Workshops, XP and Badges!

Academy's reorganisation

Hello everybody!

As you might notice, Gamebuino’s website had some changes!

We (especially Sylvain) did a reorganization of the academy part which is now separated in 3 categories:

Official workshop: Workshop which has been written or validated by the Gamebuino team

Popular workshop: As the name suggests, this category regroups the most popular tutorials.

Stand-alone: Small tutorials which helps you to gain new skills or to learn how to handle your Gamebuino.

But that's not all! These workshops are now divided into steps which allow you to go gradually follow your progression.

To make the experience easier and adapted, new tabs are available:

This beautiful academy is now ready to host new workshops, stay connected!

New stuff on your profile

We also added new features to your profile. You can now gain some XP with your action on Gamebuino.com. And you can now win some badges!

You can also share your Facebook, twitter, GitHub and Google +

Other members can access them with a click!

PS : Thers is some changes on the referrals ;)

Gabuinian’s of the week !

As we’re really proud of our community, and we love to highlight its members, we decided to create a new rubric, which is an interview with a member of the community.

 And we are happy to start this week with STEPH :

Can you present yourself in few words?

Fascinated by the programming since my 11 years old, I studied in computer science until the PhD and defended a thesis in Distributed Artificial Intelligence. I am currently working as a Research Engineer at the University in Reunion Island. But I still admire the genius of the creators of retro video games that invented everything at a time when hardware and systems environments were extremely constrained. Coding on the Gamebuino META plunges us into the difficulties of this pioneering era and that's why it is exciting.

Tell-us your story with Gamebuino!

One of my friends told me about an article he read on jeuxvideos.com which presented a small console made in France to play and create retro video games. That’s how I discovered the incredible pedagogic project around Gamebuino META. It’s been 3 months since I joined this small, dynamic and nice community. I try to bring my stone to the building with my modest contribution on the learning programming part with tutorials.

Tell- us your Story with code?

I started to learn basic with books when I was 11. At this time I only had access to T07, 1h a week. I learn everything by coding on paper, in notebooks .. Using the processor in my head ????

And with times, I discovered a lot of other languages as Assembler, C, Prolog, Ada, SmallTalk, Java, PHP, JavaScript, Lua, etc. I never did C++ and that’s what motivate my double interest in the Gamebuino META 3 months ago only ! Technically, we are always learning. This is precisely what makes this discipline exciting :)

What is your first creation ?

I immediately set a goal for my first creation that allows me to base my first experience in programming in C++ through the writing of a tutorial on object-oriented programming and architecture Model View Controller. Because according to the well-known "Ce qui se conçoit bien s’énonce clairement, et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément.” To illustrate these programming paradigms, I chose a small exercise that was both simple and rich in terms of design models: the famous Game of Life, devised by John Conway in the 1970s. All the interactive capabilities of the META are discussed: control buttons, color display, LEDs and sound management. A way for me to make a complete overview on this mysterious little object that I was eager to apprehend. It seems to me that the result is rather successful if I believe the way it was welcomed by the Gamebuino team, since it was the subject of the "Pick of the week" :)

What’s the creation you are the proudest of?

It is my second tutorial: "High Resolution Tamperized Lighting". I discovered that it was possible to access the high definition screen of the META off the beaten track and free from the official library gb.display. I owe this discovery to Andy O'Neill's awesome article "High Resolution without gb.display". Andy is one of the major contributors to the Gamebuino universe and here I pay him my humble respect for his remarkable creations. This article opens up a sea of fantastic possibilities to fully exploit the capabilities of META. I wanted to give a spotlight on this unique technique by writing a complete tutorial on a clever method to exploit it fully. The tutorial also scans fundamental notions of mathematics and mechanical physics essential for video game programming. I sincerely believe that it is a real gold mine for the community and I encourage all those who want to learn to develop video games to read it!

Do you want to add something?

I sincerely want to say thank you to the community that is active around Aurélien's project to promote it, to deliver its contributions in Open Source and to make its contribution, so as to gradually build a great educational tool for our young coders, and for all of us, since each of us continues to learn in light of the creations that is around on the site gamebuino.com.

Congratulations to Aurélien, Sandra, Sylvain and the team that works in the shadows, for managed to lead this project, and to continued to animate and energize this great community that is activated around this small console full of resources and surprises. It’s a nice discovery for me.