amiga-news.de - Archive

Archive 05/2023

`19.May.2023` Amiga Future (website)	Java program: ham_convert 1.9.1 Sebastian Sieczko's Java-based program ham_convert converts modern graphic formats into the Amiga's HAM format and is now available in version 1.8.7. New features besides bug fixes are further options for HAM6 and support for very small pictures, i.e. with less than 300 pixels in total. (snx) [News message: 19. May. 2023, 08:27] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`19.May.2023` a1k.org (ANF)	Card game: Poker Nights - "Tropical Heat" As part of the strip poker series "VTO - Poker Nights", a second data disc "Tropical Heat" was released yesterday at the title link. (snx) [News message: 19. May. 2023, 08:21] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`19.May.2023`	Video: The SMB2/SMB3 network filesystem under MorphOS 3.18 With the latest release of MorphOS 3.18, the new Smb2FS handler was integrated, which provides an SMB2/SMB3-capable network filesystem. The video above demonstrates the new feature. (dr) [News message: 19. May. 2023, 07:28] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`19.May.2023`	Floppy disk images: Disc Image Manager V1.46 for Linux, macOS and Windows Gerald J Holdsworth's Disc Image Manager is an application used to load a retro disc image, read the catalogue and output any required files. In addition, it will also add files to the image, delete, and rename files and directories. On the Amiga side, reading and writing of AmigaDOS disks and hard disks with OFS and FFS formatting are supported (not fully tested with FFS). Support for directory cache and international characters is still missing. As the author reports, the Disc Image Manager was originally a Delphi class written for inclusion in the Repton Map Display to read Repton data files directly from disc images. To test whether the class worked well, he wrote a GUI front-end for the class called Disc Image Reader, but it was only available on Windows. When someone asked about accessing Acorn DFS images on macOS, he decided to port his application to Lazarus. The first thing he added was write-back to the disc images, which turned Disc Image Reader into Disc Image Manager. Changes in version 1.46: New or improved features Image report now lists the free space map for ADFS. Add Partition button now works for DFS single sided images to add a second side. Exporting files now includes a date/time stamp field in the .inf file if set. Importing files, where the .inf file has a date/time stamp field, updates the date/time for the file. The ADFS interleave can now be changed without re-organising the data. This method then re-reads the file using the new method. Can now save a BASIC file to the host system as a text file. BASIC file viewer now uses smaller text and no longer bold, unless it is a keyword. Text in quotes is now in italics. Image report now checks every file and directory on an image and reports details of files with CRC32 error or broken directories (ADFS). When importing a file to an image, it no longer complains if the selected node is not a directory. Now, it just selects the selected node's parent before importing the file. The BackSpace key is now a shortcut for deleting files or directories. Bug fixes When deleting directories, the internal directory references were not getting updated. When deallocating free space on a New Map ADFS, the wrong idlen was sometimes being used. The New Map ADFS free space map was not getting read correctly. Renaming an ADFS file in a ADFS/DOS hybrid image could crash the application on Windows. Renames on the DOS or Acorn FS side could also fail. Broken ADFS directories were getting displayed with the 'Not Read' colours. A corrupt 'JesMap' sector, on Acorn FS, can cause the application to crash. Additional checks have been put in place. An ADFS Old Map, with no free space, would hang when trying to delete a file. In ADFS, when selecting a sub-directory the image details status bar would sometimes report no image title, 0 bytes used and 0 bytes free. When an ADFS New Map zone is close to capacity (i.e., not enough space for a fragment id to be written in), the free space was incorrectly reported. This would cause files and directories to fail to being written but the catalogue information would still be. Deleting an ADFS directory which is the penultimate directory in the catalogue would result in the last one being deleted from the internal references. This then caused confusion with the front end GUI and resulted in a crash. In addition, deleting everything from the image would leave the free space map not correctly updated. The author also provides a detailed PDF manual. (dr) [News message: 19. May. 2023, 05:53] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`19.May.2023`	Editor: MUI-Vim V9.0.1546 for AmigaOS 4, AROS and MorphOS MUI-Vim is a port of the editor Vim. This editor is intended for editing programs as well as plain text files. Multi-level undo, syntax highlighting, command line history, block operations and scripting are some of the features. Ola 'sodero' Söder has now ported version 9.0.1378 of VIM and released it for AmigaOS4, AROS and MorphOS. Additionally, he has updated syntax highlighting for Hollywood 10. Downloads: Vim_9.0-ppc-amigaos.lha (15 MB) Vim_9.0-i386-aros.lha (14 MB) Vim_9.0-ppc-morphos.lha (15 MB) (dr) [News message: 19. May. 2023, 05:18] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`18.May.2023`	Minimig: Revision 1.97itx Revision 1.97itx of the Minimig - a reimplementation of an Amiga 500 in a FPGA - is available. This board was designed to fit into any MiniITX case and is compatible with standard ITX power supplies. It features an added LED and button header, allowing you to easily connect necessary buttons and LEDs to your MiniITX case. One of the major improvements is the addition of 2MB of FastRAM, bringing the total onboard RAM of the Minimig to 6MB. Furthermore, enhancements have been made in the Verilog, enabling Minimig to automatically configure the 2MB of fast RAM in hardware. The board has undergone thorough testing with various components, including the TF030 accelerator, MC68000 and Pistorm. (dr) [News message: 18. May. 2023, 20:08] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`18.May.2023` MorphZone (Forum)	MorphOS: E-mail client Iris 1.15 Jacek 'jacadcaps' Piszczek has pushed an update a few days after the release of version 1.14 of his e-mail program Iris for MorphOS. Changes are mainly for a NetStack bug in MorphOS versions 3.14 to 3.18, which already led to Wayfarer 5.3, and, as there, cURL and sqlite were also updated on this occasion. (snx) [News message: 18. May. 2023, 08:18] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`18.May.2023` Robosaurus Spielothek (ANF)	Video report: Amiga Ruhrpott Convention 2023 (German) Dominic Ortmanns visited the Amiga Ruhrpott Convention in Duisburg-Rheinhausen, Germany, on May 6, 2023 and recorded his impressions in a video at the title link (Camera: Jürgen Weißenfels, Graphics: Jan Reineke). His summary of the "small but nice Amiga fair, from fans for fans": "This event is the first of its kind. That makes it especially interesting to see what the organizers around 'T!nomania' [and CZ-Tunes] have done here. I can already tell you that I was very impressed. I could meet many nice people from the Amiga community and had some very interesting conversations. This was definitely the hard core of Amiga hardware and software enthusiasts. You could play, buy, drink, chat with developers, YouTubers, podcasters and other organizers, and there was even a raffle of exquisite prizes. So in my opinion, especially for the first attempt of an own Amiga convention, a precision landing. But if you want to know all the details of my opinion, you should still watch the video." (snx) [News message: 18. May. 2023, 08:07] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`18.May.2023` AmigaSource (Webseite)	Browser extension: AGuide Viewer 0.1 AGuide Viewer is an open source reader for AmigaGuide documents implemented as a browser extension. It works with Firefox and Chromium on all platforms. Under Firefox the installation takes place automatically with the corresponding consent. For Chromium, unpack the file aguide-0.1.xpi into a folder. In Chromium, go to "Extensions" > "Manage Extensions" and activate the developer mode there. Then select the previously created folder using "Load unpacked extension". The extension automatically recognises files that have a .guide file name extension or begin with the '@database' sequence. AmigaGuide documents downloaded from the internet are automatically rendered in the browser. Viewing local files is also supported by starting the AGuide Viewer by clicking on the AGV icon in the browser toolbar. The user interface is similar to that of AmigaGuide or MultiView. As Firefox blocks direct links to local files in the extension, the author recommends opening such a link in an AmigaGuide document by using the right mouse button and "Link in new tab". The author plans to submit future versions to the Chrome Store for signing, which will simplify installation on Chrome/Chromium. Since Mozilla's signing process is somewhat simpler and it is the author's preferred browser, he had focused on it with the first version of the AGuide Viewer. (dr) [News message: 18. May. 2023, 06:44] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`18.May.2023`	Preview videos: Temptations port for CD32 The developer 'S0Y' is working on his CD32 port of Temptations, the platform game originally released for MSX-1 in 1988 (amiga-news.de reported) and now has published two further preview videos showing the complete third and first sequences of the fourth level. (dr) [News message: 18. May. 2023, 05:50] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`17.May.2023`	Video player: Amos Anim Player V2023.05.16 The "Amos Anim Player" of the group "ELECTRIC BLACK SHEEP" is a very simple IFF-ANIM player that runs on any Amiga. It can play compressed IFF-Anim formats synchronised with a separate IFF Audio Sample (or MOD). Not much RAM is needed, as the anim frames and audio are streamed directly from the hard disk. If there is enough RAM, the sound is streamed directly from RAM. The Amos Video Player, also provided by the "ELECTRIC BLACK SHEEP", uses its own file format. The conversion takes a long time and only works on WinUAE with acceptable speed. The "Amos Anim Player", on the other hand, uses the standard IFF animation format, which is much easier to convert and can be used on real hardware. The AMOS source code is included and can be used freely. Feedback on usability on faster computers is welcome. (dr) [News message: 17. May. 2023, 21:30] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`17.May.2023` Amigaworld.net (forum)	AmigaOS 4: Survey results regarding usage of PowerPC emulation Hans de Ruiter has now evaluated his recently started survey about the usage of AmigaOS 4 on a PowerPC emulator. According to this, almost 55 % of the 447 participants use real hardware and a good fifth exclusively emulation. At the title link more details can be found. (snx) [News message: 17. May. 2023, 13:13] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`17.May.2023`	Reverse Engineering: Speedball 2 In terms of games (software), reverse engineering is the process of analysing the code and content of the game to understand how it works. A GitHub page provides software tips and learning materials for interested developers. In this case, Simon Frankau has taken on the Amiga classic Speedball 2. Based on his previous analysis of the Sega Megadrive version, he used the reverse engineering tool Ghidra for the disassembly. Below, he described to us how he followed the boot process to obtain a memory image: Disassemble the boot block (first couple of sectors of the ADF) to find how it loads the second-level loader. The boot block uses ROM routines, so I had to learn about how to call the OS from assembly. Once I knew where the second-level loader was in the disk image, I could disassemble that. This loads the main binary. The second-level loader has its own disk routines, so I got to learn about the sector encoding of Amiga disks (with MFM) and the blitter. From there, I learnt where the main binary was, and could extract it from the ADF. It's compressed, so I reversed the compressor and wrote my own implementation to decompress the binary. At this point, I had a memory image representing the game after loading and decompressing. I loaded it into Ghidra and worked through it, understanding it and giving names to all the functions and variables, and adding comments. I also built tools to extract and the graphics and sounds and make them accessible. As he goes on to describe, the copy protection (although the game has been cracked) uses Rob Northen's Copylock, a kind of trace vector decoder. To undo this, I used FS-UAE's debugger to track what it was doing. Overall, this project would have helped him immensely to learn a lot about the Amiga, as the game makes good use of the hardware: It uses the copper for scrolling and palette management. It uses the blitter to render sprites and do disk decoding. It uses the sound hardware and vertical blanking interrupt for a mod-player-like sliced player. It uses the CIA and other i/o for keyboard and joystick. Some graphics resources were embedded IFFs, so I learnt about them. The code would have been pretty good, in his opinion - he could usually figure out what the developers were up to, even though there were no symbols or comments, and he discovered few bugs. He found it amusing that the copy protection routine, despite its complexity, only changes three memory locations. Despite the hardware differences, the code is very similar to the Megadrive version, which would a) show how easy it is to port it to 68000 platforms and b) make decoding the Amiga version easier. The binary would contain a few pieces of dead code, such as a team-selection menu, but unlike the Megadrive version there are not cheat codes. The AI was pretty simple, given how well it plays! The AI doesn't cheat: it interacts with the rest of the game by writing to the variables that would otherwise be written to by the joystick routine for a two player game. (dr) [News message: 17. May. 2023, 06:05] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`17.May.2023` itch.io	Platformer: Tech Demo "Space Cavern Blaster" v0.13 As entry to the Retro Platform Jam #6, 'dotmos' has released a cross-system platformer for Amiga 500, Atari ST, C64, DOS and Sega Megadrive as a proof of concept (amiga-news.de reported, YouTube video). Version 0.13 now provides support for joysticks. (dr) [News message: 17. May. 2023, 05:53] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`17.May.2023`	Space Invaders clone: Skinvaders Space Invaders is a 1978 shoot'em up originally programmed by Tomohiro Nishikado and distributed by Taito. The group "ELECTRIC BLACK SHEEP" - among others, the mini-game None of Us - has now published a simple variant written in AMOS, whose graphics can be exchanged in the enclosed source code independently of the programme code. The background and the enemy images can have a maximum of eight colours, but must in any case have the same colour depth. (dr) [News message: 17. May. 2023, 05:25] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]

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