Nuclear Monster

  • Tim Hunkin is back today with another episode in his The Secret Life of Components series. Springs are covered and it’s fun to watch Hunkin explain the subject with real-world demonstrations of how different springs work and then applying them to his creative arcade machines.

    There are just three episodes left in The Secret Life of Components, as Hunkin has already covered chains, LEDs, hinges, and switches, next week we should have access to his thoughts on connectors, then glue, and finally bearings. As always I recommend checking out Hunkin’s site for more details on the series.

  • The title could be for a game jam, but Paper Jam! is a virtual reality word game for Steam VR. Looks like a little bit like a Diner Dash type of system where you’re serving a queue of customers at the book store, but you’re hitting huge VR typewriter keys to make words out of a jumble to serve them. It’s important to note this game requires space for room scale.

    Paper Jam! is $6.29 on Steam for Windows until April 9th when it goes up to $7.

  • Lucas Matney writing for Tech Crunch:

    Today, Microsoft announced that it has received a contract to outfit the United States Army with tens of thousands of augmented reality headsets based on the company’s HoloLens tech. This contract could be worth as much as $21.88 billion over 10 years, the company says.

    Microsoft will be fulfilling an order for 120,000 AR headsets for the Army based on their Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) design. The modified design upgrades the capabilities of the HoloLens 2 for the needs of soldiers in the field.

    Microsoft has a long history of working with the government to help murder people and their GitHub unit famously contracts with ICE and helps to cage children.

  • It’s been almost 7 years since I reviewed Temple Gates Games’ Cannon Brawl, a Worms-like that adds a light real time strategy layer with resourcing and building construction. Since it was released in 2014 on Steam for Windows, macOS, and Linux, Cannon Brawl has also come to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and now Temple Gates Games and Blitworks are bringing Cannon Brawl to the Nintendo Switch eShop on April 14th for $10.

    I’m playing a pre-release version of the game and it is perfect for the Switch. The cannons are just as fun to fire, and the writing is still funny. The campaign is rewarding and teaches players one thing at a time in a fun way before unlocking new characters or other cannon types and upgrades but you can still just jump right into an AI battle or multiplayer. Using two Joy-Cons for single-Switch multiplayer works great. I highly recommend checking out Cannon Brawl on the Switch or revisiting it on any of the other platforms it is on.

  • Every year Apple has their World Wide Developer Conference and due to the current pandemic situation this year’s will again be solely online. Starting June 7th and running through June 11th, you can find out more and see Apple’s animated Memoji tribute to Phil Schiller’s M1 Mac opening here. Typically we hear about upcoming features for their operating systems and sometimes new hardware is announced.