Do you remember a time before social media? Mobile phones? Email? We are surrounded by digital technology, and new applications impact our lives whether we engage with them or not. Issue 24 of Hello World, out today for free, gives you ideas for how to help your learners think openly and critically about technology.
Teaching about the impact of technology
For learners to become informed, empowered citizens, they need to understand the impact technology has on them as individuals, and on society as a whole. In our brand-new issue of Hello World, educators share insights from their work in and around classrooms that will help you engage your learners in learning about and discussing the impact of tech.
For example:
Jasmeen Kanwal and the team at Data Education in Schools share their resources for how young people can start to learn the skills they need to change the world with data
Julie York writes about how incorporating AI education into any classroom can help students prepare for future careers
Ben Hall discusses whether technology is divisive or inclusive, and how you can encourage students to think critically about it
This issue also includes stories on how educators use technology to create a positive impact for learners:
Yolanda Payne tells you how she’s using teaching experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic to bring better remote learning to communities in Georgia, USA, and in the US Virgin Islands
Mitchel Resnik and Natalie Rusk from Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT Media Lab introduce their new free mobile app, OctoStudio, and how it helps learners and educators in underresourced areas get creative with code
And there is lots more for you to discover in issue 24.
The issue also covers how you can make time to teach about the impact of technology in an already packed curriculum. Sway Grantham, Senior Learning Manager at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, says in her article:
“As adults, it is easy for us to see the impact technology has had on society and on our lives. Yet when I tell pupils that, within my lifetime, it wasn’t always illegal to hold your mobile phone to your ear and have a call while driving, they are horrified. They are living in the now and don’t yet have the perspective to allow them to see the change that has happened. However, knowing the impact of technology allows us to learn from previous mistakes, to make decisions around ethical behaviour (such as using a phone while driving), and to critically engage in real-world issues.
As teachers, allocating some time to this topic throughout the year can seem challenging, but with a few small changes, the impact might be more than you can imagine.”
Share your thoughts & subscribe to Hello World
With so many aspects of life impacted by technology, computing educators play a crucial role in supporting young people to become informed, empowered citizens. We hope you enjoy this issue of Hello World and find it useful in your teaching.
Our Coolest Projects 2024 online showcase has come to a close, with 7197 young people from 43 countries sharing the incredible things they have made with code. A huge congratulations to everyone who took part!
Coolest Projects is our annual global celebration of young digital creators and the cool things they make with technology. This year’s showcase featured 4678 amazing projects, from a doughnut clicker game created in Scratch to an app that tracks sunscreen usage and areas with high UV levels for users.
This week, we celebrated each and every young creator and their incredible tech projects in a special livestream:
Every year, we invite some very special VIP judges to choose their favourite projects to highlight. Meet our 2024 judges and find out about the projects they picked.
Azra Ismail’s favourite projects
Azra is the co-founder of MakerGhat, an education nonprofit based in India that aims to nurture underserved youth to become the next generation of entrepreneurs and leaders. MakerGhat has reached around a million youth to date through hands-on making programmes. She is also an Assistant Professor at Emory University, where she directs the CARE Lab (Collective Action & Research for Equity). Azra was named in the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list, and has previously worked with Google, the Wadhwani Institute for AI, and United Nations Global Pulse. She has a PhD in Human-Centered Computing and Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech.
Greg is an award-winning Science Presenter and Producer who has written and hosted a bunch of stuff on TV, YouTube, radio, and stage over the past 20 years. Greg has a BBC Radio 4 show called Sliced Bread that investigates whether wonder products like face creams and air fryers are indeed ‘the best thing since sliced bread’, or marketing hype. Greg regularly pops up on TV — he’s a regular on the BBC’s Morning Live and was the in-house science guy on Blue Peter and Sunday Brunch for many years. He’s also hosted multiple TV series, made live shows for families on YouTube (Let’s Go Live), and toured science theatre shows around the UK.
Natalie is the Executive Director of the App Inventor Foundation, a global nonprofit that has empowered over 20 million inventors of all ages to create over 100 million apps to improve their lives and uplift their communities. She received her PhD in ML and AI education from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and currently serves as Expert on Mission at UNESCO to develop the UN’s AI Competency Framework for K-12 Students.
Selin is a 17-year-old multi-award winner and changemaker who has been passionate about using tech for good since an early age. She taught herself to code at age 8 and started building robots at 10, and participated in Coolest Projects for many years. She has built seven robots to date, including the social good robot iC4U, a robot guide dog for visually impaired people, and BB4All, an anti-bullying school aid robot. She has also built a stray dog wellbeing app, JAVA, and an AI model for breast cancer diagnosis. Her aim is to inspire young people, especially girls, to see the fun and importance of using tech for good.
We partnered with Broadcom Foundation to give a special award to young creators using coding and computing to solve real-world problems that matter to their communities. Broadcom Coding with Commitment® is a special recognition for a Coolest Projects creator aged 11–14 who has used computing as an essential problem-solving tool to help those around them.
This year’s Broadcom Coding with Commitment® recipients are Naitik, Shravasti, and Nikita from India in recognition of their project Drainage alert system. Their thoughtful project uses a water flow sensor connected to a Raspberry Pi computer to detect when waste enters the drainage system and causes blockages and send an alert to the local council.
Get inspired and keep creating!
Now you’ve seen the judges’ favourite projects, it’s time to pick your own! Take a look at the Coolest Projects 2024 online showcase gallery to see all the amazing projects from young people all over the world, and get inspired to make your own.
Participants will shortly receive their own unique certificates and the personalised feedback on their projects from our team of judges, to celebrate their achievements.
Support from our Coolest Projects sponsors means we can make the online showcase and celebration livestream an inspiring experience for the young people taking part. We want to say a big thank you to all of them: Amazon Future Engineer, Broadcom Foundation, GoTo, Kingston Technology, Meta, and Qube Research & Technologies.
Turn Raspberry Pi into a rugged robot, equipped with wheels or legs, and you can explore the surface of a planet (or your backyard) and use sensors to analyse your environment. This month, we’ve got a guide to the best robotic parts, equipment, and sensors to use.
Dicemaster 2000
We love this game controller for visually impaired people. The buttons are 3D printed with Braille enabling the maker’s friend to take part in a gaming group. Dicemaster showcases maker skills with Raspberry Pi’s electronics to produce a fun, but seriously useful, controller.
Colour Word Clock
Gurgle Apps has been making fun electronics projects for years now. The three siblings Amelie, Caleb and Zivya are back again with a kit that you can build yourself – the Colour Word Clock. It uses LEDs to light up letters in a 3D-printed case that spells out the time.
Retro Gaming Magic Mirror
David Edwards wanted to make a Magic Mirror, and he also wanted an arcade machine but didn’t have the space (or permission) to build one. The solution was this fabulous build that combines both concepts into one device. A 65-inch display turned into a magic mirror that plays as many different systems as possible.
Using M.2 HAT+ with Raspberry Pi
The new M.2 HAT+ enables you to add super-fast SSD storage cards to Raspberry Pi, alongside other devices like the AI accelerator in the AI Kit. This month Nate shows us how to attach M.2 HAT+ to Raspberry Pi and set it up to expend Raspberry Pi 5 using the PCI-express compatible connector.
Raspberry Pi Success Stories
Raspberry Pi has been used as the bedrock for many homespun projects that turned into successful business ideas. It makes us so happy to see Raspberry Pi help people build a successful company from scratch, and some big-name companies have used Raspberry Pi to breathe life into their product range. Our Success Stories feature showcases some of the best business ideas around.
Learn electronics with CrowPi Compact
The CrowPi is a smart electronics kit that now serves up components to Raspberry Pi 5. Experimenting with electronics is an excellent, fun, and rewarding hobby and this kit will help you get started.
Save 35% off the cover price with a subscription to The MagPi magazine. UK subscribers get three issues for just £10 and a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico W, then pay £30 every six issues. You’ll save money and get a regular supply of in-depth reviews, features, guides and other Raspberry Pi enthusiast goodness delivered directly to your door every month.
Overwatch 2 is raising money for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
The Pink Mercy skin and Rose Gold Mercy bundle are available for purchase.
Blizzard will donate 100% of the purchase price (excluding any applicable platform fees and taxes) to BCRF’s mission to eradicate breast cancer.
Since 2018, you may have spotted the distinctive Pink Mercy skin in Overwatch and Overwatch 2 – the color symbolic of breast cancer awareness. Mercy wears it proudly as part of supporting the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Now, there’s another chance for players to show their support as well, with the return of the Pink Mercy skin and the debut of the all-new Rose Gold Mercy skin. Both are available for purchase today, benefitting BRCF.
I was only eight years old when my family’s world was turned upside down. The diagnosis of my mother’s breast cancer marked the beginning of a long and arduous battle. Visits to City of Hope Hospital became routine, a place where my brothers and I would spend entire days waiting, playing, and hoping. The image of my mother, weakened by the treatments, is etched in my memory.
Mike Laursen, Blizzard
I recall the surgeries, the conversations, and the day we celebrated my mother’s first victory over the disease with pizza and paper party hats—a moment of joy. However, the reprieve was short-lived. The cancer returned during my high school years, and my family’s routine once again revolved around treatments and trips to City of Hope. The normalcy of having a sick parent was a reality that my family and I had to accept. It was during these years that turning to video games was the only way for me to escape the realities of what was happening and find some comfort.
The day my mother’s mastectomy was deemed a success was a glimmer of hope, but it was quickly overshadowed by the discovery that the cancer had moved to her liver. The weeks that followed were a blur, a rush to gather family and make the most of whatever precious time was left. My last memory of my mother is one of pain and a desperate fight for more moments together.
Pink Mercy Skin
My story is more than just a recount of my personal struggle; it’s a call to action. It’s a reminder that behind every statistic, every campaign, and every research breakthrough, there are real people with real stories. It’s about the unseen battles that many face, the silent warriors who fight without fanfare, and the loved ones who support them through it all. I find solace and purpose in my work, where I am part of a team helping to prevent such stories from repeating. The commitment to fight, help those in need, and bring goodness into the world reflects the heroes we create in our work.
In the spirit of action, I’m excited to share an initiative that combines my passion for gaming with the fight against breast cancer. Blizzard has released special charity skins for Overwatch 2. The new skins are designed for the hero Mercy, a brilliant scientist and “guardian angel” who has dedicated her life to helping others. All sales of the limited-edition Pink Mercy skin and Rose Gold Mercy skin will benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) – now through July 8, Blizzard will donate 100% of the purchase price (excluding applicable platform fees and taxes) towards BCRF’s mission to eradicate breast cancer, which will help families across the globe (terms and conditions here).
Rose Gold Mercy Skin
In the end, my story is not just about the pain of loss; it’s about the enduring hope that one day, no child will have to remember their mother’s battle with cancer. It’s about working towards a future where the victories are not just temporary, but permanent. It’s about ensuring that the paper party hats are not just a memory, but a symbol of a battle truly won. Let’s carry forward the memory of those we’ve lost by continuing the fight and by being the heroes in our own stories.
In loving memory of Gladys L. Laursen – October 6, 1940-August 21, 2000
Today our friends Mitch Resnick and Natalie Rusk from MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten group tell you about OctoStudio, their free mobile app for children to create with code. Find their companion article for teachers in the upcoming issue of Hello World magazine, out for free on Monday 1 July.
When people see our new OctoStudio coding app, they often say that it reminds them of Scratch, the world’s most popular coding platform for kids. That’s not surprising, since the group of us developing OctoStudio were also involved in creating Scratch, with its distinctive building-block approach to programming. But there’s an important difference.
A young person connects coding blocks to animate their OctoStudio project. Credit: MIT Media Lab
The difference is that we designed OctoStudio specifically for mobile phones and tablets, based on requests from educators in communities where children and families don’t have access to laptops and desktop computers, but do have access to mobile devices.
OctoStudio takes advantage of special features of mobile phones and tablets, such as built-in sensors, so young people can create projects that respond to shaking or tilting, or even ‘beam’ signals between devices. And because of the small size of mobile devices, children and families can create projects anytime anywhere, and integrate digital coding with physical making.
OctoStudio makes it easy for beginners to start creating. Children can choose a character from a diverse collection of emojis, draw their own in the OctoStudio paint editor, or take and edit a photo. With just a couple coding blocks, they can make their characters move, jump, speak, or glow — and respond to shaking, tilting, or tapping on the phone or tablet:
Since our Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab launched OctoStudio as a free app in October 2023, we’ve been delighted by the creativity and diversity of projects that children around the world have created with OctoStudio. As examples, we’d like to share with you three different projects from three different continents.
Getting active with OctoStudio
When Xavier, a 10-year-old in Rwanda, started using OctoStudio, he was intrigued with the ‘When I shake’ block. He realized that he could create a step tracker project, by sensing how the phone shook each time he took a step.
From the emoji library in OctoStudio, Xavier selected a rabbit, and he programmed it to grow a little bit each time he took a step. The more steps, the bigger the rabbit. To test the project, Xavier ran around in a circle. When he looked at the rabbit again, he saw how big it had grown and exclaimed: “Now it’s mega huge!” After finishing his project, Xavier made and posted a video tutorial to show others how to make their own step tracker using only 5 coding blocks.
One popular way to get started with OctoStudio is to make a favorite animal out of craft materials, take a photo of it, then bring your creation to life on the screen with OctoStudio coding blocks. As part of the Brazilian Creative Learning Network, educators Renato Barboza and Simone Lederman offer creative learning workshops in which children design creatures using a combination of natural materials and modeling clay. In these ‘fantastical creatures’ workshops, facilitators ask questions to encourage participants to design not only the creatures, but also develop ideas about how their creatures interact within their environment.
For example, two sisters created imaginary creatures, one with long sticks for arms, the other with big eyes and wings made from leaves. The sisters then took photos and made their creatures come to life in OctoStudio, making them jump, glow, and fly. They recorded sounds and explained more about their creatures, including where they live and what they like to eat.
Beaming between devices
OctoStudio also opens up the possibility of projects involving multiple mobile devices, using the new ‘beam’ block to send signals between the devices (via Bluetooth). For example, children can make a character in a story or game look like it’s jumping from one device to another by sending a beam signal when the character reaches the edge of the screen.
Thawin, an elementary school student in Thailand, decided to use the ‘beam’ block to create a project about caring for the environment. He embedded one tablet in a cardboard cutout of a watering can, and programmed it to beam a signal each time he shook it as if he were sprinkling water. Then, he added a tree emoji to another tablet, and programmed the tree to grow each time it received a beam signal. He proudly shared his project with his classmates: each time someone shook the watering can, the tree grew.
To get started with OctoStudio, you can download it for free from app stores for Android and iOS phones and tablets. The app is translated into more than 25 languages, and comes with sample projects and mini-tutorials.
Here are some resources for learning and exploring more:
You can share your OctoStudio stories, photos, and videos on social media using @octostudioapp or #octostudio. We can’t wait to hear about your and your children’s experiences!
Microsoft Flight Simulator City Update VIII: Las Vegas features one of the world’s most distinctive cities. Las Vegas (“the meadows” in Spanish) traces its name to a Mexican explorer who passed through the area in 1829 and found dense grasslands fed by freshwater springs. Founded on May 15, 1905, the city grew steadily in the following two decades. Its population boomed with Nevada’s 1931 legalization of casino gambling and the start of construction on the nearby Hoover Dam.
Las Vegas is in the Mojave Desert of southern Nevada, surrounded by roughhewn peaks that shimmer in afternoon sunlight. Unofficially known as “The Entertainment Capital of the World,” a key component of the city’s allure is its wide range of architecture, including The Strat, a complex with a 1,149-foot-tall observation tower. Or, visitors can experience the pyramid-shaped Luxor, out of the top of which shines The Luxor Sky Beam, the brightest human-made light in the world. And, the Las Vegas Strip, a stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in the heart of the city, is vibrant from dusk until dawn.
Microsoft Flight Simulator City Update VIII brings Las Vegas and its myriad facets alive like never before in the world. With this latest offering, simmers can enjoy the sights of Las Vegas rendered in eye-popping resolution, with a fusion of the latest high-resolution aerial imagery, digital elevation model data, and TIN (triangulated irregular network) surface texturing to render the sights.
Microsoft Flight Simulator City Update VIII: Las Vegas is available FREE to all owners of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Ensure that your simulator is running version 1.37.19.0 (or a more recent version), download City Update VIII, and then take-off in your favorite airplane and enjoy the incredible sights of Las Vegas. The sky is calling!
Microsoft Flight Simulator is available for Xbox Series X|S and PC with Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, Windows, and Steam, and on Xbox One and supported mobile phones, tablets, and lower-spec PCs via Xbox Cloud Gaming. For the latest information on Microsoft Flight Simulator, stay tuned to @MSFSOfficial on Twitter.
We are working with two partner organisations in Odisha, India, to develop and roll out the IT & Coding Curriculum (Kaushali), a computing curriculum for government high schools. Last year we launched the first part of the curriculum and rolled out teacher training. Read on to find out what we have learned from this work.
Supporting government schools in Odisha to teach computing
Previously we shared an insight into how we established Code Clubs in Odisha to bring computing education to young people. Now we are partnering with two Indian civil society organisations to develop high school curriculum resources for computing and support teachers to deliver this content.
With our two partners, we trained 311 master teachers during July and August 2023. The master teachers, most often mathematics or science teachers, were in turn tasked with training teachers from around 8000 government schools. The aim of the training was to enable the 8000 teachers to deliver the curriculum to grades 9 and 10 in the June 2023 – April 2024 academic year.
At the Foundation, we have been responsible for providing ongoing support to 1898 teachers from 10 districts throughout the academic year, including through webinars and other online and in-person support.
To evaluate the impact our work in Odisha is having, we gathered data using a mixed-methods approach that included gathering feedback from teachers via surveys and interviews, visiting schools, capturing reflections from our trainers, and reviewing a sample of students’ projects.
Positive impact on teachers and students
In our teacher survey, respondents were generally positive about the curriculum resources:
87% of the 385 respondents agreed that the curriculum resources were both high quality and useful for their teaching
91% agreed that they felt more confident to teach students IT & Coding as a result of the curriculum resources
Teachers also tended to agree that the initial training had helped improve their understanding and confidence, and they appreciated our ongoing support webinars.
“The curriculum resources are very useful for students.” – Teacher in Odisha
“The webinar is very useful to acquire practical knowledge regarding the specific topics.” – Teacher in Odisha
Teachers who responded to our survey observed a positive impact on students:
93% agreed their students’ digital literacy skills had improved
90% agreed that their students’ coding knowledge had improved
On school visits, our team observed that the teachers adopted and implemented the practical elements of the initial training quite well. However, survey responses and interviews showed that often teachers were not yet using all the elements of the curriculum as intended.
In their feedback, many teachers expressed a need for further regular training and support, and some reported additional challenges, such as other demands on their time and access to equipment.
When we observed training sessions master teachers delivered to teachers, we saw that, in some cases, information was lost within the training cascade (from our trainers, to master teachers, to teachers), including details about the intended pedagogical approach. It can be difficult to introduce experienced teachers to new pedagogical methods within a short training session, and teachers’ lack of computing knowledge also presents a challenge.
We will use all this data to shape how we support teachers going forward. Some teachers didn’t share feedback, and so in our further evaluation work, we will focus on making sure we hear a broad and representative range of teachers’ views and experiences.
What’s new this year?
In the current academic year, we are rolling out more advanced curriculum content for grade 10 students, including AI literacy resources developed at the Foundation. We’re currently training master teachers on this content, and they will pass on their knowledge to other teachers in the coming months. Based on teachers’ feedback, the grade 10 curriculum and the training also include a recap of some key points from the grade 9 curriculum.
A State Resource Group (SRG) has also been set up, consisting of 30 teachers who will support us with planning and providing ongoing support to master teachers and other teachers in Odisha. We have already trained the SRG members on the new curriculum content to enable them to best support teachers across the state. In addition to this, our local team in Odisha plans to conduct more visits and reach out directly to teachers more often.
Our plans for the future
The long-term vision for our work in India is to enable any school in India to teach students about computing and creating with digital technologies. A critical part of achieving this vision is the development of a comprehensive computing curriculum for grade 6 to 12, specifically tailored for government schools in India. Thanks to our work in Odisha, we are in a better position to understand the unique challenges and limitations of government schools. We’re designing our curriculum to address these challenges and ensure that every Indian student has the opportunity to thrive in the 21st century. If you would like to know more about our work and impact in India, please reach out to us via india@raspberrypi.org.
We take evaluation of our work seriously and are always looking to understand how we can improve and increase the impact we have on the lives of young people. To find out more about our approach to impact, you can read about our recently updated theory of change, which supports how we evaluate what we do.
Today, Laura James, Head of Computing and ICT at King Edward’s School in Bath, UK, shares how Experience AI has transformed how she teaches her students about artificial intelligence. This article will also appear in issue 24 of Hello World magazine, which will be available for free from 1 July and focuses on the impact of technology.
I recently delivered Experience AI lessons to three Year 9 (ages 13–14) classes of about 20 students each with a ratio of approximately 2:3 girls to boys. They are groups of keen pupils who have elected to study computing as an option. The Experience AI lessons are an excellent set of resources.
Everything you need
Part of the Experience AI resources is a series of six lessons that introduce the concepts behind machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). There are full lesson plans with timings, clear PowerPoint presentations, and activity sheets. There is also an end-of-topic multiple choice assessment provided.
Accompanying these are interesting, well-produced videos that underpin the concepts, all explained by real people who work in the AI industry. Plus, there are helpful videos for the educators, which explain certain parts of the scheme of work — particularly useful for parts that might have been seen as difficult for non-specialist teachers, for example, setting up a project using the Machine Learning for Kids website.
Confidence delivering lessons
The clear and detailed resources meant I felt mostly confident in delivering lessons. The suggested timings were a good guideline, although in some lessons, this did not always go to plan. For example, when the pupils were enjoying investigating websites that produce images generated by a text prompt, they were keen to spend more time on this than was allocated in the lesson plan. In this case, I modified the timings on the fly and set the final task of this lesson as a homework task.
Learning about AI sparked the students’ curiosity, and it triggered a few questions that I could not answer immediately. However, I admitted this was a new area for me, and with some investigation, found answers to many of their extra questions. This shows that the topic of AI is such an inspiring and important one for the next generation, and how important it is to add this to the curriculum now before students make their own, potentially biased, opinions about it.
“I’ve enjoyed actually learning about what AI is and how it works because before I thought it was just a scary computer that thinks like a human.” – Student, King Edward’s School, UK
Impact on learners
The pupils’ feedback from the series of lessons was unerringly positive. I felt the lessons on bias in data were particularly important. The lesson where they trained their own algorithm recognising tomatoes and apples was a key one as it gave students an immediate sense of how a flawed training data set created bias and can impact the answers from a supposedly intelligent AI tool. I hope this has changed their outlook on AI-generated results and reinforced their critical thinking skills.
Many students are now seeing the influence of AI appearing in more and more tools around them and have mentioned that a career in AI is now something they are interested in.
“I have enjoyed learning about how AI is actually programmed rather than just hearing about how impactful and great it could be.” – Student, King Edward’s School, UK
Clearly this topic is incredibly important, and the Experience AI series of lessons is an excellent introduction to this for key stage 3 students (ages 11–14). My tips for other educators would be:
I delivered these to bright Year 9s and added a few more coding activities from the Machine Learning for Kids website. As these lessons stand, they could be delivered to Year 8s (ages 12–13), but perhaps Year 7s (ages 11–12) might struggle with some of the more esoteric concepts.
Before each lesson, ensure you read the content and familiarise yourself with the lesson resources and tools used. The Machine Learning for Kids website can take a little getting used to, but it is a powerful tool that brings to life how machine learning works, and many pupils said this was their favourite part of the lessons.
Before the lesson, ensure that the websites that you need to access are unblocked by your school’s firewall!
I tried to add a hands-on activity each lesson, e.g. for Lesson 1, I showed the students Google’s Quick, Draw! game, which they enjoyed and has a good section on the training data used to train the AI tool to recognise the drawings.
We also spent an extra lesson using the brilliant Machine Learning for Kids website and followed the ‘Shoot the bug’ worksheet, which allowed pupils to train an algorithm to learn how to play a simple video game.
I also needed to have a weekly homework task, so I would either use part of the activity from the lesson or quickly devise something (e.g. research another use for AI we haven’t discussed/what ethical issues might occur with a certain use of AI). Next year, our department will formalise these to help other teachers who might deliver these lessons to set these tasks more easily.
Equally, I needed to have a summative assessment at the end of the topic. I used some of the multiple choice questions that were provided but added some longer-answer questions and made an online assessment to allow me to mark students’ answers more efficiently.
“I have always been fascinated by AI applications and finally finding out how they work and make the decisions they do has been a really cool experience.” – Student, King Edward’s School, UK
From comments I have had from the students, they really engaged with the lessons and appreciated the opportunity to discuss and explore the topic, which is often associated with ‘deception’ within school. It allowed them to understand the benefits and the risks of AI and, most importantly, to begin to understand how it works ‘under the hood’, rather than see AI as a magical, anthropomorphised entity that is guessing their next move.
“The best part about learning about AI was knowing the dangers and benefits associated and how we can safely use it in our day-to-day life.” – Student, King Edward’s School, UK
As for my perspective, I really enjoyed teaching this topic, and it has earned its place in the Year 9 scheme of work for next year.
If you’re interested in teaching the Experience AI Lessons to your students, download the resources for free today at experience-ai.org.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a fast-paced, retro-inspired FPS that comes with buckets of pixelated gore. Taking on the role of a Space Marine, players previously had the chance to blast their way through a variety of Warhammer 40,000 inspired environments, and now we’re thrilled to announce the next expansion to our boomer-shooter saga!
Boltgun: Forges of Corruption offers more enemies, more levels, and even more mayhem, so with that in mind, let’s take a closer look at everything that goes into crafting the perfect outlet for your righteous rage… the enemies!
Choosing the Best
The Warhammer 40,000 universe is full of incredible character art, and the team here at Auroch were spoilt for choice when it came to picking a cast of enemies. Using initial design requirements as a guide, the first step was to collect as much reference as we could. This helped to confirm things like size, colours, details, and even which weapons or items to include. Shots of real life miniatures made this task even easier, and the Games Workshop website proved to be extremely useful.
Shapes are Important
Once a good library of reference has been established, the process of creating a retro enemy sprite can begin. It starts with a conventional method you’d find in most other games, by modelling a 3d mesh. However, we pay special attention to the overall shapes of our characters, pushing things like heroic proportions and creating silhouettes that players can easily identify. In Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, enemies are shown from the front a majority of the time, so we always ensure the front view captures them in their best light.
Exaggerated Angles
In a similar way to how we model characters, things on the animation side tend to focus on exaggerated poses and frame timing that really sells the intent of an animation. In order to capture that ‘retro’ magic, we use minimal frames, so it’s important to pack all the visual information we want into a tiny, animated space. The impact point of a crushing punch can be held slightly longer, or the juddering of weapon’s rapid fire can be sped up into a chaotic blur. This level of single frame control is almost like working with stop motion.
Special FX
Once an enemy has been modeled, animated and rendered, we start working on the FX. This step adds dynamism and interactivity, and the way we use FX for enemy attacks are particularly important. Not only do they need to look amazing, but there’s a set of game mechanics that should be followed. Certain weapons fire at different speeds, projectiles have different trails, and explosions have different sizes. All enemy attacks in Boltgun come in three distinct types, magical Tzeentch, organic Nurgle or combustible human, and it’s important for players to be able to visually distinguish between them, using colours, shapes, and various other artistic techniques.
Blood and Guts
One of the cornerstones of Boltgun is its stylistic gore, and the most satisfying way of bringing our enemies to life is seeing the crimson mess that results when they expire. We’ve built a gore system in a way that enables players to effectively ‘paint’ sections of our levels with the red of previous battles, something that’s both awesome, and can be useful as a pathfinding tool. Lastly, each enemy comes complete with a set of custom body parts, or ‘gibs’ as we like to call them. These have a habit of bursting outwards when an enemy has been destroyed, offering just one more level of detail to the interactive package that is your typical Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun enemy.
A Place to Call Home
Finally, what good would combining all the amazing elements above be without giving our enemies a proper place to live? We use visual theming to really set the scene. A sickly green haze suggests an area infested by Nurgle, where as the chaotic purple of the warp means the presence of Tzeentch is near. We also use decals to add extra detail to floors and walls, giving players the impression that they’re moving from one territory to the next. And lastly, a well thought-out prop library can really help with the storytelling aspect of a map.
As the game progresses, players may notice evidence of previous conflicts such as fortifications, military supplies, corpses, sacrificial shrines, and much more. Adding things like this helps to make the experience of encountering enemies in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun feel more alive and real.
So now you’ve been given an insight into some of the tips and tricks the team here at Auroch uses to create AI for players to blast away at or run screaming from. We’ve worked hard to customize the standard character art pipeline you’d see in most modern games, and produced a result we’re proud to say is one of the cornerstones of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun’s unique retro aesthetic.
Unleash your mighty wrath in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun DLC: Forges of Corruption, out now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC for $5,99! For newcomers, a special edition containing the base game and the DLC is also available for $24,99. EnjoyWarhammer 40,000: Boltgun on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC and Xbox Game Pass!
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun
Focus Entertainment
☆☆☆☆☆284
★★★★★
$21.99$17.59
Xbox Game Pass
Load up your Boltgun and plunge into battle headfirst! Experience a perfect blend of Warhammer 40,000, classic, frenetic FPS gameplay and the stylish visuals of your favourite 90’s retro shooters. Play a battle-hardened Space Marine on a perilous mission across the galaxy, as they battle against the Chaos Space Marines and daemons of Chaos. In glorious boomer shooter style, unleash your devastating Space Marine arsenal as you blast through an explosion of sprites, pixels and blood. Run, jump and charge across huge levels to shoot, shred and slice the worst heretics across the galaxy! • Dive into a visceral combat experience, complete with viciously satisfying gunplay, high mobility and buckets of blood to reward your skills
• Dominate the battlefield with the awesome firepower and heavy metal of a Space Marine’s devastating arsenal
• Experience the ultimate homage to retro shooters, blending stylish visuals with fluid, modern FPS gameplay
Welcome back to the regular “help me pick out what to play next” list (or maybe that’s just me) with Game Pass! We have more games waiting for you to boot up and play on PC, console, and cloud. Let’s jump in!
In Case You Missed It
But first, quick shout out to those who tuned in this last week for the Xbox Games Showcase, where we showed off 18 games that will be coming Day One to Game Pass! Check the recap of the whole show here, and we’ll keep you updated on the Wire for when you can start to play some of these games soon.
Available Today
Still Wakes the Deep (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) Available on day one with Game Pass! From the award-winning developers at The Chinese Room comes a terrifying tale of isolation. You are trapped on an oil rig in the North Sea, running from an unknowable horror that has come aboard. With no escape and no way to fight back, all you can do is survive. Learn more about Still Wakes the Deep in Xbox Wire’s hands-on preview.
Coming Soon
My Time at Sandrock (Cloud, Console, and PC) – June 19 Just like My Time at Portia, My Time at Sandrock takes place in a wholesome post-apocalyptic world 300 years after the Day of Calamity destroyed most modern technologies. Gather resources to build machines, befriend locals, and defend Sandrock from monsters — all while saving the town from economic ruin!
Keplerth (PC) – June 20 Try to survive on a hostile alien planet in this 2D sandbox RPG, where you can choose to live alone or fight side-by-side with your friends in the online multiplayer mode. Survive, build, farm, fight, and explore your way to victory in this open-world adventure!
EA Sports FC 24 (Cloud, Console, and PC) EA Play – June 25 Welcome to the Club – EA Sports FC 24 is coming to PC Game Pass and Ultimate via EA Play on June 25, just in time for UEFA EURO 2024. Lead your nation against the best and challenge for international glory as champions from across The World’s Game go head-to-head to become Champions of Europe.
SteamWorld Dig (Cloud and Console) – June 26 A platform mining adventure with strong Metroidvanian influences. Take the role of Rusty, a lone mining steambot, as he arrives at an old mining town in great need. Dig your way through the old earth, gaining riches while uncovering the ancient threat that lurks below…
SteamWorld Dig 2 (Console and PC) – June 26 SteamWorld Dig 2 is making a return to the Game Pass library, taking you on a platform mining adventure forged in Metroidvania flames. When an old trading town is struck by mysterious earthquakes, it’s up to a lone steambot and her unlikely companion to uncover what trembling terrors lie beneath.
Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – June 27 Join Robin Hood and his unwavering band of outlaws in 12th-century England on their mission for a free Nottingham, as you travel across various regions and build up a secret hideout village and help the denizens of the surrounding lands. Complete quests, construct various builds, craft a broad range of items, and freely explore locations inspired by both myth and history in this open-world RPG with base-building features.
DLC / Game Updates
Minecraft: Tricky Trials Update – Available now Venture into the Tricky Trials Update! Team up or go solo and discover new decorative blocks, hostile mobs, items, weapons, paintings, and the trial chambers – a sprawling structure stuffed with traps and treasures for every player!
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Perks
Smite: Summer Sizzle Pack – Available now Ignite your fights with the Summer Sizzle Pack in the free-to-play action MOBA game, Smite! Unlock the gods Danzaburou, The Morrigan, and Fenrir as well as their voice packs and emotes. Plus, unlock a 3-Day Account Booster!
Monster Hunter Now: New Season Bundle – Available now Hunt monsters in the real world on your mobile device! Celebrate Monster Hunter Now’s Season 2 with a bundle that includes new monster materials and other awesome bonuses! Claim one Ultra Hunting Ticket, a Paintball, a Potion, a Wander Orb, and a material for crafting Basarios (new monster with the next update!) weapons and armor. This Perk content requires Monster Hunter Now mobile game to use (available free-to-play).
Leaving Soon
The following games are leaving the Game Pass library soon, be sure to check the dates below and don’t forget to use your 20% membership discount on games you would like to keep!
Leaving June 30
FIFA 22 (Console and PC)
F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Stranded Deep (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Sword and Fairy Together Forever (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Leaving July 5
Cricket 22 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Stay tuned to @XboxGamePassPC and @XboxGamePass, and @Xbox for updates and when you can start scratching games off your backlog. Cheers!
Now that flashback is over, it’s in with the new as Modern Horizons brings some of the greatest machines of our current decade. Technology, innovation, and a lot of power come to play as this series’ Festival Playlist Reward cars: the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse, 2023 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N, 2021 Toyota GR Yaris, 2023 Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S, and the 2023 KIA EV6 GT. 18 new EventLab props to create your dream highway are joining your collection complete with everything you need to create a modern motorway. Five icons from your favorite movies and TV shows for a spin across the Horizon Festival with the Universal Icons Car Pack available for purchase now. This series’ collectible item takes technology even further than we thought. Meet the Robot Collectible on the second week of the Festival Playlist. The 21st century shines on Horizon Festival in our latest update: Modern Horizons.
Release Notes and Game Fixes.
General
General performance and stability fixes
Cars
Fixed an issue with the 2021 Volkswagen ID.4 where it wasn’t possible to tune the gear ratio while in stock configuration
You can find a list of issues we are currently investigating here. The Troubleshooting Hub is always open for you to leave any reports you have.
Your Way IS the Highway with New EventLab Props
There are some who will do anything to escape the traffic and mundane sensation of driving on a motorway.
Then there are others who replicate their daily commute or create new highways on their favorite games.
For this second group of people, we have added the latest 17 EventLab props that include everything you need to build a modern road.
This list of props includes:
Roads & Racing
Gameplay
Robot Collectible
Every highway piece features snapping functionality for easier attachment!
Festival Playlist.
Modern wonders with an electric touch, muscle power, and maximum comfort make way as the Reward Cars available for each week of Modern Horizons and as a Series reward.
Can you unlock these future legendary vehicles?
2023 KIA EV6 GT
Earn 80 PTS during the Modern Horizons Festival Playlist to unlock as a Series Reward.
The 2023 KIA EV6 GT has the heart-and-home feel of an SUV that crosses the “GT” line on the sand to become a racing utility vehicle that’s as comfy as it is powerful.
Like a futuristic spaceship, EV6 GT features a green button on the steering wheel that unlocks its true power, transforming this changeling from urban driver into racing speedster able to go from 0 – 100 kmh in just 3.2 seconds using its surprising 576 bhp.
To keep you on your toes from the get-go, this KIA’s inside is adorned with racing interiors like the seats and trim, so even the tamest drives around the Festival will have the unique race-to-the-finish feel.
Did we mention it’s 4 wheel-drive and electric? Because it is and we love it.
2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Earn 20 PTS during Week 1 “Summer” Season on the Modern Horizons Festival Playlist. Available from June 20 until June 27
Galloping to the Horizon Festival with crashing footfalls; it’s the latest, biggest, and meanest horse we have seen: the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse.
As soon as you pop this car’s hood you will be greeted with a very delightful badge, one that says “5.0”. The emblem is not there only for decoration, it’s to remind you of the massive 5.0-liter V8 naturally aspirated Coyote engine that drives this car forward and powers it with 500 horsepower.
6-speed manual transmission and rear-wheel drive to get the complete muscle car experience and an updated braking system to excel its performance on the track as well
Enjoy the reckless charge of the 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse!
2023 Hyundai iONIQ 5 N
Earn 20 PTS during Week 2 “Autumn” Season on the Modern Horizons Festival Playlist. Available from June 27 until July 4
The future has arrived. Looking like your regular Sunday-drive SUV, but hiding a potent powertrain and futuristic technology, the 2023 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N is an auspice for cars to come.
The all-electric powertrain will put its 320 bhp to work and to make the 5 N vanish right in front of your eyes as it reaches 100 kmh from a standstill in 4.5 seconds.
This new iONIQ is a great outdoors partner with an upgraded towing capacity, a great ride, and a minimalist interior design you’ll want to live in.
2021 Toyota GR Yaris
Earn 20 PTS during Week 3 “Winter” Season on the Modern Horizons Festival Playlist. Available from July 4 until July 11
Running on sheer force of vigor and with a willingness to take you from point A to point B in the least number of seconds possible, the 2021 Toyota GR Yaris is taking its shot as your new favorite hot hatch.
The GR is quite hot, actually: a daredevilish four-wheel drive system to make quick work of corners, a very eager 2.1-liter turbocharged engine that puts out 257 bhp, and a six-speed manual transmission to experience corner taking like a true champion built to smash the giants of the track.
Drive around the Horizon Festival in the new benchmark for modern hatchbacks and create your own special build of the versatile vehicle.
2023 Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S
Earn 20 PTS during Week 4 “Spring” Season on the Modern Horizons Festival Playlist. Available from July 11 until July 15
Picture it: the echo of eons of Porsche’s magnificent history added to modern electric technology and comfort of an all-wheel-drive SUV. You don’t have to imagine it anymore: it’s the 2023 Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S,: Porsche’s all-electric sports utility vehicle.
As the name implies, this Taycan shares a lot of aspects and components with its sedan counterpart. However, the electric SUV comes with two engines that output 750 horses as soon as you touch that pedal. You will cruise so comfortably inside; you’d probably forget that this vehicle can reach 100 kmh in just 2.4 seconds.
Porsche reaps the past by adding elements of its racing legacy into this model which perfectly contrasts with the new generation additions such as touch screens and, of course, the completely modern electric power train bringing the racing history of the brand into the modern era.
Universal Icons Car Pack
From the big screen to your gaming monitor, these icons from your favorite movies and TV shows take the Horizon Festival for a retro revival!
Experience new adventures for K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, the Jurassic Park 1992 Jeep Wrangler Sahara, and all 3 versions of the Time Machine from the Back to the Future trilogy!
Time Machine from Back to the Future
The original Time Machine from Back to the Future has arrived at the Horizon Festival!
Lights and sounds similar to what you saw on the film will burst out of the car just when you hit 88 mph.
Time Machine from Back to the Future Part II
Complete with the new Mr. Fusion attachment, the second iteration of the Time Machine will also be available on the Universal Icons Car Pack.
Just like the first Time Machine, this one will display unique effects once the classic 88 mph speed is met.
Time Machine from Back to the Future Part III
Back to the Future’s Time Machine from the saga’s third instalment will be at your disposal in this Car Pack.
The driving experience of this Time Machine really sets it apart from the previous two versions, and of course, this one will also produce the iconic VFX of its movie counterpart when it reaches, you guessed it, 88 mph.
1992 Jeep Wrangler Sahara from Jurassic Park
From Isla Nublar, the Horizon Festival welcomes Jurassic Park’s 1992 Jeep Wrangler Sahara.
Your vehicle of choice to race on the different off-roading courses in Mexico or to take on a cozy tour watching unusually large ancient reptiles.
K.I.T.T from Knight Rider
Villains hidden across the Horizon Festival, beware! A muscle car powered by justice and artificial intelligence has arrived.
K.I.T.T also comes with a body kit (no pun intended) that allows it to activate Super Pursuit Mode!
You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Car…
Lurking in the deepest corners of the Festival Playlist’s second week is an outfit so amazing nobody has been able to keep it in captivity. From the bottom of the ocean, get your character ready to wear the Shark Outfit–includes swim trunks and fins!
Complete Week 2 EventLab “Laderas Core” by PinHead Larry06 to unlock this exclusive outfit.
A Modern Construct to Add to Your Collection
BEEP BOOP BOP! Transmission confirmed.
Location of the new collectible: unknown. Coolness level: the highest.
Modern Horizon’s second week Collectible event will give you the chance to find and smash.
You will also be able to add this automaton to your EventLab constructions in case you were looking for a futuristic theme or build a robotic scenario.
What’s Next
Time to slow things down and take a well-deserved breather!
Forza Horizon 5’s next update will feature a new Evolving World Coffee Shop, as well as new collectibles and clothing items, and, of course, new cars to unlock and collect!
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle made a grand appearance at Xbox Games Showcase 2024 last weekend, showing off new gameplay, revealing new elements of the story, and treating us to an extended scene set in the Himalayas, as Indiana and new companion Gina attempt to recover a relic while avoid the clutches of colonel Viktor Gantz.
On a special episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, host Malik Prince got to talk more about the trailer and the wider game, joined by MachineGames’ Jerk Gustafsson, Game Director, and John Jennings, Production Director. If you want to watch the full interview, check it out below – or read on for the new details.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s development is in full swing, and what we’ve seen of the game promises a truly authentic Indiana Jones adventure – both in storyline and gameplay.
“The story kicks off when an ancient relic is stolen from the college where Indiana Jones works,” explained Gustafsson. “He’s determined to track down the thief, and he stumbles into this ancient conspiracy involving the theory of the Great Circle, as we call it. The Great Circle is a strange alignment of ancient sites around the globe, and a set of mysterious artifacts connect to it. But Indy isn’t the only one in search of answers. The enemy are scouring the world for these artifacts, believing that they hold some kind of power – and to stop them there’s only one thing he can do, and that is to find the artifacts first.”
This kicks us off on a classic globe-trotting adventure, beginning in the corridors of Indy’s beloved Marshall College, before taking in the Himalayas, the ancient jungle sites of Sukhothai in Thailand, the Vatican (an all-new location for an Indiana Jones project), the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, and more. It’s the kind of set-up you’d hope for from an Indiana Jones story, but it stemmed from a perhaps unexpected source:
“It actually started with an idea from [Bethesda Game Studios director and executive producer] Todd Howard,” said Gustafsson. “He had been thinking for years about creating a story around the concept of the Great Circle, so when we got this opportunity to work on an Indiana Jones game it felt like the perfect match.”
Of course, that idea was just the starting point, and the team at MachineGames has worked incredibly closely with Lucasfilm Games to ensure that their original adventure would feel faithful to movies it sits alongside.
“We spent countless hours just rewatching the films – especially the two movies that are closest to the game, which are Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Last Crusade,” said Gustafsson. “In addition, we have one of the best resources through our partnership with Lucasfilm Games, and working together with them on this project has been invaluable, just this cave of knowledge about the character, which has been fantastic.”
“It’s been great having access to writers, art directors from Lucasfilm, people who worked with the Indiana Jones property for decades,” continued Jennings. “Having their input – I mean, some of these people know everything that has ever been written about Indy – and having them to bounce ideas off, and get some of their own input has been hugely, hugely invaluable.”
That partnership came with perks for fans on the team, too: “We managed to get access into some of the Lucasfilm archives as well,” said Jennings, “which for Indy fans has been an absolute dream come true, to get access to some of these things that perhaps not so many people have seen.”
The research has been deep. Writers and artists on the team studied not just the films, but comics and books, not to mention had recreations of Indy’s costume created – including his iconic fedora, reproduced by the same hatmaker that created the original for Raiders of the Lost Ark. On the musical side, longtime Lucasfilm Games collaborator Gordy Haab (who recently won a Grammy for his work on the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor soundtrack) has been brought in to create a score John Williams would be proud of.
That authenticity extends to the characters involved, too. While most of the cast will be brand new faces for the franchise, the latest trailer showed us more of Indy’s friend, Marcus Brody: “Because we start the story in Marshall College it made sense to have Marcus there, to sort of ground it in the familiarity of Indy’s home base,” said Gustafsson – before going onto tease that we’ll see cameos from other classic characters along the way, too.
Of course, the most important element for authenticity was in getting Indy himself right, and the team found a perfect partner in renowned actor Troy Baker:
“It was maybe an unexpected choice at first, but from the moment we watched his audition tape we were just totally sold,” said Jennings. “He’s just a great actor. He’s put so much effort into the role as well – you can tell he’s just this huge, huge fan of Indiana Jones […] We’ve just been in a [voiceover] session recently with him, and he was improvising lines. You know, ‘Wouldn’t Indy say it a bit more like this?’ Or commenting on lines that we’ve written that we thought were subtle Easter Eggs just for the die-hard Indy fans, and he’ll pick up on it straight away.”
Baker’s performance doesn’t just extend to a great impression of Harrison Ford, either. “He’s not just a voiceover actor, he’s the full thing,” Jennings continued. “We do full performance capture: the body, the face, and the voice all recorded at the same time. And he’s got the physical acting nailed down as well. He does a really, really good job of capturing the character of Indy – specifically his character in the first few movies, the earlier ones, which is where our game is set of course. He just does it perfectly.”
This has been a new kind of development process for MachineGames, and that extends to the game itself. “It’s a little bit different, this game, for us, in many ways,” said Gustafsson. “We are very used to having heavy weapons, gun-blazing shooters – and this is a little bit different. We are making a proper adventure game here.”
While the team’s acclaimed Wolfenstein games were brutal, frenetic shooters, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle offers an experience more befitting of the world’s most famous archaeologist.
“He solves problems with his mind first and really relies on smarts, and not this excessive combat that we have seen or done before with the Wolfenstein games,” explained Gustafsson. “When you are playing the game, choosing the more authentic stealthy Indy route – or just some classic old fist-fighting – will be a benefit to the player more times than not, and also make for a very fun and challenging experience.”
In playing as Indy, we’re not rampaging through the world, but stopping to solve puzzles, and trying to avoid conflict when we can. The team wanted to avoid turning the character we know into a superhero.
“He is flawed, he makes mistakes, he stumbles, there is weight to his movement, and we have this gritty, pulpy edge to the action,” continued Gustafsson. “But at the same time he’s also rather athletic, he’s an excellent fighter, and he also has an enormous amount of luck as well – and at the same time he’s the best archaeologist in the world. So focusing on all of these things, in a way it makes the game feel in line with these classic matinee action-adventures that the movies were celebrating, something I think Indy himself also personifies in a way.”
To do that, the game will primarily be set in first-person – a perspective that MachineGames is very familiar with, a key way to help players feel like they’re truly walking in his shoes, and an exciting point of difference when looking at the wider action-adventure genre as a whole. In key moments, however, we will see the character in third-person, letting us live those filmic moments from the outside.
And speaking of filmic moments, the trailer ended with a callback to perhaps one of the most famous sequences in movie history – Indy’s rolling boulder escape. We had to ask how that made it into the game, and whether we’ll be able to play it. But Gustafsson wanted to keep some mystery before Indiana Jones and the Great Circle arrives:
“That’s unfortunately one of those things where I just have to say: ‘You’ll have to wait and see.’”
Uncover one of history’s greatest mysteries in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle™, a first-person, single-player adventure set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark™ and The Last Crusade™. The year is 1937, sinister forces are scouring the globe for the secret to an ancient power connected to the Great Circle, and only one person can stop them – Indiana Jones™. You’ll become the legendary archaeologist in this cinematic action-adventure game from MachineGames, the award-winning studio behind the recent Wolfenstein series, and executive produced by Hall of Fame game designer Todd Howard. YOU ARE INDIANA JONES Live the adventure as Indy in a thrilling story full of exploration, immersive action, and intriguing puzzles. As the brilliant archaeologist – famed for his keen intellect, cunning resourcefulness, and trademark humor – you will travel the world in a race against enemy forces to discover the secrets to one of the greatest mysteries of all time. A WORLD OF MYSTERY AWAITS Travel from the halls of Marshall College to the heart of the Vatican, the pyramids of Egypt, the sunken temples of Sukhothai, and beyond. When a break-in in the dead of night ends in a confrontation with a mysterious colossal man, you must set out to discover the world-shattering secret behind the theft of a seemingly unimportant artifact. Forging new alliances and facing familiar enemies, you’ll engage with intriguing characters, use guile and wits to solve ancient riddles, and survive intense set-pieces. WHIP-CRACKING ACTION Indiana’s trademark whip remains at the heart of his gear and can be used to distract, disarm, and attack enemies. But the whip isn’t just a weapon, it’s Indy’s most valuable tool for navigating the environment. Swing over unsuspecting patrols and scale walls as you make your way through a striking world. Combine stealth infiltration, melee combat, and gunplay to combat the enemy threat and unravel the mystery . THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY Venture through a dynamic mix of linear, narrative-driven gameplay and open-area maps. Indulge your inner explorer and unearth a world of fascinating secrets, deadly traps and fiendish puzzles, where anything could potentially hide the next piece of the mystery – or snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
As someone interested in giving old tech a new lease of life, the idea came naturally. “I was inspired by the many high quality network audio streaming devices sold by the major stereo component brands such as Sony, Cambridge Audio, NAD and so on but I couldn’t justify the cost,” he explains.
“I figured they just play back digital audio so I started looking at DIY options. I knew I wanted a standard-sized stereo component and decided an old stereo tuner would be reasonably-priced because they are not in very high demand, even among audiophile collectors.”
Treble buy
Alan purchased three Sony ST-JX411s so that he could mix-and-match the best looking parts (“most were dented and dirty,” he says). He liked its look and noted it had space for a decent-sized LCD. “The Sony tuner has a retro vibe but doesn’t look too dated, and it fits in with much of my second hand stereo equipment,” he says. “I also thought that a repurposed tuning knob would be a nice touch for a streaming player – few attractive modern tuners have one.”
The front panels were important. “I wanted to play a playlist or start and stop the device without using a web interface on my computer or phone,” he explains. “Another requirement was for an alphanumeric display for the currently playing song, title and file format. Since my amplifier already had a digital-to-analogue converter [DAC], I wanted quality digital audio – S/PDIF – too.”
For the audio quality, Alan chose a HiFiBerry Digi2 Pro which uses the I2S sound port for S/PDIF audio output (without a DAC, he’d have opted for a DAC HAT such as the Raspberry Pi DAC Pro). To connect everything together, he used a small proto PCB board with some male headers. “That way I could use female-to-female jumpers to connect to the Pi GPIO pins,” he says.
Setting the tone
Alan retained the logic board which houses the front-panel buttons. “The main challenges related to reverse-engineering these buttons and I’m not sure I would have accomplished the project without a schematic diagram I found online,” Alan continues. As it was, Alan was able to read row and column values, reducing the number of wires from 17 to 11. He also replaced the logic board’s vacuum fluorescent with a new alphanumeric LCD, and Raspberry Pi’s ports were extended to the tuner’s back panel.
To control the functions, Alan used the open-source project moOde. “I had already been using moOde on Raspberry Pi 4 and I was happy with its features and audio quality,” he says. “I also liked the simplicity of the moOde API, so I didn’t have to spend much time figuring that out.”
So how does it fare? Great, as it happens. “It works very well, with no issues,” Alan says. “And since I’m using the original board passively – that is with no power applied – there’s not as much to wear out or go wrong. I now use the music streaming player almost every day and the audio quality is indistinguishable from the original source material, at least to my ears.”
World of Warcraft’s The War Within expansion got a release date during the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 – coming to PC via Battle.net on August 26, this expansion will be the first part of a trilogy of expansions known as The Worldsoul Saga, diving deep into the mythology of World of Warcraft.
To celebrate, Official Xbox Podcast host Malik Prince teamed up with World of Warcraft community manager and WoWCast host Bethany Stout to interview World of Warcraft Executive Producer Holly Longdale and Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, finding out more about this expansion, and why now is a perfect moment to jump into the game for the very first time. You can watch the entire interview below, or read on for all the key details.
Of course, it’s something new to see World of Warcraft on an Xbox podcast. “We’re just super excited to be part of Xbox now, coming from Blizzard,” said Longdale. “And we’re representing a PC game, World of Warcraft, so we’re super excited to be here, and we want to share with all the Xbox fans that we’re here to stay. We’ve been around for 20 [years] – we’re not your dad’s game, we’re not your mom’s game – and we’re going to be around for 20 more at least. We want to invite everybody into this incredible experience.”
Part of that invitation comes with the game’s free trial, allowing you to explore the world and level up all the way to level 20. But there’s a new option to do so with the Welcome to Azeroth bundle. Including everything players need to begin their adventure in Azeroth, this offers the current expansion, Dragonflight, a level 60 character boost, and 60 days of game time for $24.99 USD.
That bundle has been carefully-chosen to help you get ready for the upcoming expansion: “We’ve really done a lot over the last 20 years to ensure that 20 years of content is not 20 years of obstacles that you have to overcome to get to the latest, coolest thing,” said Hazzikostas. “When War Within comes out, Dragonflight, the current expansion, will be what you play through to level up and jump right into War Within. That will give you the power, give you an understanding of the mechanics, you’ll have a dragon companion that you’ll earn very early on […] and it’s also going to prepare you story-wise for what The War Within is going to bring.”
It all makes The War Within a great marker for when to start playing WoW – as the beginning of a brand-new, three-expansion saga, this is a new story that even seasoned veterans will be discovering for the first time. And that story is already being told ahead of the expansion’s August 26 launch:
“In the lead-up to War Within, there’s already stuff going on in World of Warcraft at this very minute,” said Hazzikostas. “Xal’atath – the villain that you saw at the end of that [Xbox Games Showcase] cinematic – has emerged into the world, and her tendrils are branching throughout Azeroth, weaving dark plans that are going to threaten us. It’s exciting to have that build-up to that launch moment.”
When it does kick off, The War Within will introduce brand new zones to explore: leading players under the surface of Azeroth into Dwarven caverns, taking them to the beautiful Hallowfall Canyon (with airship travel to get around), and into Azj-Kahet, the home of one of World of Warcraft’s most powerful civilizations, the Nerubian Empire. Incidentally, Nerubians are an intelligent race of arachnids – and The War Within will offer an arachnophobia option to replace their models with (friendlier-looking) crabs.
We’ll also get a new feature called Warbands, which will allow players to switch between multiple characters without having to replay swathes of the expansion. Delves will offer a new dungeon experience, allowing for smaller, shorter dungeon crawls, even for solo players. For bigger dungeons, which often require you to play with others, The War Within will offer AI characters for those who can’t play with a party.
The War Within is doubly special for Blizzard, as it marks the 20th anniversary of World of Warcraft, and it’s an opportunity to look at how different kinds of players approach the game, and build something for all of them: “This is a huge year for World of Warcraft in general,” said Hazzikostas. “It’s really humbling to reflect upon my own relationship with the game, but really just to look back at the journey that we’ve taken as a development team with our community. We’re a game that has grown and evolved as our community has.
“I think not everyone has that time to spare these days – we’re all busy, we all have a lot of responsibilities, but we want to maintain a relationship, or build a new one, with this world that’s been special for so many people. [It’s] evolved over the years to keep that depth for those who want to seek it, but [we’re] making sure that there’s a wide range of levels of commitment and relationship you can have with the game and still have an epic, fulfilling experience.”
“What you saw [in the Xbox Games Showcase] cinematic was a celebration of the past 20 years, and the journey of our story over the past 20 years,” said Longdale. If you want to join in those celebrations – whether you’re a committed player, someone looking to return, or a total newcomer – now’s the time.
Earlier today on the Official Xbox Podcast episode, hosts Malik Prince and Jenn Panattoni spoke with President of Oxide Games, Marc Meyer, and Head of Ara for Xbox Game Studios, Brian Stone, as they stopped by to share more in-depth details on Ara: History Untold, including new details on its multiplayer and – best of all – to share a release date: Ara: History Untold will launch this September 24, 2024, for Windows PC, Steam, and will be available on day one with PC Game Pass!
Watch the full podcast below – the Ara: History Untold section begins at 1:58:
As they detail in the interview, the team at Oxide really wanted to make Ara distinctive in the historical grand strategy genre, by looking across the landscape of strategy games to identify common pain points they could address and explore ways they could shake things up. There are many things the team is excited to talk about when it comes to Ara and we’ve highlighted some of the biggest news elements to come out of today’s segment.
Playing in a Living World
One of the standout elements of Ara: History Untold that’s immediately clear from the footage shown during the Official Xbox Podcast segment, and its screenshots, is just how beautiful and detailed the world looks. At a high level, you can easily see how the regions are divided, making them distinguishable from agricultural versus industrial, as well as resource deposits.
“Ara, at its core, is a classic turn-based historical grand strategy game that spans the scope of human history from ancient times all the way up to the modern era and beyond,” explains Stone. “But it’s also a game that (Oxide) has been really pouring a lot of modern elements into it. They’ve made the look of the game something completely unique that you’ve never seen before.”
Diving in closer, however, you see that this is a “living” map with massive amounts of activity from planes flying overhead, garbage trucks going down the street, children playing in playgrounds, to wildlife living in dense jungles. It brings character to this game world and lets you connect with it in a way that you may not have before in other grand strategy games.
“This is all randomly generated every time you build a new game. Every time you play again, you will get a different world. It’s going to be full of all these different biomes,” Meyer explains. “It’s the living world; it’s full of all types of interesting things we want the players to notice and to see… And it’s a resource. That’s part of the game. It’s something you will harvest and get things from, and you will establish your nation here and you’ll use that resource to improve the lives of your people and your citizens.”
Multiple Paths to Victory with Unique Leaders
Because there’s so many ways to play through Ara, it was important for the team to make sure there were leaders for every playstyle, and we were shown that during the Official Xbox Podcast segment. There’s a variety of traits that help define who these Leaders are, inspired in part by how they existed in the world.
“Each of the leaders has sort of this unique hero trait that that sets them apart from everyone else,” explains Meyer. “They’ve got these set of traits that they share with each other and they kind of dictate a little bit of the underlying pieces of their personality and they dictate how they’re going to get along with each other… It lets us have a huge variety in the different leaders that we offer and so that playing each one of them is very different.”
Ultimately, the goal of Ara is, through your own means, to become the most prestigious nation on Earth. And you can do that across a lot of different types of gameplay strategies, from military conquest to religious victories to industry. Or become a beacon for other nations through prestige. “There are almost unbound ways to kind of go invest in kind of what you’re building from that first little village,” says Stone.
“As your nation grows, and as you gather people, you’ll gain claims that will let you take over pieces of land and grow your empire and find new places to build and new resources to exploit,” Meyer adds. “And so, it’s all this self-fulfilling system where you grow so that you can grow more, and you can get more land and you can get more resources. And then you take those resources, and you refine them through our crafting system to produce amenities that will improve the quality of life of your people.”
Multiplayer and Simultaneous Turns
In many grand and turn-based strategy games, multiplayer sessions can be a challenge — trying to wrangle a dozen players in a single game can be a daunting task. But Oxide might have a solution here. They call it “Simultaneous Turns” and it involves all players resolving their Turns at the same time. While not wholly new to the genre, the way simultaneous turns are implemented in Ara is truly unique.
“The way that works is you submit your actions, and everyone else in the world submits their actions at the same time, and then they all get resolved together,” explains President of Oxide Games Marc Meyer. “It’s not a situation where if you go first, you get to get the claim; the person who goes second doesn’t get the claim. In this model, everyone goes at the same time. So, in multiplayer you really have a fair chance at everything.”
“We’ve built all of that turn processing in the Azure Cloud, which means that it’s all there, all running, all the time,” adds Head of Ara History Untold for Xbox Game Studios Brian Stone. “Anybody in any game can hot join, in or out. You can run games at any pace you want. If you want to play a game like one turn a day or one turn every 30 seconds. It doesn’t matter. You can do that. You don’t need to worry about who’s hosting — it’s like almost unlimited flexibility in terms of how you play.”
“We really wanted to remove all the barriers for multiplayer,” says Meyer. “You can jump in and out of as many games as you want. You can take your turn when you have time and wait until it gets submitted. If your friend decides he doesn’t want to play anymore, an AI can come in and take over for him, it doesn’t mean the end of your entire world if you’re playing online and you don’t want to do that, you can stop, and you don’t have to worry about destroying the game for everyone else who’s playing.”
Check out the entire Ara: History Untold deep-dive episode on the Official Xbox Podcast to hear more information around the details mentioned here as well as seeing the game in action. Look for Ara: History Untold to launch on Windows PC, Steam, and with PC Game Pass on September 24, 2024.
Slowly but surely, the enigmatic Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is revealing itself to us, only to pose new questions as we peel back the layers on this unique game. Recently, Capcom shared some new background details on the festering Seethe, creatures of lore who pose a threat to the Maiden, Yoshiro, and the villages she’s protecting.
This past weekend at Summer Game Fest Play Days, I was among the first to try out a lengthy demo of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, before sitting down with some of the game’s creators to answer all of the “what did I just see?” types of questions which came tumbling forth.
This special demo was set early in the game, in an area called Myoko Pass; the developers explained that we’ll be spending a lot of time in the mountainous region. “The story takes place and also concludes on Mount Kafuku” explained Producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi. “Many of the Japanese folklore and mythologies have backgrounds where it takes place on mountains, and that’s where [we] got the inspiration.”
If you’ve seen a trailer for Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, your reaction may have been along the lines of “this looks cool, but how, exactly, do you play it?” Fortunately, the game’s loop sets itself up early: taking control of masked guardian Soh, players earn crystals by purging defilement throughout the village (hold the B button down whenever you see something… disturbing). This often releases a villager in the process; crystals can be spent to assign them more martial roles to take on at night – when things go from weird to worse.
You’ll need to balance building up your battalion with an even more important task: using crystals to clear a path through the defilement for Yoshiro, the maiden you’ve seen dancing in trailers, to proceed through the village towards a tainted Torii Gate – the titular Path of the Goddess. Soh’s crystal harvesting and direction of Yoshiro and the villagers takes place during several real-time minutes of daytime. Once night falls, it’s time to make the best of a perilous situation.
As soon as it gets dark, the defiled Torii gate starts spitting forth pint-sized, almost cute enemies, based on Yokai of Japanese folklore, all making a beeline for Yoshiro. While they don’t move too quickly, they come in large numbers, and from multiple directions.
Not a problem – Soh is a capable warrior who employs a graceful “Sword Dance” action system, inspired by traditional Kagura dance. The result evokes a sort of “Capoeira with blades” moveset.
I directed Soh back and forth, elegantly slashing my way through dozens of monsters, occasionally pausing to direct my axe-wielding villagers to hold down choke points. While Yoshiro took a hit or two, generating all kinds of alarm on screen, she made it through the night. By sunrise, I had earned enough crystals to pave a path for Yoshiro all the way to the Torii gate, where she purged that part of the village of defilement.
This opened up a tent, serving as a base from which to prepare for the next battle. Inside, Yoshiro presented Soh a Tsuba guard, granting a new power to battle the Seethe called Suzaku’s Flame, with the promise of more to come.
Seeking a greater challenge, I next challenged a boss. Before heading off to battle, Yoshiro supplied a bounty of crystals, with which I trained a posse of four woodcutters to help even the odds. Soon, Gakinyudo, a giant version of the mobs I had been facing in the village, came bursting into the clearing. I assigned three villagers to surround the abomination, reserving one to guard Yoshiro. We were dealing out significant damage when Gakinyudo summoned more tiny versions of itself to swarm the battlefield.
That’s when Gakinyudo got the best of me, sending Soh sprawling to the earth. Interestingly, that’s not game over – Soh become a floating spirit, still able to direct villagers and keep the pressure on the beast. After a few agonizing seconds as a non-corporeal being, Soh respawned back on the battleground, sword in hand! This made it clear that, in a real way, Soh isn’t the main character, it’s Yoshiro; if she is slain, the mission has failed.
This time, I made better use of Soh’s dodge roll, and before long, Gakinyudo was dispatched. Soh was rewarded with boons to his health, and even new roles to assign villagers, such as Archer, for the battles ahead.
And there will be plenty more fights; this is a big mountain, and daylight is already burning. Fortunately, we won’t have to endure many more dark nights until we get our hands on Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, something that the developers eagerly look forward to.
“Having it on Game Pass on day one allows an opportunity for many people to want to challenge themselves to take on this new gaming genre, to experience this new gaming experience,” Director Shuichi Kawata told me. Producer Hirabayashi added, “When you first play it and then you progress through it at the beginning, it kind of takes a little bit of time to get used to it. But as you progress through it and beyond the very first difficulties, you really get the feeling of the new gaming experience that this game has to offer. So we are looking forward to that.”
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess will be available on July 19 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows PC, and Xbox Game Pass subscribers will be able to play the game from day one. In addition, this title is compatible with Xbox Play Anywhere, allowing cross-play and transfer of saved data between Xbox and Windows 10/11.
Want even more options? There’s also a new setting that lets you adjust your dynamic background color without changing your profile color.
Easily Connect Your Xbox to Your Wireless Networks
Switching between Wi-Fi networks just got a whole lot easier for your Xbox. You can now remember up to 10 wireless networks that you’ve used before and hop on them without typing the passwords again. It’s also easy to forget and disconnect from the wireless networks you’re done with. No need to remember the Wi-Fi from your trip – unless you plan to go back! To check this out, go to Settings > General > Network settings > Manage wireless networks > Manage my networks.
Manage Your Subscriptions Directly From Your Console
You can now update your subscription plan or turn on recurring billing within your console settings. Go to Settings > Account > Subscriptions, select your subscription, and then choose Change subscription. Once you’re there, you’ll be able to select the options that work best for you.
Some Experiments You Might See on Your Console
We’re always experimenting and looking for ways to make your console experience even better. This month, you may notice updates such as the ability to find people using console search, updates to the Game Pass page layout and style, and additional information to search card results and flashcard store buttons. As we roll out these experiments, a random subset of players will be able to give them a try.
Xbox Wireless Controller Firmware Updates
Starting today, we’re rolling out a firmware update for your Xbox controllers. If you use the Xbox Adaptive Controller, you’ll have expanded support for more connected USB accessories. This update will better support full functionality of some accessibility peripherals. Each port now supports up to 12 buttons, a second stick, and a hat switch.
You’ll also see improvements to wireless disconnects for the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 when a headset is attached to its 3.5mm audio port. Plus, you’ll get some other bug fixes to make your gaming smoother. Grab this update from the Xbox Accessories app on the Xbox console or your Windows PC.
PC Gaming | Xbox App on PC Experience Updates
New Game Pass Sub Navigation Menu Is Now Available for All Players
Back in April, we announced that we had started previewing this new menu with a subset of players. Today, we’re excited to share that all PC players can now enjoy these new navigation options inside the Xbox app on PC.
The Game Pass tab will now display options to directly access all games from Xbox Game Studios, EA Play, and Riot Games that are available in the catalog. EA Play is included with both PC Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate, and both Game Pass memberships also give you access to exclusive Riot Games benefits.
With Game Pass, you can access all of the benefits above, and enjoy incredible new games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which will be coming to Game Pass on day one later this year. Game catalog and benefits vary by plan.
Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) Updates
Managing Game Data for Cloud Gaming
We have enhanced features to support players in managing their game data on Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta). Now you can self-manage game data and cloud saves for titles that are played on browser at xbox.com/play, from the Samsung smart TV app, and on other supported cloud-gaming devices. This is a vital tool to use for troubleshooting when corrupted data prevents gameplay, or to reset a game to its original state when you want to start a game from scratch. You can find instructions on how to manage game saves when using Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) on our support page.
Mouse and Keyboard for Cloud Gaming Is Now Available for All Players
Last month, we announced that we started rolling out mouse and keyboard support for cloud gaming on Edge and Chrome browsers and the Xbox app on PC. These features are now available to all players. To access this feature on the Xbox app on PC, simply select the Cloud Gaming tab and navigate to the Play with mouse and keyboard collection, which includes all games supporting mouse and keyboard.
Help Shape the Future of Xbox
Stay tuned to Xbox Wire for future updates and all the latest and greatest Xbox related news. For support related to Xbox updates, visit the official Xbox Support site.
We love hearing from the community, whether you have a suggestion for a new feature that you’d like to see added, or you want to give feedback on existing features that could use some improvement. We’re always looking for ways to improve Xbox experiences for players around the world. If you’d like to help create the future of Xbox and get early access to new features, join the Xbox Insider Programtoday by downloading the Xbox Insider Hub for Xbox Series X|S & Xbox Oneor Windows PC. Let us know what you think!
Mini Dexed ports the concepts of the digital synthesiser to Python and Raspberry Pi, and is the brainchild of Simon Peter (aka Probono), who describes it as a ‘Dexed FM synthesiser similar to 8x DX7 (TX816/TX802) running on a bare-metal Raspberry Pi (without a Linux kernel or operating system)’ to produce eight tones. Voices can be programmed using a DX series editor using MIDI sysex.
Emphasising the importance of Yamaha’s DX7, composer and MusicRadar journalist OSC Steve argued: “it’s possible to categorise 1980s music into two eras; the pre-DX7 era and the post-DX7 era, such was the widespread use of this new instrument and its distinct timbral character”.
Bringing DX7 to life
Probono has been experimenting with Raspberry Pi, for home automation and 3D printing as well as digital music, since its launch in 2012. He began the Mini Dexed project because he was keen to make a “real musical instrument” rather than something that felt like a computer. He is in awe of the original developers of FM synthesisers and says Mini Dexed “stands on the shoulders of giants”. To recreate their sounds he was looking for a commonly available, inexpensive microcontroller with lots of computing power and is “using Raspberry Pi more like an embedded microcontroller than a regular computer”. Quick boot times, small code size and overall simplicity are further hallmarks. The project began in 2022 during a discussion in the Circle project, when Probono asked for guidance on how to go about integrating an existing synthesiser engine. Another maker, Rene Stange produced Circle, a library for code that runs it in a bare-metal Raspberry Pi environment, while Holger Wirtz ported the Dexed synth engine for use with microcontrollers, creating a framework specifically for this scenario.
Future sounds
Mini Dexed is a flexible platform for experimenting with electronic sound. Once it had been ported for microcontroller use, Probono deliberately built Mini Dexed around Raspberry Pi and commonly available, inexpensive hardware components. He says a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 version could be created for less than €50. Hardware choices and whether to use a dedicated audio DAC are down to individual makers’ preferences, while suitable connections for the audio partly depend on which Raspberry Pi you’re using. Those that can be configured to use USB Gadget Mode instead of USB Host mode (currently Raspberry Pi 3 and 4 but not yet 5) allow MiniDexed to be used as a USB MIDI device and accept audio streaming from MIDI keyboards, for example. “As someone who is interested in experimental music, I could imagine hooking up all sorts of sensors via MIDI to Mini Dexed, in order to create an immersive soundscape that changes as its surroundings change.”
Mini Dexed has also been extended to work with external DACs (making it usable with Pico and Raspberry Pi 1 and 2, too) as well as adapted to support 16 voices by blogger Kevin, who has contributed to this fantastic synth’s development and raised its profile. Probono specifically mentions the potential of Raspberry Pi Pico which Kevin was able to implement: see magpi.cc/picodexedgit or magpi.cc/dx7usbdongle.
“While the project can be built without any extra hardware, a simple display and a rotary encoder and/or some buttons make it much easier to use, and an inexpensive digital to analogue converter increases sound quality significantly.” Probono says “The real cost is the time invested into developing, building, refining, testing, discussing – and the MiniDexed community collectively has put in, and is still putting in, a lot of time and effort, which I am very grateful for.”
“I am still trying to wrap my head around how to design sound from scratch using FM, it’s probably a learning journey for a lifetime.”
Mecha Break will be available in 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, with a closed beta test coming only to Xbox Series X in August 2024.
The game features three distinct game modes: 6v6 Battlefield mode, 3v3 Arena mode, and up to 60-player PvEvP (unavailable for the upcoming beta).
Experience an arsenal of unique mechs with diverse playstyles and customization; play how you want and master your mech’s abilities.
Oozing with high-tech style and full of fast-paced battles, Mecha Break is multiplayer mech-based shooter that puts you in the pilot seat of your very own towering mech as you dive into a clash of steel and plasma unlike any other. Now, after two successful closed beta tests on PC, developer Amazing Seasun Games is proud to announce that Mecha Break’s next closed beta test will be coming to Xbox Series X in August 2024!
While the impressive mechs and break-neck speed of Mecha Break’s combat is the flashy initial draw, the room for personal expression through cosmetic customization and diverse combat tactics will let you build an attachment to your favorite mech. The full release game will feature three distinct game modes: 6v6 Battlefield mode, 3v3 Arena mode, and up to 60-player PvEvP.
Mecha Break features customizable mechs, player-created mech pilots, a wide array of mech and weapon types, and three distinct game modes where you can discover an array of attacker, brawler, defender, sniper, and support mechs each with unique playstyles and toolsets.
For the upcoming closed beta test in August on Xbox Series X, the highlighted game modes will be the 3v3 Arena mode and 6v6 Battlefield mode. Here you’ll work together with your team and engage in intense aerial and ground combat as you fight for the objective. Employ strategic tactics for close and long-range encounters, unleash devastating firepower, cleave mechs in half with giant melee weapons, and rain missiles upon the battlefield as you and your team fight to win.
Strategic planning is key in Mecha Break, so effective communication with teammates will be essential to lead them to victory. Prepare for adrenaline-pumping battles, lightning-fast maneuvers, and explosive firepower. Experience the colossal power and thrilling movement of your towering mech. Mecha Break’s closed beta test on Xbox Series X will begin in August 2024. Stay up to date on all Mecha Break news on Discord, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter).
Mecha BREAK
Amazing Seasun
☆☆☆☆☆
★★★★★
Mecha BREAK is a multiplayer mech game that allows players to choose from diverse mechs, customize appearances, and battle colossal war machines on treacherous terrain. Get ready for the ultimate showdown—blitz, brawl, blaze!
Across Europe and beyond, teams of young people are receiving data from the International Space Station (ISS) this week. That’s because they participated in the annual European Astro Pi Challenge, the unique programme we deliver in collaboration with ESA Education to give kids the chance to write code that runs in space.
The Astro Pi computers inside the International Space Station.
In this round of Astro Pi, over 26,400 young people took part across its two missions — Mission Space Lab and Mission Zero — and had their programs run on the Raspberry Pi computers on board the ISS.
Mission Space Lab teams find out the speed of the ISS
In Mission Space Lab, we asked young people to team up and write code to collect data on the ISS and calculate the speed at which the ISS is travelling. 236 teams wrote programs that passed all our tests and achieved flight status to run in space. And not only will the Mission Space Lab teams receive their participation certificates this week — they’ll also receive the data their programs captured on the ISS.
A picture of the Himalayas taken from space by the Astro Pi computers.
Many teams chose a feature extraction method to calculate the ISS’s speed, identifying two points on Earth from which to calculate the distance the ISS travelled over time. Using this method means using the high-quality camera on the Astro Pi computer to take some fantastic photos of Earth from the ISS’s World Observation Research Facility (WORF) window. Teams will receive these photos soon, which are unique views of Earth from space.
Feature extraction between two images
How fast does the ISS travel?
The actual speed that the ISS is travelling in space while at normal altitude is 7.66km/s. Its altitude can affect the speed, so it can vary, but the ISS’s boosters fire up if it dips too low.
To help teams with writing programs that can adapt to some of these variances, and to show them the type data they can collect, we gave them a programming tool we call Astro Pi Replay. Using this tool, teams can simulate how their program would run on the Astro Pi computers up in space.
The International Space Station orbiting Earth
This is the first time we asked Mission Space Lab teams to focus on a particular scientific question. So how did they do? The graph below shows some of the speeds that teams’ programs estimated.
The range of speeds calculated by Mission Space Lab teams
As you can see, a variety of speeds were estimated, but the average is fairly close to the ISS’s actual speed. Teams did a great job trying to solve the question and working like real space scientists. Once they receive their data this week, they can check how accurate their speed estimate was.
Mission Zero pixel art lights up astronauts’ daily tasks
In Astro Pi Mission Zero, a coding activity suitable for beginners, 16,039 teams of young people created code to make pixel art inspired by nature. Nearly half (44%) of the 24,409 participants were girls! 15,942 of the Mission Zero teams had their code run on the ISS after we checked that it followed the rules.
Mission Zero Submissions
Every team whose program ran on the ISS — with their pixel art showing for the astronauts to see as they worked — will receive certificates with the time, date, and location coordinates of their Mission Zero run.
We’ve been so impressed with this year’s pixel art creations that we’ve picked some as new examples for next year’s Mission Zero coding guide. That means young people will be able to choose one of a few pixel images to start with and recreate or remix them for their program. More info on that is coming soon, sign up to the Astro Pi newsletter to not miss it.
Let’s get ready for September
Thank you and congratulations to everyone who took part in the missions this year, and our special thanks to all the amazing educators who ran Astro Pi activities with young people.
The south of Italy photographed from space by the Astro Pi computers
For us, there is much to reflect on and celebrate from this year’s challenge. We’ve had the chance to run Mission Zero with young people in person and identify a few changes to help make the activity easier. As Mission Space Lab now involves simulating programs running on the ISS with our new Astro Pi Replay tool, we’ll be exploring how to improve this as well.
We hope to engage lots of previous and new participants in the Astro Pi Challenge when it starts up again in September. Sign up for the newsletter on astro-pi.org to be the first to hear about the new round.
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