Hey All!
Happy Pi Day!
For Pi Day, I am going to be giving away TWO things. A Raspberry Pi 3, and a PiPlay Portable kit.
All you have to do to enter is enter your email address in the form below. I will be closing the submission at the end of the week! Look for the PiPlay Portable Kickstarter this month!
-Shea
Hey All,
I compiled AdvanceMAME 1.4 and AdvanceMESS 1.4 for the Raspberry Pi3.
On the Pi3, games like Street Fighter II and The Simpsons run like butter with full audio. It’s great!
You can download them here:
http://sheasilverman.com/rpi/raspbian/pi3/advancemame_1.4-1_armhf_pi3.deb
http://sheasilverman.com/rpi/raspbian/pi3/advancemess_1.4-1_armhf_pi3.deb
To install run:
sudo dpkg --force-all -i advancemame_1.4-1_armhf_pi3.deb sudo dpkg --force-all -i advancemess_1.4-1_armhf_pi3.deb
On another note, our first “PiPlay Advance” boards came in:
There was of course an issue with our pin routing, so we had to order a new revision of the boards. So excited to see this project start coming together!
-Shea
Hey All!
So this week the Raspberry Pi Foundation released a new version of Raspbian that includes experimental support for OpenGL. This is a big leap from OpenGL ES. This is real OpenGL that tons of games and software use. No mobile versions required anymore. That being said, its super experimental. It basically breaks the official screen and the camera doesn’t work. It also only works in xwindows and not on the command line.
BUT! One of my favorite games (and the way I lost 50lbs) is now available on the Pi! StepMania! The Dance Dance Revolution simulation game!
Here’s how to compile it:
First clone the StepMania repo:
git clone https://github.com/stepmania/stepmania stepmania cd stepmania
Install the dependancies:
sudo apt-get install cmake gcc g++ libmad0-dev libgtk2.0-dev binutils-dev git-core make libasound2-dev yasm libc6-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libbz2-dev zlib1g-dev libjpeg8-dev libpng12-dev libxtst-dev libxrandr-dev libglew-dev libglu1-mesa-dev mesa-common-dev automake autoconf libva-dev
A lot of these you will probably already have installed.
Now cd into the Build directory and start the configuration process (and run it one more time afterwards)
cd Build cmake .. cmake ..
Now you will want to edit the CMakeCache.txt which has some of the configuration options.
nano CMakeCache.txt Look for CRASH_HANDLER and set it to OFF, SSE2 should be set to OFF, and Full Release should be set to ON. press ctrl-x then y to save.
Now lets compile StepMania!
make
Let that run until it is done, should take about 3 or 4 hours. When it’s complete run
cd .. ./stepmania
and you should now be playing StepMania!
All of your configurations will be under ~/.stepmania, and your songs and stages go under ~/stepmania
Have Fun!
Also, GO SEE DEADPOOL (if you are 18 and older!!)
-Shea
Hey All,
Updates maybe sporadic for the next few weeks.
AdvanceMAME updated to 1.4 so I have recompiled the source and made .debs out of it. This will work on the Pi and Pi2.
To install goto a terminal and type:
sudo dpkg --force-install -i advancemame_1.4-1_armhf.db advmame
You will now have a directory in ~/.advance and will need to edit your advmame.rc file.
nano ~/.advance/advmame.rc
Add to the first line:
device_video_clock 5 - 50 / 15.62 / 50 ; 5 - 50 / 15.73 / 60
Then press ctrl-x then y and hit enter to save.
You can now place your game files into the ~/.advance/roms directory and launch a game with the command:
advmame gamename advmame sf2
Have a good weekend all!
-Shea
Happy Friday Everyone!
I am proud to present the very latest version of PiPlay! PiPlay 0.8 Beta 9! I feel like this is the best release yet!
While this was mostly a bug fix and compatibility update, we do have one awesome new features implemented. When you upload, drag and drop, ftp, or somehow copy a game file to the roms folder, our file watcher will pick that up, and automatically update the PiPlay Menu. No more running the Rom Scraper, or getting popups about unscraped files.
Update now via the PiPlay Menu, or download the latest image!
Have a good weekend everyone!
Hey All,
I am VERY excited to post about this. I have been working on this book for the better part of a year, it has truly been a blood sweat and tears kinda project. I felt burnt out at times, frustrated, ecstatic, relieved, rewarded, and angry all during the writing of this book. But it’s done and I couldn’t be happier.
I am pleased to announce that my book, Raspberry Pi Gaming Second Edition has been published and is now available to order from Amazon.
Whereas the last book was mostly a cookbook style in writing, this book teaches how to:
Thanks again to everyone who has helped me, supported me, and given me the opportunity to make this a reality. You all rock. Thank you readers and PiPlay community members 🙂
-Shea
Hey All,
Sorry for the super late post. The weather changes here in Florida knocked me on my butt. I’ve been in bed for the past two days trying to get over this cold. Going from 40 degrees to 70 to 80 back to 40 just messes with me. It also didn’t help that I ran myself ragged on Friday.
IAAPA
So Friday was the “members of the public” day at IAAPA. IAAPA stands for International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, which means that if you ever wanted to see how a ride works, or where to get new arcade machines, or pretty much anything within the amusement / coin op sector, this is the place. I go every year and it is always a blast. The biggest noticeable trend this year is how un-3d everything is. 2 years ago every ride and game had a 3D gimmick to it. Now, pretty much nothing is 3D except for the big ride experiences.
This year some of my coworkers went with me. They enjoyed themselves.
Super Smash Bros.
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U came out this weekend. Holy crap it is amazing. I had friends over on Friday, we played 8 player smash, and it was a riot. I will have the image of me playing as Samus getting the smash ball and taking out all 7 of the other players in one final smash attack burned into my memory for a very long time.
It’s a beautiful, well made, extensive game. I have no idea how long it is going to take me to unlock everything.
The game also includes support for Nintendo’s new NFC characters called Amiibos. Think Skylanders but different. For now, the way they work is dependant on each game. For Mario Kart 8, it just unlocks new outfits. In Smash Bros, they act as a super smart CPU character. The figures are really well made and look good sitting on display.
I’m still trying to get some of the NFC info from them. I’d love to write a program to back up the data, but it’s hard finding info on the MIFARE Ultralight chip it identifies as.
If you have any info please let me know!
Have a good week all,
-Shea
Hey All,
Happy Friday. One more week of break before the Fall semester starts up. It’s going to be a busy month!
I’m happy to announce that PiPlay 0.8 Beta 5 is being released. It should be available on SourceForge in a few hours.
Fixes / Improvements:
Work is already being done on the next release, which will include 2 player controller setup support, thanks to Mark.
Have a good weekend everyone!
-Shea
Hey All,
Happy Friday! I got an email this morning from Packt giving me the stats for my book sales from October to December of 2013. I’m happy to report that I have sold over 200 copies. Thank you all so much!
This weekend I will be doing a last minute presentation of PiMAME with FamiLAB at the Orlando Science Center. I will then be preparing for PyCon in Montreal, where I will be doing a poster session on how PiMAME was built in Python. I will also be attending Instructurecon in Utah and speaking about LTIs and how we program and implement them at UCF. It’s going to be a fun two months of traveling 🙂
I have gotten some great feedback on PiMAME 0.8, and I am going to be working on some fixes this weekend (these are my two low hanging fruit goals to complete):
Have a good weekend all!
Hey All!
Happy Friday! It has been a long week. The weather in Florida right now is crazy. One day it’s 80 degrees, the next day its 50, then 70, then 40. I wish it would make up its mind! The bad part about it is everyone is getting sick. Anyways…
PiMAME 0.8…
… preview release only for the brave edition
PiMAME 0.8 is almost done. We have a few more bugs to fix, and some more features to test, but the basics are there.
I have an installer available for the brave to try. It will make a new pimame folder in your home directory, so I recommend using a fresh install of Raspbian.
From the home directory in your command line, enter in the following command:
wget -O - http://pimame.org/installer.sh | bash
When that has finished running, reboot your Pi. It should automatically boot up into the new launcher, and a web interface should be available at your Pi’s IP address.
If you decide to test this, please send me any and all feedback! It is much appreciated!
This has been a huge labor of love, and I couldn’t have done it without some of the contributors to the codebase:
Thanks everyone! Have a great weekend!
-Shea