amiga-news.de - Cloanto: Release of Amiga Forever 2008 "RP2" / Announcement of C64 Forever

Cloanto: Release of Amiga Forever 2008 "RP2" / Announcement of C64 Forever
For a few days already, a free update for Cloanto's emulation package Amiga Forever 2008 is available via the Software Director, including all previous updates and introducing support for the new RP2 file format (amiga-news.de reported). Below you can find the official press release that has been published today.

Cloanto Releases Amiga Forever 2008 "RP2", Announces C64 Forever

Cloanto released this week Amiga Forever 2008 "RP2", the latest version of the award-winning Amiga preservation, emulation and support suite for Windows and other platforms, and a first batch of 10 games in the new RP2 format. Both the RP2 update and the new games are a free download for current users.

Amiga Forever 2008, the most significant release in the Amiga Forever series, already set new references in usability while more than tripling the featured content and providing easy access to a universe of free downloads. The "RP2" update (from RetroPlatform Player, the technology used by Amiga Forever) adds support for the new RP2 file format and content delivery, recognition and configuration framework.

RP2 is a simple and standards-compliant wrapper format, essentially a ZIP archive containing one or more disk image files and an XML manifest. Full information is being shared with download sites and other partners.

Does the emulation world really need a new format? Well, RP2 does not aim to replace the existing disk image files: there will always be ADFs, etc. Cloanto's project involving automatic identification of disk images and automatic configuration of the emulation system also remains ongoing, and will soon flow into RP2.

The new format aims to solve another aspect, i.e. how to easily download, organize and play sets of multiple disks, and treat each game as a single file, just as users do with MP3s. Today, ZIP archives can be downloaded from games sites, but they still won't play automatically. ADFs might do that (with Amiga Forever they already do), but this wouldn't work with games that need more than one disk image.

That's where RP2 aims to deliver, making playback of an .rp2 Amiga game file as simple as playing an .mp3 music file: one file, one game, nothing else to remember or configure. And users will be free to rename or reorganize the files, while existing investment in Amiga disk images will be preserved by means of automated conversion options.

Amiga Forever is still far from perfect, and we know that. Thanks to the precious support of our customers, we keep working on other fronts, which include:

Merge the current heuristic configuration logic with the autoconfiguration library
Make it possible to create, edit and share configurations
Make it easier to add or remove content from the player lists (Games, Demos, etc.)
Improve online search
New partnerships

The RetroPlatform player and content framework were designed from the beginning to be modular and platform-neutral. The Amiga alone, while full of memories and passion, remains a risky "niche" for a software house. In order to achieve better stability and growth potential for the project as a whole, we decided to support a second platform which we all love and know well from our past.

This means that Amiga Forever will soon get a little 8-bit brother (or sister), to be named C64 Forever. More information will be released soon at www.c64forever.com.

Your Amiga Forever Team (snx)

[News message: 03. Sep. 2008, 10:40] [Comments: 0]
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