The six-sided die is one of the most recognizable symbols of gaming and gambling. But as Dr. Matt Fleming states, cubes don’t roll well. You know what does? A dodecahedron. So Matt put the numbers one through six twice on a 12-sided die. Hence the name Doublesix Dice.
Aside from being 12-sided, Doublesix Dice also have the same number of pips printed on opposing sides. Matt says this makes the dice more balanced compared to ordinary six-sided die.
Roll a browser then head to Kickstarter to get Doublesix Dice. A pledge of at least $10 (USD) gets you a pack of 12 dice.
I’m not even going to pretend that I understand what Mema Haxx did to pull this off, especially since you can watch the presentation in its entirety in the video below. Lesser mortals such as I should proceed to around 47:30 in the video to check out the demo.
You can also read Mema Haxx’ presentation on Google Docs. Although the group thinks that the hack is very promising, it’s still in alpha and won’t be of any use to anyone except coders. For now you’d be better off commissioning a Cross Plane. But keep that Wii U GamePad healthy.
When I first saw OpenEmu, it was already able to play games from different previous gen systems, but it had this experimental streak to it. Four years later, it has put its wild days behind. The new OpenEmu is a suave and streamlined application that looks and behaves like a native OS X program.
OpenEmu uses open source emulators for the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Gear, NeoGeo Pocket, Nintendo DS, NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Sega 32X, Sega Master System, TurboGrafx-16 and the Virtual Boy. The beauty of it is that you don’t have to switch between emulators to play digital copies of games that you legally own (henceforth known as DCOGTYLO). Simply load DCOGTYLO into OpenEmu and it will figure out what emulator each one runs on, similar to how your computer automatically opens your other files in their respective programs (well, most of the time anyway).
Another great feature of OpenEmu is that it downloads game covers for your DCOGTYLO over the Internet, then presents it in interfaces that OS X users will be familiar with, such as Cover Flow. Those two features combine to give you an elegant way to organize and view your DCOGTYLO collection.
But OpenEmu really shines if you take the time to get to know its more technical features. For starters, it supports a wide variety of gamepads, from generic USB controllers to the DualShock 4. It also has a variety of video filters that can make you fell like you’re back in third grade, looking up at a 15″ CRT TV, when you’re actually playing a DCOGTYLO on your MacBook Air. At work. Here’s a great preview of OpenEmu by Lon Seidman:
You can download OpenEmu for free. The emulator’s developers also bundled a pack of homebrew games for those that don’t have a DCOGTYLO to play.
As with the Mega Man 2 NES, Ryan worked with fellow modder Custom NES Guy on this mod. The star of the project are the cutouts on top of the console, which Ryan painstakingly made by hand. But there are also lots of tiny details to appreciate here, from the great color scheme and paint job to the four bundled controllers, each with an overlay representing a different member of the Turtles.
As I said, Ryan is selling this particular console. It’s going to cost you more than a box of pizza though. As of this writing you have to bid at least $1,275 (USD) on eBay to get a chance at owning the console.
Okay, okay, I kid. The Xbox One doesn’t look that much like a VCR, but it still is about a big as one. But leave it to an enterprising console modder like James “DarkUncle” Terry to solve that problem, by transforming an Xbox One into a laptop.
What you’re looking at here is what I’m reasonably certain is the very first Xbox One laptop mod. The Console measures only two-inches-thick when closed, and that includes the size of the LCD flat panel built into its lid. That’s even more impressive when you realize that the Xbox One normally measures almost three inches-thick. The top of the console has a matte black finish, with an integrated touch power control and a gloss black shell around the outside. He also added custom buttons for controller sync, eject, and audio volume. Between its additional cooling fans and the standard Xbox One heatsink, James says it stays nice and cool too.
The laptop has all of the regular ports from an Xbox One, but also added an audio line-out connector, which Microsoft neglected to include on the console. Check out the build in the video below:
Great job, James! Now all you need to do is figure out a way to build the Kinect into it, and shrink down Microsoft’s power brick, and all will be right with the world.
If you’re interested in having your own custom Xbox One laptop built, head on over to Dark Uncle Custom Gaming to get in touch with James.
A couple of years ago we got a peek at what several NES games might look like if they were rendered in voxels instead of pixels, courtesy of deviantART member John Buonvino. Programmer ProcyonSJJ was inspired by John’s renders and decided to take them a step further, making a voxel engine for the NES emulator FCEUX.
According to ProcyonSJJ, “[t]he renderer takes the color in the upper left corner and treats that as the clear color while at the same time ignoring any pixel in the image buffer composed of that color (no voxel).” In very simple terms, the engine will make voxels out of all the pixels, except for the ones with the same color as the “background”. This makes his engine work best with games that have single color backgrounds, as you’ll see in his demo video:
Sadly, it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll be able to toy with NES games using the voxel engine. Zeromus, one of the lead programmers of FCEUX, refused to integrate ProcyonSJJ’s engine into the Windows port of the emulator. Then the two had an argument and I don’t think the engine was incorporated into any version of the emulator. I’m not going to simplify their points here since you can read their messages for yourself on the TASVideos forum. As for the rest of us, we’ll just have to cherish the video.
Yeah, there’s a computer in here somewhere. This is Japanese designer Hiroto Ikeuchi’saward-winning casemod, which is basically a toy diorama that erupted over a PC. According to Wired, Hiroto calls the diorama his “secret base.” It’s filled with soldiers, mecha and guns along with gadgets, electronics and trinkets made to look like weapons or heavy machinery.
You can see more pictures of Hiroto’s casemod on photographer Rakutaro’s blog. You should also check out Hiroto’s website and his blog to see more of his work.
You can use a 3D printer to create replicas of items made in Minecraft. YouTuber ItsJustJumby did the opposite: he built a virtual 3D printer using Minecraft. Actually he built a 3D modeling program, a computer and a 3D printer inside the game.
You can say that Minecraft itself is a kind of virtual 3D printer: you stack tiny blocks in layers and eventually end up with a 3D object. But ItsJustJumby’s setup is more automatic and even has a crude user interface. I’m not going to pretend to understand how his computer processes the instructions, but I can tell that it both makes 3D models and builds the final object out of wool blocks.
Now all that’s left to do is 3D print his 3D printer.
Dexter Industries makes a Raspberry Pi add-on called BrickPi, which connects the ultra cheap computer to LEGO’s NXT Mindstorms parts. To show off what you can do with its kit, they made a robot that reads eBooks aloud.
The BrickPi Reader was designed to read from the Kindle app on the Nexus 7 tablet. Aside from a Raspberry Pi and LEGO, the BrickPi Reader also has a Raspberry Pi camera. The camera takes a picture of an eReader’s screen. The Raspberry Pi then uses an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program to extract text from the picture. A Text-to-Speech engine reads the extracted text aloud. Finally, its Mindstorms arm taps on the Nexus 7′s screen to turn the eBook’s page. When you think about it, it’s basically a Rube Goldberg machine.
But don’t say goodbye to Audible just yet. Not only does it take the BrickPi Reader a few minutes to convert a single page, its “voice” is also horrible. Maybe it’s soothing to baby robots.
I love how they show a guy wanting to read an eBook while driving, as if their finished contraption could be used in a vehicle. Still, who would’ve thought LEGO could read?
Flyonix specializes in aerial video and photography. The studio recently put their knowledge of drones for a geeky pursuit. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, Flyonix set out to build and fly a life-size TARDIS. And they succeeded. Somewhat.
Flyonix built a custom rig with 12 propellers. Judging from their brief making-of videos – which you can watch here and here – they made the TARDIS model itself out of styrofoam. With everything in place, all that was left was to let her fly…
Oh, the humanity! Unfortunately it seems like her chameleon circuit wasn’t the only thing that needed fixing. According to Metro, a battery shortage was responsible for the crash. If you’re an aspiring Time Lord, you can see more in-progress photos of Flyonix’ ill-fated TARDIS on the studio’s Facebook page.
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