Price: $20
Release date: Out now Publisher: Supergiant Developer: Supergiant Multiplayer: None Link: Supergiant need to know
Transistor begins with a woman, a dead body, a talking sword, and a dying city. Hp spectre mouse jumping. Red is a singer with no voice, trapped in a sprawling digital metropolis being erased by white robot programs called the Process. Byte by byte, block by block, Cloudbank is becoming nothingness in the shape of a city. But Red has the Transistor, the mysterious sword she pulled out of the dead body at her feet. Red is the hero, but the Transistor plays both narrator and star. Eight hours after grasping that sword, I reached the end of Red's journey in love with the Transistor's deeply nuanced combat abilities—and disappointed that the world around her felt so shallow by comparison.
Like Bastion , Supergiant's first game, Transistor is an action RPG set in a dying world, with a narrator keeping you company as you play. The narration works just as well as it did in Bastion (and comes from the same voice actor), lending emotion to a stoic silent protagonist and offering insight and context about the world. The narrator also does most of the expository heavy lifting, musing about the Camerata, the shadowy organization behind the destructive Process. As he talks, Red walks through linear environments, stopping every couple minutes for a battle that will be over in two or three minutes.
Cybertactics
Supergiant leans more heavily on the RPG half of its formula than it did with Bastion, as the Transistor can freeze time and initiate a planning mode called Turn() for queuing abilities called functions—digital souls absorbed by the Transistor—against the Process. Walking around the map and queuing abilities fill up an action bar, and more powerful abilities eat up more space on the bar. Positioning and planning the order of attacks is vital. Most abilities can hit multiple enemies when aimed by holding down a button and choosing an angle of attack. Crucially, any ability—even one that would normally eat up half the action bar—can close out the turn queue, even if the bar is nearly full. I learned to save my heaviest hits for last.
After committing to a sequence of attacks, the world snaps back into action and enemies move in slow-mo as Red attacks in real time. There's a great cadence to combat. I'll sometimes spend a full minute planning the most efficient turn, then watch Red execute four Process in as many seconds. The reward for mastery is a quick, satisfying victory.
Transistor's hybrid of real-time and turn-based combat is infinitely malleable thanks to the sword's functions. All 16 functions can be used as active abilities—stuns, ranged line attacks, explosive AOEs, cloaking fields, dodges—or as upgrades that augment the effects of other functions. Early in the game, I upgraded the slow-but-powerful Breach function with Jaunt, which made the attack trigger instantly and let me use it while my meter was recharging. Later I built my kit around Red's first function, Crash, which makes enemies vulnerable, and Cull, a devastatingly powerful knock-up attack that costs a huge chunk of the turn meter. But that didn't matter, since I could take down even the toughest Process in one turn.
As if there weren't enough active and upgrade combinations, all 16 functions have another effect when equipped in a passive slot. As an active function, Help summons an AI companion to assist in battle. Equip it as a passive, and it offers a 25% chance to become a SuperUser when triggering a turn, which grants unlimited movement range and a devastating one-hit-kill attack. Purge, a damage-over-time active, becomes an automatic counterattack equipped as a passive. My favorite passive is Bounce, which gave Red a lifesaving damage shield. But there's a trade-off: Bounce is also a great attack, as its bullets ricochet from enemy to enemy.
Transistor is built to be played with a controller, as each function is mapped to a face button and Turn() is controlled with the triggers. The default mouse/keyboard controls are a little clunky—pressing 1-4 will highlight a function, and right mouse button triggers it—but an alternate option will fire off the function instead of highlighting it. The keys can also be remapped, and Transistor has the most impressive on-the-fly UI switching I've ever seen for controls. Touch the keyboard or mouse, and all the in-game UI elements will show PC controls. Touch the controller, and they'll automatically switch to controller prompts. It's one of those little touches that's so slick, you wonder why it's not in every game.
There are thousands of combinations that can fill those four active slots, and the system opens up even more in Transistor's New Game+ mode. I kept playing after completing the story to get more of the combat. Combining functions is strategically rewarding, and there's a fun, exciting tension in triggering a turn and then dodging the remaining Process as it recharges. Combat is on the easy side, though—I only died twice throughout the game, and I played at least half of it with a combination of 'limiters' equipped.
Limiters unlock throughout the game and make the Process spawn in greater numbers or hit harder or gain protective shields. Fighting with limiters engaged earns Red more experience. I could've made Transistor even tougher, but I enjoyed the balance I found with three out of 10 limiters equipped. I never want to use the limiter that reduces my memory pool, for example, because then I couldn't have as much fun combining functions.
With three limiters engaged, I did bottom out my health bar in some of Transistor's more intense fights. But that's not a death sentence—it overloads and disables an active function, restores your health, and lets you fight on. This led to some of my favorite battles, as I suddenly had to figure out how to finish off the Process with my go-to damage abilities disabled. I finished one battle with a single active function left. When they're all gone, it's lights out.
While Transistor's combat only gets more fun in New Game+, I also rolled into a second playthrough with the forlorn hope that there was more to Transistor's story than I'd gotten the first time around. Unfortunately, there wasn't.
Questions unanswered
The city of Cloudbank is stunning, a lusciously detailed, hand-drawn cyberpunk future built atop the memory of a red-gold art deco past. As the Process consume it, streets awash in vivid green and red and purple lighting fade to austere white. Cloundbank's end state will be like the Construct in The Matrix: endless nothing, ready to be overwritten.
At 1080p and 1440p I never saw Transistor's framerate dip from a smooth 60 fps. It was rock solid while exploring or fighting a dozen Process at once, even with neon particle effects overwhelming the screen. The framerate did struggle at 4320x2560 on the Large Pixel Collider, a resolution it clearly wasn't optimized for. Though the game was designed for 1080p, it looked great at 4K and at 1440p. Zooming in on 4K screenshots, I can see the signs of upscaled 2D art, but from normal sitting distance the game was unfailingly beautiful.
Exploring the empty streets of Cloudbank had me as entranced as the first time I stepped foot into Bioshock's Rapture. Supergiant's 2D art is that compelling, and the city's blend of sci-fi and classic architecture promises a fascinating backstory. I was still waiting for that backstory when the game ended.
There's this feeling I get when I'm dropped into a new fictional world like Transistor's in media res . It starts as an inkling of excitement. This imaginary world was established long before I got here. Events have been set in motion, and I'm playing catchup. What makes this world tick? How long has it been here? I want to know.
I start playing like an archaeologist, scouring the corners of a game world to find out more about this place and its characters. I start reading more closely, paying attention to character bios and posters and signs to piece the world together. I get more excited as I approach the payoff—that moment when the worldbuilding clicks, when I come across the charred remains of the poor soul whose audio diaries I've been listening to in Bioshock , or read a passage of William Gibson's cyberpunk novel Neuromancer so evocative that I can see cyberspace clearly in my mind. This is the moment when I'm completely absorbed, and I know this world is complex and vital and alive beyond the narrow pathway of the specific story it has to tell.
Transistor never has that payoff. I thought the narrator's cryptic references to Cloudbank's past were building up to a moment that would do the city justice, but that moment just never comes. I hoped that I would encounter the people of Cloudbank and learn their stories, but after battling the Process from empty environment to empty environment, that hope shrank. I hoped sidequests or puzzles would feed me clues, but only a handful of terminals around Cloudbank offer cursory insight into the city's culture.
Like Bastion, Transistor is focused on a hero and a narrator traversing the ruins of their world. But Bastion had a hub point to return to where more characters eventually gathered. As the mystery of Bastion unfolded, it tied the fates of its characters to the fate of its world. It was that world's epilogue. Red's story, by contrast, feels like a sliver of what is interesting and compelling about the city of Cloudbank. Transistor is disappointingly linear in a city that begs for exploration.
The story Transistor does tell is dished out in tantalizing morsels, and I had to spend some time reflecting on the ending to decide what happened. Perhaps because of that vagueness, Transistor's emotional climax didn't hit me like Bastion's did. Supergiant's games are, in that sense, mirror images—the first with shallower combat but a powerfully told story, the second with deep, tactical battles but a story that doesn't fulfill the promise of its world. Then again, that promise lives on even after the credits roll. I hope Supergiant isn't done with the world of Transistor, because there's so much more I want to know.
The silicon transistor was invented in 1954 and has been considered one of the greatest inventions in the history of technology. Its invention practically spawned the field of electronics and contributed to all of our modern computers, iPods, phones, etc. If you've ever asked what a transistor is or does, you probably were told that it is like a switch. However, it is a bit more complicated than that.
This Instructable will detail a basic transistor and what it can be used for. I am making this because I have had a box of assorted transistors for a while and never really knew how to use them in circuits. After reading some tutorials online I combined some ideas together and figured out how to use transistors in basic circuits. I will demonstrate the use of transistors by controlling PC fans from a computer's LPT (parallel) port. Then I will implement a simple form of PWM (pulse-width modulation) to control the fan's speed. This demonstrates the ability of transistors to use low-voltage, low-current signal lines (such as a parallel port or microcontroller IO line) to control higher voltage, higher current devices like motors (in this case, PC fans).
An electronic component known as a semiconductor. A semiconductor can be an excellent conductor of electricity under some conditions while it can resist conducting electricity under other conditions. There are basically two types, the bipolar transistor (also called the junction transistor), and the field effect transistor (FET). Transistors are typically designed with at least three terminals, one of which (the base) serves as a sort of control gate (for lack of a better term). A supply voltage is connected across the other two terminals and the (signal) voltage present at this third terminal serves to “turn on” the transistor to varying degrees allowing current flow. In a common amplifier circuit, for example, a large supply voltage is placed in series with the transistor and a load (such as a speaker), and then a small varying voltage (the source signal) is applied to the base. This causes the transistor to allow a varying amount of current to flow from the supply source (usually a power supply) through its load as the source signal’s voltage rises and falls. This is a very, very rudimentary description of an amplifier circuit, which is the basic circuit used across a good portion of all analog audio (including equalizers, mixers, crossovers, amps, etc.). It is also worth noting that in many ways the transistor mimics its predecessor, the vacuum tube. There are some distinct and important differences to us audio people, but the basic function is the same.
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For fun, I took a USB keyboard apart as I'd like to use the keyboard circuit board without the actual physical keyboard. I am in need of soldering advice however.
Opening up the keyboard I see this:
This is the plastic sheet that is connected to each keys. The pins I have zoomed into are connecting to the circuit board, which looks like this:
Unfortunately I can't solder directly to these as they appear to repel solder. I then tried drilling small holes in them and attaching thin wire, and maybe that can hold a while, but it seems very flimsy and is destined to break off.
Do you guys have advice on how to make a fairly robust connection to these pins?
Initially I'd like to connect separate wires and then connect the wires to my breadboard.
I thought about overlaying the plastic sheet on top (as it would have been inside the keyboard), but connecting wires to the plastic pins seems even harder.
T.K.T.K.
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I had the same question a few weeks ago. I wanted to build a presentation footswitch controller - up / down / PgUp / PgDn - using an old Lenovo keyboard.
I found that the coating can be scraped off easily using a flat blade screwdriver taking care not to damage the copper. The material is like a powder coating and is hard but brittle. Careful tinning with a fine solder left me with a neat tinned edge connector.
Figure 1. (1) The Lenovo keyboard controller PCB. (2) The 'rows' membrane (18 lines). (3) The columns membrane (8 lines).
Examining the keyboard matrix I was able to determine that there were 26 'pins' split into 18 rows and 8 columns. Plugging the USB connector into my computer and running KeyboardTester.com's online app I was able, by carefully connecting rows and columns, to find the matrix points required for my application.
Figure 2. Partially filled out keyboard matrix. I had what I needed. ;^)
Be aware that since both rows and columns are scanned you won't be able to do a simple pull-down or pull-up arrangement from your micro to simulate a keypress.
TransistorTransistor
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I have been able to connect thin wires to these using electrical tape. I also passed the wires through the holes in the PCB and added glue to stop them moving around, and folded the exposed wire onto the contact from the other side before carefully pressing the tape on top.
Transistor Keyboard Or Controller Download
I only used one contact on each side, just enough to create a single keypress.
bdslbdsl
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I'm little confused about this one and don't know where to start. The idea is to have micro-controller or FPGA output PWM signal (5V or 3.3V while PWM is 100%), and then use a transistor to power ventilator that needs 12V to run.
I know that I need to connect grounds of ventilator's power supply and FPGA's (or μC's) power supply together. After that, I use resistor in series with transistor's collector to limit current.
The part that's bugging me is how to connect the base and the PWM output pin? Which resistor value do I need to chose if I want 3.3V to be 100% ? How to get battlefield 1 war bonds. And which value do need if I want 5V to be 100% ? I mean, how can I 'tell' transistor that 3.3V (or any other voltage that I'm operating on) is when it needs to power ventilator at 100% capacity?
I hope you can understand my question. Thank you for any answers !!
xx77aBsxx77aBs
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A (two-level) PWM signal has two states: high and low. Regardless of whether the supply for your FPGA/MCU is 5 V or 3.3 V, you want the low state to turn into 0 V across your fan, and the high state to turn into 12 V across it (or vice versa). That way, by varying the duty cycle of the PWM signal, you will be able to drive the fan all along its working range.
The transistor (which can be BJT or MOSFET) has to work either completely off or completely on, to dissipate the minimum possible. If the supply is 12 V, you don't need any resistor in series with the fan. The transistor's collector or drain will be directly connected to the fan. Also, use a Schottky diode in parallel with the fan, so that the cathode is at your +12 V node, and the anode is at the collector or drain. The fan is an inductive load, and you need to provide a path for its current, once you turn off the transistor. Otherwise, excessive voltage may build up at the collector/drain of the transistor, and you may damage it.
Assume BJT: You only need a resistor in series with the base, to limit the base current. We need to know how much current your fan draws, at 12 V (let's call that $I_{fan}$), and also the $beta$ of your transistor (the current gain from $I_{base}$ to $I_{collector}$). Choose the resistor this way:
$ R_1 = dfrac{V_{supply}-0.7}{10*dfrac{I_{fan}}{beta}} $
$ V_{supply} $ is 3.3 or 5. The factor 10 is to have enough margin as to make sure that the BJT will never work in the linear region.
TelaclavoTelaclavo
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I see that Telaclavo has given you a good answer for a bipolar transistor. Here is what it would look like with the right kind of FET:
For low voltages like 12 V, FETs are available that turn on well enough with only 5V or even 3.3V on the gate. These are sometimes called logic level FETs. The gate can then be driven directly from a CMOS digital output.
The diode is essential to not damage the FET. A motor will look inductive, so when you attempt to switch it off it will raise its voltage to whatever it takes to maintain the current until the resulting reverse voltage eventually causes the current to go to 0. This is sometimes called inductive kickback. Without the diode, that kickback current has no place to go and would raise the FET drain to a high voltage so that the FET eventually breaks down and thereby allows the current to flow. This is not good for the FET. A Schottky diode is a good idea here since they are fast, and at your low voltage they are readily available for suitable characteristics.
Olin LathropOlin Lathrop
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If I understand your question correctly, you are looking to control the power across your ventilator using PWM.
In which case, by having 100% duty cycle, the transistor will be switched on, and you would have your ventilator turn on at 12V
efox29efox29
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Another angle on this problem is to use a fan with a dedicated PWM input. Many suppliers offer this as a standard feature.
In my experience, many brushless DC fans don't like operating with chopped input power - you aren't able to get fine control of the RPM. Using a dedicated PWM input allows you very fine control of the speed, and since you're controlling a digital input (not chopping power) you only need a modest MOSFET and don't need a clamping diode.
Adam LawrenceAdam Lawrence
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