Game Builder Garage: Nintendo wants you to make Video Games

That Nintendo does strange things no longer surprises anyone. There's Nintendo Labo, your cardboard building game; or Ring Fit Adventure, your fitness game; to show that developing and succeeding with atypical games is something they can and know how to do.

How can you curl the curl a little more to this idea of ​​playing differently? Well, making people make their own games are liked by SabuJ. 

That's what their next release for Nintendo Switch, Game Builder Garage, a game about creating other games, is all about.

How could it be otherwise, the idea behind Game Builder Garage is to make it as simple and visual as possible, which seems like an impossible task because developing video games must be one of the most complex art forms that exist: you have to program code, animate characters , designing sets, composing music.

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And no matter how much Nintendo wants to, it is impossible to become one-man orchestra from the very Renaissance to do everything right by ourselves.

Hence the key to Game Builder Garage is the balance between apparent simplicity and subtle complexity. The game puts at our disposal some simple tools, called Nodon, with which you interact by drawing lines or moving them around the screen. 

Something as simple as putting a character module and drawing a line between the 'jump' option and the buttons on the console serves to define which turn button is used to jump.

Behind something apparently so simple there is a lot of code that we do not see, because we only see our faces with these nice Nodon, who also each has his own personality. 

In the demonstration before the press that a representative of Nintendo Europe made, since the server has not yet been able to play the game.

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 You can see that these seemingly simple systems are gradually getting complicated and require a lot of notions and learning. Making a character jump on platforms and when picking up an object, it plays music and by the end of the screen it already requires a dozen Nodon modules to work well.

For this reason, Game Builder Garage explains everything little by little and throughout seven lessons focused on different aspects of video game development, from making the buttons serve to move to making the camera move while we move.

Each of these lessons will focus on a video game genre, from an R-Type style ship game to a platform game like Super Mario 3D World; and you will have to get a good grade to be able to move on to another lesson, because first you have to learn to do things and then 'examine' them.

Once you learn everything that the game gives of itself, the limit is the sky. From Nintendo they assure us that it is possible to create our own character designs, with their textures and colors and shapes and others, to put them in our creations.

So if you are very clever, you can create your own Super Mario Bros., with a Mario drawing included . If you are already thinking of drawing offensive things, be careful, that Nintendo has certain filters, pill.

There are a total of 80 different functions, of 80 different Nodon; and also a limit to what you can include in a single game, so the complexity of an individual game is limited to a certain extent. 

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From Nintendo they assure us that it is possible to link one game to another and thus build a sequence of screens that are loaded one after another, so there are official ways to overcome this limit.

The ambition Nintendo shows with this game is incredible. And the trust it puts in the players that they are going to create interesting products, too.

But looking at the difficult, absurd and original levels that many have created in Super Mario Maker, the game that allows you to create Mario levels and share them online, this may be good for you.

Of course, it will be possible to share the levels online for them to download, play and, if you allow it, modify other players. It will not be possible to play online, but it will be possible to play with up to two players locally, the company also confirms.

And if you are wondering what genres of video games will be available, the answer is rather what genres of video games people will be able to develop. 

There is a Nodon to play in first person, so doing a Call of Duty-style FPS is theoretically possible. It is also possible to create platform games in 3D, as I have seen this in the presentation video that Nintendo gave us; and surely it is possible to even make a fighting game for two players. 

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Racing, there is directly a lesson dedicated to them.

I still have some doubts about Game Builder Garage, starting with whether I would be able to have the discipline and creativity to make my own video game. 

I also do not know how complex they can be to create these games, but from what I saw, it is possible that if you are not clear, you will be able to get involved a lot.

With a bit of luck, this game helps people who so despise the work of video game developers to realize that, even when Nintendo puts all the tools and teaches you how to use them, it is very difficult to create something fun and beautiful or it just works fine.

Google will Open its First Physical Store this Year

Google will open its first physical store this summer, marking a new milestone in the expansion of the technology giant, which now also expands its branches at street level. 

New York has been the city chosen for this new step forward for the company.

The election has not been trivial. Google has been linked to this city for more than two decades. The firm's landing will take place specifically in Manhattan, in the Chelsea neighbourhood, current headquarters of several company facilities where more than 11,000 employees work. "We see the store as a natural extension of our long commitment to the city," he maintains.

The news was shared yesterday by on the firm's blog "Today, we announced our plans to open Google's first physical retail store, it will be in one of the most important cities in the world: New York," the company celebrated.

Google has not offered a specific date for the opening of the store but has advanced that visitors "will be able to experience" the company's hardware products and services.

The retail space will make navigational devices available to you and offer a wide selection of products manufactured by Google: from Pixel phones to Nest products, to Fitbit devices, Pixelbooks and more.

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In this way, the company follows in the footsteps of Apple, which years ago opted for the opening of stores in emblematic places, with a wide network already consolidated worldwide and converted, in some cases, even into a tourist attraction.

In the case of Google, expert personnel will also offer advice and guidance to those who visit the store asking for any details about their devices or any problem with the installation of programs or of a technical nature such as the breaking of the terminal screen. 

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Likewise, workshops will be offered on the use of the different devices offered by Google.

The 'Chipagedon' Threatens to dry up the Tech Industry

The flapping of a butterfly's wings can be felt on the other side of the world. This Chinese proverb is being fulfilled in 2021 in the technology sector and the aftershock of the earthquake is being felt in other industries. 

Covid-19, cryptocurrency mining, the advancement of the cloud ('cloud computing') and the sales of 'smartphones', together with a historic drought in Taiwan, the world's chip manufacturer, have highlighted the global shortage of these components, a problem of the first order.

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The worst unemployed, but not the only one, has been the automotive sector. Several of its main factories have had to temporarily close in the United States and Europe due to lack of supplies. 

In the US, vehicle production fell 4.3% in April, while in Spain the Stellantis plant (formerly Grupo PSA) in Vigo has suspended its 'sine die' lines and Toyota will do the same in Japan for part of June.

If the pandemic paralyzed the industry last year, the lack of sufficient supply of semiconductors now threatens the recovery. The fall in these supplies - which may not normalize until 2023  would cost the automotive industry alone in 2021 close to 110,000 million dollars.

And would reduce its world production by 3.9 million vehicles, in addition to 42,000 jobs at stake, according to estimates the consulting firm AlixPartners.

What is a Semi-Conductor?

A semiconductor is any material that becomes a conductor by allowing the passage of an electric current or, also, preventing it. Silicon and germanium are the most used materials to make them, although the industry makes use in other cases of sulfur, boron or cadmium.

Since their invention in the late 40s, the most important application of these chips (as they are popularly known) is the manufacture of transistors, a real revolution then, especially in consumer electronics. 

Today they are present, among others, in 'smartphones', calculators, computers, televisions, as well as all kinds of vehicles. And experts warn of a possible increase in their prices (from 1% to 3%) due to the lack of semiconductors.

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The automotive industry works with processes 'just in time' (just in time), which are characterized by a lack of supply in order to reduce costs. 

The closure of factories forced by the pandemic exacerbated this problem, while the growing weight of electric cars has further evidenced the dependence on semiconductors.

Meanwhile, the technology industry, boosted by a greater demand for computers and video consoles during confinements, demanded during those months the chips that the automotive industry previously required. 

With the progressive return to normality, manufacturing has been unable to meet so much demand and thus began the first chapter of the 'Chipagedon', as the experts have baptized this atypical situation that the planet is experiencing due to the lack of semiconductors and whose origin of the problem sits in Asia.

Like a football trident, Taiwan, South Korea and China score the goals in the semiconductor arena. The first, a small Asian island with just over 20 million inhabitants, has the chip-making champion in the TSMC group. In 2020, the country accounted for 22% of world production.

It is followed by Samsung, as the South Korean company built 21% of the semiconductors that went on the market last year. The two share almost half the market, but China is still missing. In 30 years it has gone from 0% to 15% in the world manufacturing quota, even overshadowing mighty Japan. 

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A meteoric rise that will lead him to reign in the sector in just nine years, according to forecasts. Other giants such as the American Intel and Qualcomm, or the Dutch ASML, barely keep up the Asian pulse.

Millionaire Investment

Since April, the EU has been studying creating an alliance of European semiconductors that would include firms such as STMicroelectronics, NXP, Infineon and the manufacturer of extreme ultraviolet technology (EUV) equipment, the aforementioned ASML, to reduce dependence on foreign chip manufacturers. 

The community roadmap goes through the development of a plan that allows the different governments of the Union to provide financing to these companies to achieve, at least, that their market share in this sector increases to 20%, double what that it holds now.

"To be leaders and not followers, EU industry needs urgent and ambitious action on digital technologies such as semiconductors, cloud, quantum, space connectivity and batteries," says Thierry Breton, Commissioner for the Internal Market.

But the development of a factory that produces the 3 and 5 nanometer devices - almost as fine as a human hair - that the market demands could take three to four years, in addition to the investment would be around 15,000 million euros. 

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Despite these figures and deadlines, Europe is working on it and plans with TSMC to build a plant in the Old Continent, a bet that Intel has joined separately, asking Brussels for about 8,000 million euros in public aid to build another factory.

To all this must be added the cost of developing semiconductors. According to the consulting firm McKinsey, the R&D costs for the development of a chip have multiplied by almost 20 times and those of construction of its nodes by another 13.5 times. 

All in all, semiconductor sales have not stopped growing: almost 18% in the first quarter.