Opinions, tips, and news orbiting Microsoft
In this episode, Robert is joined by Mikayla Hutchinson to talk about Visual Studio for Mac, a full-featured IDE built natively for the Mac. Visual Studio for Mac is now generally available and can be used to develop, debug and test mobile apps, Web ap… Continue reading Visual Studio for Mac | Visual Studio Toolbox
We’ve been receiving lots of requests from players asking for more details about our plans for Xbox One. So on behalf of the entire team here at Gazillion, I’m excited to officially announce that Marvel Heroes Omega will be launching on Xbox One on June 20! Soon, Xbox One players will get to experience Marvel Heroes Omega with its unique blend of non-stop action and long form MMO progression features, all with an ever growing library of playable heroes from the Marvel Universe. Last time we talked, I touched on some tips on how to decide on your very first… Continue reading Marvel Heroes Omega Launching June 20 on Xbox One
Do you spend hours trying to clean, standardize and transform data such as date-time, addresses or URLs? Transform Data By Example is an Excel add-in that can help you find a transformation function to quickly wrangle the data. —Read on to learn more.
The post Transform Data By Example—a Microsoft Garage project for Excel appeared first on Office Blogs.
Continue reading Transform Data By Example—a Microsoft Garage project for Excel
Join us at GDC 2017 as we honor three amazing developers with ID@Xbox Gaming For Everyone Awards. We talk with the award winners about their games, chat with Katy Jo Wright the director of Gaming for Everyone at Xbox, and Mark DeLoura the winner of the 2017 Game Developer Ambassador Award. We’ll dive into accessibility as well as how we as game developers can harness our abilities to develop games that can share our unique perspectives, raise the voices of others, and change the world!
[00:11] Katie Stone Perez and Chris Charla present ID@Xbox’s Gaming for Everyone Award
[03:25] Interview with Culture Shock Games about We are Chicago
Culture Shock Games has created a game that showcases the harsh realities of growing up on the south side of Chicago. The game was created using real stories, putting you into the shoes of a young boy about to graduate high school when his best friend goes missing. http://www.wearechicagogame.com/
[05:27] Interview with Out Of Sight Games about A Hero’s Call
The developers of A Hero’s Call grew up loving games, especially epic fantasy RPGs. After losing their sight, these games became impossible for them to play, and they were unable to find any accessible games that fulfilled these desires. Thus, they set out to make a game like those they remembered playing; one that would delight blind and sighted gamers alike. A Hero’s Call is an epic RPG with deep narrative gameplay that is engaging for all. For sighted gamers, it provides an enlightening glimpse into the creation of accessible games. http://outofsightgames.com/a-heros-call/
[08:48] Interview with Kenny Roy from Arconyx about I, Hope
I, Hope is a beautiful coming of age adventure story about a young girl named Hope, whose town has been taken over by Cancer. The game is engaging for all, yet for survivors and children who are currently battling cancer, the game is empowering. The developer has truly set out to make a game that kids can play while receiving cancer treatments; something to distract them, but at the same time, put them back in control of their battle. In addition to this being a great game, the developer is donating all their profits from the game to Game Changer, a wonderful non-profit organization whose mission is to spread hope and love to children staying in hospitals. Watch for this game to come to Xbox One!
[10:49] Interview with Katy Jo Wright from #TeamXbox about Gaming For Everyone
[12:05] Interview with Mark DeLoura, winner of the 2017 Game Developer Ambassador Award, former Senior Advisor for Digital Media to President Barack Obama
Continue reading Episode 29: ID@Xbox Gaming for Everyone Awards | Level Up
Scratch continues to be one of those project we love following and highlighting…
This month Scratch turns 10. Yeah, I know, wow… 10 already?
Steven Levy of BackChannel has written a great article covering the history of Scratch…
At 10, Scratch is a popular tool to teach kids programming. But its real glory is how it imparts lessons in sharing, logic, and hackerism.
Last year, I went to Nigeria with Mark Zuckerberg. One of the first stops on the trip was a program that taught kids how to code. When Zuckerberg entered the room, many of the young students had a hard time pulling themselves away from their projects, even to gawk at one of the world’s richest men. Facebook’s founder instead came to them. “What are you making?” he’d ask. And they would proudly say, “A game!” or whatever it was, and begin showing him how it works. Zuckerberg would stop them. “Show me the code!” he’d say, because, well, he’s Zuckerberg, and any occasion is ripe for an ad hoc programming review. And that’s when the kid would click on a menu that toggled from the game to the LEGO-like building blocks of a Scratch program.
This happened several times, with kids ranging from ages 8 to 15. In every instance, the maker of a cool project could clearly show this famous visitor how he or she had methodically implemented a plan. Zuckerberg was clearly impressed. As we headed up the stairs to leave the building, Zuckerberg called out to me, “Scratch! Have you heard of this?”
Oh, yes I had. Though it was not yet released to the world when Zuckerberg left Harvard to launch his quirky little startup, Scratch (developed just a couple of T stops away) is quickly becoming the world’s most popular computer language for kids taking their first bite of programming. Last year, over 120 million people came to its site, and many of them built and shared projects, at a rate of a million a month. “It’s the gateway drug for Silicon Valley engineering,” says Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, a Scratch supporter.
But I also knew that Scratch, celebrating its 10th anniversary this month, was something more than training wheels. A product of the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is steeped in a complicated set of traditions—everything from educational philosophy to open source activism and the pursuit of artificial life. The underpinnings of this tool subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, convey a set of values through its use. So while those kids in Nigeria were hopping onto a stepping stone to a computer science career, they were also absorbing a very specific and in some ways quirky set of values that could be called hackerish, in the classic sense. These values include reverence of logic, an unshakeable belief in the power of collaboration, and a celebration of the psychic and tangible rewards of being a maker.
… [Click through to read the entire post… Yes, now, you’re going to want too, take my word for it…]
***We’re happy to see so much interest in this studio! We will be temporarily closing the ability for you to manually add your project. So please leave a comment with a link to your project if you would like to add something to the studio. A curator will help add it to the studio. Thanks!***
This month, Scratch turns 10 years old! Join the celebration by making a birthday project. You could make an interactive card, an animation of a party, a birthday-inspired game, or any other project that celebrates Scratch’s birthday!
Need inspiration? Check out our new birthday card tutorial: https://scratch.mit.edu/card
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Audrey Colle just celebrated 17 years at Microsoft. She worked in many business units from speech recognition, communication APIs, Bing ranking, Advertising platform, Data Group and is now an engineering manager in the AzureCAT team (Customer Advisory … Continue reading Interview with Audrey Colle, Engineering Manager at Microsoft | GALs
At Team Xbox we put gamers at the center of everything we do and we are driven to build the best platform on which to create and play games. We’ve heard the feedback and passion from fans about this Xbox classic, and for this re-release on modern devices, we’ve decided to give it away for free. Yes, free. You can download Phantom Dust today on Windows 10 PC and the Xbox One family of devices (via Xbox Play Anywhere) at no cost. Phantom Dust is such a unique game, that when it was released for the original Xbox in 2004… Continue reading Cult Classic Phantom Dust Free on Xbox One and Windows 10
After nearly two years of development, we’re excited to announce our studio’s first game: Claybook, a clay simulation puzzle game. In Claybook, both the environment and the characters are made from deformable clay. Everything has a permanent effect on the world around you, but your clay’s shape changes as well; the characters and world is in constant interaction with each other. During early development, we noticed our unique clay world opened a whole new set of possibilities for game mechanics. It took some experimenting with all the combinations to find the ones that fit together best. For example, our characters… Continue reading Physics-Based Puzzle Game Claybook Coming Soon to Xbox One
