#intended just for function and in creating these spaces in video games it forces you to engage with it stylistically

[mo0l]

idk if its just me but something about exploring office building spaces in virtual spaces is rly like exhilirating to me,,, maybe its like taking an environment thats normally quite foreign to me and making it like a playground,,,, but idk in general doing this with all sorts of modern day architecture really hits me in an emotional way,,,, something abt walking around the stanley parables environments, or like office levels in half life mods, the map for doom thats just the tiny seinfeld apartment with an insane amount of detail,,,,, i think i may just have permanent source engine custom map brainrot but something abt this shit,,,, i wanna just explore environments like these and play with my friends,,,, i like the idea of just existing in places outside of their intended function,,,, like imagine hanging out in an office cubicle building with ur tranny friends and playing in that space,,,, roleplaying an office worker or boss/employee relations as an improv bit or a kink set up to fucking or drawing on the walls, rolling up a skinny tranny in a carpet like a burrito and rolling her around the floors, hide and seek,,,, i have such a desire to use an office space as a playground, its so personified in its own way, its own environment, even if its aesthetic is kind of the pure absence of any personality thats an interesting aesthetic too! maybe this is a cope ive developed subconciously to hype myself up for my inevitable future of working towards an office job,,, or maybe im just really autistic and it is naturally appealing in some weird unexplainable way,,, probably both

[pan-matsuri]

Just learned about auto-dubbing on Youtube videos. There is no way currently to disable this feature as a viewer, which means that some videos are no longer able to be viewed as the original creator intended. I think this is a bad thing!

Generative AI is not worth the drawbacks for what limited benefits it may currently provide. Big tech has this fascination with it but is unable to define to what end it is being pursued. I've read plenty of literature, attended classes and guest lectures, and I've never felt that I recieved any good answers to the question "why are we doing this?".

I sincerely hope we enter another AI Winter because I'm so tired of this risky technology being forced on people. In just the last year, generative AI has transformed creative spaces in a very bad way. We used to create and share art for the simple sake of expression, and now generative AI has only exacerbated the notion that the goal is to create content to be monetized. Everything has to be about productivity and I'm so sick of that mindset that is so prevalent among my peers in computer science.

I argued in a paper once that AI research misses the point. It plays Go and Chess to win, but that's not really the reason why people invented those games. It creates images and sounds, but it doesn't really understand why humans spend so much time doing that ourselves. AI research doesn't seek to understand the world. Rather, it primarily seeks to optimize it.

Generative AI is soulless. That which is created by it is uncaring, unfeeling, and often incorrect. Researchers spend so much time and money trying to understand why it even functions the way it does. It is clearly not ready for general use and is a dangerous addition to a world already gripped by a crisis of authority.

It is too much to ask our leaders in business or politics to suddenly be compelled by morals or ethics; for too long, they have shown that they clearly do not care about anything past their own bank accounts. So instead, we need to reject this technology ourselves.

If you are a creator, please consider disabling auto-dubbing on your channel. Filter out AI-generated content on any art gallery sites you visit. Boycott the use of applications like ChatGPT or Character.AI that are built on large language models.

Speak to a neighbor. Draw a picture. Write a story.

We don't need generative AI.

[raeeeskjaan]

Reward Games: Where by Engage in Matches Intent

With today’s a digital surroundings, pay back video game titles include blossomed to be a exciting blend of activity in addition to motivator. Most of these video game titles go higher than the more common perception of engage in intended for enjoyment, featuring end users real-world gains inturn with regards to time period, proficiency, or maybe bridal. No matter if it’s gaining treat greeting cards, building up exclusive foreign exchange, or maybe obtaining items that store touchable importance, pay back video game titles usually are redefining the best way persons interact with game playing.

This surge connected with cell phone technological know-how in addition to app-based tools possesses competed a significant purpose from the attractiveness connected with pay back video game titles. People are now able to admittance most of these video game titles every time in addition to at any place, rotating bored minutes in prospects to help acquire. Not like typical video game titles of which solely deliver in-game success, pay back video game titles offer a good sense connected with advance of which provides away from the a digital earth.

What exactly forces quite a few to help pay back video game titles would be the emotion connected with outcome along with the likelihood of precise attain. No matter if it’s performing regular troubles, enjoying advertising, or maybe accomplishing unique milestones, end users usually are regularly inspired to interact with as a result of programs of which think both equally stimulating in addition to worthwhile trò chơi đổi thưởng. That type possesses tested in particular attractive to more radiant audience in addition to relaxed participants exactly who importance activity of which even offers anything in return for.

Coders connected with pay back video game titles have grown progressively more resourceful with the direction they offer incentives. Many deliver in-game currencies which might be traded intended for goods, while other people associate having real-world models to produce reductions, offers, or perhaps strong dollars winnings. That integration connected with game playing in addition to the business sector makes an exclusive ecosystem where by enjoyment in addition to functionality coexist.

Even so, this rising appeal of pay back video game titles likewise lifts significant criteria. People need to have to learn any time many people devote in addition to assure this profits usually are value the work. Only a few pay back video game titles were created similar, and many may perhaps exaggerate likely cash flow to help catch the attention of end users. Openness, fairness, in addition to end user safeguard are important to help developing trust in that living space.

Irrespective of most of these troubles, pay back video game titles characterize a fun filled frontier with a digital activity. Many people show you the way game playing is usually both equally fulfilling in addition to fruitful, featuring people an awareness of connected with intent together engage in. For many people, it’s not practically receiving this game—it’s in relation to doing just about every small connected with gameplay matter.

For the reason that game playing marketplace continues to innovate, pay back video game titles may very well mature with both equally complexity in addition to wide variety. While using the integration connected with blockchain technological know-how, decentralized companies, in addition to user-owned belongings, one's destiny assures all the more means intended for people to help gain from the in-game ordeals.

Pay back video game titles record this soul on the current gamer—curious, hooked up, in addition to in search of in excess of a excessive ranking. Within a earth where by time period is usually precious, most of these video game titles present you with a uncomplicated although strong proposition: engage in a bit, acquire a bit, and revel in this vacation along the route.

[captainmazzic]

So every now and again I get a message in my inbox asking about what I thought about such-and-such a thing in new canon, or if I’m intending on writing any meta or analysis on a particular subject in Star Wars. And sometimes I keep those messages sitting in my inbox for months (one has been sitting there for a little over a year), because I think, maybe I will feel comfortable doing in-depth meta again and I’ll wish I’d remembered what this message had asked. But as time goes by I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Okay. Real talk for a minute here. Bear with me as I’m long-winded and I don’t really have a concise way of communicating this. Potential political views and personal opinions on certain points in cinematic history below.

Short backstory first. I’m an older Star Wars fan. I was a tiny child when the last of the original trilogy came out, and both my parents are sci-fi nerds so I was practically raised on Star Wars. They are also tabletop RPG nerds so I was also raised on D&D and the like. So naturally when Star Wars tabletop RPGs were floating around I snapped them up and consumed them like candy. The novels were a natural extension of the RPGs, and I consumed those just as enthusiastically. The Expanded Universe was my bread and butter, and to this day I’m very nostalgic and fond of it even if most of it is quite laughably terrible.

Where am I going with this? Everything is a product of their time. The original trilogy was created when George Lucas was a young liberal-minded fresh-faced director looking to change the world and make his mark. This was the 70s, war was awful, the government was evil, hippies and protests were everywhere, and the only thing that seemed to have any hope of changing the world were small bands of spunky misfits with a mission and a message. And that mentality is one that shows, in the original Star Wars films. Lucas designed the Empire as a representation of the United States circa the Vietnam War, just dressed up in the fashion and ceremony of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. (Sources: Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, Pp. 87-88; Michael Ondaatje, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, p.70) The message of the original trilogy boiled down to “the ability of a small group of people to defeat a gigantic power simply by the force of their convictions… no matter how small you are, you can defeat the overwhelmingly big power.” (quote: Walter Murch). He really struggled to get Star Wars onto the big screen, with a lot of setbacks and rejections, and many times when he thought it would never happen. But it did, and it was wildly successful. And I think in part it was because that message really spoke to people, and it didn’t hurt that it was wrapped up in a package with cool laser swords and explosions and space battles.

But then the 80s happened. And the 90s happened. And through that, what happened to Lucas is what happens to many people as they gain success, wealth, and fame as they grow older. The system started to work for him instead of against him. Suddenly the Powers That Be weren’t trying to suppress his ideas from getting to an audience; suddenly all those organizations that seemed so hell-bent on keeping him out were now enabling him to get and stay in, to conserve and gain influence; suddenly his opinion counted for so much it almost seemed god-like, especially in this galaxy far, far away that was unflowering under his direction and all-seeing eye. I guess the system isn’t so bad after all, eh?

And thus we have the Prequels. They can be a rollicking good time, but their message is muddled. Before them the books and the RPGs seemed to try as best they could to hold on to that earlier message of underdog vs. the powers-that-be (with the RPGs succeeding more often, imho), but they couldn’t continue in the face of their Ultimate Creator coming back in to make more SW movies. With the Prequels, suddenly the Old Republic is portrayed as noble and struggling instead of corrupt and dying, with a lot of hand-waving and “something something well actually” in regards to the role of the Jedi, the nature of the Senate, etc. There’s mixed messages where sometimes we get the old Star Wars back, with energetic groups of activists and freedom fighters trying to bring down the oppressors, but there’s also a lot of storytelling awkwardness where the audience is implored to trust the authorities and rely on the judgment of those with power over you within the same breath. This trend continues throughout the Clone Wars animation, and it is there that it becomes often so cognitively dissonant one wonders how you don’t get whiplash trying to follow whatever garbled message they think they’re communicating. And I think that’s where the Star Wars franchise really began to become a monster in its own right. Big businesses are hulking entities unto themselves, functioning like capitalist plutocracies within their host nations, and the Star Wars franchise is no exception. Whatever garbled message Lucas tried to send out with the Prequels grew amplified and even more confused with the Clone Wars, spread into the video games and the books, and continued to infect Star Wars as the franchise was turned over to the quintessential mega-plutocratic-empire, The Walt Disney Company.

And here we have the Sequel movies, the New Canon, and all of the disasters that come with them.

Disney walks a fine line between well-meaning family-friendly sugar and spice, and ruthless all-consuming hypercontroller of everything from arts and entertainment to food and clothes and government lobbying. Their bottom line is the dollar and the influence on – and power over – people’s lives that the dollar brings with it. Handing them a story whose original message was about people resisting the very kind of mammoth force that Disney embodies, and hoping that they will try to stay true to said original message, is hopeless and foolish at best and utterly disastrous at worst.

With the Sequels and subsequent movies, Disney pays good overt lip service to the original trilogy with things like Rogue One and the Rebels animation, which on the surface certainly do look like the same sort of message as the original trilogy. But scratch just below that surface and Disney is all about communicating that submitting to the authority of, say, higher Rebel command and following their orders even when it goes against your gut feeling (ex. Ezra Bridger in the Rebels animation), or that rebelling against an unjust government is only valid if it is done according to a strict but nebulous set of arbitrary rules and only if it is done in the service of a different unjust government that just happens to be slightly less evil than the one you’re trying to overthrow (ex. any iteration of the Old Republic ever, but I’m especially and particularly looking at you, Sequel-era Republic/Resistance and SWTOR Jedi/Republic).

And here is where I balk about ever doing meta on Star Wars again. I hate that this is the direction Star Wars is taking. I hate that New Canon feels like propaganda to me. I hate that I can’t enjoy any of this stuff if I take it for what it presents itself to be. I hate that the only way I truly can enjoy Star Wars now is by cherry-picking all of the tiny bits of window dressing that was pretty enough or interesting enough for me to want to look at it again, and very deliberately and consciously throwing out all the rest.

The experience of Star Wars that I create for myself is escapist and isolating, because it is so very tailor-made to what I can enjoy out of it now. When I go see a new Star Wars film or play a Star Wars game, I don’t actually see whatever story the franchise is trying to actually tell. I see bits and pieces that I can put together into something I can cope with better, something I can actually enjoy.

Examples include:

In Rebels, when the official franchise’s story killed off Maul. I cannot and will not acknowledge that, or function as though it happened. And I can’t really give my opinion on how not having Maul around will affect the future story, because I very literally do not care at all about any Star Wars where he is not in it.

In The Clone Wars, there are so many instances of Anakin Skywalker having agency and making decisions independent of the Jedi Council or without having their insipid code squarely in mind, where if he had made those decisions in a more realistic setting they would have turned out quite well, but what we get on screen is ominous background music and FoReShAdOwInG.

In The Last Jedi, I cannot fathom any reason why Yoda would be given the role that he was given, and find it a complete affront to Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, who had every motivation, every reason, every right to have that role instead. So I can’t see that scene without him in it. I just… I don’t see it. It didn’t happen that way, and I find I cannot discuss it as it’s presented on-screen. I have nothing to say.

In the Sequel media, both books and movies, Supreme Leader Snoke is portrayed as a one-dimensional Saturday morning cartoon villain whose intended role in the story is blurred as the story progresses, and his death is completely nonsensical in regards to the buildup of information that we as an audience have gleaned about him. We see pieces of evidence that he could have actually cared about Kylo Ren that go nowhere in the actual story, and he ends up just being a scapegoat that gets thrown away halfway through the second sequel movie. I choose to see more in his character than what we were given in Actual Canon™, and thus see him very differently than what common discourse would allow. Because of this, if I discuss Snoke in mixed company I know that I will be called out as someone who advocates for only the limited cardboard-character that is portrayed on screen, instead of for the internalized view that I have personally built for him.

I know everyone’s personal view of a character or characters is different, because we all have different points of view. But there is often some sort of vague common ground in their portrayal that the author or storyteller was originally going for, that most people usually pick up on and base their opinions around. But what if some of the key characteristics that make up a character are just… things you choose not to see or are incapable of seeing, and your own personal view of that character becomes almost entirely different from the “original”? Probably the most benign example I can think of is Hera Syndulla. If I take what I see of her in canon, she infuriates me with how she treats her crew. But if I just decide that such-and-such a conversation never happened, or her decisions on such-and-such a mission were different than the on-screen one, she essentially becomes an alternate-universe version of herself. Only that this version is one that I can tolerate, and it is the only version I see anymore.

How does one communicate that my entire experience of Star Wars is as an AU?

And on and on it goes. Discussing meta and Actual Canon Events™ as portrayed on screen and on printed page has become nothing but a migraine headache to me. I cannot engage in discourse, because I am very much not seeing what everyone else is seeing and talking about, nor do I care to. I just… I can’t keep talking about the same stupid things over and over again. I can’t keep screaming into the void about the unsustainability of the Sith or the Jedi, about the complete inequality and corruption that would have to be absolutely omnipresent in the Republic for it to even be remotely realistic even by cartoon standards, about the inevitability of the Republic turning into an Empire, about the weird dissonance given to the concept of the Force that would end up making both the Jedi and the Sith’s case baseless and weak, etc. etc. ETC. It’s exhausting, it’s stressful, and for something that I’m here to try to enjoy, it’s not even remotely enjoyable.

The very core of the matter is that I love the Star Wars universe. I love the worlds, I love the aliens, I love the ships and the droids and the technology and the concept of the Force. I love the characters. I love all of these things, and sometimes I even love the plots and stories (thank you Chuck Wendig and Timothy Zahn). But I just can’t enjoy digging into the meta of it anymore.

So if you like what I post of my own personal Star Wars-brand AU, by all means dig right in. But I don’t think I can do anymore general meta or discourse. I’m sticking with fanart and fanfic.

[poizegames]

How an extraordinary arrangement Do a Virtual Reality App Cost?

In 2022, nobody considers computer generated reality with regards to video games or entertainment least difficult. Of way, VR fundamentally based games with totally vivid encounters are exceptionally renowned, and a significant number of them are created at regular intervals. In any case, augmented reality is demonstrating its cost in numerous different ventures - medical services, tutoring, web based business, particular preparation, sports, naval force, etc.

Computer generated reality, no matter what its fairly steep beginning cost, can essentially diminish the expense of your business through giving virtual regions without a need to reproduce them inside the actual world or visit to the genuine sites. Nowadays, we can harm down the expense of a Virtual reality application development to show what it incorporates and what the utility added substances mean for the entire cost.

The Kind of VR Apps

Permit's start with the sort of the VR application you are making arrangements to develop. The kind of item you expect to acquire incredibly impacts each the expense and an opportunity to foster it. There can be various standards that could help us to recognize various types of computer generated reality applications.

The personality of your venture plays out an essential job inside the decision of your VR application type:

Basic VR applications: Such applications, while creating vivid stories, are scarcely ever intelligent, if at any time, and are typically intended to show computerized spaces to clients. For instance, you could find such computer generated experience applications in training in which you can travel all over the planet or visit verifiable locales without leaving your room. Another utilization case is 360 virtual visits in genuine property or the travel industry - the individual "strolls" through houses, lofts or facilities through donning a headset. In such VR applications, the communication is primarily diminished to following the markers driving the client among virtual rooms. At the equivalent time, such augmented simulation application utilizes headsets just and not utilizing extra sensors. Thus, the individual's casing position and moves aren't concerned inside the experience.

Web based business applications: Those VR programs are more prominent cutting edge, as other than riding the stock, the buyer can "take" and examine the items they like. The store stock is to be had as 3d models that the clients can take a stab at inside the Virtual Space. Such applications are extra intuitive than 360 augmented experience visits, as the purchaser can do different moves inside the application UI. A couple of predominant projects grant "putting the item inside the bushel" and in any event, finding out, all inside the computer generated experience.

Preparing Simulators:  That is a more serious level of VR application development, as it includes a sizable level of submersion and intuitiveness. In such computer generated experience applications, the client are in finished director of the virtual region and the endlessly moves of the edge in the genuine global are reflected in the virtual world, as well. On the main hand, such applications require greetings tech VR framework, routinely comprising of additional sensors to make the space answering the client's body developments. On the other hand, a VR application of this sort is a custom item through master designers that requires a ton of work to make. In any case, the following experience is totally definitely worth the subsidizing.

3d computer games: This type of VR applications additionally includes striking submersion and intuitiveness; however it intently depends upon on custom pictures and three-D demonstrating. Games in computer generated simulation are performed through exceptional augmented experience gadget allowing procuring the most functional experience.

Social VR applications: Virtual space, events, and stages wherein clients can get by and large with their mates utilize a combination of the image and video content and three dimensional designs. Through nature, social Virtual reality applications are team oriented bundles, which require some extra advancement exertion.

Multi-shopper show applications: In such applications, computer generated reality is utilized to exhibit an item or thought in a beautiful manner. They're developed to be gotten to via various clients all the while all together that the VR show is executed for a bunch of clients. Contingent upon the type of item, such applications can utilize video content, three dimensional displaying, and illustrations. The key element is the multi-client get right of section to, which offers some incentive to the utility.

MMORPG Apps: Multiplayer capability betting computer games are the zenith position of VR applications, as they comprise a solitary virtual space that answers the activities of a few gamers. They're genuinely visual and intuitive and are the most extreme hard and minimal expense to make.

Whatever other model which could decide the improvement intricacy is the wide assortment of clients. Through this statute, Virtual reality applications might be single-client and team oriented, the last option being clearly more troublesome and reasonable to make.

[tastydregs]

Sentons launches smaller sensors that can turn any surface into virtual controls

Join gaming leaders online at GamesBeat Summit Next this upcoming November 9-10. Learn more about what comes next. 

Sentons has launched a new low-power and small sensor with an accompanying gesture engine to be used in wearables (including glasses, earbuds, watches, and fitness trackers) to create virtual controls to navigate apps and features on the devices themselves.

The SDSwave processor (model SNT8255) and gesture engine unlock a customizable, ergonomic user experience, while eliminating UX design restrictions that come from the limited real estate and tiny surfaces found on the displays of wearables. As an example, it can embed a force sensor in wireless earbuds.

San Jose, California-based Sentons‘ mission is to create a world where human touch brings any surface to life. They call this software-defined surfaces, or tech that allows people to interact with their devices beyond a touchscreen. It uses ultrasonic sensors for its devices.

“Wearable makers haven’t been able to deliver streamlined, sleek wearable devices with natural user interfaces because of the constraints that come with limited space,” Sentons CEO Jess Lee. “Moreover, traditional touch technologies not only respond to touch but also to water, making them impractical for use on wearables that are often outdoors and exposed to the elements. We’re excited to finally bring a solution to market that allows device designers to make use of even the tiniest surface to make it touch and force interactive. This outdoor and water-immune interactivity unlocks new user experiences and capabilities for wearables, something the industry has never seen before.”

Webinar

Three top investment pros open up about what it takes to get your video game funded.

Watch On Demand

These sensors are smaller than the company’s previous generation of sensors (the SDS Gaming Bar and SDS Camera Bar), which could turn the side of a smartphone into an input device. That let phone makers such as Asus and Lenovo add virtual game control buttons to their smartphones so people could play games like Call of Duty: Mobile more easily. The Asus/Tencent ROG and Lenovo Legion phones used it.

The new SDSwave wearable solutions can change an entire device into a force-sensitive touch interface that is able to recognize and distinguish gestures, all at different speeds and pressure levels on the smallest of devices, regardless of the shape, without compromising battery longevity or sleek design aesthetics.

It also brings curved surfaces to life and is fully water immune, enabling touch on wet surfaces. This allows device makers to deliver a seamless experience in the most rugged environments or during intense fitness routines. Users can tap the edge or squeeze the device to make a selection, slide a finger up and down the edge to scroll, and more.

The benefits include changing virtual buttons on the fly with changes in software, gesture functionality in the presence of water, the ability to distinguish false touches or even false intended contact from water. It works with metal surfaces, unlike capacitive touch. The haptics triggering is available with the sensor module. It’s compatible with thin, small displays with curved designs.

And it consumes only 20 microwatts of battery in standby mode and 80 microwatts in operating mode. Sentons is currently in collaboration with top wearable device makers in the U.S. for possible launches in mid-2022. Lee said in an email that the power consumption on the new device is 10 times better than on the smartphone device.

Sentons was founded in 2011 and is led by a team of technologists from Apple, Telegent Systems, and LSI Corporation.

GamesBeat

GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. How will you do that? Membership includes access to:

Newsletters, such as DeanBeat

The wonderful, educational, and fun speakers at our events

Networking opportunities

Special members-only interviews, chats, and "open office" events with GamesBeat staff

Chatting with community members, GamesBeat staff, and other guests in our Discord

And maybe even a fun prize or two

Introductions to like-minded parties

Become a member

[listentotheland]

x 
pronouns: they/themme/etc 
Currently Residing: homeless in Brooklyn, NY (Lenape land) Social Media: @tittyglow.jpeg x makes all kinds of things and does all the things and enjoys questionings and musings and the performative nature of living as a human and playing games and fulfilling roles and disappointing others; they extrapolate the double consciousness of post modernism and being multiply marginalized by creating multimedia installation and movement based conceptual art about the bõhdë~~~ https://x-itsjustx.com venmo tips and reparations: @justx LINK FOR LISTENING- https://ift.tt/2UZKXKd INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: Who are you and what do you do? my name is x and you can call me x, lowercase, it doesn’t stand for anything. i’m a first gen, Afro and Chinese-Jamaican, agender, 2S, and disabled, transdisciplinary performing artist, curator, counselor, community organizer, activist, tattooer, sex worker, and cat parent. i mostly work in dance, theatre, video installation, and otherwise unspecified time-based media. Where are you ? i’m currently homeless and nomadic, drifting across the stolen land of the Lenape, specifically the Canarsee, Rockeway, and Maspeth. i fled my apartment in westchester recently due to the abuse my cat and i experienced, from my cis white gay male roommate, for nine consecutive months. How are you engaging with the current conditions of our world? i am thriving in the ways that a socially distanced, isolated world of Quarantine-oh has created a digital and virtual world with room and breadth for accessibility. on the other hand, i have various conditions that have gone neglected, untreated and misdiagnosed so i have been quite hysterical and physically uncomfortable in my body. as someone who is visibly black, not seen as trans, with invisible disabilities, i am not sure whether to be more scared of the 2 active strains of coronavirus, NYPD, or the white people (or rather, socialized white people) that call themselves my friends. statistically, my death may be more likely to be caused by my own hand, and those responsible for hurting and traumatizing me time and time again will go unscathed, holding onto their privilege, jobs, and clout, while I continue to choke on my tears and phlegm that i am forced to swallow as i am expected to be high functioning at all times. this will be the death of me. What does pride mean to you? taking up space and not letting white, cis, able-bodied, neuro typical, financially stable, shelter-secured people, coons and Uncle Tom’s alike control my narrative. speaking the fuck up because i had to painfully learn that if i didn’t advocate for myself, no one else would. reminding those who are marginalized and systemically oppressed that they are not immune to being bigoted, discriminatory, problematic, and hurtful just because their heart was in the right place. pride to me is shouting from the rooftops so that those who have been tokenized by white led and controlled arts institutions, yes even those who are visibly black and queer identified, are stripped of their ben carson-hood, so that reparations and sovereignty can go to those who are most vulnerable and betrayed by our own. Introduce your video? The audio for this video is taken directly from the script of my first long form play, which is still in development. Originally, it was intended for the stage with consideration of multimedia elements, but my company is now considering that the piece exist entirely digitally or rather, primarily produced for the digital and virtual realm. virtual rehearsals with {a multi-dimensional performance company} have been gut-wrenchingly beautiful, honest, and magical and i am excited for what ensues. while i am featured in this music video, i am not featured in the aforementioned long form piece, even though it is autobiographical. this video is a researched exploration of the tentatively titled work, high functioning ex point oh.

[igb220-n10063013-blog]

Platformer Playtesting

So this is the final week before checkpoint 1 and I've done another round of playtesting sessions with my friends (sadly I was unable to attend the workshop). Two of them had very little issue navigating the space and communicated after the playtest they found the level quite easy to read in what was expected of them. Being well versed in platform games however enabled the first two testers to give me some good feedback and suggestions for further developments. Here are some combined thoughts from the two of them.

The spear mechanic being a linear projectile did not feel natural and was at times clunky to allign - I believe this would be remedied by implementing physics to the object as well as mouse aim if possible

Both users liked I had used spears as breadcrumbs in the cloud section, they also seemed to enjoy having a limited number of spears and thus needed to think about their placements

One playtester reported the cloud's movement speed was far too slow, they also noted you did not need to use a single spear in the section (whoops).

I admitedly did my chapter readings on playtesting a little late this week, but after the playtesting sessions with my two friends I realised some content from the chapter was very applicable to me. Tracy Fullerton discusses the seperation between testing with confidants (i.e friends) and with people you are less familiar with, while both testers provide the benefit of new opinions and thought process a confidant is more likely to pull some of their punches in their feedback or look at the project with a positive bias. So to remedy this I asked a friend of a friend, who isn't very experienced with games in general, to test out my game and observe them.

Uninformed Playtester

This playtesting experience was wildly different to my previous testing, and I learned a lot just by watching them play before even discussing it. While my playtester-friends moved with ease throughout the level, this friend had a sense of hesitation in all of their moves and seemed a little unsure at times. I think some of this hesitation is due to their blanket lack of video game experience, but there are aspects of my visual communication which could be improve, below are my main to indicators of this.

The above segment I would consider the main source of information, and one that came at the expense of the player as they became visilbly frustrated in the 6 attempts. While this section was purposed designed to prompt players to think about here they throw their spear - the intended path is not to through a spear on the right wall but instead double jump and make a platform on the higher left wall - two factors I hadn't thought of became apparent:

Given that the amount of spear ammo given to you at this point is exactly how many you require on the optimal path, making a mistake (throwing the spear on the right wall) results in having to refresh the webpage and starting the game again.

The timing window required to throw your spear on the left log wall is slim, unfamiliar players find this timing much harder than I anticipated.

After discussing why this gauntlet was so troublesome for the player I have thought of a few potential solutions:

Change the log wall on the right to a grass wall to indicate a spear should not be thrown there (improved design communication through visual telegraphs)

Increase the length of the left log wall to reduce the timing window (easier challenge once the player realised the true path)

Increase the total spear count to allow the player to create both a platform on the right and left wall (more forgiving/less punishing)

Overall I think this section was so apparent because it was asking too much of the player at an early stage. At this point no jumping throws have been required, nor has the player been intentionally mislead and tasked with thinking about a less linear solution. I think this semi-puzzle is good on its own, but so early in the level prompts players with two many new concepts at once, instead gradually introducing them one by one would be optimal.

Another and more long term solution would be to implement the functionality of picking up a spear you have already thrown, this would allow players to reattempt sequences in a less punishing manner without having to restart.

Another interesting sequence can be seen above, the player stands on the cloud as it slowly moves to the left and must create a path over the vertical wall, they may also stand at the speech bubble with a grey cloud in it to recall the cloud to the starting platform. While I did suspect the speech bubbles visual design was not the greatest (I used a premade asset since my artistic skills are beyond anything another human should have to see), I did not anticipate something.

The moving platform being a cloud relys on inherited visual communication from past platformers which often used clouds as platforms, it required an informed audience to recognise it was a platform. This uninformed playtester made the realistically reasonable assumption that you can't stand on clouds and that it was simply an aesthetic choice, and instead attempted navigate to the platform with the frog on it by throwing spears (which is impossible), because that's what the previous challenges had required. I could remedy this by changing the sprite of the cloud to something else, or more interestingly the level could feature a platforming test earlier in the level which forces a player to stand on a stationary cloud platform.

Summary

This playtest was very helpful and provided me with a lot of insight into iterative design where, if this was a real game production, I would act on any issues that came to light in testing to improve the players experience. Despite some of the hiccups in playtesting, all testers seemed to enjoy the core mechanic as well as some of the example expanding mechanics I proposed to them.

[arcadeidea]

Spacewar! [1962]

Spacewar is still the first video game. Not technically: the developers of Spacewar were already aware of a playable Tic Tac Toe implementation on the very computer they were working on, which by that point was already a more-than-decade-long tradition for computers, not to mention Tennis For Two [1958]. (For greater detail on this cascade of history, watch Ahoy's fantastic and dry documentary The First Video Game.) These prior works are only trivia, though, and false starts all of them. They're what you find if you look at the past not on its own terms but on ours, applying a rigorous schema of definition aspiring to the condition of a science, searching for something specific they couldn't have known they had. Tennis For Two is the only game of that protozoic era to be relevant or even known of to anyone in the field for the next several decades, and even then all that was required of it was the mere fact of its existence (its status as a trivia item) for the sake of a something so banal as a lawsuit. They are worthy of honorary mention, but a medium is not a prescription, it is a chain of tradition. Not only is Spacewar wholly original and something only achievable with a digital computer and not an attempt at transferring a real-life game, but more importantly and ironically, it did not exist in a vacuum.

Spacewar is not something you apply a definition to, Spacewar IS the definition. Although nothing so strident and bold and definitive was intended as it would be with later games, when it was taken as a prototypical guide by those who followed, that is what it functionally became. Not to be too precious and romantic and mythologize it ("First there was nothing, then there was Spacewar!"), not to be too essentialist about it ("Spacewar contains the seeds for all what followed"), not to use it to answer What Doth Games and fall right back into the checklisting trap — but we can read the game itself as a manifesto, a collection of precepts and assumptions, and one of the creators (JM Graetz) was even considerate enough to give us an itemized list of exactly what the MIT Tech Model Railroad Group hoped to achieve in making Spacewar:

1) It should demonstrate, that is, it should show off as many of the computer's resources as possible, and tax those resources to the limit; 2) Within a consistent framework, it should be interesting, which means every run should be different; 3) It should involve the onlooker in a pleasurable and active way — in short, it should be a game.

The expressed reason video games exist as a distinct artistic medium, as anything more than a shadowplay of traditional games and sports, is to show off the power of our computers. I use that word — power — and not the more prosaic and accurate "computer resources" that Graetz used for a reason. It's 1962, and it can not be put out from anyone's mind, viewer, player, or creator, that computers would be instrumental in a real Space War of the foreseeable future. Or even a terrestrial war, which was the sole practical purpose and reason for the existence and funding of computers up to this point in history (if we take pure mathematics for its own sake as "impractical.") It's a show of force, it could even be a threat if it were leveraged in a Cold War propagandistic context against those with weaker or nonexistent computers and not with the giddy, childish innocence that it was created and received with. Better to call the spirit "utopian frivolity," though. Self-proclaimed hackers brought not only Spacewar to the system, but the music of Bach and by extension his rosy vision of the divine and human. Perhaps these programmers may have had their imaginations circumscribed and imprinted with the hitherto military legacy of computing, not to mention American culture... but these eggheads messing around saw the potential of computers reaching far beyond that, towards a hi-tech Arcadia. There's much to admire there, but it carries the unmistakable stench of classical tragedy, and Spacewar serves as a testament of the damnation from within: not just that it is a window into an imagined future of nothing but war, but that its explicit priority is the poisonous ambition to simply use more and more resources, again endemic to American culture as much as it is to future game development culture.

Things like "crunch" weren't around yet, of course. Spacewar is sometimes casually attributed to Steve Russell as the lead or main developer, as in the current lede of its Wikipedia article. The original concept was borne of three-man bull sessions with Russell, but then the very first step towards practical implementation was taken by a fourth man. Russell then created a barebones prototype, including the ships and their ability to turn and thrust and shoot (and it is not mentioned, but presumably, to die.) In response to playtesting, he added background stars. After that point, it became stone soup. Other people in the Tech Model Railroad Club would have a bright idea — bespoke controllers, accurate background stars, freshly optimized ship-turning code, death animations, hyperspace warp, and the big one, the central gravity-well star — and then just implement it themselves. The end result is a game that's simple, but surprisingly polished and full-featured, especially compared to our image of early games as clunky, primitive, blocky things. It reminds one of the hagiographic myth of early-90s Id, a very small team of friends having as much fun making the game as they are playing it, all leaving their personal touch on the work. Steve Russell was not the auteur with a hand on the tiller and an eye on his vision, but one crucial member of the team. It's all very kumbaya, non-hierarchical, no pressure, if we take testimony about its development on face value and don't chuck it out as rose-tinted nostalgia.

This stands in contrast to the game, which is a fantasy of violent domination in competition, with a definite winner. We could unpack the implications of that more, and what it all means that the very first video game was of war, but, well, we'll have plenty of chances to in the future to say the least. Two opponents, precisely balanced and equal in a space ballet, identical in every way except for visually (the distinctive silhouettes of the needle and the wedge are a minor triumph in character design.) Hey, maybe there's some Tic Tac Toe influence there! Spacewar's idea of gaming is inherently multiplayer, and that makes sense. Solo games like pinball or Solitaire card games exist, but the large majority of games at this point that inform what we understand a game to be are all communal activities. The game even came with inviting options to modify the game's parameters to suit the player's preferences.

[I must confess now: other than maybe a couple minutes at a computer museum with a partner, and a few minutes in the middle of writing this awkwardly sharing a keyboard on a browser emulator with my dad, I don't think I've properly played this. I'm just a tourist. Is this an analysis of Spacewar or of JM Graetz's The Origin Of Spacewar? This is more of a programming note than anything about the game, but part of why I'm starting this project is because I've always been on the outside looking in when it comes to gaming. I've always loved reading about games more than playing them, and this writing and canon-exploring endeavor is a hope that I can fill in the gaps and to force me to form my own thoughts. And what's the point if I can't well play the game for myself? Unless I change my mind, I'll be largely avoiding multiplayer games whenever I possibly can, because not only can securing a Player 2 in these early non-online games be an awkward or high barrier to clear for me, and not only are many of them ephemeral, and/or hard to fix in place and get a read on, such as here where the intention is that every run is different because of the guile and fumbles of your human opponent even though the game blatantly remains static, but their basic legibility depends even more than usual on practiced skill that I just haven't personally built up.]

The game is inherently hostile to your continued existence, and both players are only empowered to make it even moreso. Movement is constant, although very slow so as to facilitate strategic marksmanship over spray-and-pray. It's not an anxious atmosphere though, the edge of threat and action is what keeps the player engaged, throws them into interaction and thought. The central star is the key that makes this dramatic and dangerous gameplay: it makes it impossible to stay still, and it serves as the passive threat of death, one that can't be defeated, only negotiated. The only other gameplay element to speak of is your human opponent, but the star serves as the personification of the game itself. It shares something in common with the roulette wheel, not in the randomization which is more in play with the Hyperspace Warp Hail Mary, not even in the gravitational pull, but in the way it stands as an emblem that ultimately, you're playing the game on the terms of the game-maker and at the mercy of physics. Maybe it's only a small philosophical leap from playing against the computer's game and a player to designing a game played against only the computer.

Spacewar exists already at the fruitful intersection of abstraction, simulation, and fiction that games will never escape. You don't get to brake, but instead have to apply reverse thrust, in a nod to simulating what space flight would really be like. But you can pivot freely without applying any thrust at all as though on a Lazy Susan, so that your nose is always pointing in the opposite direction   of the thrust for quick visual clarity. Your bullets don't obey gravity like your ship does. These have their respective knowingly-silly technobabble explanations, papering over the gap between simulation and abstraction with fiction. War is its name and theme, but it's really more of a duel, boiling war down to a single dogfight. Space is its name and theme, but it's not empty and it's not infinite, it's a closed area smaller than a sheet of paper that wraps around at the edges and corners, which if I'm visualizing correctly, would resolve to a teardrop shape (which is then projected onto a rectangle, which is then projected onto a circle.) In each case, we are presented with a small slice of what we understand through the minimal text (the title) to represent an almost incomprehensibly bigger idea.

We easily understand its shorthand mostly through intertextuality. We only understand what we're looking at, and why we can regard war with frivolity, because of the pulpy science-fiction wrapper. The inspiration for the concept is explicitly cited as low-culture "genre fiction" for nerds like the seemingly endless procession of science-fiction B-movies through the movie theaters. Specifically singled out is the cheesy space opera book series The Skylark Of Space. The yearning for the combination, a Skylark Of Space special effect B-Movie, was exactly what produced the creative energy in the bull sessions to dream up the totally-unprecedented gameplay concept of Spacewar. That's right: the first original video game was genre trash born of frustrated aspirations of filmmaking. Doesn't get much more fitting an inauguration.

Spacewar spread like a folk song, not a commercial proposition. The determination was made that there was simply no consumer base, so the source was handed out to anyone who asked. Somehow or another, a fellow hacker would catch a look at Spacewar, then return to their own machine to recode it from scratch if it wasn't a PDP-1, and people would keep adding onto it themselves. That's a remarkable method of propagation that has its successors such as the Type-In game but it relies heavily on a baseline of common computer literacy that necessarily dies out as computers get both more widespread and infinitely less demanding on the user to learn how to program just to use it. I can't help but feel a twinge as Spacewar is cloned into Galaxy Game [1971], one of the first if not the first coin-op arcade video game. Money makes it ugly: Is it stealing when it was freely and casually distributed before?

[ramajmedia]

Ghost Parade Preview: Indonesian Folklore Meets Metroidvania

Gamers might not be familiar with Indonesian video game studios, but Lentera Nusantara's Ghost Parade seeks to change that in the coming months. Their debut release, set to be published by Aksys Games, is an ambitious and elegantly animated metroidvania whose style and themes draw inspiration from films like Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away, the animated indie hit Ori and the Blind Forest, and the wide array of unique recruitable creatures to be found in Pokémon.

Having the opportunity to actually see Ghost Parade in motion, there's also something of an immediate visual connection to George Kamitani’s work with his studio Vanillaware, including previous console generation classics like Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Much like those titles, Ghost Parade has a slightly marionette-animated and painterly look, featuring smooth movement and dark contrasting colors that reflect the haunted forest environs.

Related: Wasteland 3 Preview - Prepare Yourself For The All-Mighty Kodiak

Ghost Parade is Lentera’s first formally-released game project, though the founders of the studio have been working in and around the space for over a decade. Co-founder and CEO Azizah Assattari, who doubles as Creative Director, originally worked as a researcher and lecturer in various fields around the arts and multimedia efforts prior to the studio's origins. A few other games from this Southeast Asian nation have made a splash with Western audiences in recent years — Toge Productions' Rage in Peace garnered considerable praise last year, including its soundtrack, which featured local Indonesian bands — and Assattari and her team are looking to attract further attention to the bustling Indonesian game dev scene with their sizable, visually striking adventure.

Players take on the role of Suri, a young girl diverted through the woods on her way back home after school. Suri is a precocious, violet-haired nine-year-old who happens to have the strange talent of being able to see ghosts (known as “lelembut,” a word Lentera defines as "the local term for all supernatural beings including creatures, such as yokai in Japan, or wandering spirits of dead people"), a variety of whom are tucked throughout Svaka Forest. She decides to take a shortcut through the woods to get home on time, and is soon drawn into their supernatural intrigues, delayed but entertained by this assortment of spirits, who range in sensibility from the buffoonish to the macabre.

According to the studio, Ghost Parade’s storytelling was originally part of Assattari's research for her master’s degree, contained in comics which can now be read in a fresh and recently released English translation. The scrolling webcomic is generally light-hearted, but the story in this IP also regards the deforestation and systemic burning of Indonesia’s woodland due to logging, agribusiness, and global-capitalist demands, a nationwide epidemic that's been broiling for several decades now. This theme doesn’t seem to be exactly front-loaded in the Ghost Parade narrative, but the studio does seek to shed light and attention on this ecological concern, in addition to making a fun game. The studio remarks that, “The main conflict in this game’s story exists because people started to destroy the forest, which is home to many ghosts and animals. In this game, we want people to believe that humans can be more dangerous than ghosts!”

So how does it play? Screen Rant was able to secure a preview opportunity to check out Ghost Parade in person. Unlike Ori and the Blind Forest or Bloodstained, there’s a much floatier, hazy feel to the character movement, which manages to slot into the ghostly themes nicely. Suri initially gets a bright lantern which she can use to strike enemies, which is a nice change of pace from the more violent conventional weapons in other games; also, interestingly enough, "Lentera" translates to "lantern" in English. Many of the ghost familiars she encounters throughout the journey join end up joining her team, offering her an additional offensive function or spell, like firing a projectile or creating a shield or platform.

All of these ghost characters factor heavily into gameplay, and there are over 30 which Suri can recruit throughout the story, each of which have a special function mapped to a controller button that can attack enemies, assist her in navigating through the forest terrain, or offer other benefits. Three of these ghost companions can be “equipped” simultaneously at any time, and their unique abilities can also be modified and upgraded by leveling up one of Suri's specific attributes. It all results in a mix that feels like one-part empowering metroidvania, one part skill-based platforming, with many areas containing a strong sense of verticality and multiple routes, including tricky paths through more dangerous territory that lead to tucked-away treasures.

While we were able to see only a limited amount of the grander narrative, it featured plenty of dialogue with other ghost denizens of Svaka Forest (apparently there are 100 individual ghosts to converse with throughout the adventure). In a manner quite familiar to Western ghost stories, each of them have a quest or purpose that Suri can help activate and assist with during her journey, and the conversations tends to be brisk and accessible. The broad strokes of the story seem cutely energetic, with Suri’s can-do demeanor quickly endearing the different ghost personalities over to her side.

There are also a plethora of checkpoints planted throughout each area, which manage to ease any related punishment due to misplaced jumps or deaths due to spike hazards. Rather than render the platforming meaningless, these shrine-like safe zones allow Lentera to set up plenty of tricky precarious leaps and surprises, while also never forcing the player to have to begrudgingly replay lengthy areas to get back to where they originally were. It’s a design choice that encourages experimentation and failure, and the heart of it feels reminiscent of Super Meat Boy’s clever die-rinse-repeat philosophy for each level.

It’s not completely clear what Ghost Parade will fully evolve into by its upcoming release, but the intriguing visual presentation already sets it apart from a good number of games in the genre, and the different abilities of the ghosts promise a healthy amount of experimentation if players intend to access all its content. Lentera expects approximately 10 hours for a complete playthrough, but hints at secrets related to specific companion abilities that will be up to the player to puzzle out.

Additionally, even though the gameworld seems to primarily consist of the forest itself, it's a region filled with bizarre ruins and architecture that mixes up the general look of the environments, so you’re not just staring at trunks and leaves the whole time. If you ever wanted to drag a few Kodama from Princess Mononoke along for a rambunctious quest through the woods, Ghost Parade is worth a closer look.

More: Preview: Borderlands 3 Boss Fights Are The Best They've Ever Been

Ghost Parade is currently on track to release in October — though that expected date may be subject to change — on PlayStation 4, PC/Steam, and Nintendo Switch.

source https://screenrant.com/ghost-parade-preview/

[fridge-reviews]

Perception

Developer: The Deep End Games Publisher: Feardemic Rrp: £17.99 (Gog.com), £17.99 (Steam) Released: 30th May 2017 Available on: Steam, Gog.com Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard Approximate game length: 10 Hours Darkness has never held anything to fear for you, how can it when every day of your life has been spent within it? But this place, this place is different. The darkness almost feels... thicker, more menacing. Every sound feels like it travels further than it should and that something is paying attention. It feels like the house is listening, and nothing frightens you more. [DISCLAIMER – IN THE INTEREST OF FULL DISCLOSURE THIS IS A GAME I BACKED ON KICKSTARTER AND RECEIVED CODE FOR AS A BACKER REWARD] Fancy that, a survival horror game set in first person where you play as a character who is blind. Its hard to envisage how one would go about designing such a thing. As you can imagine using an intensely visual medium such as video games to portray blindness is quite the difficult task without resorting to just making the screen black. Thankfully there are some developers out there willing to take up the challenge. The way game handles the subject is by giving player character the ability to 'see' sound (similar to Marvel Comic's Daredevil). Cassie Thornton is the name of our protagonist for this story, and Echo Bluff is the location. For years Cassie has had dreams, or perhaps nightmares is a better description, of the old house known as Echo Bluff. She feels drawn to it, to try and piece together why she keeps dreaming of it.

When you start the game you get to chose between two modes; Chatty Cassie (which is the recommended setting by the developers) or Silent Night. Chatty Cassie will have the protagonist speak a fair amount where as in Silent Night remains mostly quiet. I played it on the Chatty Cassie mode, as the developers had originally intended it to be played. Honestly I don't think she spoke that much, and what she had to say was generally either interesting or appropriate for the situation at the time. Every step you make temporarily illuminates a small portion of the world, not enough to really navigate by though. If you want to see further ahead Cassie has to tap her cane [Space], the effect only lasts about ten seconds but its enough to see what you're doing. Its not just your sounds that you can see though, any sound creates an image, dripping taps, leaking radiators etc. Bear in mind though that you aren't alone in the house, and every sound you make runs the risk of attracting attention.

Being a survival horror game it has some of the things we have come to expect, the odd jump scare (although not that many) here, a quick puzzle to solve there and all throughout are places to hide. But from what are you hiding? Well, the game calls it 'The Presence' so I guess that's what I'll stick to as well. So here’s the part where this becomes very interesting to me. You require sound to 'see' by, otherwise your just stumbling around in the dark. The Presence hunts through sound, so every noise you make attracts its attention. This forces the players to try and learn Echo Bluffs layout.

Cassie also has a 'sixth sense' that when used guides the player to the next objective. The manner in which it does it can be a bit jarring though, as it takes control of the camera and points it directly toward the next goal 'as the crow flies' so to speak. In a way that’s a good thing though as it forces the player to have to work out how to get to the goal rather than guide them step by step around the house. As you play you find clues around the house. It seems that our dear Cassie is something of a psychic, any items you pick up will give you a glimpse of part of a story. However psychic powers are not enough, and Cassie has to rely on good old technology, specifically her phone and its apps, like its text to speech function... well its not like people wrote in braille just in case a blind person came through.

When the game wants you to see an event it takes control of the camera and drags your viewpoint to what it desires. Sadly this can cause some of the jump scares to lose their effectiveness because of the removal of control from the player (albeit temporary). There's also a slight delay between the camera settling into position and the jump scare itself, which again lessens the impact. This game can be very confusing, especially if you die. In the event of that happening you get sent back to the last checkpoint, but you keep all the progress you've performed so any items you've picked up remain in your possession. The thing that makes the game extra confusing is clearly not something that was by design. In most games if you perform an action that triggers an event, like a jump scare etc the event will happen once, unless you somehow reset your progress. But in Perception if you do certain actions again they'll trigger the event. This can cause the player some confusion because, in my case, you feel like it means you've not completed some kind of puzzle or sequence. Combine that with the sixth sense that points you directly at the next objective and you can start to feel frustrated that you've now traversed these rooms several times over.

For me I can that I'm quite happy with what The Deep End Games have created. That being said, I have to admit that this game was more of a mystery thriller than a survival horror to me. Perhaps I've become desensitised from playing too many horror games nut even the parts that could be considered horrific I found creepy more than anything.

Whether this is a worthwhile purchase or not depends on what you want out of the game, I got about five hours worth of engaging story and a satisfactory conclusion out of a premise that I was, at best, curious about. If this appeals to you perhaps try; Devil's Tuning Fork Slender the Arrival Gone Home

[nyutheatrepractices]

Day 2: Deepening the Context and Bearing Witness

We’re continuing to settle into San Juan! Day 2 continued to deepen our understanding of the context in which we’re working, artistically, historically, culturally, and politically.

(A representative photo here, in which we’re all having fun in the sun while TA Quenna works tirelessly to make this trip run smoothly <3)

The day began at the studio, where (after a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday to Asha!) we broke off to work in our studio groups for the first time. Six of us are working in masks and puppetry with maskmaker, puppeteer, and performance artist Deborah Hunt, and the other eight (including myself) are focusing on physical theatre with choreographer, improviser, and dancer Alejandra Martorell. Alejandra began our session with a quote from Nietzsche: “There is more reason in your body, than in your best wisdom.”  While pointing out the irony in this phrasing (in using the word “reason” Nietzsche still operates within the logic he seeks to critique), Alejandra set the tone for our work in physical theatre: we will be working with our bodies, changing our awareness of our bodies, seeking and storing knowledge in our bodies… For a bunch of NYU students (even theatre people) who are used to sitting in a classroom and using only our brains, this is exactly the push we need!

Alejandra started by cluing us in to a quick anatomy fact: your spine actually ends closer to where your eyes are, not where we normally think of as the base of the neck. Way up there, your skull rests on the top vertebra of your spine, nestled in sort of like if you fit the knuckles of each of your hands together. The way that most of us carry ourselves belies our own anatomy: our necks are usually tense, perhaps hunched over our phones. And it turns out that is a hard habit to break! The number of times Alejandra instructed us to release our necks, or physically lifted and shifted our skulls into their proper position indicated just how challenging.

Thinking about this part of our body was part of an aspect of Alejandra’s practice called Alexander technique. Frederick Alexander was a theatre actor who realized that the way he was using his body as an actor was hurting him, not from one instance of injury but rather repeated patterns that contradicted the body’s normal functioning (imagine the late 19th century version of hunching over an iPhone). Even though it’s hard to break those conditioned habits, returning to the body’s natural anatomy and way of being actually lets us try less hard, strain ourselves less, and work more sustainably.  Throughout the studio, various simple physical exercises allowed us to gain an awareness of this part of our body, and it became clear what a difference it makes. In a game in which one person guides another around the space, the follower became noticeably more willing to yield to the leader. Even just lying down becomes more restful when your head is properly aligned. Don’t let the photo fool you: supported rest is hard work when you’re trying to do it right!

While those of us in physical theatre were changing our awareness of our bodies, our mates doing mask work were having a similarly impactful experience. During a brief midday check in, they shared experiences of working to get out of their minds and into their bodies, disengaging from themselves and letting the mask tell the story, and embracing being completely out of their element. For both groups, today’s work set the stage for the creative endeavors to come during our studio time. You’ll get a more detailed report from a friend in the mask and puppetry studio soon. For now, a taste of their work for your viewing pleasure.

To continue our context-building around the history of Puerto Rico, we visited el Museo de las Américas, housed in a series of rooms connected by a terrace encircling an enormous courtyard. As children kicked a ball around the courtyard, we explored the African Heritage and Conquest and Colonization exhibits, which emphasized that Puerto Rican society has evolved from the melding of the cultures of the indigenous Taíno, enslaved Africans forced to the island against their will, and the colonizing Spanish. Throughout nearly 400 years of slavery on the island, both the indigenous Taíno and Africans and their descendants resisted their unjust treatment, rebelling against the colonization of their lands and revolting against their enslavement from the start.

Our final activity today was a lecture by another of the incredible artists we’re blessed to call a teacher on this trip: Rosa Luisa Márquez, a prolific theatre artist and pedagogue. Rosa’s lecture (though I hesitate to call it that lest I evoke a tweed-elbowed professor dryly talking at an amphitheater of yawning students) beautifully connected the seemingly disparate work of the morning and the museum in the afternoon. Armed with a table full of masks and other props, Rosa weaved together the arrival of the Europeans on the island and the disastrous consequences for the indigenous people and the Africans eventually brought here and enslaved, with a broad overview of the spectrum of street theatre in Puerto Rico and throughout the Americas. Much of this street theatre is explicitly political, such as that of Marisa Barsy, among whose works include tattooing “colony” on her back, the Clown Police in San Juan, who both satirize the violence of the state and act as mediators between the people and the police who aren’t wearing red noses, and Tito Kayak, an engineer and activist who doesn’t consider himself an artist, but who stages dramatic public acts to protest illegal development in San Juan and Puerto Rico’s colonial status (I recommend a quick Google search to find video of his aerial and aquatic feats).

The work of these artist-activists is situated in a long history of theatricality in the streets in the Americas, one that Rosa emphasizes predates the arrival of the Europeans. History as we learn it, she says, is written history. Everything else is considered “prehistory,” and is denied. Similarly, theatre that doesn’t stem from the written word is devalued, considered minor, a craft rather than an art. Speaking profoundly to this dual social studies ed and ed theatre student, Rosa used the history of street theatre to challenge these colonialist notions. She reminded us of the wisdom that exists in the body and not the mind, gave voice to history of marginalized communities that are often denied it, returned political agency to activists and everyday people whose actions are often ignored in favor of individual government leaders, and labeled the street as a stage, positioning those who perform there as artists. 

After presenting the work of Marisa Barsy, Rosa shared that that was where she had intended for the lecture to end. But, as she put it, life is stronger than art. We were invited to place our shoes on the stage, at which point Rosa told us about an action/installation created by two Puerto Rican poets when it was revealed that 4,645 people were estimated to have died as a result of Hurricane Maria, a number that far exceeded what the government was willing to admit. What began as these poets’ spontaneous work of art grew into a cemetery, as more and more people contributed shoes, including those of the dead, family members of those who died spoke, and the community honored those they lost. Through the placement of the shoes, Rosa said, “the absent bodies were conjured.” This was Rosa’s final example of street theatre, in which the community bore witness to lives lost, to the ineptitude and intransigence of the government in the face of this loss, and to their own capacity for closure and healing. It was a powerful reminder of the context in which we are here as students, educators, and artists from the United States at this significant moment in Puerto Rico, in the wake of a tragedy that is a result of a history of colonialism and government neglect. In this context, Rosa told us our responsibility as visitors: to bear witness.

[grassroutes]

The New DJI Robot is Insane: Introducing the Robomaster EP Core

Our verdict of the DJI Robomaster EP Core: The most powerful STEAM learning robot ever. A comprehensive education toolkit and curriculum for both Scratch and Python programming is provided, and further expansion is possible with various microcontrollers and sensors.1010

You probably think of DJI as that drone company, but they’ve actually turned their engineering geniuses to a lot more than just drones. The DJI Robomaster EP Core is the next generation of intelligently programmable, remote-controlled, or entirely autonomous robots. It’s insanely good fun, a great learning experience, and I’m completely smitten with it.

Read on to find out more.

Robomaster EP Core: At a Glance

Omnidirectional movement via Mecanum wheels and custom servo motors with 250Nmm torque.

Four hit detectors (impact or laser) with RGB ring lights.

2-axis grabber.

2400mAh battery (around 1-hour battery life).

HD camera, microphone, and onboard speaker.

Micro-SD card slot.

Local Wi-Fi or router connectivity.

Proximity sensor.

Dimensions: H13 x W10 x L15.5 inches (H33 x W25 x L39 cm) with grabber fully retracted.

Weight: 7lbs 8oz (3.4kg).

Expandable with Raspberry Pi, Arduino, micro:bit, or NVIDIA Jetson; sensor adaptors provided.

FPV remote control via desktop or smartphone app.

Scratch or Python programming.

Curriculum and structured competitive modes.

Note: we received an engineering sample for testing. Contents and build guide may differ, and we didn’t have access to the full educational curriculum, only the existing Robomaster app (which is primarily designed for the Robomaster S1 Series).

Building the Robomaster EP Core

Before you can really get started, the Robomaster EP Core package arrives in an enormous box consisting of five trays of parts. That’s right: it’s flat-packed and you’ll need to build it yourself. That would the Engineering part of the STEAM learning experience.

It took me a good half-day of solid build time to get this put together (which you can see in the video review compressed down to about a minute!).

Thankfully the instructions are detailed, and despite two full trays of screws and bolts, each part is labeled well and at no point was I confused about where something ought to be placed.

If you can build some Ikea furniture, you can do this. Just be sure to pick the right screw from the right part of the tray.

Getting Started

You can connect to the Robomaster either via a local Wi-Fi, or by allowing the Robomaster to connect to your router. The latter is preferable, as it allows you to access the Robomaster from any networked client for truly remote control and programming.

A desktop version of the software is available for Mac or PC, though it appears to be a direct port of the mobile app, and runs full-screen.

A switch on the side of the grey controller box selects which mode to operate in. Simply type in your Wi-Fi password to the app so it can generate a QR code. The camera mounted on the Robomaster will then read this, and connect to the network.

Note that the Robomaster is unable to roam between enterprise Wi-Fi access points, so you should use a single high powered router or ensure adequate coverage in the location you’ll be operating the Robomaster. Driving down my hallway resulted in the Robomaster disconnecting from one Unifi access point and pausing for a few seconds as it reconnected through another.

Robomaster Chassis

There are two main parts to the build. The first is the wheels and chassis. We’ll talk more about the “Mecanum” wheels in a moment, but the chassis itself is built around a large solid metal frame, which includes extra mounting points for your own 3D printed parts, accessories, or additional sensors.

The front half has a slight suspension on it, allowing it to traverse small bumps with ease.

This chassis houses the battery as well as the power distribution board and communication bus. It’s this that you’ll plug everything in to. The battery is removable, and spares can be purchased. Each charge lasted me about an hour of constant use.

The 2400mAh battery can be swapped easily and spares purchased separately.

One outstanding feature of the Robomaster EP Core is the four Mecanum wheels. Each wheel is driven by its own powerful custom DJI servo.

Rather than a traditional rubber tire, these wheels has a set of twelve freely-rotating rollers, mounted at a 45-degree offset. Confused? I don’t blame you.

This curious arrangement of rollers on the wheel means that simply rotating the wheel actually forces it to move sideways instead. In order to create the normal forward or backward motion, you need another Mecanum wheel with its rollers mounted in the opposite direction. When both wheels are then rotated in the same direction, the sideways forces cancel each other out, and the chassis actually moves forward or backward as intended.

However, the magic comes when each wheel is driven in opposite directions, both creating the same sideways motion instead. With four such wheels mounted in this configuration, the Robomaster can both strafe left and right, and rotate 360-degrees on the spot. This is called omnidirectional movement. And it’s nothing short of amazing.

If you haven’t already watched the review video to see this in action, you really need to go do that now. Go on, I’ll wait.

This isn’t just incredible to watch though, it also opens up so many more programming possibilities for maneuvering because of the precision involved.

It also adds more interest to the remote control aspect. Maneuvering now requires two analog joysticks, rather than an accelerate and brake pedal, and steering wheel. Anyone familiar with first-person shooter games will feel at home immediately. You can strafe around a target in a circle, for instance, or easily drift around corners. The Robomaster EP Core is highly agile in tight spaces, and racing this thing is immensely fun.

Stop having fun though: this is a learning experience!

Grabber

Mounted on top of the chassis are the grabber attachment and grey controller box. The controller handles Wi-Fi communication, as well as the micro-SD card for recordings.

Powered by three strong servos, the grabber can lift up and down, push or pull, as well as pinch in or expand its rubber claws. Obviously the first thing I did was to grab a courgette and lug it around the kitchen for a while.

This is a screenshot from a video taken using the on-board camera.

When fully extended, the lifting power of the servo is limited, so you may need to pull an object in closer before it can be lifted up again. It’s reasonably powerful and was able to lift up some small blocks of wood or toy cones, but struggled with an iPhone 6 Plus (which is about 6 ounces).

Robomaster doing a spot of weeding with the grabber.

The Robomaster App

While a separate SDK is available and will likely be used for parts of the curriculum, your initial point of contact with the robot will be via the Robomaster app (for iOs, Android, Mac, or Windows). Launch this and you’ll be greeted with three choices:

Solo

Battle

Lab

Solo mode is for simple remote control. Use the joystick on the left to move forward, backward, and strafe. Drag left or right on the screen to rotate. Click the grabber button to bring up that control interface. The main screen area is taken up by the wide-angle first-person-view from Robomaster’s camera. You can also record a number of audio clips to playback on the robot. These are saved to the hardware and can be recalled or set on a loop with hilarious consequences.

The button for follow mode sadly does nothing without the gimbal attached. To move the camera view up or down, you’ll need to manipulate the grabber arm that it’s attached to. The health bar also doesn’t do much unless you’re being pursued by a Robomaster S1 equipped with a laser gun (not even kidding–that’s a thing).

Battle mode is a more structured FPV combat or race event. Without the gimbal and gel bead or laser gun, the battle type aren’t relevant, but the race mode can still be used. By placing the included visual markers around your track, Robomasters must visit each marker in order, which behave as checkpoints. A bonus marker can also be hidden for extra points. The AI recognition system will immediately identify any it sees (though I found this only worked with good lighting), and after visiting each one in turn for the required number of laps, you’re given a resulting time.

 Camera and FPV

Unsurprisingly for a company known to produce superb quality video drones, the FPV camera mounted on top of the grabber is also superb.

With an f2.4 aperture and wide 120-degree field of view, I found video transmission to be rock solid and perfectly clear, though this will depend largely on your router and Wi-Fi performance. You can record HD video to a micro-SD card too (not included), which includes audio.

A screengrab from the on-robot camera.

Finally, the Lab is where you can learn all the Robomaster functions, as well as jump right into Python or Scratch coding. Road to Mastery consists of 11 guided Scratch tutorials. DIY Programming presents you with some ready-made Python or Scratch code examples or allows to start afresh. Robo Academy is really just three web links, taking you directly the developer documentation, video tutorials, and programming guide.

Again though, many of these resources rely on the gimbal attachment, so I wasn’t able to fully complete all of these with the EP Core. They’re still beneficial to run through however, and you may find you can convert many of the instructions for use with the grabber alone. The curriculum included with EP Core purchases will be tailored to the grabber.

Scratch Programming the Robomaster EP Core

Now taught to all school children from primary ages and up, Scratch is a visual block programming language that’s surprisingly powerful. The custom Robomaster GUI includes buttons to either bring up a first-person view (to drive the robot back tot he start position before running code again, for instance), and a debug overview of currently defined variables. As the robot runs through programs, blocks of code are highlighted, so it’s easy to follow along and see exactly what’s going on. You can even convert your Scratch program to Python code at any point if you’d rather.

I haven’t actually used Scratch before–the best I had in school was some a BBC Micro Turtle, with BASIC programming. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to pick up, and how much of the Robomaster’s systems are exposed to graphical programming. The “Smart” block section includes things like action for when a visual marker is recognized in view, or when a number of claps are identified.

Robomaster S1 vs EP Core

Robomaster S1 was released last year and is available to purchase for all consumers. It features the same Mecanum wheeled chassis as the EP Core, but doesn’t have as any extensibility when it comes to additional power ports, sensor adaptors, or communications facilities for Arduino, micro:bit, or Raspberry Pi. It’s a more simple remote control and programmable robot, than an entire engineering platform.

The most noticeable difference is that the S1 featured a gel-bead and laser shooter mounted on a gimbal (“Warrior mode”), which could be used for Robomaster battles, or to shoot the included vision marker targets.

Instead, the EP Core instead uses a more education-focused (or school-friendly) grabber attachment, which DJI calls “Engineering mode”.

The EP Core also has a full curriculum for all suitable year groups to follow (though we haven’t had access to that so can’t comment further on it).

While many of the Robomaster app tutorials are currently reliant on having the gimbal attachment, the remote control element and programming components are all there for use with the grabber.

The other difference is pricing: Robomaster S1 can be purchased for around $500 from numerous stockists. The EP Core is only available through educational partners, or via direct inquiry to DJI. I couldn’t draw them on exact pricing (presumably there are bulk discounts for schools), but given the similarity to the S1, I wouldn’t have thought it was too far off the $500 mark.

Robomaster S1 Robomaster S1 Buy Now On Amazon $549.00

Is This the Ultimate STEAM Learning Tool?

In a word, yes.

The only slight frustration is that you can’t currently follow all of the Robomaster app tutorials. It’s not clear if these will be expanded to cover more of the grabber functionality, but the full curriculum will be tailored toward it and included with all purchases.

I’m quite envious of any lucky students who have the opportunity to learn to program using the EP Core. It’s simply an incredible learning tool. Sure you could learn Scratch without a cool robot to drive around, but it’s a whole lot more motivating to have that real hardware react to your programming. The EP Core model includes expansion ports and mounting holes for additional sensors and development boards, such as the Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or even NVIDIA’s Jetson Nano.

For pricing, you’ll need to enquire directly with DJI or via their local educational providers. Alternatively, if the expansion capabilities aren’t a concern and you’d rather the gimbal-mounted gel-bead and laser shooter instead of a grabber, check out the Robomaster S1, which is widely available.

Read the full article: The New DJI Robot is Insane: Introducing the Robomaster EP Core

The New DJI Robot is Insane: Introducing the Robomaster EP Core posted first on grassroutespage.blogspot.com

[droneseco]

The New DJI Robot is Insane: Introducing the Robomaster EP Core

Our verdict of the DJI Robomaster EP Core: The most powerful STEAM learning robot ever. A comprehensive education toolkit and curriculum for both Scratch and Python programming is provided, and further expansion is possible with various microcontrollers and sensors.1010

You probably think of DJI as that drone company, but they’ve actually turned their engineering geniuses to a lot more than just drones. The DJI Robomaster EP Core is the next generation of intelligently programmable, remote-controlled, or entirely autonomous robots. It’s insanely good fun, a great learning experience, and I’m completely smitten with it.

Read on to find out more.

Robomaster EP Core: At a Glance

Omnidirectional movement via Mecanum wheels and custom servo motors with 250Nmm torque.

Four hit detectors (impact or laser) with RGB ring lights.

2-axis grabber.

2400mAh battery (around 1-hour battery life).

HD camera, microphone, and onboard speaker.

Micro-SD card slot.

Local Wi-Fi or router connectivity.

Proximity sensor.

Dimensions: H13 x W10 x L15.5 inches (H33 x W25 x L39 cm) with grabber fully retracted.

Weight: 7lbs 8oz (3.4kg).

Expandable with Raspberry Pi, Arduino, micro:bit, or NVIDIA Jetson; sensor adaptors provided.

FPV remote control via desktop or smartphone app.

Scratch or Python programming.

Curriculum and structured competitive modes.

Note: we received an engineering sample for testing. Contents and build guide may differ, and we didn’t have access to the full educational curriculum, only the existing Robomaster app (which is primarily designed for the Robomaster S1 Series).

Building the Robomaster EP Core

Before you can really get started, the Robomaster EP Core package arrives in an enormous box consisting of five trays of parts. That’s right: it’s flat-packed and you’ll need to build it yourself. That would the Engineering part of the STEAM learning experience.

It took me a good half-day of solid build time to get this put together (which you can see in the video review compressed down to about a minute!).

Thankfully the instructions are detailed, and despite two full trays of screws and bolts, each part is labeled well and at no point was I confused about where something ought to be placed.

If you can build some Ikea furniture, you can do this. Just be sure to pick the right screw from the right part of the tray.

Getting Started

You can connect to the Robomaster either via a local Wi-Fi, or by allowing the Robomaster to connect to your router. The latter is preferable, as it allows you to access the Robomaster from any networked client for truly remote control and programming.

A desktop version of the software is available for Mac or PC, though it appears to be a direct port of the mobile app, and runs full-screen.

A switch on the side of the grey controller box selects which mode to operate in. Simply type in your Wi-Fi password to the app so it can generate a QR code. The camera mounted on the Robomaster will then read this, and connect to the network.

Note that the Robomaster is unable to roam between enterprise Wi-Fi access points, so you should use a single high powered router or ensure adequate coverage in the location you’ll be operating the Robomaster. Driving down my hallway resulted in the Robomaster disconnecting from one Unifi access point and pausing for a few seconds as it reconnected through another.

Robomaster Chassis

There are two main parts to the build. The first is the wheels and chassis. We’ll talk more about the “Mecanum” wheels in a moment, but the chassis itself is built around a large solid metal frame, which includes extra mounting points for your own 3D printed parts, accessories, or additional sensors.

The front half has a slight suspension on it, allowing it to traverse small bumps with ease.

This chassis houses the battery as well as the power distribution board and communication bus. It’s this that you’ll plug everything in to. The battery is removable, and spares can be purchased. Each charge lasted me about an hour of constant use.

The 2400mAh battery can be swapped easily and spares purchased separately.

One outstanding feature of the Robomaster EP Core is the four Mecanum wheels. Each wheel is driven by its own powerful custom DJI servo.

Rather than a traditional rubber tire, these wheels has a set of twelve freely-rotating rollers, mounted at a 45-degree offset. Confused? I don’t blame you.

This curious arrangement of rollers on the wheel means that simply rotating the wheel actually forces it to move sideways instead. In order to create the normal forward or backward motion, you need another Mecanum wheel with its rollers mounted in the opposite direction. When both wheels are then rotated in the same direction, the sideways forces cancel each other out, and the chassis actually moves forward or backward as intended.

However, the magic comes when each wheel is driven in opposite directions, both creating the same sideways motion instead. With four such wheels mounted in this configuration, the Robomaster can both strafe left and right, and rotate 360-degrees on the spot. This is called omnidirectional movement. And it’s nothing short of amazing.

If you haven’t already watched the review video to see this in action, you really need to go do that now. Go on, I’ll wait.

This isn’t just incredible to watch though, it also opens up so many more programming possibilities for maneuvering because of the precision involved.

It also adds more interest to the remote control aspect. Maneuvering now requires two analog joysticks, rather than an accelerate and brake pedal, and steering wheel. Anyone familiar with first-person shooter games will feel at home immediately. You can strafe around a target in a circle, for instance, or easily drift around corners. The Robomaster EP Core is highly agile in tight spaces, and racing this thing is immensely fun.

Stop having fun though: this is a learning experience!

Grabber

Mounted on top of the chassis are the grabber attachment and grey controller box. The controller handles Wi-Fi communication, as well as the micro-SD card for recordings.

Powered by three strong servos, the grabber can lift up and down, push or pull, as well as pinch in or expand its rubber claws. Obviously the first thing I did was to grab a courgette and lug it around the kitchen for a while.

This is a screenshot from a video taken using the on-board camera.

When fully extended, the lifting power of the servo is limited, so you may need to pull an object in closer before it can be lifted up again. It’s reasonably powerful and was able to lift up some small blocks of wood or toy cones, but struggled with an iPhone 6 Plus (which is about 6 ounces).

Robomaster doing a spot of weeding with the grabber.

The Robomaster App

While a separate SDK is available and will likely be used for parts of the curriculum, your initial point of contact with the robot will be via the Robomaster app (for iOs, Android, Mac, or Windows). Launch this and you’ll be greeted with three choices:

Solo

Battle

Lab

Solo mode is for simple remote control. Use the joystick on the left to move forward, backward, and strafe. Drag left or right on the screen to rotate. Click the grabber button to bring up that control interface. The main screen area is taken up by the wide-angle first-person-view from Robomaster’s camera. You can also record a number of audio clips to playback on the robot. These are saved to the hardware and can be recalled or set on a loop with hilarious consequences.

The button for follow mode sadly does nothing without the gimbal attached. To move the camera view up or down, you’ll need to manipulate the grabber arm that it’s attached to. The health bar also doesn’t do much unless you’re being pursued by a Robomaster S1 equipped with a laser gun (not even kidding–that’s a thing).

Battle mode is a more structured FPV combat or race event. Without the gimbal and gel bead or laser gun, the battle type aren’t relevant, but the race mode can still be used. By placing the included visual markers around your track, Robomasters must visit each marker in order, which behave as checkpoints. A bonus marker can also be hidden for extra points. The AI recognition system will immediately identify any it sees (though I found this only worked with good lighting), and after visiting each one in turn for the required number of laps, you’re given a resulting time.

  Camera and FPV

Unsurprisingly for a company known to produce superb quality video drones, the FPV camera mounted on top of the grabber is also superb.

With an f2.4 aperture and wide 120-degree field of view, I found video transmission to be rock solid and perfectly clear, though this will depend largely on your router and Wi-Fi performance. You can record HD video to a micro-SD card too (not included), which includes audio.

A screengrab from the on-robot camera.

Finally, the Lab is where you can learn all the Robomaster functions, as well as jump right into Python or Scratch coding. Road to Mastery consists of 11 guided Scratch tutorials. DIY Programming presents you with some ready-made Python or Scratch code examples or allows to start afresh. Robo Academy is really just three web links, taking you directly the developer documentation, video tutorials, and programming guide.

Again though, many of these resources rely on the gimbal attachment, so I wasn’t able to fully complete all of these with the EP Core. They’re still beneficial to run through however, and you may find you can convert many of the instructions for use with the grabber alone. The curriculum included with EP Core purchases will be tailored to the grabber.

Scratch Programming the Robomaster EP Core

Now taught to all school children from primary ages and up, Scratch is a visual block programming language that’s surprisingly powerful. The custom Robomaster GUI includes buttons to either bring up a first-person view (to drive the robot back tot he start position before running code again, for instance), and a debug overview of currently defined variables. As the robot runs through programs, blocks of code are highlighted, so it’s easy to follow along and see exactly what’s going on. You can even convert your Scratch program to Python code at any point if you’d rather.

I haven’t actually used Scratch before–the best I had in school was some a BBC Micro Turtle, with BASIC programming. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to pick up, and how much of the Robomaster’s systems are exposed to graphical programming. The “Smart” block section includes things like action for when a visual marker is recognized in view, or when a number of claps are identified.

Robomaster S1 vs EP Core

Robomaster S1 was released last year and is available to purchase for all consumers. It features the same Mecanum wheeled chassis as the EP Core, but doesn’t have as any extensibility when it comes to additional power ports, sensor adaptors, or communications facilities for Arduino, micro:bit, or Raspberry Pi. It’s a more simple remote control and programmable robot, than an entire engineering platform.

The most noticeable difference is that the S1 featured a gel-bead and laser shooter mounted on a gimbal (“Warrior mode”), which could be used for Robomaster battles, or to shoot the included vision marker targets.

Instead, the EP Core instead uses a more education-focused (or school-friendly) grabber attachment, which DJI calls “Engineering mode”.

The EP Core also has a full curriculum for all suitable year groups to follow (though we haven’t had access to that so can’t comment further on it).

While many of the Robomaster app tutorials are currently reliant on having the gimbal attachment, the remote control element and programming components are all there for use with the grabber.

The other difference is pricing: Robomaster S1 can be purchased for around $500 from numerous stockists. The EP Core is only available through educational partners, or via direct inquiry to DJI. I couldn’t draw them on exact pricing (presumably there are bulk discounts for schools), but given the similarity to the S1, I wouldn’t have thought it was too far off the $500 mark.

Robomaster S1 Robomaster S1 Buy Now On Amazon $549.00

Is This the Ultimate STEAM Learning Tool?

In a word, yes.

The only slight frustration is that you can’t currently follow all of the Robomaster app tutorials. It’s not clear if these will be expanded to cover more of the grabber functionality, but the full curriculum will be tailored toward it and included with all purchases.

I’m quite envious of any lucky students who have the opportunity to learn to program using the EP Core. It’s simply an incredible learning tool. Sure you could learn Scratch without a cool robot to drive around, but it’s a whole lot more motivating to have that real hardware react to your programming. The EP Core model includes expansion ports and mounting holes for additional sensors and development boards, such as the Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or even NVIDIA’s Jetson Nano.

For pricing, you’ll need to enquire directly with DJI or via their local educational providers. Alternatively, if the expansion capabilities aren’t a concern and you’d rather the gimbal-mounted gel-bead and laser shooter instead of a grabber, check out the Robomaster S1, which is widely available.

Read the full article: The New DJI Robot is Insane: Introducing the Robomaster EP Core

The New DJI Robot is Insane: Introducing the Robomaster EP Core published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/

[listentotheland]

x 
pronouns: they/themme/etc 
Currently Residing: homeless in Brooklyn, NY (Lenape land) Social Media: @tittyglow.jpeg x makes all kinds of things and does all the things and enjoys questionings and musings and the performative nature of living as a human and playing games and fulfilling roles and disappointing others; they extrapolate the double consciousness of post modernism and being multiply marginalized by creating multimedia installation and movement based conceptual art about the bõhdë~~~ https://x-itsjustx.com venmo tips and reparations: @justx LINK FOR LISTENING- https://ift.tt/2UZKXKd INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: Who are you and what do you do? my name is x and you can call me x, lowercase, it doesn’t stand for anything. i’m a first gen, Afro and Chinese-Jamaican, agender, 2S, and disabled, transdisciplinary performing artist, curator, counselor, community organizer, activist, tattooer, sex worker, and cat parent. i mostly work in dance, theatre, video installation, and otherwise unspecified time-based media. Where are you ? i’m currently homeless and nomadic, drifting across the stolen land of the Lenape, specifically the Canarsee, Rockeway, and Maspeth. i fled my apartment in westchester recently due to the abuse my cat and i experienced, from my cis white gay male roommate, for nine consecutive months. How are you engaging with the current conditions of our world? i am thriving in the ways that a socially distanced, isolated world of Quarantine-oh has created a digital and virtual world with room and breadth for accessibility. on the other hand, i have various conditions that have gone neglected, untreated and misdiagnosed so i have been quite hysterical and physically uncomfortable in my body. as someone who is visibly black, not seen as trans, with invisible disabilities, i am not sure whether to be more scared of the 2 active strains of coronavirus, NYPD, or the white people (or rather, socialized white people) that call themselves my friends. statistically, my death may be more likely to be caused by my own hand, and those responsible for hurting and traumatizing me time and time again will go unscathed, holding onto their privilege, jobs, and clout, while I continue to choke on my tears and phlegm that i am forced to swallow as i am expected to be high functioning at all times. this will be the death of me. What does pride mean to you? taking up space and not letting white, cis, able-bodied, neuro typical, financially stable, shelter-secured people, coons and Uncle Tom’s alike control my narrative. speaking the fuck up because i had to painfully learn that if i didn’t advocate for myself, no one else would. reminding those who are marginalized and systemically oppressed that they are not immune to being bigoted, discriminatory, problematic, and hurtful just because their heart was in the right place. pride to me is shouting from the rooftops so that those who have been tokenized by white led and controlled arts institutions, yes even those who are visibly black and queer identified, are stripped of their ben carson-hood, so that reparations and sovereignty can go to those who are most vulnerable and betrayed by our own. Introduce your video? The audio for this video is taken directly from the script of my first long form play, which is still in development. Originally, it was intended for the stage with consideration of multimedia elements, but my company is now considering that the piece exist entirely digitally or rather, primarily produced for the digital and virtual realm. virtual rehearsals with {a multi-dimensional performance company} have been gut-wrenchingly beautiful, honest, and magical and i am excited for what ensues. while i am featured in this music video, i am not featured in the aforementioned long form piece, even though it is autobiographical. this video is a researched exploration of the tentatively titled work, high functioning ex point oh.

[noisyunknownturtle]

Stuck in Quarantine? Become a Blockchain Expert With These Online Courses

It seems like the entire world has been told to stay inside their homes as the coronavirus outbreak continues to wreak havoc. As a result, the world has become almost entirely digital. 

A recent article from NPR showed that visits to news sites have increased by 60%, and that people are spending more time playing online video games. At the same time, online teaching platforms have started offering free, or heavily discounted, virtual courses. Below are a list of online blockchain and cryptocurrency courses worth exploring while spending time at home.

Coursera: “Blockchain Revolution Specialization” 

Ranked by e-learning hub Digital Defynd as the best blockchain-certification course, Coursera’s “Blockchain Revolution” course series is designed to introduce learners to blockchain for business, government and society.

The courses are taught by Don Tapscott, a globally recognized speaker and the executive director of the Blockchain Research Institute, and Alex Tapscott, the author of the best-selling book “Blockchain Revolution” and a new book called “Financial Services Revolution.”

The BRI’s director of communications, Luke Bradley, told Cointelegraph that students from all different backgrounds have found the Blockchain Revolution course series valuable:

“There’s no coding experience required to take the course. All you need is about 8–12 hours a week, and we’ve had some learners finish the course by putting in 4–6 hours a week.”

Bradley also mentioned that the course is unique from others, noting that students eventually get to apply what they’ve learned through a “blockchain opportunity analysis.” He described this as “a hands-on opportunity to come up with and analyze a blockchain application in a student’s profession or organization.” Upon completing the four-course series, students receive a certificate from INSEAD, a leading graduate business school. 

Bradley further noted that the BRI recently launched an additional course series that specifically caters to financial-services professionals called “Blockchain Revolution in Financial Services.” This series is intended for students with a background in banking and finance who want to learn about the fundamentals of blockchain.

The BRI is currently offering 50% off of the first month of the Blockchain Revolution course series.

Udacity: “Become a Blockchain Developer”

As blockchain adoption continues to grow, the demand for developers in the space is also increasing significantly. Udacity’s “Become a Blockchain Developer” course allows students to create their own private blockchain, secure digital assets using blockchain identity, explore the Ethereum platform, and use Solidity and smart contracts to develop a decentralized application, known as a DApp.

Udacity’s CEO, Gabe Dalporto, told Cointelegraph that the overall goal of the program is to bring hands-on projects to students:

“During the course, students will build a decentralized app that allows them to create, sell, and transfer ownership of a unique star token (CryptoStar) on the Ethereum blockchain using smart contracts and the nonfungible (ERC-721) token standard.”

Another project the course offers is tracking items through the supply chain. Dalporto noted that this teaches students how to manage and audit blockchain product ownership as the product is transferred down the supply chain. “This can help improve your notarization service with a smart contract to support transferring of ownership, product auditing, and supply chain management,” he explained.

Other projects within the course focus on building DApps with multiple smart contracts and creating a decentralized property-listing application, where students will represent their ownership rights using zero-knowledge proofs. Tokens will then be minted to represent the claim to the property. According to Dalporto, Udacity’s blockchain developer course is unique due to its interactive experience:

“This course offers an open opportunity for anyone seeking to enter the field. Plus, blockchain is still an emerging technology, so you have the chance to start making an impact right away. The critical differentiator in an emerging field is hands-on experience, and that is exactly what you’ll get in this program.”

Dalporto explained that the course takes four months on average to complete, which involves about 10 hours of work per week. Upon completion, students will receive a nanodegree certification from Udacity, which Dalporto says can be added to a LinkedIn profile. 

Udacity is currently running a site-wide promotion of 50% off until March 24, for all those interested in signing up.

Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation: Blockchain training courses

Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation offer an entire catalogue of blockchain training courses, including five that are completely free to take in partnership with EdX. The executive director of Hyperledger, Brian Behlendorf, told Cointelegraph that the most popular of the free introductory courses are: 

LFS170 – Blockchain: Understanding Its Uses and Implications

LFS171 – Introduction to Hyperledger Blockchain Technologies

According to Behlendorf, these courses help students understand exactly what a blockchain is, and its potential to enable change around the world. “These courses allow students to analyze use cases in technology, business, and enterprise products and institutions,” Behelndorf explained. Students who complete both of the free courses are eligible to receive a professional certificate in blockchain for business from EdX.

In addition to the free courses, there are more advanced programs that go into detail on how to administer and utilize specific Hyperledger projects, including Aries, Fabric, Indy, Sawtooth and Ursa. The Linux Foundation also offers certification exams for both Hyperledger Fabric and Hyperledger Sawtooth to help professionals demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

Behlendorf noted that the Hyperledger blockchain courses are unique because they are designed to equip students with the knowledge necessary to prepare for Hyperledger certification exams, which is helpful for those interested in working professionally with Hyperledger.

“Blockchain: Understanding Its Uses and Implications” takes about 20 hours to complete, while “Introduction to Hyperledger Blockchain Technologies” requires about 40 hours. Students interested in receiving a verified certificate of completion can obtain one from EdX for a $199 fee.

Udemy: Lolli’s “Earn and Learn” program

Udemy, a global marketplace for e-learning, offers over 2,000 courses related to Bitcoin (BTC) and blockchain. The e-learning giant formed a partnership with Lolli, a Bitcoin-rewards platform, to provide its users with tools to learn about Bitcoin, finance and other crypto-related topics. 

Alex Adelman, Lolli’s CEO and co-founder, told Cointelegraph that the partnership with Udemy was initially launched to offer Bitcoin back for purchasing online courses. He noted that Lolli is now expanding its partnership with Udemy to launch “Earn and Learn,” which will start on March 24. According to Adelman, this program will include a dedicated landing page on Udemy’s site that will recommend online courses at discounted rates for Lolli users:

“We understand most people are staying in their homes during this time and we want to provide resources for them to learn more about Bitcoin, specifically those who are new to Bitcoin and crypto. We want to incentivize them to spend this time learning and earning free Bitcoin in the process.”

Lolli users have already streamed over 1,000 blockchain- and cryptocurrency-related courses from Udemy. Adelman expects this number to increase as more people are forced into quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

In order to accommodate new users, Adelman said that many of the online courses selected on the Udemy/Lolli landing page will be discounted during quarantine periods. Lolli will also be increasing the rate of return so that users receive 16% back in Bitcoin, starting March 20 and lasting through April 30. 

Ivan on Tech Academy

Well-known crypto YouTuber Ivan on Tech launched the “Ivan on Tech Academy” to empower individuals to learn about the opportunities in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. According to Ivan, the most successful people in the space are not traders but rather builders. He told Cointelegraph:

“All new industries are filled with opportunities. Imagine working with mobile apps 10 years ago or the Internet in the 90s, or computers in the 80s. However, most people miss out on the great opportunities to build a great career or a business.”

In order to bring blockchain education to the masses, Ivan created his courses for individuals who do not have any prior skills or knowledge of the blockchain space. He noted that 15,000 students are currently enrolled in his program and that each student earns a certificate upon course completion. He said:

“Our students gain results quickly and can build Dapps within days, as we offer a very hands-on approach. We also provide help with employment and for people interested in launching their own projects.”

Other in-home learning options 

In addition to the courses listed above, Class Central offers a database of 95 courses on blockchain and 66 courses on cryptocurrency. Additionally, a new app called Bitcoin Lessons is geared toward educating the younger generation on Bitcoin. The first four lessons are free, and students can earn Bitcoin upon course completion. Cryptocurrency-investing app Abra also just launched a free 10-day course on crypto.

Finally, there are a number of cryptocurrency and blockchain influencers who offer free educational series on YouTube. For example, Crypto Wendy O’s YouTube channel consists of videos designed to break down complex indicators for individuals interested in learning more about trading.

window.fbAsyncInit = function () { FB.init({ appId: '1922752334671725', xfbml: true, version: 'v2.9' }); FB.AppEvents.logPageView(); }; (function (d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) { return; } js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js"; js.defer = true; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); !function (f, b, e, v, n, t, s) { if (f.fbq) return; n = f.fbq = function () { n.callMethod ? n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments) }; if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n; n.push = n; n.loaded = !0; n.version = '2.0'; n.queue = []; t = b.createElement(e); t.defer = !0; t.src = v; s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s) }(window, document, 'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1922752334671725'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); Source link

The post Stuck in Quarantine? Become a Blockchain Expert With These Online Courses appeared first on For Crypto.

from For Crypto https://ift.tt/2J7niRr