Aug 15

Friday Post: Kickstarter shipments

Hey All,

As I’m sure you’re aware, I’ve been spending most of my time working on the PiPlay Kickstarter.  This has involved ordering samples, getting materials, designing hardware, and all sorts of fun things that goes along with PiPlay the application.

I’m really thankful to all the backers (and other supporters) who were able to make this a reality.

0cfaeeacd077645e6addbb6d231575f8_large 036b4257a8b09d0660981b47eef8806c_large350 SD Cards have been made with the PiPlay software, and above that is my living room filled with boxes of joysticks.

I’m going to have fun this weekend sending out shipments.

Now it’s time to work on the next release.

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

 

May 30

Friday Post: Joysticks!

Hello All!

It has been a long week.  I plan on sleeping until Sunday.

PiPlay will be getting a joystick configuration utility in the next release.

Don’t mind the placeholder graphics.  The designer who did the PiPlay logo is making all the controller graphics to go in there 🙂

The next release is coming along really well.  I’m very happy with it so far.

I bought Mario Kart 8, so if anyone wants to race, friend me!  My NNID is SSilver2k2

On a cuter note, my wife and I went to the Humane Society and adopted a 6 month old orange kitten.

IMG_3931

Meet Applejack 🙂

Have a great weekend all!

 

-Shea

Mar 21

Friday Post: PiMAME Updater

Hey All,

New week, new revisions to PiMAME 0.8.

The new version of the frontend now includes:

  • TankStick support.
  • Numpad support.
  • Shutdown, Restart, and Update commands.
  • A notice in the menu when a new update is available.

Please run the following on the command line:

wget -O - http://pimame.org/update.sh | bash

Have a great weekend all!

Nov 15

Friday Post: More PiMAME Menu stuff.

Hey all,

Happy Friday!

I am beyond stressed.  I think I’m buying a house next friday.  If all goes according to plan.  Knock on wood, everything will go right.

Anyways,  I have put up some new github repos for PiMAME.  It’s regarding PiMAME 0.8, and it’s for the new web frontend and the pimame menu / launcher.  They are no where near ready for use, but if you would like to help with the programming, feel free to fork the repo and send a pull request.

https://github.com/ssilverm/pimame-menu
https://github.com/ssilverm/pimame-web-frontend

Have a good weekend everyone!

-Shea

Nov 08

Friday Post: Things to come!

Hey All,

Happy Friday!

I just got back from our second tech time conference that I coordinated.  It was awesome.  Exhausting, but so darn worth it.

Anyways,  a coworker and I are working on a new PiMAME menu system, and I thought you all should see a sneak peek of the design work!

Screen Shot 2013-11-06 at 5.25.35 PM

 

I’m really excited!

Stay tuned!

-Shea

Sep 27

Friday Post: Raspberry Pi Gaming Published!

Hey All,

I have awesome news! My book, “Raspberry Pi Gaming” has been published this week. The eBook version is currently available on Amazon.com, and the hardcopy should be available next week.

3231OS_mockupcover_instant-how to (2)

 

Raspberry Pi Gaming at Packt Publishing

What you will learn from this book

  • Install a Raspberry Pi operating system
  • Set up PiMAME
  • Install RetroPie
  • Emulate PlayStation, SuperNES, MAME, and Atari 2600 games
  • Create your own Minecraft world and extend it with the API
  • Play in Open Arena matches with your friends
  • Go on an adventure with Cave Story
  • Fix common issues and troubleshoot your device
  • Keep your Raspberry Pi up-to-date

I hope you all enjoy.  I’m very excited and proud of this project!

-Shea Silverman

Jul 26

Friday Post: Book Reports

Excuse the delay, I’ve been having connection issues all day.

Hey All!

Happy Friday!

This has been a trying week.  The wife and I are now house hunting, and the endeavor has been…exhausting.  Oh well.  Onto some good stuff.

Book Reports

The book I am writing is currently at the review stage, which is awesome.  Hopefully only another month or so and the finished copies will be available!  While we wait for that to be released, I have some other books I have been reading and I think this community will enjoy.

Super Scratch Programming Adventure!: Learn to Program By Making Cool Games

super_scratch_programming_adventure

This book has a really interesting background.  It was created by created by The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups and the MIT Media Lab.  The book teaches you how to “program” in the Scratch language/IDE.

Scratch is really neat as it’s a drag and drop visual language that is aimed at young / new programmers.  You learn programming concepts as you place blocks of “functions” in various areas to perform actions.

The book itself is well done, with comic book style artwork, narrative, and learning modules.  It’s an easy read, and a good start for a young programmer.

Instant Minecraft: Pi Edition Coding How-to

0636OS_mockupcover_instant-how to_0

Packt Publishing has just published this book about using the Minecraft API for the Raspberry Pi with Python.  I have a soft spot for Packt, as they are the ones publishing my book, but so far I have enjoyed this book.

From the beginning you are thrown into the Python interface and start manipulating the Minecraft world on your Pi.  It is relatively short, only around 50 pages, but I find that to be a good thing.  It’s to the point.  You go from nothing to building a full Revsersi game by the end.

I showed it off at the Orlando Science Center with FamiLAB last saturday and it was really neat to see the amount of children who ran up to see anything related to Minecraft.  Some of the parents were enthusiastic about being able to bring education to a video game.

I hope you have a good weekend and hopefully enjoy these books.

-Shea

 

Apr 12

SDL Keymappings

Hey All,

I’ve been trying to get the Tankstick working with GNGeo recently, and the issue that has been cropping up is that the Tankstick by default uses LeftCtrl, LeftAlt, and Space for the top row of buttons.  This would be fine if I could just specify that, but the GNGeo config file (gngeorc) needs the SDL key mapping, which isn’t really documented anywhere.

What I have found is that if I start X Windows, run xev, press the required button, take that output hexadecimal, then convert that to decimal, about 99% of the time it’s the valid SDL key mapping.

Just a heads up to anyone else with that kind of issue.

Mar 11

PiMAME code on GitHub

Hey All,

I’ve put my PiMAME code and configurations on GitHub for anyone to look at, check out, fork, make improvements, etc, etc.

If you check out menu.py,  you will see that I have a new line item for RetroPie / EmulationStation.

I am testing it out in addition to AdvanceMAME.

Enjoy!

https://github.com/ssilverm/PiMAME

-Shea

Jan 06

Pleasant Surprise, New version of AdvanceMAME was released

Hey All,

I received a pleasant surprise this weekend.  A new version of AdvanceMAME and AdvanceMENU was released by the author.  I am currently compiling it and testing it out.  It is still based on MAME 0.106.

This is going to push back the PiMAME 0.4 release as I want to incorporate these new binaries into it.

You can find the sources here: http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/index.html