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James Derek Lomas game user testing in India

Game user testing is going great! Once we get the games running (we've had a TON of technical issues) they are really working well. The typing game seems to be the favorite so far-- It is definitely the most collaborative, as you can see in this video.

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Added by James Derek Lomas on July 24, 2010 at 7:00pm — 1 Comment

James Derek Lomas Feedback requested: Next Iteration of the games

Download the 3in1_playpower.nes

The DAIICT team has released the next version of the games. To play, download an emulator at:
http://nestopia.sourceforge.net/

To get the keyboard to work (for the typing game), click on the Menu option "Machine", then "Input", then "Expansion… Continue

Added by James Derek Lomas on July 21, 2010 at 10:36pm — 7 Comments

Harrison Lee The case studies: Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my case study analysis of the data and observations from the kind volunteer researchers working in India. The final study from the group of four involved a drastically different role of the TVC in the family life. In this case (household BD), the TVC was a core element of the daily routine and was considered essential by the family as a learning tool. However, both game cartridges were encouraged to be played by the parents as they felt that standard educational games and ta… Continue

Added by Harrison Lee on July 19, 2010 at 7:00am — No Comments

Harrison Lee The case studies: Part 1

The link to the case scenarios that Derek posted yesterday are of diverse, different families that have many differences and similarities. The first three families in households AW, AT, and BC, are most certainly diverse in how technology plays a role in the family life. The first family uses technology as an entertainment venue, but at different times during the day as each family member had a different timetable. The elders, as they are referred to, appear to avoid use of the TVC and prefer wa… Continue

Added by Harrison Lee on July 19, 2010 at 6:30am — 2 Comments

James Derek Lomas Where will our games be played?

View family "BD"

Over the course of the… Continue

Added by James Derek Lomas on July 18, 2010 at 6:00pm — 1 Comment

James Derek Lomas Feedback on existing games?

Hey everyone,

Here is a draft of the current version of the games. Many changes are planned, but it would be great to get feedback now. We will be trying these out with some families, and iterating over the course of the week. We'd really love your feedback! All you need is an NES emulator...

3in1_final.zip

Cheers,
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Added by James Derek Lomas on July 18, 2010 at 5:46pm — 2 Comments

Harrison Lee Troubling News

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/business/11digi.html?emc=eta1

This article summarizes recent research regarding the educational effects of having home computers. According to their findings (that were obtained through 'widely varying' routes), test scores of those who own home computers in developing nations drop. Evidently, children spend more time playing games that are fun than using these computers for… Continue

Added by Harrison Lee on July 13, 2010 at 6:00am — 8 Comments

Aaron Trammell Tales from the NYU Workshop

The 8-bit design workshop, hosted at NYU last week, was awesome! After a brief explanation of the Playpower project by Derek, Don (8bitpeople’s No Carrier!) led a really badass lecture regarding the capabilities and limitations of the 8-bit 6502 processor, or in layman’s terms NES. By the time lunch was served everyone had already got their hands dirty hacking an old copy of the Bomberman ROM; we learned how to alter the sprites so that bomberman would appear headless, or with a skull for a head… Continue

Added by Aaron Trammell on July 8, 2010 at 12:00pm — 1 Comment

Kan Yang Li NROM HUNTING IN TOKYO!

I had a great time learning how to burn NES programs and sprites to real chips with Don last week ( Thanks again!). I brought in 10 Famicom cartridges with NROM PBC in them ( at least I thought they were) to the workshop. I selected them based on an online pictorial database that Don gave me couple days prior to the workshop. I was super excited then super disappointed because none of the cartridges has the right PBC board in it. I realized that even with the same game ( identical exterior ), it… Continue

Added by Kan Yang Li on July 6, 2010 at 1:30pm — 11 Comments

James Derek Lomas 8-bit Game Design Tutorial @NYU

Broadcasting LIVE this Friday and Saturday, from 10am-5pm:

Video clips at Ustream Continue

Added by James Derek Lomas on June 24, 2010 at 8:00pm — No Comments

Darsh Shah How To Use the FamiTracker Driver Source to make NSF Music Files

I recently learned how to add music to the NES game at our desired location and also how to reduce size of the NSF file to save space. I think this might be helpful to the members.

How To Use the FamiTracker Driver Source to make NS

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Added by Darsh Shah on June 24, 2010 at 1:00am — No Comments

Kishan Patel Hanuman Quiz Game [Version 1]: Feedback Wanted

Here is "Hanuman Quiz Game" which is based on the mythological tale that Hanuman takes sun as a fruit and goes to eat it.



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Added by Kishan Patel on May 21, 2010 at 2:30pm — 4 Comments

Kishan Patel Hanuman Typing Warrior [Version 2]: Feedback Wanted

Here is the second version of the typing game. We have not made too many changes but we are building over this draft.


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Added by Kishan Patel on May 21, 2010 at 2:00pm — 1 Comment

Manabu Nagaoka 3D

Looking for companies in the USA or overseas that build 3D monitors and contents that can be seen on the monitors that do not require the 3D glasses. Anyone? Continue

Added by Manabu Nagaoka on May 14, 2010 at 8:00pm — 7 Comments

Kishan Patel Hanuman Typing Warrior [Version 1]

We have implemented the first level of Hanuman typing warrior which was designed as a part of Playpower's India workshop at IIIT-Hyderabad last December after making appropriate changes in the design.


Here is the code of the game:

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Added by Kishan Patel on April 8, 2010 at 10:00am — 6 Comments

Paulo Silva 64 columns on a nes famiclone (just an idea)

From the 80's i remember some utilities for ZX-Spectrum uses 64 columns, on a 256x192 display resolution: taswide, which is a zx-basic extension for providing this 64 columns text, and tasword, which is a zx-spectrum text editor can use these 64 columns. ZX-Spectrum defaultly uses 32 columns of text, as well as NES machines.

The idea would be having this on a NES Famiclone as well, whatever how slow or tricky could be implementing this.

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Added by Paulo Silva on April 3, 2010 at 10:22am — 3 Comments

Emiliano Figueroa Parallel/Printer Port Interface

You may have noticed that the standard Famiclone word processing program comes with a Print option buried in its menus. Selecting it will surely produce an error message but it does work given the right equipment. Some Famiclone computers come with a PC style parallel port on the back so that you can hook up a real printer and create hard copies of your typed works.

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Added by Emiliano Figueroa on March 27, 2010 at 6:43pm — 5 Comments

Paulo Silva gujarati character set

Here is one more small contribute from me. Since i'm seeing so many people from Gujarat here in the playpower.org , i started to draw a NES gujarati charset, based on the unicode.org pdf file related to gujarati writing. I'm not fluent in gujarati language, and surelly i hope seeing fixes and improvements on this charset. I also don't know how enough are the 8-bit ascii encoding and 8x8 pixel monospaced room for the gujarati language.

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Added by Paulo Silva on March 10, 2010 at 10:11am — 3 Comments

Paulo Silva converting a picture into patterns and namespace

Based on some converters i did for other computer/console systems (msx, zx-spectrum, c64, samcoupe, etc.), and in a need of trying to understand a bit more of the NES hardware, and trying to get the most of a static display, without lacing or synchronized line interruptions (like from some NES demos), i started to develop a converter for that - it's still very incomplete, since it's still not very efficient on choosing the most unique and repeated 256 cells from 960, and it doesn't saves yet the… Continue

Added by Paulo Silva on March 6, 2010 at 3:43pm — 2 Comments

whymandesign.com Create innovate Playgroundgames.org

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Added by whymandesign.com Create innovate on March 5, 2010 at 12:34am — No Comments

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