at Grove Street Games about what it’s been like to pack such a massive game and its expansions into the Switch and get it to run well.

It’s been no easy task, according to Grove Street producer Jordan Kleeman. Not only is ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition set to bring Switch 1:1 in content and features with Xbox and PlayStation builds, but it will feature new content as well. The new Scorched Earth Ascension content will be available to Switch players along with everything else that came before, and the developers have worked hard to up the resolution and make it run at a smooth 30fps in both Docked and Handheld Modes.


According to Kleeman, this was a big opportunity for Grove and Studio Wildcard to tie up most of the loose ends in ARK: Survival Evolved. It was a chance to tie a bow on the current game and also give a lot of players what they’ve been asking for across years of play. As such, the Ultimate Survivor Edition is meant to be the most complete and comprehensive version of ARK. For those who savor a variety of play, Grove is also bringing PVP, PVE, and Private servers to the game (you can rent a server to use for your own purposes, even on Switch).

ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition is set to arrive on Nintendo Switch on October 25, 2022. It’s available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S as well. Want more videos like this? Be sure to check out our YouTube channels at Shacknews and GamerHubTV for the latest interviews, reviews, gameplay, unboxing, and more on the latest video games, technology, and toys.

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at [email protected] and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.

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How to Optimize Movies and TV Shows for Smooth Plex Playback

UNCACHED CONTENT

Working with Plex Media Server is generally pretty easy unless you’re streaming a lot when you’re away from home or your server hardware isn’t powerful enough. Luckily, Plex makes it very easy to optimize your media for smooth playback.

Why You Should Optimize (And When You Shouldn’t)


RELATED:



How to set up Plex (and watch movies on any device)

The purpose of this lesson is to take advantage of

Plex’s

great optimization options, a godsend for those who really

need

it’s a waste of time for those who don’t. With that in mind, we definitely recommend that you read this introductory section carefully to determine if you need to optimize anything at all.

Plex is centered around two applications: the server (where your media is stored) and the client (the application you use to watch your media, usually on your TV, phone, or other set-top box). The Plex Media Server central software manages almost every aspect of interacting with Plex — the clients simply act as an interface to whatever the server is serving. All the hard work is done on the server side — streaming, streaming transcoding when needed, etc. — and it’s very CPU intensive.

If you have a good processor (at least an Intel Core i3 or equivalent, preferably a better one) and a fantastic broadband connection with great download speeds, then you probably don’t even need to optimize your media. If you have great hardware and have never noticed anything wrong with playback, this guide is not for you.

On the other hand, there are many scenarios where underpowered hardware or limited internet speeds can really detract from the quality of your Plex experience. If you’re experiencing choppy playback, regular buffering, and other such issues, optimization can save the day.

This is different from Plex transcoding, which converts your video to the perfect format on the fly. Instead, Plex’s optimizations convert your media ahead of time, so there’s no CPU usage when it’s time to watch your media — the video is already optimized and ready to be sent to the client.

Wait, you could say nothing is free except for warranties, so what’s the catch? The catch is that the optimized video is stored as a separate video file along with other media files and, you guessed it, takes up space. It’s not as much as the original video file (because the optimization process reduces both video quality and file size to make streaming easier), but depending on the size of your library and the video settings you choose to optimize, it can add up quickly. .

Let’s see how you can enable optimization, tweak settings, and prevent excessive disk usage so that your optimization experiment doesn’t take up all the free space on your media server.

How to Optimize Your Plex Media Server Files

Before proceeding, we strongly recommend that you start small with experimentation. While you can immediately start optimizing your entire library with just a few clicks (if you know where to look), the optimization process is both CPU and storage intensive. You don’t want to scroll through a huge library only to find that the settings you’ve chosen don’t really suit your needs. So before optimizing everything, be sure to select a few movies or a TV show season and experiment! (Seriously,

start small!

)

To start optimizing, open the web dashboard of your Plex Media Server. Select a video library. It doesn’t matter which library (TV shows or movies) because the optimization menus are the same for all videos, whether you want to optimize a single season of TV shows or an entire collection of movies.

To demonstrate the options, we’re going to optimize one movie file to start with: a beautiful rip that we’ve created from

In Search of the Lost Ark

it’s absolutely huge, and therefore will always be transcoded for playback on mobile devices. You can choose any movie from your collection to follow, but the bigger the better, as it will be easier for you to see the change in file size and video quality when comparing files before and after.

When you find the media you want to optimize, hover over the entry and click on the three dots that appear in the bottom right corner.

Select «Optimize» from the pop-up menu. (Note this, the «Optimize» option is never open, but is always hidden in a small menu of additional options «…».)

Here you will find the optimization menu. We want to draw your attention to two important things.

First, you’ll find a video quality drop-down menu. Second, you’ll find a toggle as well as a drop-down menu where the optimized versions are stored: in the source items folder, or all together in a separate /Plex Versions/ folder, anywhere you choose. Where to store media is entirely a personal choice. Maybe you want everything to stay together in one folder, maybe you want to have a separate folder or drive with optimized copies.

In terms of video quality, you can choose from the following options, including «Custom» which offers finer control over the final product.

Let’s say we wanted to create a lower quality version, but still in HD. Let’s call this selection «Low HD Mobile», select «Universal Mobile» from the middle dropdown menu and then «2Mbps 720p» which is the minimum HD we can use. A quick note on the «Universal Mobile» option — there’s also «Android», «iOS», «Xbox One» and other presets that should specifically optimize video for clients on those devices, but to be honest, we’ve never noticed much of a difference. when we used them.

Once you’ve made your choice, click the big orange «Optimize» button in the corner. A pop-up window will indicate that your media is being optimized.

If you follow the link in the popup or click the status icon on the top navigation bar and then select «Conversion» as shown below, you will see the progress. If you have more than one item in the queue, you can drag individual entries to move them to the front of the queue.

For large files such as high bitrate HD movies, the process

slow

goes even on good iron. On our multi-core server, transcoding this movie alone took about 20 minutes. So, once you’ve figured out what settings you need to optimize, this job is best left outside of business hours.

After the conversion is complete, we can take a look at how the file size has changed. In our case, the source file was a 1080p video with a file size of 8.33 GB; the optimized version is a 720p video with a file size of 1.53 GB. As we noted above, the results will depend on the settings you choose, but in this case we have reduced the file size by 544% and now the entire video is pre-encoded for future viewing. Both our network and our CPU need to carry a lighter load when we want to transmit it from afar.

Now that we’ve done a little experiment with one file to show you how it all works, let’s see how we can automate the whole process — those are useful ways.

Advanced Plex Optimization: Filters make life easier

Choosing one movie to optimize is great if you’re manually choosing the movie you want to watch away from home, but as a practical matter (especially if you have multiple users on your Plex Media Server), manually optimizing is tedious.

Here is very

very

, a handy little trick appears. When you’re browsing your Plex media collection, you can bring up the optimization menu at any time, and whatever you’re looking at, like a filtered search or a specific category, becomes the target of the optimization rule you’re about to create.

A great example of where this trick can come in handy is the On Deck TV show category, which shows upcoming TV shows based on the show you’ve been watching. The screenshot below shows what we observed

Adventure Time

as well as

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

. Instead of optimizing

each

episode of the entire show, we tell Plex to only optimize the episodes we haven’t watched yet. We’ll click on On Deck to see the category in more detail.

In the «On Deck» detail view, click the «…» icon and select Optimize.

Here you can set the quality you want, as we just did, but you can also (now that you’re working with more than one item) toggle entries like «Unviewed Only» and «Limit to [X]» as shown below .

In addition to applying these kinds of filters to the On Deck category, you can also apply them to other toolbar categories such as Recently Added TV Shows, Recently Added Movies, and any combination of filters you can think of. with in Plex.

In the screenshot below, we have filtered our movies by date added, which shows the most recent movies added to the server.

By clicking the «…» icon and creating an optimization entry while the view is in this state, we can create an automatic rule that automatically optimizes the most recent movies added to our movie library. Remember that whatever representation you have (and/or what filter you apply to get that representation) will be the basis of the optimization rule you create.

Finally, the last stop on our tour. Under Settings > Server in the dashboard, you will notice a new entry in the left navigation column.

Now that you’ve started optimizing your content, there’s an «Optimized Versions» entry where you can see all the media you’ve optimized, delete individual entries, or delete all optimized versions in one fell swoop with the big red button. The only thing to keep in mind here is that when you delete an optimization rule, you delete all the optimized versions created with it. So if you don’t want to erase all optimized versions (or just want to change future versions or how long they will be kept), hover over the rule and click the pencil icon.

You can then just edit the entry (as if you just created it) instead of erasing all the progress you’ve made (and all the cpu cycles you burned in the process).

It takes a little time to learn how to optimize things to determine exactly which settings are best for your needs, but once you have solid optimization rules in place, it’s all easy and forgotten — no more video freezing or buffering.

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