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Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

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Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#331

Post by joezydeco »

FabHK wrote: post #302
bbx wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well known in the music/synth world thanks to their OP-1, which I bought 2 weeks ago: https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1 It looks like a toy, and kind of plays like one, but it's actually a marvellous piece of gear, very capable musically, and providing a fantastic user experience. There's just nothing else like it out there. The company itself is very unique. Just look at what they came up with [1] for O…

This OP-1 reminds me of the Casio VL-1 [1], made famous (in Germany at least) by the pop band Trio in their NDW (Neue Deutsche Welle) song Da Da Da [2] [3]. I wonder whether that's accidental, or an homage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_VL-1 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Da_Da [3] for example about 1:25 into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYcviXK4rg

I coveted mine as a kid. And it had a calculator! All 80s gadgets turned into calculators!

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#333

Post by tyleo »

darzu wrote: post #83
tyleo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is awesome! Is MakeCode a subsidiary of Microsoft? It looks like it’s based on some Microsoft tech similar to Google’s Blockly I hadn’t seen before. I’m curious because I’m working on a product in this space.

Yeah, we're a team at MSFT (same org as VS Code). All* our code is open source. We use Google Blockly, and we've made a number of contributions upstream to them. What's your product? * Our server code isn't open source, but it's basically just a node app serving a SPA. Everything is client side. Works offline too.

My product is called Devev. I moonlit the product for the past few years while working at Microsoft. I quit about a month ago to get it over the finish line. I'm still pre-launch but here are some images: https://imgur.com/a/zLS1g0t

I worked on video games for the past few years and saw many less technical colleagues empowered by tools like Unreal Engine's Blueprint (https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Blueprints). I thought that the same paradigm may apply more widely but the visual languages used outside of games weren't really hitting the mark.

Devev is a framework for creating visual programming languages. They are supported through extensions. For launch I'm working on an extension which parses TS types and allows you to use the existing code in nodes. That's what you'll see in my image above. This will allow early users to tap into existing libraries published on NPM.

I don't expect much traction with the launch version and plan to target a specific domain shortly after that. I'm leaning towards a build system where you can capture your dependencies in a visual graph. One of the applications I'd been thinking about was allowing users to build and share games or other applications in a web-editor similar to Scratch.

Devev is also a JS SPA and the client editor uses Electron. The client editor supports more features like multiple windows, editors panes and plugins. Additionally the client can parse new Typescript files but not the SPA. For the SPA to parse TS I'd need to deliver TSC over the web which I won't figure out for V1.

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#334

Post by parkersweb »

FabHK wrote: post #302
bbx wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well known in the music/synth world thanks to their OP-1, which I bought 2 weeks ago: https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1 It looks like a toy, and kind of plays like one, but it's actually a marvellous piece of gear, very capable musically, and providing a fantastic user experience. There's just nothing else like it out there. The company itself is very unique. Just look at what they came up with [1] for O…

This OP-1 reminds me of the Casio VL-1 [1], made famous (in Germany at least) by the pop band Trio in their NDW (Neue Deutsche Welle) song Da Da Da [2] [3]. I wonder whether that's accidental, or an homage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_VL-1 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Da_Da [3] for example about 1:25 into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYcviXK4rg

I've still got one of those - the tone creator on it is awesome :)

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#335

Post by Veedrac »

msvan wrote: post #11

I think it's cool. I'm not that old, but games these days mostly seem to be about squeezing every last dollar out of the consumer through shady means. I think this is part of why I don't play video games anymore. It's nice to see something different.

Then buy different games? There are so many games out there, you don't have to buy from the sleaziest, profit-whoring of them.

N++, Papers Please, Geometry Dash, Return of the Obra Dinn, Ori and the Blind Forest, 1001 Spikes, Hollow Knight, the list goes on. Then you have things like The Talos Principle, which does have DLC, but it's many hours long, or Humble and their bundles and monthlies, or that Lichess and Pokemon Showdown are legitimately completely free.

The Playdate looks like a fun toy, but it's vastly more of a cash grab than the games I play regularly.

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#336

Post by kokojie »

stOneskull wrote: post #10
slantyyz wrote: post #2

It would be cool if the crank was also used to charge the device's battery.

that's what i thought it was for, and then maybe it could be used to charge something else with crank-power through usb

Yeah, if the crank charged the device, it would have been an instant buy for me.

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#337

Post by cpach »

officeplant wrote: post #330
cpach wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was really surprised to hear this. Although I live in Sweden I don’t think I’ve ever heard about TE before. Usually Spotify and Klarna gets the majority of the tech news coverage around here. TE seems like a really interesting company!

Teenage Engineer and Elektron are two beloved companies of the synth world from Sweden

Elektron I do recognize! Perhaps I was more in touch with cool things back when the Sidstation was released :)

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#338

Post by rmellow »

toper-centage wrote: post #266
Pils wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When hardware is increasingly becoming just a way to interface with a larger platform (IoT, game console subscription services, etc.), I think there will be a certain nostalgia for more static, tactile and analog hardware. I collect records, own a couple pocket operators, and buy physical books for similar reasons. Single-purpose hardware has identity. It has explicit purpose. If it is well-designed, it has an interf…

After entertaining the idea of getting a smartwatch for years but always feeling unimpressed, I started carrying a dumb casio. There's something great about machines that only do one or two tasks but do it very well. Look at ebook readers. They are not super popular, but they have a solid market.

On this point, I just got a Withings Steel HR [1]: It's a classic analog watch, with a sole extra function of measuring heartbeat and exercise on a tiny LCD in the back of the watch face.

I love that it's purpose-specific and isn't gimmicky like smartwatches. This also means the battery lasts about a month. Plus, it looks good.

[1] https://www.withings.com/ca/en/steel-hr

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#339

Post by srik »

_lbaq wrote: post #258
keyle wrote: post #80

Panic never stops surprising me. You'd think you had them figured out, they keep jumping onto another shelf. It must be fun to work at Panic. It reminds me of how tech companies were in the 90s. Clear mission, but open horizon.

It is partially designed by https://teenage.engineering of Sweden, they apparently among other things came up with the crank.

Their OP-1 is one of the most brilliant pieces of hardware I’ve ever used. Very Dieter-Rams esque. Just brilliant.

https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#340

Post by bubblewrap »

Veedrac wrote: post #328
bubblewrap wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I never had a Gameboy, so now I hope I can kind of make up for the missed experiences with this gadget.

Just buy a Gameboy. Good games are timeless.

Which one should I buy? I don't really know the Nintendo world.
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