Last week, we asked you to partner up and share thrilling moments where characters worked together in your favorite games using #PSshare #PSBlog. From battle ready buds to dynamic bot and bird companions, here are this week’s highlights:
Cloud and Tifa stand ready to face anything in this Final Fantasy VII Remake share by YouJustGotArfed.
Deacon and Boozer go for a ride in Days Gone, shared by gameman13.
MentorCaptures shared Raven and Xii working together in Gravity Rush 2.
Kassandra sets sail with her trusted advisor Barnabus in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, shared by Amianan_NiRaGuB.
Sefwick shares a gripping shot of Kal and BD-1 escaping in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
Abby pets a WLF pup Alice in The Last of Us Part II, shared by Comput_ART.
Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?
THEME: Hitman 3
SUBMIT BY: Wednesday 9 AM PT on February 3
Next week, slip into the many disguises of Agent 47, and share daring Hitman III moments using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.
Find out more about the wholesome, jolly couch co-op party game with a pinch of construction building
Discover tips that will help you squeeze out even more fun out of the game
Greetings, aspiring space cadets! Bonkies, the jolly couch co-op party game with a pinch of construction building, is coming to Xbox One on this very day! To celebrate the launch, we’d like to share a few, quick tips on how to become the best apestronaut the universe has ever seen. So grab your friends, strap in, put on your jetpack and robo-arm equipped spacesuit and get ready for some extraplanetary monkey business!
1: Know your apequipement
BonkieCorp cares for its brave space pioneers, and in order to ensure the success of our missions, we’re equipping every monkey, dog, cat and other creatures we send into space with state of the art, cutting edge technology – our own patented jetpack, and a bionic arm! We’ll take a closer look at both of them in a moment, but for now know this – the jetpack lets you fly around the construction site with grace and elegance, while the robo-arm allows you to manipulate the materials and shape them into glorious constructions!
At least in theory, because usually at first, you’ll probably bump into your friends a lot and knock stuff down… Practice makes perfect!
2: Bring your prime mates
No great space endeavor was ever accomplished by one human (or monkey) alone. Each and every mission launched into the void of space was the work of many, and needed great amounts of cooperation in order to achieve success. Same goes for Bonkies! Even though our space program contains solo challenges, in case you’d like to train on your own, the majority of missions you’ll come across are designed for cooperation and teamwork! Sometimes two players will be enough, but be sure to have some more friends ready to jump in, because there is always more work for a spare pair of hands (or in this case a powerful, robotic arm!).
3: Unleash the arm
We’ve already mentioned the marvel of monkey technology that is your robo-arm, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. For the beginner space cadet, we advise you use it in its default mode, which means that the arm will only orient itself facing one of the four basic directions – up, down, left, and right. This makes it easier to manipulate the blocks and ensure their proper placement in the construction.
However, if you think you could use some more wackiness in your life (couldn’t we all?), feel free to navigate to the options in the main menu, and change it, so that you can also use the right analog stick to operate the arm. Things are going to get slightly more goofy, but that’s all part of the charm!
4: Don’t overheat
Now, let’s discuss your portable, wearable and fashionable personal transport device – the jetpack! You’re probably already familiar with the basic concept of such a tool – you use the left analog stick to glide through space with ease (and sometimes accidentally smash into a support pillar or a friend). These particular ones also come equipped with a boost! This comes in handy when you need to pick up a heavy block, or when you want to move fast.
Be wary, however, that if you boost too much, trying to lift a heavy block, it might result in an overload, which will send you flying haphazardly across the construction site, and will probably result in you knocking over the building you’re trying to raise. It is super fun though, so go crazy once in a while!
5: High-five often
Nothing says “good job!”, or “neat!”, or “hey, I really appreciate you as a friend!” quite like a good, old fashioned high-five! Not everyone knows that our engineers have spent an unreasonable amount of time, effort and tax-payer money to make sure that the robo-arms can also handle and faithfully portray all the delicate nuances of this ancient and sacred tradition. Just position your arm in the vicinity of another player’s arm and get slappin’! High-five, low-five, medium-five, behind-the-back-and-upside-down five, the arm can take it all!
A well-place high-five is the cherry on top of a freshly finished construction, and should bring out a smile on the face of any sentient being, organic or synthetic. Use them wisely!
6: Topple what you’ve built (just not too soon)
The joys of creation are one of the driving forces behind everything that monkeykind has achieved so far and hopes to achieve in the coming days, years or centuries. But, to be fair it also feels pretty damn good to topple something big and watch it crumble. Destruction can also be fun to watch, and even more fun to cause!
That’s why, after you complete each challenge, you’ll have a moment to bring it all back down into ruin. Just make sure that the timer has actually clicked and the challenge is passed, or otherwise you might risk angering your team members and having your controller unplugged (well, controllers aren’t usually plugged these days, but you get the idea).
And yes, we know that it kind of defeats the purpose of raising the constructions in the first place, but come on. What’s more important – a logically continuous space-operation, or having fun? Yeah, that’s what we thought too.
7: Look for secret hats
Everyone loves finding little, interesting or surprising secrets once in a while, and that’s a scientific fact of life, our scientists confirmed that. They wear lab coats, so that has to be true, right?
Well, in order for someone to find a secret another someone has to hide it first. So, to make your mission even more fun, we’ve decided to be that someone (the second one, the one that hides stuff)
Before embarking on a challenge, you’re asked to input 3 letters as a name that will identify you among other players. There are over 30 3-letter codes that, when entered, will gift you a little piece of flair like nice, LIT glasses, or a tophat worthy of a true SIR. That’s enough hints, discover the rest on your own!
8: Get those bananas!
Everyone knows that bananas are a precious source of potassium and a delicious, curved snack. Not everyone knows that they are also the space fuel of the future! And even fewer people are keepers of ancient lore suggesting that bananas acquired by finishing a challenge before a set time, are the keys to unlocking more playable characters!
That last sentence isn’t entirely true, we’re spreading the word so everyone knows how to unlock more majestic creatures to help out with space construction. BonkieCorp employs not only monkeys, you know. Cats, dogs, mammals, robots and a few mythical creatures all want to be part of the mission, so we’ve decided to let them. Discover them all!
Knowing these tips should make the task at hand (colonizing the solar system as a team of monkeys with jetpacks and robo-arms, just to remind you) slightly easier. That is not to say, that it will be easy, or that this knowledge will suffice on its own. You’ll still need the help of your friends, quick wits and impressive agility to tame the far reaches of space. But, the most important thing is to remember that it will also be a whole lot of fun!
Bonkies is launching on Xbox One today, and you snatch get them with a -20% discount in the first week! See you there, space cadet!
Bonkies is a jolly party game about cooperation, space construction and the joys of colonising the solar system as a team of monkeys. You and your prime mates will be tasked with raising all sorts of quirky constructions on distant planets, by stacking blocks so they fit a given outline. To do so, you will have to team up with other space faring animals and master the use of your trusty apequipment – a banana-fuelled jetpack and a powerful robo-arm. On top of that, you’ll have to utilise the wackiest kinds of blocks (magnets, rockets and even nuclear fusion are no strangers for a well-trained astronaut like yourself), and work in exotic and not-quite-monkey-friendly places. Who said space construction was going to be easy? Monkey around with your friends! Moving heavy blocks is no small feat. Fortunately, up to 4 friends can join forces together to carry this burden (or drop it on each other's heads). Monkey around by yourself Waiting for friends to join you? Don’t worry! You can have fun in the single player campaign! Fancy blocks for every occasion To make the job more interesting, you’ll find some rather unusual blocks at your disposal. If you thought this would all be easy, wait until you have to try and catch a stray rocket block flying around, or handle an explosive nuclear fusion cube. Choose your chimpion Animals of all shapes and sizes come to help out, thumb-owners or not! Monkeys, dogs, cats (possibly a unicorn too?) – you name it! They’re all eager to suit up and monkey around. Earn your bananas Bananas are the space food of the future! Secure your bunch by beating the time scores, and if you gather enough, you’ll unlock some new buddies!
Did you ever have the desire to destroy the world? Did you ever wonder what it is like to play the villain? If your answer is yes, now you can in Rack N Ruin!
Rack N Ruin is a top down action adventure bullet hell game where players take control of a demonic wizard named Rack, guiding him on his path to corrupt a planet for his dark master. Rack’s journey will take him across a large world filled with dungeons, foes, puzzles, secrets, and more.
The small world will not stand idle, and its champions will rise to stand against Rack, a fierce little conqueror who has brought numerous worlds to a violent end. However, the overzealous demon lord’s master wants world enslaved for his domination. Rack is given one last chance to bring a world to its knees instead of just blowing it up.
Being a wizard, Rack isn’t much for heavy lifting, instead he uses mind over matter to move blocks, turn switches, and summon magic weapons to do his bidding. At his disposal Rack will have an arsenal of magic powers, and items. These powers will not only be used to destroy Rack’s adversaries, but will also be employed to solve the games’ numerous puzzles. Rendered in crisp HD, the hand painted world of Galia awaits exploration, and corruption. Each zone will be corruptible, allowing the player change the world from a lush fairy tale into a grim nightmare world. Every time a part of the world falls, Rack grows in strength, and unallied demonic foes rise. In the end, only a terrible mirror world of Galia will remain. Destruction, Mayhem, and Ruin await all.
Burn through hordes of foes with 4 core elemental weapons. Unleash death with an array of 24 spells, items, and contraptions. Find special items that allow the player to create unique item interactions based on the elemental weapon type. Weave through complex bullet patterns while smiting titanic bosses and over 30 unique enemies. Explore an enchanted benevolent world, and then transform it into a nightmarish image of its former self. Ransack castles, pillage dungeons, escape prisons, navigate gloomy caves, and awaken ancient evils. Unravel devious puzzles, and scour the land for over 100 secrets. Meet a charming cast of townsfolk, and collect their souls.
Join Rack on an epic adventure across a world filled with magic and wonder. Then watch in astonishment as Rack befouls, corrupts, slaughters, and brings about a general air of misfortune to everything and everyone he confronts. Chaos reigns in this top-down action adventure rpg that's infused with the intensity of a classic shoot 'em up.
Willkommen bei Next Week on Xbox. Wie immer stellen wir Dir alle neuen Spiele vor, die bald für Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S und Xbox One erhältlich sind! In der kommenden Woche erscheinen wieder jede Menge Spiele für Deine Lieblingskonsole – hier siehst Du, welche neuen Games Dich erwarten. Klick Dich einfach durch die Spiel-Details, um mehr zu möglichen Vorbestellungen zu erfahren (Änderungen vorbehalten).
Feb 3, 2021
Get 10 Quest
Get 10 Quest ist ein facettenreiches Puzzlespiel, in dem intuitives Gameplay auf herausstechende Grafik trifft. In den beiden Modi Endlos und Level erwarten Dich 80 verfügbare Level und sechs verschiedene Spielarten. Ob Du lieber über die Touch-Steuerung oder das Joypad spielst, bleibt Dir überlassen.
Nach einem brutalen Angriff auf die Erde schickt die Menschheit Aufklärungsschiffe zum Sternensystem, aus dem der Angriff kam. Als einer der Piloten allerdings nicht mehr von seiner Mission zurückkehrt, wirst Du in der Rolle der talentierten Sabrina dazu berufen, ihn zu finden. Mit Habroxia 2 erwartet Dich ein Weltraum-Shooter der alten Schule inklusive spannender Upgrades, epischer Bosskämpfe und nostalgiegeladener Pixel-Grafik.
Xbox Play Anywhere, Xbox Game Pass – Project Winter ist das ideal Spiel, um seinen Freunden mal in den Rücken zu fallen. In dem auf bis zu acht Spieler ausgelegten Multiplayer-Game überlebt nur der, der im entscheidenden Moment an sich selbst denkt. Sammle Ressourcen, verbessere Strukturen und arbeite auf den Moment hin, in dem Du von Teamwork auf Egoismus umschalten musst.
Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S – Du schlüpfst in die Rolle von Cahal, einem mächtigen Garou, der die Kontrolle über seine Zerstörungswut verloren hat und seitdem im Exil lebt. Cahal hat die Fähigkeit, sich in einen mächtigen Werwolf zu verwandeln. Aus diesem Grund spielt er trotz seiner Verbannung eine entscheidende Rolle im aufkommenden Krieg zwischen den Garous und dem mächtigen Ölkonzern Endron, der den Planeten zerstört.
Glittering Sword ist vollgepackt mit Anlehnungen an Spieleklassiker der 90er Jahre. Jede Szene bietet neue Fallen, Gegner, Portale und Schalter, die in der richtigen Reihenfolge überwunden, besiegt und betätigt werden müssen. Nur so meisterst Du die actiongeladenen Herausforderungen.
Xbox One X Enhanced – First Blood ist ein humorvolles Stealth-Action-Spiel. Aus der Top-Down-Perspektive vertreibst Du als Staubsaugerroboter Einbrecher aus deinem Haus – ein kurzweiliger Zeitvertreib und der erste Titel der Justice Sucks-Serie.
Well hellooo there! I’m Sam, co-founder of Butterscotch Shenanigans, and today I’m thrilled to share some tips and tricks to jumpstart your adventures in our goofy crafting RPGCrashlands.
In Crashlands, you’ll play as Flux, an intergalactic trucker who gets marooned on an outlandish, dangerous planet called Woanope. It’ll take all of your wits (and both of your glutes) to survive, gather up your cargo, and get off-world before your employer cuts your pension, so make the most of your adventure by following these pro-tips!
Every quest matters: Quest givers often hold special recipes for powerful items or sweet pieces of furniture. They’re also always the source of boss encounters. If it seems like a quest-giver is asking a lot of you, it’s probably because there’s an insane boss-fight somewhere down the line, so get ready!
Harvest everything: Seriously! Crashlands isn’t like every other crafting game you’ve played – there’s no penalty for carrying thousands of items. If you walk past something, pick it up!
Bombs and potions are your friends: Make them! Tons of them.
Run stations in parallel to boost your productivity: Like in the real world, things you make in Crashlands take some time to construct. Use that built-in downtime to check your other stations for useful things to make, like bombs or potions, or extensions to your base.
Specialize with your trinkets: You’ve got four trinket slots in your suit. Trinkets are special items that augment your abilities in fantastic ways. Pay attention to creature weaknesses (check the compendium!) to outfit yourself for optimal combat, or improve your harvesting efficiency.
Keep signs on hand: By always carrying signs with you, you can quickly label parts of the map where you find a pocket of rare resources or rare, epic creatures.
Pick the right pet for the job: Every pet provides different types of damage, different attack patterns, and different buffs to you. You can make your combat a lot smoother by learning about the strengths and weaknesses of the creatures you are fighting and bringing a pet that counteracts them!
Salvage and re-roll your equipment. Crafted equipment on Woanope is subject to the fluctuating energy blasts coming from the core of the planet – so any given weapon or armor craft could be more powerful than another. In your suit UI you’ll find a small, yellow recycle icon – this can be used to breakdown old or unwanted equipment so you can get some of the precious components back for another roll at a particularly juicy upgrade.
With these tips in-hand you’ll quickly gain mastery over the wilds, tame all kinds of alien beasts, and get a taste for all the adventure that Crashlands has to offer. Now get out there and thrive!
Play as Flux Dabes, a galactic delivery truck driver whose latest shipment gets interrupted by a megalomaniacal alien named "Hewgodooko" who tears her ship to pieces looking for useful tech. Crashlanded on Woanope, you must fight, tame, craft, quest, bossfight, and adventure your way to domination of all the things so that you and JuiceBox, your trusty sidekick/supervisor/robotic cargo palette, can send a message to the Bureau of Shipping and get those packages delivered!
Welcome to Next Week on Xbox! Here we cover all the new games coming soon to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows 10 PC as well as upcoming Xbox Game Pass and soon-to-be released ID@Xbox titles! Get more details on the games below and click their profiles for pre-order details when available (release dates are subject to change). Jump in!
Get 10 Quest – February 3
Get 10 Quest is an incredible puzzle game that will keep you stick to the screen with its simple, intuitive yet deep gameplay and eye-catching, fresh graphics. Face the game in 2 different modes, Endless and Levels. Experience 6 different gameplay throughout the 80 available levels. 2 different control systems: Get 10 Quest is playable with both touch controls and joypad!
In the aftermath of a brutal attack, humanity sends scout ships to the star system that was at the source of the assault. But when one of the pilots doesn’t return home, it’s up to the talented starpilot Sabrina to find them. Habroxia 2 is a non-linear, old-school space shooter with upgrades, boss fights, and even New Game+, all wrapped in a retro package combining pixel graphics, chiptunes, and stellar gameplay.
The perfect game to back-stab your friends. Project Winter is an 8-person multiplayer game focusing on social deception and survival. Communication and teamwork are essential to the survivors’ ultimate goal of escape. Gather resources, repair structures, and brave the wilderness together.
A unique experience full of savage combat and mystical adventures, inspired by the famous role-playing game. You are Cahal, a powerful Garou who chose to go into exile after losing control of his destructive rage. On his quest for redemption and blood, Cahal plays a crucial role in the great war between the Garous and Endron, a powerful oil company that serves the Wyrm, whose destruction is ravaging the planet.
Glittering Sword is full of spiritual references to classical gaming brands from the ‘90s, and it’s shiny and balanced graphical setting helps the player to dive into the memorable adventure. Here, each screen is the individual location with traps, enemies, portals and switches, and the player needs to learn the exact order of completing things the right way.
Roombo: First Blood is a comedic, top-down, stealth-action game about being a robot vacuum cleaner and fending off burglars from your home. A short, experimental game and the first in the Justice Sucks series.
The new Raspberry Pi Pico is very different from a traditional Raspberry Pi. Pico is a microcontroller, rather than a microcomputer. Unlike a Raspberry Pi it’s a platform you develop for, not a platform you develop on.
Blinking the onboard LED
But you still have choices if you want to develop for Pico, because there is both a C/C++ SDK and an official MicroPython port. Beyond that there are other options opening up, with a port of CircuitPython from Adafruit and the prospect of Arduino support, or even a Rust port.
Here I’m going to talk about how to get started with the C/C++ SDK, which lets you develop for Raspberry Pi Pico from your laptop or Raspberry Pi.
I’m going to assume you’re using a Raspberry Pi; after all, why wouldn’t you want to do that? But if you want to develop for Pico from your Windows or Mac laptop, you’ll find full instructions on how to do that in our Getting Started guide.
Blinking your first LED
When you’re writing software for hardware, the first program that gets run in a new programming environment is typically turning an LED on, off, and then on again. Learning how to blink an LED gets you halfway to anywhere. We’re going to go ahead and blink the onboard LED on Pico, which is connected to pin 25 of the RP2040 chip.
We’ve tried to make getting started with Raspberry Pi Pico as easy as possible. In fact, we’ve provided some pre-built binaries that you can just drag and drop onto your Raspberry Pi Pico to make sure everything is working even before you start writing your own code.
Go to the Getting Started page and click on the “Getting started with C/C++” tab, then the “Download UF2 file” button in the “Blink an LED” box.
A file called blink.uf2 will be downloaded to your computer. Go grab your Raspberry Pi Pico board and a micro USB cable. Plug the cable into your Raspberry Pi or laptop, then press and hold the BOOTSEL button on your Pico while you plug the other end of the micro USB cable into the board. Then release the button after the board is plugged in.
A disk volume called RPI-RP2 should pop up on your desktop. Double-click to open it, and then drag and drop the UF2 file into it. The volume will automatically unmount and the light on your board should start blinking.
Blinking an LED
Congratulations! You’ve just put code onto your Raspberry Pi Pico for the first time. Now we’ve made sure that we can successfully get a program onto the board, let’s take a step back and look at how we’d write that program in the first place.
Getting the SDK
Somewhat unsurprisingly, we’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make installing the tools you’ll need to develop for Pico as easy as possible on a Raspberry Pi. We’re hoping to make things easier still in the future, but you should be able to install everything you need by running a setup script.
However, before we do anything, the first thing you’ll need to do is make sure your operating system is up to date.
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt full-upgrade
Once that’s complete you can grab the setup script directly from Github, and run it at the command line.
The script will do a lot of things behind the scenes to configure your Raspberry Pi for development, including installing the C/C++ command line toolchain and Visual Studio Code. Once it has run, you will need to reboot your Raspberry Pi.
$ sudo reboot
The script has been tested and is known to work from a clean, up-to-date installation of Raspberry Pi OS. However, full instructions, along with instructions for manual installation of the toolchain if you prefer to do that, can be found in the “Getting Started” guide.
Once your Raspberry Pi has rebooted we can get started writing code.
Writing code for your Pico
There is a large amount of example code for Pico, and one of the things that the setup script will have done is to download the examples and build both the Blink and “Hello World” examples to verify that your toolchain is working.
But we’re going to go ahead and write our own.
We’re going to be working in the ~/pico directory created by the setup script, and the first thing we need to do is to create a directory to house our project.
$ cd pico
$ ls -la
total 59284
drwxr-xr-x 9 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 10:26 .
drwxr-xr-x 19 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 10:29 ..
drwxr-xr-x 12 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 10:24 openocd
drwxr-xr-x 28 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 10:20 pico-examples
drwxr-xr-x 7 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 10:20 pico-extras
drwxr-xr-x 10 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 10:20 pico-playground
drwxr-xr-x 5 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 10:21 picoprobe
drwxr-xr-x 10 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 10:19 pico-sdk
drwxr-xr-x 7 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 10:22 picotool
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 60667760 Dec 16 16:36 vscode.deb
$ mkdir blink
$ cd blink
Now open up your favourite editor and create a file called blink.c in the blink directory.
Then copy the pico_sdk_import.cmake file from the external folder in your pico-sdk installation to your test project folder.
$ cp ../pico-sdk/external/pico_sdk_import.cmake .
You should now have something that looks like this:
$ ls -la
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 11:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 pi pi 4096 Jan 28 11:01 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 398 Jan 28 11:06 blink.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 211 Jan 28 11:32 CMakeLists.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 2721 Jan 28 11:32 pico_sdk_import.cmake
$
We are ready to build our project using CMake.
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ export PICO_SDK_PATH=../../pico-sdk
$ cmake ..
$ make
If all goes well you should see a whole bunch of messages flash past in your Terminal window and a number of files will be generated in the build/ directory, including one called blink.uf2.
Just as we did before with the UF2 file we downloaded from the Getting Started page, we can now drag and drop this file on to our Pico.
Unplug the cable from your Pico, then press and hold the BOOTSEL button on your Pico and plug it back in. Then release the button after the board is plugged in.
The new blink.uf2 binary can be dragged and dropped on to our Pico
The RPI-RP2 disk volume should pop up on your desktop again. Double-click to open it, then open a file viewer in the pico/blink/build/ directory and drag and drop the UF2 file you’ll find there on to the RPI-RP2 volume. It will automatically unmount, and the light on your board should start blinking. But this time it will blink a little bit differently from before.
Try playing around with the sleep_ms( ) lines in our code to vary how much time there is between blinks. You could even take a peek at one of the examples, which shows you how to blink the onboard LED in Morse code.
Using Picotool
One way to convince yourself that the program running on your Pico is the one we just built is to use something called picotool. Picotool is a command line utility installed by the setup script that is a Swiss Army knife for all things Pico.
Go ahead and unplug your Pico from your Raspberry Pi, press and hold the BOOTSEL button, and plug it back in. Then run picotool.
$ sudo picotool info -a Program Information name: blink description: First Blink binary start: 0x10000000 binary end: 0x10003344 Fixed Pin Information 25: On-board LED Build Information sdk version: 1.0.0 pico_board: pico build date: Jan 28 2021 build attributes: Release Device Information flash size: 2048K ROM version: 1
$
You’ll see lots of information about the program currently on your Pico. Then if you want to start it blinking again, just unplug and replug Pico to leave BOOTSEL mode and start your program running once more.
Picotool can do a lot more than this, and you’ll find more information about it in Appendix B of the “Getting Started” guide.
Using Visual Studio Code
So far we’ve been building our Pico projects from the command line, but the setup script also installed and configured Visual Studio Code, and we can build the exact same CMake-based project in the Visual Studio Code environment. You can open it as below:
$ cd ~/pico
$ export PICO_SDK_PATH=/home/pi/pico/pico-sdk
$ code
Chapter 6 of the Getting Started guide has full details of how to load and compile a Pico project inside Visual Studio Code. If you’re used to Visual Studio Code, you might be able to make your way from here without much extra help, as the setup script has done most of the heavy lifting for you in configuring the IDE.
What’s left is to open the pico/blink folder and allow the CMake Tools extension to configure the project. After selecting arm-none-eabi as your compiler, just hit the “Build’ button in the blue bottom bar.
Building our blink project inside Visual Studio Code
While we recommend and support Visual Studio Code as the development environment of choice for developing for Pico — it works cross-platform under Linux, Windows, and macOS and has good plugin support for debugging — you can also take a look at Chapter 9 of the Getting Started guide. There we talk about how to use both Eclipse and CLion to develop for Pico, and if you’re more used to those environments you should be able to get up and running in either without much trouble.
Where now?
If you’ve got this far, you’ve built and deployed your very first C program to your Raspberry Pi Pico. Well done! The next step is probably going to be saying “Hello World!” over serial back to your Raspberry Pi.
From here, you probably want to sit down and read the Getting Started guide I’ve mentioned throughout the article, especially if you want to make use of SWD debugging, which is discussed at length in the guide. Beyond that I’d point you to the book on the C/C++ SDK which has the API-level documentation, as well as a high-level discussion of the design of the SDK.
Support for developing for Pico can be found on the Raspberry Pi forums. There is also an (unofficial) Discord server where a lot of people active in the new community seem to be hanging out. Feedback on the documentation should be posted as an Issue to the pico-feedback repository on Github, or directly to the relevant repository it concerns.
All of the documentation, along with lots of other help and links, can be found on the same Getting Started page from which we grabbed our original UF2 file.
If you lose track of where that is in the future, you can always find it from your Pico: to access the page, just press and hold the BOOTSEL button on your Pico, plug it into your laptop or Raspberry Pi, then release the button. Go ahead and open the RPI-RP2 volume, and then click on the INDEX.HTM file.
Im Psycho-Horror The Medium erlebst Du die Geschichte von Hellseherin Marianne, die gleichzeitig in zwei Realitäten lebt – in unserer Welt und der Welt der Geister. Das Gameplay von The Medium zeichnet sich durch die Dual Reality-Mechanik aus, mit Hilfe derer Du gleichzeitig in beide Welten eintauchst. The Medium ist ab sofort auf Xbox Series X|S, PC und im Xbox Game Pass verfügbar.
In The Medium steuerst Du Marianne zeitgleich an verschiedenen Punkten im Spiel sowohl in der materiellen Welt als auch der Geisterwelt. Das Feature fungiert sowohl als Erzähl- als auch Spielmechanik, die zum einen die Geschichte und zum anderen die Erkundung und das Lösen von Rätseln vorantreibt. Befindest Du Dich in der dualen Realität, teilt sich Dein Bildschirm vertikal oder horizontal auf. Das erfordert eine leistungsstarke Hardware, wie die von Xbox Series X|S, da beide Welten zeitgleich gerendert werden.
Dual Reality funktioniert aber anders als ein Multiplayer-Splitscreen. Die meisten Spiele, die den Split-Screen nutzen, zeigen zwei verschiedene Instanzen derselben Umgebung. In The Medium sehen die reale- und Geisterwelt aber völlig unterschiedlich aus und nutzen verschiedene grafische Modelle und Texturen. Das erfordert deutlich mehr Arbeitsspeicher, Speicherplatz und Render-Aufwand.
Effekte wie Bewegungsunschärfe oder Ambient Occlusion werden doppelt berechnet und gerendert. Vor diesem Hintergrund benötigt der Titel eine beträchtliche Menge an VRAM und Speicher, der deutlich schneller zur Verfügung gestellt werden muss, als es mit Hardware älterer Generationen möglich wäre. Auch wenn Splitscreen-Sequenzen auf Screenshots oder Trailern der Dual Reality ähneln, die Technik von The Medium funktioniert anders.
Seit Jahren arbeiten wir an The Medium und der Idee von Dual Reality. Für uns ist es ein großer Moment, das Spiel mit samt der innovativen Spielmechanik endlich in Deine Hände zu legen. Bevor Du aber die dunklen Korridore des verlassenen Niwa Hotels betrittst, wünschen wir Dir ganz viel Spaß bei The Medium!
The Medium ist ab sofort auf Xbox Series X|S, PC und im Xbox Game Pass erhältlich.
Its 5.7-inch display is much bigger than Pimoroni’s previous e-ink boards, the Inky wHAT and pHAT. Indeed, it’s considerably larger than a full-size Raspberry Pi board, for which an extra female header (to boost height) and metal standoffs are supplied. Care is needed to hold it by the edges when mounting, so as not to push down on the glass panel. Alternatively, it fits flush on a Raspberry Pi Zero without the extra header, for a reduced overall depth – great for putting it in a wooden frame for wall mounting. If using a Raspberry Pi 400, you’ll need a GPIO extender cable.
The slimline board even features some breakout GPIO pins on the underside, including I2C and SPI, along with four tactile buttons on its left edge – these could be handy for switching between images or sets of them in a headless picture frame setup.
Now in full colour
In addition to its size, the other major plus point about the Inky Impression is that it now uses ACeP (Advanced Color ePaper) to deliver seven colours: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, orange. This means it can display standard RGB images without the hassle of having to alter the colour mode to a special indexed palette in an image editor, as is required on the Inky wHAT and pHAT. So it’s far easier to download or transfer images to use straight away; they just need to be 600×448 pixels, so may need scaling and/or cropping. Most major file formats are supported.
We found that simpler images, without too much detail, tended to work best. In particular, the Inky Impression is ideal for showing pop art, comic-book panels, and pixel art. Most standard photos will look fine on it, although you may find that the colours are a little washed out compared to the original image – this can be alleviated somewhat by altering the contrast and colour saturation of the photo.
As with all e-ink displays, it takes a few seconds to change to a new image (so it’s no use for animations or videos), with some flashing as it refreshes the different colour layers. There is also the possibility of some ‘ghosting’ as strong elements from the previous image may sometimes be noticeable – the best way to solve this is to show an all-white image between them.
Code examples
To use the Inky Impression, you’ll need to download the Inky Python library (as used by previous boards), either using a one-line installer or cloning/downloading the GitHub repo – the latter may be more up to date. This includes a ‘7color’ folder of Inky Impression code examples to get you started and demonstrate some of its use-cases.
Along with code to display a selected image, there’s a nice example for a simple HTML webpage, which offers a convenient way of showing styled text on the screen. There’s also a neat graphing example that plots coloured circles for data, illustrating how the Inky Impression could be useful for showing sensor or weather data in colourful charts. If using using battery/portable power, a big advantage over a conventional display is the extremely low energy drain: it only draws power when changing images, which otherwise stay on screen even with the power disconnected.
Verdict
8/10
While its lengthy screen refresh time means it’s not suitable for every project, it’s ideal for use as a digital art/picture frame or for displaying data in graphical form.
You may be familiar with what VR can do in terms of gaming and immersive entertainment experiences. But, in addition to traveling to new worlds, battling zombies, and learning about other cultures, virtual reality has been an invaluable resource for the business community for many years. From engineering to research, to workplace training, and even customer experience, VR has helped to significantly evolve how businesses operate today. According to a poll commissioned by Grid Raster, nearly 91% of businesses surveyed have or plan to implement AR or VR technology. VR has made headway in nearly every industry, and it’s quite possible VR may have influenced your favorite product or service.
So, how does one even get started when evaluating VR opportunities for one’s business? Given the limitless opportunities and solutions VR offers, it can seem like a daunting challenge to find the best solution for your business. Well, the solution really depends on your needs. But, the best place to start may be with the headset, arguably the most important tool in the virtual reality arsenal.
Both HTC VIVE Pro Eye and VIVE Focus Plus are terrific VR headsets for your business.
Not all headsets are built the same, and they can serve very different purposes. Two of the most popular and versatile types of headsets are the PC-based headset (PCVR) and the all-in-one headset. Essentially, PC-based VR headsets are attached to computers via cable (or wirelessly connected via wireless accessory), while standalone or all-in-one (AIO) headsets have all the necessary components housed within the body of the headset. Let’s give you the lowdown on each and how they may work for your business.
PCVR: A VR Headset with Top-End Specs, Precision Tracking, Connected VR
PCVR continues to be a popular choice due to its technical specs. Since the headset is connected to a PC, much of the effort is done by the various parts of the computer; the CPU for speed, the GPU for visual fidelity, and the power supply unit for power. So, in essence, the VR headset taps into the full capabilities of whatever computer it’s connected to offering the best visual fidelity, refresh rate, and rendering quality while enabling the headset to run the most immersive content.
PCVR headsets, like the VIVE Pro Eye connect with computers to produce the clearest visual fidelity, fast refresh rate, and the most precise tracking
But, what’s outside the PCVR headset is another feature that sets it apart from AIO headsets. PCVR leverages outside-in tracking, meaning the headset and controllers get their room spatial awareness by communicating with base stations that are attached to walls or ceilings. The base stations then help map the room and constantly communicate with the headset to offer the most precise tracking (but don’t worry, all data is stored locally and never shared). This is incredibly important when the VR experience requires precise design elements or multi-user training.
Given PCVR is tethered to a PC, and requires set up of base stations, it is best employed for longer-term solutions or in fixed places. Although, there are many businesses that have found transportable PCVR solutions for events, education, and trade shows.
The main differentiation with AIO headsets is the absence of any cables or external processing assistance, like a computer. Where PCVR is the host to the computer’s specs, AIO has a dedicated CPU, GPU, and power supply all tightly packed underneath its shell, and usually runs off a processor designed specifically for mobile VR. AIO also uses what’s called inside-out tracking, where the headset actually plays the role of the base stations, using the sensors and cameras on its face to understand its position relative to the boundaries the user has established during setup. (Note, some PCVR headsets like our VIVE Cosmos also support inside-out tracking).
AIO headsets also tend to be wi-fi enabled, providing a seamless experience to download new apps, browse the internet, or even broadcast what’s happening in the headset to a tablet or other mobile device.
The HTC VIVE Focus Plus is an advanced all-in-one (AIO) VR headset that is completely wireless, offering portability and versatility.
The key benefit of the AIO headset is that it is completely wireless and portable, making it perfect for training, remote collaboration, rehabilitation at healthcare facilities, a unique presentation tool on the road, as well as many other valuable uses. Kiosk mode on the VIVE Focus Plus all-in-one VR headset enables businesses to limit access to apps and navigation and turn the Focus into a portable, powerful fixed-purpose device. With this user-friendly feature, trainees and clients can focus on only your enterprise apps.
VR Headsets Built to Suit Your Needs
As you can see VR is completely adaptable to just about any business need. At HTC VIVE, we understand the unique challenges businesses have, and in addition to offering both best-in-class PCVR and AIO VR headsets, we also offer complete business VR solutions with software and warranty services. If you are thinking now may be a good time to employ VR for your business, visit https://www.enterprise.VIVE.com to learn more and to speak with a business sales associate.
Immortals Fenyx Rising: A New God is available now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, following Fenyx as they undertake a series of challenges and trials to earn a place in the Pantheon of the gods. In order to prove themselves worthy, Fenyx will explore a new open area, Olympos Palace, and delve into new puzzle-filled vaults designed by the gods themselves.
Additionally, players who haven’t yet had a chance to try Immortals Fenyx Risingcan get a taste of its climbing, gliding, and aerial melee combat with the free demo, which is now available on Xbox platforms. Featuring exclusive content not seen in the main game, it’s a chance to experience Fenyx’s range of abilities with a short, self-contained quest to uncover the Secret of the Cyclops.
Immortals Fenyx Rising: A New God features elaborate new vaults that – in addition to looking much sunnier than the main campaign’s Tartaros Vaults – feature all-new puzzle elements, like Tesla coils and interconnected portals, along with plenty of tricky navigation and physics challenges. As players complete the vaults, they’ll be encouraged by Ares, Athena, Aphrodite, and Hephaistos, who will gradually reward Fenyx with four new ability upgrades. These enable Fenyx to do things like smash through otherwise impassable barriers, or switch places with a statue-like clone, which become increasingly vital as players tackle the later, more complex vaults. And, of course, there are plenty of opportunities to cleave through hordes of tough-as-nails monsters with Fenyx’s fully powered-up combat capabilities and a new, god-appropriate gear set.
Immortals Fenyx Rising: A New God is now available as part of the Season Pass for Immortals Fenyx Rising, or as a separate purchase (and while it’s playable without having finished Immortals Fenyx Rising, story spoilers make it highly advisable that you do). Fenyx’s ascension to Olympos is also just the beginning of what’s in store, with future DLC adventures letting players explore Chinese mythology in Myths of the Eastern Realm, or beat up monsters as Fenyx’s new champion Ash in The Lost Gods.
For now, Immortals Fenyx Rising: A New Godlets players tackle huge, perilous challenges that elevate the game’s dungeon design to new (literal) heights. Do you have what it takes to become a god? Dive into the new DLC– or start with the free demo – and find out.
Expand your Immortals Fenyx Rising™ adventure with this first DLC for more epic adventures and puzzles! In A New God, play as Fenyx to overcome the trials of the gods of Olympos. In these trials, Fenyx hones her godly powers and finds ways to become even stronger as they attempt to earn a place among the inner circle of the Pantheon.
In today’s update for Grounded, we are bringing flying insects into the backyard, with mosquitos, fireflies, and bees landing in the world. The team has wanted to bring flying creatures into Grounded for some time, as it was a top community request for our ever-evolving backyard.
As the population of creatures in Grounded grows with these new additions, there will be even more items for players to craft. For this update, Bee Armor, a Firefly Head Lamp, and the rapier-like Mosquito Needle are all new recipes that players will be able to research and craft once they have taken down the new bugs. But that’s not all! Players are now able to craft a shield from weevil parts which allow players to block attacks that previously could not be blocked.
Along with the new creatures and crafting recipes, some new quality of life features have been implemented. Per community feedback, equipped items will no longer take up inventory space and instead take up equipped item slots. Not only that, when a player dies, all equipped items will remain on the character, making the journey back to their backpack to retrieve their items less arduous.
We hope players love these insects and updates as much as we loved creating them! As always, we hope to hear what our community thinks of these new creatures as we continue to build on our Xbox Game Preview experience together.
To learn more about the details of each of these new additions to the backyard, check out the latest Grounded Developer Vlog on the Obsidian YouTube Channel.
Get ready to lock ‘n load and splat your foes, Roblox fans. Big Paintball has gotten even bigger on Xbox One with its richest content update yet, bringing you more maps and a host of gameplay improvements to ratchet up the fun and intensity of every firefight.
New and Remastered Maps
Suijin and Safehouse have recently been added to Big Paintball’s roster of maps, bringing the total to 10. In addition to the two new battlefields, Big Games has also been hard at work remastering the game’s existing maps with an enhanced color palette and more strategic gameplay elements like better cover and more open space to traverse. Whether you’re a new or returning player, there are countless gameplay opportunities to discover on each map.
Suijin
Inspired by Japanese architecture, Suijin is arguably one of the most unique and versatile maps Big Paintball has to offer. The steep terrain, plentiful cover, and wide-open lanes along the outer rim will require you to constantly mix up your play style if you hope to come out on top.
Safehouse
Whether you’re indoors or outdoors, expect to engage in some ferocious fights in Safehouse. As soon as the round starts, both teams will inevitably vie for control over the massive safehouse in the center of the map. Set up a perimeter quick and you just might find yourself victorious.
New Game Mode
The competition heats up in Big Paintball with the all-new, ultra-intense Skill game mode. The rules are simple: whoever gets to 100 tags first, wins! Rack up those streaks and let the paint fly.
More Updates to Come
Big Games is always looking to refine the gameplay experience in Big Paintball. The new content drop includes a new movement system so the game feels faster-paced. You’ll also notice various improvements to respawns and lots of visual upgrades across the board. And that’s just the beginning. Over the coming months, players on Xbox One can look forward to a steady stream of new maps, weapons, and streaks to gain an edge over their opponents.
Roblox is the ultimate virtual universe that lets you play, create, and be anything you can imagine. Join millions of players and discover an infinite variety of immersive worlds created by a global community! Already have an account? Log in with your existing Roblox account and play now! MILLIONS OF WORLDS TO EXPLORE In the mood for an epic role-playing adventure? Want to compete against rivals worldwide? Or do you just want to hang out and chat with your friends online? A growing library of worlds created by the community means there’s always something new and exciting for you to play every day. PLAY TOGETHER ANYTIME, ANYWHERE Roblox features full cross-platform support, meaning you can play with your friends and millions of other people on their computers, mobile devices, Xbox One, or VR headsets. BE ANYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE Be creative and show off your unique style! Customize your avatar with tons of hats, shirts, faces, gear, and more. The Xbox One version of Roblox also includes exclusive avatar outfits. CHAT WITH FRIENDS Connect with your friends online by chatting with them via Xbox Live’s integrated voice chat or party chat. An active Xbox Live Gold subscription is required. CREATE YOUR OWN WORLDS: https://www.roblox.com/develop SUPPORT: https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us CONTACT: https://corp.roblox.com/contact/ PRIVACY POLICY: https://www.roblox.com/info/privacy PARENT’S GUIDE: https://corp.roblox.com/parents/ PLEASE NOTE: Xbox Live Gold and an internet connection of 192 Kbps or higher required to play. THE ROBLOX GAME RATING APPLIES ONLY TO THE ROBLOX APP, NOT TO ANY USER GENERATED CONTENT INCLUDED WITHIN THE APP, WHICH IS UNRATED.
It’s that time of year again, the NFL postseason is here. But before the biggest game of the year (ahem, the Super Bowl) you can go all out with Madden NFL 21’s Free Play Days on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S during the Pro Bowl from January 28 to 31.
Check out fun Madden NFL 21 activations all weekend, including the virtual Pro Bowl on Sunday, January 31. One NFL superstar from each conference (AFC and NFC) will assemble a team of four athletes and celebrities to play one epic game of Madden NFL 21.
Don’t miss the Club Championship tournament, the biggest competitive Madden NFL event of the year. Consisting of 32 finalists, each representing an NFL team, will vie for a piece of the $750K prize pool and title of Madden NFL 21 Club Champion. The AFC playoff rounds will take place live on January 28-29, and the final rounds will be February 5 to 6.
In Madden Ultimate Team, suit up for the NFL playoffs and earn Pro Bowl and Team of the Year players to boost your roster with some of the best talent in the league. Plus, it’s time to get hyped for the biggest game of the year with the arrival of Super Bowl Heroes in Ultimate Team.
On the road to the Super Bowl, anything can happen. It’s where superstars become legends, and MVPs become cover stars. Just ask Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, and the legendary Shaun Alexander. Cement your legacy on the game’s biggest stage with the Madden NFL 21 Superstar Edition for 60% off, and get the next gen of Madden NFL 21 on Xbox Series X|S for free (conditions apply). Carry your Ultimate Team, Franchise modes, and The Yard progress across generations. Get ready to feel game day realism like never before and play Madden NFL 21 free this weekend on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S from January 28 to 31!
The Medium is a third-person psychological horror game that tells the story of Marianne, a psychic who can live in two realities at the same time: our world and the world of the spirits. The Medium’s trademark feature is a mechanic we call “Dual-Reality” gameplay that you can experience today on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and with Xbox Game Pass.
At certain points in the game, you play in the material world and the spirit world at the exact same time, controlling both avatars simultaneously. It’s both a storytelling and gameplay mechanic, which drives both the main theme of the game as well as exploration and puzzle-solving. When you are in dual reality, the screen is split either vertically or horizontally. Since both worlds are rendered simultaneously, we needed powerful hardware, such as the Xbox Series X|S consoles, to fully realize the potential of the dual reality. However, we still get questions why the game needs a next-gen platform even though split screen has been with us for a long time.
The short answer is: what we do with dual reality is much different than multiplayer split screen. The long answer… well, read on.
Most other games that support split-screen displays two different instances of the same location. In The Medium, the real and the spirit worlds look completely different and use their own sets of graphical assets, such as models or textures. This is much more demanding in terms of memory, storage, and the rendering cost.
Additionally, such effects as motion blur or ambient occlusion need to be calculated and rendered twice. All in all, the game requires a significant amount of VRAM and fast storage, much faster than what was used in the previous generation of hardware. Although it might look similar in screenshots or trailers, technically speaking the game’s dual reality simply works differently and is much more demanding power-wise than “ordinary” split-screen.
We’ve been working on The Medium and the idea of dual reality for a couple of years and it’s a big moment for us to finally let the game and its innovative mechanic into the hands of the players. Before you enter the dark corridors of the abandoned Niwa Hotel, I can only add… enjoy the mystery!
The Mediumis available now on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and with Xbox Game Pass.
Discover a dark mystery only a medium can solve. Travel to an abandoned communist resort and use your unique psychic abilities to uncover its deeply disturbing secrets, solve dual-reality puzzles, survive encounters with sinister spirits, and explore two realities at the same time. The Medium is a third-person psychological horror game that features patented dual-reality gameplay and an original soundtrack co-composed by Arkadiusz Reikowski and Akira Yamaoka. BECOME A MEDIUM Wield unique psychic abilities reserved for those with the gift. Travel between the realities or explore them both at the very same time. Use the Out of Body experience to investigate places where your real-world self can’t go. Create energy shields and deliver powerful spirit blasts to survive the spirit world and its otherworldly dangers. SEE WHAT’S HIDDEN Delve deep into a mature and morally ambiguous story, where nothing is what it seems and everything has another side. As a medium you see, hear and experience more than others, and with every new perspective you will change your perception on what happened at the Niwa resort. PLAY IN TWO WORLDS AT THE SAME TIME Never-seen-before and officially patented gameplay that plays out across two worlds displayed at the same time. Explore the physical world and the spirit world simultaneously, and use the interactions between them to solve dual-reality puzzles, unlock new paths, and awaken memories of past events. ENTER A DARK REALITY INSPIRED BY BEKSIŃSKI The Medium’s spirit world is a dark mirror reflection of our reality, a grim and unsettling place where our unpunished deeds, evil urges, and vile secrets manifest themselves and can take on a form. This world has been invented and designed under the inspiration of Zdzisław Beksiński’s paintings, Polish dystopian surrealist internationally recognized for his distinctive and strikingly ominous style. MUSIC BY YAMAOKA & REIKOWSKI Immerse yourself in the disturbing and oppressive atmosphere of the game thanks to the original ‘dual’ soundtrack co-created by Akira Yamaoka and Arkadiusz Reikowski. Yamaoka-san is a legendary Japanese composer best known for his work on the Silent Hill series; Reikowski is a Hollywood Music in Media Awards nominee who worked on such acclaimed horror games as Blair Witch, Layers of Fear, and Observer. Now they join their creative forces for the music and songs of The Medium.
Who’s ready for football?! The NFL and Rocket League are suiting up for Super Bowl kickoff next week with our latest in-game event: the NFL Super Bowl LV Celebration! The week-long event is coming out of the tunnel with the brand-new game mode, Gridiron, plus new Event Challenges and the return of the NFL Fan Pack. It all starts February 2 and will be live until February 8.
Gear Up for Gridiron
Welcome to the new LTM, Gridiron! Champions Field has been transformed, complete with hash marks and the NFL logo at the 50-yard line. But before you hoist the trophy in victory, you must learn the rules:
The standard Rocket League ball has been replaced with an American football in this 4v4 mode.
Touching the ball attaches it to the roof of your car.
If any player touches the ball, that player becomes the ball carrier, setting up the opportunity for hand-offs to teammates or steals by the other team.
The carrier can single jump, but double jumping drops the ball. You can also pass the ball by dodging.
Each goal is 3 or 7 points: 7 points are awarded if the ball is attached to a player when entering the opponent’s goal, and 3 points are awarded if the ball is passed in or if the ball is loose. All own goals are worth 3 points whether the ball is attached or it’s loose.
Demos require Supersonic speed just like in standard modes.
Stay in bounds! You’ll fumble the ball if you cross the line marked on the Arena wall.
We’re adding three Event Challenges that can be completed to unlock the Gridiron Guru Player Title, NFL Wheels, and 20,000 XP! These Challenges and the Gridiron LTM are live from February 2 through February 8.
The NFL Fan Pack, that includes Octane Decals for all 32 NFL teams, will return to the Item Shop throughout the event and will be available for 800 Credits. Equip your favorite team’s Decal, hit the Gridiron, and be sure to share some of your wild highlights! Mention @RocketLeague on Twitter using the hashtag #RLGridiron. Hut… Hut… Hike!
Smart speakers are amazing devices, able to answer a near-infinite array of questions, as well as offer a variety of AI services. As shown in this project write-up by Marcelo Rovai, you can emulate a Google Assistant with Raspberry Pi and ReSpeaker 2-Mics Pi HAT, which can be triggered to “wake” and respond to your voice queries with a physical button.
To take this system to the next level, he’s leveraging an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense that replaces the button with a virtual one through keyword spotting. The tinyML-enabled Nano then listens for “yes” using its onboard microphone. When activated, it sends a signal to the Raspberry Pi, which in turn processes subsequent requests via the Google Cloud.
It’s that time once again. Over at Media Molecule, we’ve spent the last couple of months digging through a mountain of nominations for our annual Impy Awards, during which we celebrate the best, brightest, weirdest, cleverest, and most exciting creations made in Dreams over the past year. You know how Scrooge McDuck dives into a big pile of treasure? It’s been a bit like that, only with video games (and short films, and sculptures, and music, and and and…)
It was tremendously difficult. It’s been almost a whole year since Dreams launched, and so there are more brilliant creations than ever for us – and our special guest judges, many of whom you’ll recognise from around the game industry – to choose from. We’ll be celebrating the coMmunity as a whole – and our 1st birthday! – on February 14 with a wondrously over-the-top awards show that we’ve built entirely within Dreams. Yes, you read that correctly.
But today, we’re finally coming up for air to bring you our selected shortlists for this year’s Impy Awards. Before we reveal all, remember that the following categories are decided by the coMmunity, and that you can vote for your winners here:
You have until February 4 to cast your votes for these categories. Got it? Good. And now, fresh from the treasure pile, here are the final nominees:
Funniest Creation
Pig Detective 3 – Death on Detox Island – Team Pig Detective Push to Open – ParsleyGuy_Alex “This Halloween” – Music Video – TheRedProphett Throwing a New Year’s Eve Party With Barry Blobfish – Zach-inator6 Opposite Day 8: It Ain’t Great! – MrCaseyJones
Scare of the Year
The Twilight Shift – RurouniDan Left to Rot [HORROR] – Denjo92 Vestige – AVNDR_found Trauma – NauticalSquatch THE INVOCATION – TheBlightBeast
Best Art Direction
The Snowgardens – HalfUp Where leaves fall from Serenity – Sparten__X53 Bon Appétit ! [WIP] – Elfiooh THEOGONY – ZIIQ Untitled Space Opera. – ORD6
Best Sculpture
Pumpkin Spice – SootyPinions Cheetah Head – SuperCatchyName A Greasy Meal – VitaminG_90 Arashiyama Bamboo Grove – BADROBO82 Silver Elder Dragon Head Sculpt – palscage
Best Animation
The Snowball – byvsen NOGUCHI’S BELL – Episode 1 Trailer – Cyber_Sheep_Film Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt! – patekkah Go Hiking! – arseny3d Nine Tails Story / DEMO – Esuki
Best Character
8-Bit – Zypher755 *lash – FeyzPS Alfie (Alfred Elephant) – PuddyDoke A very Plane character – icecreamcheese Mrs Meek – Andymationb
Best Narrative
Pig Detective 3 – Death on Detox Island – Team Pig Detective The Snowball – byvsen Pollen – TRIX9 The Hermit – Lidlig The Snowgardens – HalfUp
Best Gameplay
Tiamatan – girlfromcroydon Octane – Azure_Kn1ght Press X to Puzzle – Pixel_Gorilla STEAMBOUND – donut_mutt Alpine Dream (Snowboarding) – TheOtterbon
Best Music
Pig Detective 3 – Official Soundtrack – ReddishBoat Grey Song a Day Album – SaucelessOne MasherButtons – For The Dreams I Can’t Remember (venwave Remix) – Venwave Morgonblues – byvsen Splatty’s Adventure – NiloFranck
Best Audio Design
The Snowball – byvsen Disappearance at Birch Hollow – Mandelbo Left to Rot [HORROR] – Denjo92 GL/TCH-R [WIP] – Elca_Gaming Vineland – ZIIQ
Best Innovation
Moldable Maze Testing Levels (WIP) – TannicAlloy IMPCEPTION – cgCody Community Events TV – Bella_Iris The Entropy Games – Entropy-Tamed Musicalia – Glitch_Me_Up
Best VR Experience
Tectonic – sanderobros ESCAPE – A minimalist Escape Room – SlurmMackenzie Please Press the Button – Aecert Jungle Bill VR – Nbeyeler ME – Wargarble
Best Voice Acting
KeldBjones in LOCK Bella_Iris in The Widow Zodira in The Twilight Shift xMightyViciousx in Deeno Teaser Trailer: In-Dreams Cut SKINNYCHAD in Shuffleboard
LOCK – Pixel_Gorilla The Snowgardens – HalfUp Alpine Dream (Snowboarding) – TheOtterbon A Little Perspective – RbdJellyfish INFINITY JUMP – the_burgervan TEMPORAL FUSE – DancingEmber Pig Detective 3 – Death on Detox Island – Team Pig Detective
Wow, what a haul! We’re going to have to increase the security ‘round these parts. Quick, somebody make us a vault door. Or a big bear. Whatever’s easiest.
Well done to all the creators, whether you made it to the shortlists or not. And if you’re still reading, we hope to see you at the event on Sunday, February 14 at 16:30 GMT / 8:30am PT on Twitch and YouTube, where we’ll announce all the winners.
Until then, you can catch us on our social channels – use the hashtag #ImpyAwards if you want to tell us how much you’re looking forward to the show. And why not visit our specially-made in-game hub? You can check out last year’s winners in the gallery, relax in the tea room, and get prepared ahead of the big night with our exclusive Impy Awards swag bag.
There are also two new limited-edition Impy Awards imps to collect. Simply complete the scavenger hunt in the Impys hub, and when you leave the level you’ll receive this glamorous pair – meet Fitz and Renée.
Make sure to install update 2.21 (arriving February 10), otherwise your imps won’t unlock. But don’t worry – if you complete the hunt before February 10, you’ll be automatically awarded the imps once you install the update. Easy peasy.
It’s gametime! The NFL and Rocket Leagueare preparing for Super Bowl kickoff next week with our latest in-game event: the NFL Super Bowl LV Celebration. The event is bringing the brand new game mode, Gridiron, plus new Event Challenges and the return of the NFL Fan Pack. It all starts February 2 and will be live until February 8.
Hit the Gridiron
Huddle up! Champions Field has been transformed, complete with hash marks and the NFL logo at the 50-yard line. But before you hoist the trophy in victory, you have to learn the rules.
Here are the rules of Gridiron:
The standard Rocket League ball has been replaced with an American football in this 4v4 mode.
Touching the ball attaches it to the roof of your car.
If any player touches the ball, that player becomes the ball carrier, setting up the opportunity for hand-offs to teammates or steals by the other team.
The carrier can single jump, but double jumping drops the ball. You can also pass the ball by dodging.
Each goal is 3 or 7 points: 7 points are awarded if the ball is attached to a player when entering the opponent’s goal, and 3 points are awarded if the ball is passed in or if the ball is loose. All own-goals are worth 3 points whether the ball is attached or it’s loose.
Demos require Supersonic speed just like in standard modes.
Stay in bounds! You’ll fumble the ball if you cross the line marked on the Arena wall.
Now throw on your pads, get out there, and have some fun. Plus, we’re adding three Event Challenges that can be completed to unlock the Gridiron Guru Player Title, NFL Wheels, and 20,000 XP. These Challenges and the Gridiron LTM Playlist are live from February 2 through February 8.
To round out the festivities, the NFL Fan Pack will return to the Item Shop. In case you missed it when it was available, this pack contains Octane Decals for all 32 NFL teams and is available for 800 Credits. Equip your favorite team’s Decal, hit the Gridiron, and be sure to share some of your wild highlights. Hut hut hike!
Season One is the latest Sea of Thieves content update, available January 28 and free for all players with Xbox Game Pass and across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows 10 and Steam.
Seasonal progression allows all players to earn Renown and rewards, with optional Trials to boost progress and a purchasable Plunder Pass to expand the reward pool.
Brand new Lost Shipment Voyages offer another permanent way to engage and raise your reputation with the Merchant Alliance Trading Company.
As we enter a brand-new year, Sea of Thieves enters a brand-new era with the arrival of Seasons! New Voyages, Events, rewards and ways to play are all packed into Season One, available as a free download today for all players with Xbox Game Pass and across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows 10 PC and Steam.
As with all of our previous content updates, Season One – including all 100 levels of rewards – comes free of charge to all players, with the brand-new Plunder Pass available for additional purchase to gain early access to premium rewards. You can read more about the introduction of Seasons and the Plunder Pass in more detail below, but we’re delighted that all pirates will be able to play everything a Season brings regardless of whether or not they pick up the Pass!
Season One Showcase
Seasons in Sea of Thieves are designed to run for around three months at a time and bring a brand-new layer of progression to the game. Making your way up through each of the 100 levels in Season One will unlock a reward each time, from gold and Doubloons to cosmetics and even Ancient Coins to spend on goods in the Pirate Emporium!
Ascend through the levels by increasing your Renown, which can be done naturally by sailing the seas and doing all the things you’d normally do. Renown is designed to ensure you won’t walk away from a session empty-handed, as you’re constantly being rewarded for play rather than being dependent on cashing in loot. You can also raise your Renown in leaps and bounds by completing Trials: themed sets of Deeds that cover almost every available activity in Sea of Thieves, from visiting every island in a region of the world to vanquishing Ashen Lords and sea monsters. So whether you prefer to casually earn Renown naturally throughout your adventures or seek it out through Trials, progression in Seasons adapts to fit your playstyle.
Season One also launches with Lost Shipment Voyages, a new way to engage with the Merchant Alliance. These Voyages turn you into a seabound detective, seeking clues to precious deliveries that went down with the ship out there somewhere along the trade routes. Retrieve the Cargo Manifests to earn Merchant Alliance rewards and reputation, but find the key to the Captain’s cabin and you can also recover treasures from these written-off wrecks! If you enjoy these new undersea undertakings, don’t worry: Lost Shipment Voyages are set to remain in the game as a permanent feature.
With all this plus Season One’s first time-limited Event – taking down undead marauders for their Soul Fragments, securing the Order of Souls weapon set in the process – and more Twitch Drops treasures on tap from Sea of Thieves Partnered streamers, our latest content update delivers an enormous number of new gameplay opportunities that players can pick and choose from as they see fit.
Pirate Emporium Plunder
Meanwhile, one of the Emporium’s headline items to accompany the launch of Seasons is the Plunder Pass. With a single purchase, the pool of rewards available to earn through Seasonal progression gets a significant boost! Picking up the Plunder Pass adds 11 premium Pirate Emporium items to the rewards obtainable during Season One, including many that are previously unreleased – such as the Dark Warsmith Blunderbuss, Eye of Reach, Pistol and Cutlass, along with the proud Silver Skull Sails. If you’re planning on doing all you can to raise your Renown, the Plunder Pass is a seriously promising proposition!
Elsewhere in the Emporium, a new year is marked with exotic Lunar Festival gear including a ship livery and weapon bundle, plus an all-in-one pirate costume and matching pet outfits that will render you almost too elegant to assault. Flamboyant new emotes let you flaunt your weapon skills or just your unshakeable confidence, while the eerie Order of Souls Possessed Pets will appeal to cat connoisseurs and monkey devotees with a darker streak…
Performance Mode
While our first content update of 2021 delivers lots of new and exciting features, it also brings a key technical update. With this release, Sea of Thieves running on Xbox Series X gets a Performance Mode option – enabling a stunningly silky 120 frames per second at 1080p for pirates who want to prioritise fluidity. Found in the Settings menu, this mode requires players to have a TV capable of supporting 120hz before it can be switched on, but those who do will be able to activate 120fps at 1080p as an alternative to 60fps at 4K. Talk about smooth sailing!
Find Out More
For more information on the Sea of Thieves Season One update, including full release notes, visit the Sea of Thieves website. The update is available for free to all Sea of Thieves players who have bought the game on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows 10 PC or via Steam, or players who have access to it with Xbox Game Pass. Simply download and install the latest Sea of Thieves update to get access.
New to Sea of Thieves? Join the fun with our Maiden Voyage, a narrative-driven tutorial experience. New players will begin their travels within this scenario – and more tips can be picked up from our online Pirate Academy, which provides invaluable information on topics ranging from sailing to swordplay. Learn more about Sea of Thieves at www.xbox.com/seaofthieves, or join the ongoing adventure at www.seaofthieves.com where you can embark on an epic journey with one of gaming’s most welcoming communities!
2020 was a year many of us will want to forget. With the arrival of 2021, what better way to launch headfirst into a new year than with the arrival of Balan Wonderworld, an exciting, brand new IP from Square Enix. Balan Wonderworld is an all action, all adventure 3D platformer where you can explore 12 amazing worlds, discover over 80 different costumes each with their own unique abilities and play alongside that special person in your life with 2 player co-op.
But Balan Wonderworld has one other totally unique ingredient that makes it so special – it tackles head on all those real-world niggling worries and anxieties that we all have. From fear and loneliness to weakness or just feeling different, Balan Wonderworld incorporates these emotions into its gameplay and it’s up to you to step into the mysterious Balan Theatre and help its inhabitants balance their emotions.
To celebrate the release of the Balan Wonderworld demo today on the Xbox Store, we caught up with Noriyoshi Fujimoto from Square Enix, the producer for this game for a Q & A about what makes the game so special.
Hello, I’m Noriyoshi Fujimoto from Square Enix, and I’m the producer for this game. Thank you for playing the demo of Balan Wonderworld. This demo is just one bit of the game, but in it you can experience one of the main distinctive features of the game – switching between different costumes as you explore stages where all kind of mechanics await you. Balan Wonderworld is easy to play, regardless of whether or not you are good at action games, and you can also play cooperatively with two players. I hope that playing this game makes you feel happy!
Rob Lightbody: Where did the idea of using ‘balancing emotions’ come from as one of the games unique USPs?
Noriyoshi Fujimoto: Since the early stages of working on the game’s concept, “balance” has been a major keyword in the development of Balan Wonderworld.
This idea led to the concepts of incorporating changes in the balance between positivity and negativity into the game’s world; creating mechanics in the stages that rely on balance; and for each action from a costume to have a corresponding and opposite action. The names of two characters in the game, Balan and Lance, also come from the word balance.
When it comes to the idea of “balancing emotions”, I think we all face little worries and problems in our daily lives. Anyone can feel negative at times. As we worked on the development of Balan Wonderworld, our hope was that playing the game and sharing the negative worries of the cast members in each chapter, and then sharing in how these problems are resolved and changed into something positive, would help players to feel positive themselves.
Rob Lightbody: How did you decide on which emotions to pair with which characters. Do you have a favourite?
Noriyoshi Fujimoto: We included a variety of themes that different people from all around the would be able to relate to and feel close to.
My personal favourite is Chapter 10 with the story of “The Artist with Painter’s block.” It is a story about an artist who, as she become more famous, gradually draws less and less of what she really wants to draw and draws more of what would please the people around her. Then, she gradually starts to think about why she draws, and whether she’s drawing the art that she truly wants to draw. This is a familiar story to creators, who tend to have this worry, and so it made me think about this situation again. At the same time, I also felt like it gave me a solution and a way to feel positive about it.
If this has you excited, then download the Balan Wonderworlddemo now on the Xbox Store. And to add to the excitement, if you play the demo now you also obtain the bonus ‘X Launcher’ costume in the full game on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S if you have play data from the demo. We hope you enjoy playing the demo until the full game releases on March 26 for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S!
This game supports Smart Delivery, and can be played on both Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. ■Welcome to a wondrous all-action show, the likes of which has never been seen before! BALAN WONDERWORLD is a wondrous action platformer game themed around the Balan Theatre. Led by the enigmatic maestro named Balan, the stars of the show Emma and Leo will use special abilities from a multitude of characterful costumes as they adventure in the bizarre and imaginary land of Wonderworld. Here memories and vistas from the real world mix with the things that people hold dear. Twelve different tales await our stars in the Wonderworld, each with their own unique quirks. They will explore all corners of these labyrinthine stages, filled with a myriad of tricks and traps, to get to the heart of each story. ■Wonderworld exists in people's hearts and imagination The setting for this tale is the fantastic, bizarre land of Wonderworld; a place where people's happy and positive memories mix with their restless worries and negativity. Leo and Emma are led into Wonderworld by the mysterious clown Balan and set off on a journey to find what is important to them. Before they can return to the real world, they must first restore the lost balance in their hearts… ■Over 80 different costumes open up all the action you could want! The stars of the show can use powers from the inhabitants of Wonderworld by wearing their colourful costumes, with over 80 different ones to try on! Bash your enemies, walk in the air, freeze time or manipulate all kinds of objects… the possibilities are endless when you pick up a new costume. ■Two Legendary Creators Reunite! Come one, come all and enjoy the pinnacle of Square Enix storytelling in an all-action world of wonder created by the legendary Naka Yuji. For the first time in 20 years Naka Yuji and Oshima Naoto join forces forming the BALAN COMPANY team; founded around, bringing together action game development, video and music production professionals from both inside and outside of the company.
We’re also launching a free content update, The Glasshouse
To celebrate, I want to give you an inside look at some of the content that’s now available for Prison Architect on Xbox One!
Going Green gives Wardens the tools to create more sustainable compounds. The introduction of farming allows Wardens to grow produce, including apples, wheat and potatoes. And with new gameplay mechanics, comes more thematic contraband to keep you alert.
Let’s start at the heart of Going Green – farming. You can now grow fruits and vegetables, creating a more self-sustaining prison. In addition to seeds and dirt, you’ll also need Farmers to tend to the crops.
While farming is mostly fun and games, prisoners will sometimes plant some… non-regulation seeds to grow herbs. I’ll let you fill in the blanks. Other prisoners will also swipe wheat and brew jailhouse Booze in their own cells. So stay vigilant – and watch out for any prisoners that seem a little too interested in the new Pantry and Farmer’s Field.
We wouldn’t be “going green” if we didn’t also talk about Green Energy! Solar, Wind, and Solar/Wind hybrid power sources are available, making your compounds energy efficient. Energy can be sold back to the grid – so it’s green in more ways than one!
The Glasshouse is a free content update available for all players on Xbox One. We’ve been listening to our players and we know that the game’s UX/UI is a bit… dated. The Glasshouse officially jumpstarts our mission to update the interface, making it more modern and intuitive.
We’re starting by expanding the sorting methods for the objects menu, allowing players to further sort the items listed. With the Going Green expansion, a new info help system has also been added which provides info on the new features and mechanics.
But there’s more! The Glasshouse adds sustainable walls, flooring, and more, which you can use to customize your Green compounds. There’s even a Recycling station because every little bit helps.
We’d be lying if we didn’t say the real stars of The Glasshouse are the additional K9 Units. That’s right, there’s even more guard dog varieties in the game — imagine the Bowtie Bandit “paw-trolling” around. Just look at him!
Well, there you have it Wardens! We’re excited to welcome all our new players who are trying the game out for the first time with Xbox Game Pass and welcome back our veteran Wardens who want to check out the new content. Hope you’re ready to get your hands dirty and earn your green thumb!
Prepare to get your hands dirty Wardens! Prison Architect: Going Green brings agriculture to your compound, introducing farming, produce exports, and a whole bunch of contraband. Key Features Fruits of Labor: Farming introduces a new type of Prison Labor, allowing prisons to grow potatoes, wheat, apples, and more. Produce can be exported or used as ingredients for inmate meals. Room to Grow: Three outdoor rooms facilitate farming: Fruit Orchard, Farm Field and Vegetable Allotment. But that’s not all, players can recruit staff Farm Workers, build a Pantry to store produce, and construct a Shed to house farming-related items. Best Buds: Inmates who enjoy nature’s beauty can grow flowers and other plants recreationally. Gardening affects inmates and gives them a positive recreation activity. Trouble is Brewing: With new crops comes new contraband. Prisoners can now secretly grow herbs in the fields and swipe kitchen ingredients to brew Booze. Fields can also become Gang Turf, so keep your guards on alert! A Greener New Deal: Prisons get an eco-friendly makeover with Solar, Wind, and Solar/Wind Hybrid power sources. Excess power created by these sustainable methods can be sold back to the grid using the Power Export Meter.
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