Adam Clare

Stardoz now has Oculus Rift support and you can play it next week in Toronto at Make it Glow, part of the Maker Festival.

Stardoz was made at TOJam and uses an Arduino heartbeat monitor to spawn enemies. You must stay calm and fight off the enemies. Now with Oculus Rift support you can fly around through meta-space with the ability to look around in 360 degrees. Is the game more fun with the Oculus Rift? You’ll have to play it to find out (hint: yes).

I’m still tweaking some of the gameplay and interfaces to make the Oculus Rift experience so much more than the non-VR version.

Playing Stardoz with the Oculus Rift

Make it Glow will have tons of fun exhibits and other oddities to check out!

There’ll be glittery things to gawk at, projects to play with, and science-ness on display. PLUS the evening will be brought to life thanks to Electric Runway – a fashion-meets-technology spectacle featuring smart garments, 3D printed jewelry, brain-sensing headbands, and light-up-everything sourced from makers near and far.
Join us as we sip on sparkles, paint with light, hypnotize our inner-cynic, reignite our maker spirit, and tinker toward a (techni-coloured!) future made by many.

Get your tickets to Make it Glow now!

Video game controllers have evolved quite a bit over the years from simple buttons to really technically complex controllers like the new one from Steam (which has sold out). They all operate using the same basic concept that the player presses a button and that button tells the game to do something.

Over time the number and arrangements of buttons has changed but the core concept has remained. Game controllers translate your physical input into something that makes sense within the game.

Many companies played with how a game controller ought to function and the ergonomics around them. From the simple Commodore 64 joystick to the button filled Atari Jaguar controller.

You can go to this website for a visual history of game controllers.

Dave Nunez has put up the innards of old game artifacts and they are surprisingly fascinating videos. He goes into the materials used (and why) then moves into how the actual game controller operates. These videos provide some context into why controllers are the way they are. One nifty part of his video is that he breaks down how the wiring works.

The first video he focuses on the Atari 2600 Joystick.