ALPHA| NEWS
SHAKING UP QUAKE
A Raspberry Pi prototype unit, which boasts a surprisingly rich feature set for its size
that would be very easy to teach that kids would be really up for.” The Raspberry Pi Foundation hopes to distribute units to every pupil in the UK across one school year – some 650,000 students. With that distribution model repeated each year, ultimately the computer could end up in the pockets of every child in secondary school education in the UK. And there’s even been interest from both
The Livingstone Hope report was a
clarion call, and a very good attempt at putting into perspective what this issue is.
David Braben, Frontier
powerhouses like America and up and coming countries in Africa. While Raspberry Pi was created to address
problems in the UK, it really does have the potential to help spread the message of computer science across the globe. The tiny computer – which is designed first
and foremost as a creative platform rather than a place to run software – has also attracted interest from hobbyists, robotics experts, and wannabe game developers
looking to gain the computer skills they failed to secure at school. “I think that Raspberry Pi could also be a
software platform running on a PC,” adds Braben. “There’s no harm in that. We’re really just trying to provide a vehicle so that there’s a way of getting enthusiasm back into kids.”
LIVINGSTONE’S HOPE While unrelated in an official capacity, Raspberry Pi also makes for a perfect compliment to the efforts of those striving to implement the findings of the recent UK Government-commissioned Livingstone Hope report. An effort spearheaded in part by Eidos life president Ian Livingstone, the report set out with very similar goals to Raspberry Pi; namely to reinstate computer science as a core literacy. “The Livingstone Hope report was really a clarion call, and a very good attempt at putting into perspective what this issue is,” says Braben. “In fact, I think this is about a wider issue than even the Livingstone-Hope report covers, because that focuses on the creative industries. The creative industries aren't the only ones that can benefit from computer science.” Whatever the differences between the two
approaches, the games industry in the UK and globally is sure to gain if the Raspberry Pi Foundation or Livingstone-Hope initiative realise their goals.
www.raspberrypi.org
How Raspberry Pi used a gaming classic to prove its might
Just a few weeks ago, a Raspberry Pi unit was shown running Id Software classic Quake III Arena. While the microcomputer was never conceived to be a gaming platform, the fact it can run the shooter at 1080 screen resolution with 4x anti- aliasing enabled and various lighting and geometrical details set to maximum specifications is hugely impressive.
“I can remember spending £250 or £300 pounds on a graphics card that couldn’t render [Quake 3] this fast,” says Ben Upton, a trustee with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. “We think this bodes pretty well for the kind
of level of gaming you should be able to do on the device, and certainly it’s a lot faster than with any of the other chips we could have chosen to use.”
While the demo showed the game running at just 20 frames-per-second, Upton confirmed his team has managed to get Quake III running on a Raspberry Pi at far smoother speeds.
08 | NOVEMBER 2011
THIS MONTH: CCPs debut demo of Dust 514 The Unity authored triple-A game Shadowgun Unreal Engine 3’s support for Flash detailed
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