The television console · renders

The slate where new worlds live.

Locke is the television console of the family. It plugs into your TV and turns a world into full colour you can see and walk through. It already carries the world that Atlas holds up, rendered large and in colour, and far more besides. And true to the philosopher it is named for, it keeps a blank slate alongside it all: the canvas where you write your own worlds and slot them in.

480×270 RGBALOCKE CONSOLE
Why it is called Locke. John Locke wrote that the mind begins as a blank slate, a tabula rasa, written into being by experience. Locke the console is named for that openness. It already carries worlds, the one your Atlas holds up and many more, and it keeps a blank slate beside them for the ones you write. Give it your code and it becomes a second reality you can step into on the screen.

Platform
Raspberry Pi Zero 2W to 5
Canvas
480×270 RGBA, 4× to 1080p
Input
2 pads USB gamepads
Audio
24 SFX + 63 tracks

01

How a world becomes real

An Atlas handheld renders a world in a tiny monochrome window. Locke takes that same idea and gives it a whole colour screen and a couch. The thing that makes it a console is the cartridge, and you make your own.

  1. Write a game as a single game.cpp file. It owns every pixel of a 480 by 270 canvas and reads two gamepads.
  2. Put the folder on a USB stick and plug it into Locke.
  3. Locke builds it on the spot the first time, then caches it. Edit the file, re-plug, and it rebuilds.
  4. Your cartridge sits in the menu beside the built-in games, yours to play and to share.
The easy way in is the Forge. You do not have to start from a blank file. The Space · Forge is a browser console with a live preview where you copy, change, and run code, then export a finished cartridge to load onto Locke.

02

What the slate gives you

// CARTRIDGES

Make your own

Every cartridge is one small C++ file that draws straight to the screen. No engine to learn, no scene graph, just the canvas and your code. The Forge teaches it step by step.

Open the Forge →
// COLOUR

A full colour canvas

480 by 270 pixels, scaled a clean four times to 1080p so the pixels stay crisp on the television. Bold palettes, chunky sprites, the look of a console you would have wanted as a kid.

Read the spec →
// TWO PADS

Two pads, one couch

Both controllers live in the box, so local two-player is the default, not an afterthought. Synthesized chiptune music and effects come built in, ready for your game to call.

The game API →

03

Flash a Locke card

Locke runs on a Raspberry Pi inside, not an ESP32, so it does not flash from the browser the way Atlas, Pioneer, and Relay do. Instead you write a ready-made SD image to a microSD card and boot it. Same idea, a different tool.

SD card image

Locke v0.28.6

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W / 3 / 4 / 5 · microSD 8 GB+

  1. Get Raspberry Pi Imager (or balenaEtcher). Either one writes the image to a card.
  2. Download the Locke image above, then in the imager choose Use custom (Imager) or Flash from file (Etcher) and pick it.
  3. Select your microSD card (8 GB or larger) and write. It takes a few minutes and verifies itself.
  4. Slide the card into the Pi inside Locke and power on. It boots straight into the console.
Already running Locke? The on-console updater pulls the latest console and rebuilds in place, so rewriting a card is only for a fresh build or a new Pi. Current firmware v0.28.6.