11 May

    IKEA Saved Our Lives in VR

    11 May 2016

    by Tino Soelberg

    After nearly strangling ourselves a few times with the cords using the Vive VR system, a simple trip to IKEA saved us from future strangulation!

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    14 Apr

    GameSense fun with Neopixels

    14 Apr 2016

    by Dave Astels

    I like doing fun things with LEDs, especially RGB LEDs (one package incorporating red, green, and blue LEDs close together). By manipulating the brightness of the three LEDs you can mix varying levels of each color to create a large number of colors. The problem is that they can be a real hassle to use. You need 3 PWMs, one to drive each color. If you want to use multiple LEDs it gets even more complex, more PWMs or some sort of multiplexing. This makes it a bit more thought & work to do interesting things.

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    06 Apr

    GoLisp security restrictions in GameSense, and how to disable them

    06 Apr 2016

    by Joel Hunsley

    One of the features built into SteelSeries GoLisp is the ability to define an environment as restricted, preventing the execution of primitives with potential security implications. This includes primitives which read and write files, access other GoLisp environment frames, writing bytes to arbitrary ports, and enable debugging.

    To reduce risks of malicious code being executed through the GameSense API, each GameSense app configured on a user’s machine is loaded into an individual restricted sandbox environment. Attempting to use any restricted primitives will log an error <primitive> is restricted from execution in this environment. But while this is ideal for the typical end user, sometimes you may want to do something with GameSense which requires the full capabilities of GoLisp. To facilitate this, we’ve introduced in SteelSeries Engine 3.7.0 the ability to load the GameSense environments on your own machine in unrestricted mode.

    To enable the loading of GameSense environments as unrestricted, the command-line parameter -unrestrictedGameSense should be added when starting SteelSeries Engine 3. It should be added in the following locations:

    On Windows

    The shortcut that is created to launch SteelSeries Engine 3 manually (from the Start menu) is in the directory %PROGRAMDATA%/Microsoft/Windows/Start Menu/Programs/SteelSeries/SteelSeries Engine 3. Edit the properties of the SteelSeries Engine 3 shortcut here and add -unrestrictedGameSense to the end of the Target field. The shortcut for the instance of SteelSeries Engine 3 that is launched in the background on startup (if the option to do so is enabled) is located in %PROGRAMDATA%/Microsoft/Windows/Start Menu/Programs/Startup. Edit this shortcut the same way.

    On Mac

    The script that is used to launch SteelSeries Engine 3 Core both manually and automatically is /Applications/SteelSeries Engine 3/SteelSeries Engine 3.app/Contents/Resources/launchSSENextCore.sh. The line that begins with nohup "$MACOS_DIR"/ssenextCore -setlocale=$1>> ... should be edited to begin with nohup "$MACOS_DIR"/ssenextCore -setlocale=$1 -unrestrictedGameSense>> ....

    If SteelSeries Engine 3 is already running when you make this change, you will need to exit and re-launch it. After doing so, restricted primitives that are executed in a GameSense environment will execute successfully rather than failing and logging an error.

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    06 Apr

    Integrating custom Arduino based handware with GameSense

    06 Apr 2016

    by Dave Astels

    When we created GameSense we were thinking about integrating our hardware with games. But we didn’t create a framework that was limited to that. The architecture of the GameSense SDK allows anyone to integrate pretty much whatever custom hardware they want with any game/application that supports GameSense.

    This project uses specific hardware and an Arduino compatible controller, but the approach can be applied to any custom hardware with a controller that can be communicated with via a usb/serial port.

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    16 Mar

    Gamesense contests

    16 Mar 2016

    by Dave Astels

    GameSense™ has been maturing over the past year into a very versatile framework for visualizing application state using SteelSeries hardware. We want to get the word out that even though it has game in its name, it’s not just for games. We also want to show how versatile it is, both in terms of using it from an app as well as for controlling hardware.

    To that end we are pleased to announce that we will be running two GameSense™ contests.

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