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21.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 21 - Frank Wille
The 21st door goes online and for this one Frank Wille has taken time out with an anecdote.

If you want to take a look at Frank Wille's wealth of work, his Homepage is the best place to start. For more than 20 years he has been working together with Volker Barthelmann on vbcc, a highly optimised, portable ISO C compiler for Amiga 3/4 and MorphOS, last updated in March this year. The vbcc distribution also includes the portable linker vlink and the portable assembler vasm.

In any case, one should not forget to take a look at the "Other Projects" to get an impression of Frank's versatility: he is responsible for the game Solid Gold and the Amiga conversions of Retroguru games such as the Sqrxz series (1, 2, 3), Giana's Return, Xump or Fruit'Y, but also for the assembler PhxAss, the involvement in the Amiga and Pegasos versions of the operating system NetBSD as well as for ppclibemu ppclibemu. He was also involved in the beta test of the Pegasos II adaptation of AmigaOS 4.1. Furthermore, he indirectly supports the Sonnet-Amiga project through corresponding adaptations of vasm and vlink.

Many thanks also to you, Frank, for your long-lasting commitment. We read your story:

"I have been in love with Denmark for decades. Wonderful nature and carefree freedom. All is still right with the world. It's no wonder that the Danes are considered the happiest people in the world. I'm sure that's true of the rest of Scandinavia too, but Denmark is the best place for me to be. Because of all the time I spend there, I have also learned the language - well, at least I don't have any problems understanding everything - and I have also become a fan of the Danish charts, which you can listen to on long drives in the car. I have written many titles on a USB stick, so that I can remember them here on journeys as well.

Back to the Amiga: With our games (Solid Gold, Sqrxz, Trap Runner, Celtic Heart, etc.) I attach a lot of importance to the classic feeling, with trackloader from disk. I.e. the game starts already in the bootblock, loads a 2nd-stage bootloader, which then shows the team logo and loads the main part.

The boot block has 512 bytes and still has some unused space. Then I remembered that some programmers in the past liked to put hidden messages in such areas, like the ROM song in the flash ROM on Phase5's CSPPC (and BPPC?) cards. I think it was something from Morissette at the time.

So in each boot block of our games, I put a verse of various songs from the Danish charts that I just happened to have in my head. Among others, from the following artists: Celina Ree, Medina, Jokeren, Rasmus Seebach. All in Danish. Only Celtic Heart has a verse in English by Tuomas Holopainen (Nightwish) "The Life and Times of Scrooge", which of course was not in the charts. :)" (dr)

[News message: 21. Dec. 2022, 16:21] [Comments: 0]
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20.Dec.2022
Thomas Wenzel (ANF)

Audio player: AmigaAMP 3.33 released
Thomas Wenzel wrote: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! :)

Bug fixes:

Fixed repeat track/all functionality.

New features:

Added pulldown menu items for repeat track/all and shuffle.

AHI has some peculiarities in that the maximum volume depends on the mode used (stereo++ or not) and the number of mixing channels. Until now, you always had to be careful not to turn it up too loud, because otherwise it would suddenly get quieter again, and with a bit of bad luck you wouldn't hear anything at all. The aim is that you don't have to worry about this any more because AmigaAMP determines the necessary limits itself. Hopefully it works for everyone. :) (dr)

[News message: 20. Dec. 2022, 21:43] [Comments: 0]
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20.Dec.2022

Advent Calendar: Door 20 - Robert Smith
It's getting close to Christmas and we open the 20th door with an anecdote from Robert Smith.

The developer is probably best known for his project, initially called "Arduino Amiga Floppy Disk Reader/Writer": this uses a microcontroller - in this case an Arduino board - to read and write Amiga floppy disks with a connected, commercially available PC floppy disk drive. In mid-2021, he then renamed it "DrawBridge" (Disk Reader and Writer Bridge). Since the beginning of 2022, he has also made a plug-in available with the "FloppyBridge", whereby the emulators WinUAE and Amiberry can work with real floppy disks (video about how it works).

Apart from that, he deals with a wide variety of topics and tries to explain facts and backgrounds to users through videos. For example:

Thank you Robert for your informative videos and your various projects. Continued success and joy. His anecdote:

"Whilst I was at college (high school) I started to develop my interest in computers, and having received an Amiga 500+ for Christmas. I quickly became interested in programming rather than just playing games. As if “computers” wasn’t enough of a reason to be picked on at school for being a geek or nerd, programming was like the ultimate, but I was not discouraged.

A few years later I went to university, a difficult time, especially if you’re shy, as you’re surrounded by lots of new people. It was also during the time when most of us were slowly transitioning away from the Amiga after commodore went bankrupt and was (it felt like) constantly being sold to yet another company with empty promises.

On the one hand I had all this great Amiga knowledge, but on a dead platform. It doesn’t take long to meet other like-minded people with similar skills, and you soon realise they’re just as useful on other machines as they were on the Amiga. We were all geeks and nerds though, and you could sometimes feel a bit of an outcast in some situations.

One day I had a revelation whilst sharing a drink at the student union bar. Sitting there, listening to the table next to us, was a group of guys discussing the football match that had occurred the night before. The level of enthusiasm, passion, anger, competitiveness and raging going on regarding the players, the referee, and the various different teams they supported, along with the intimate knowledge they seemed to have about the skills of each individual player made me smile. I sat there thinking, we’re all geeks in our own way. Merry Christmas." (dr)

[News message: 20. Dec. 2022, 06:57] [Comments: 0]
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19.Dec.2022
WinUAE Homepage (ANF)

Emulator: WinUAE 4.10.0
Version 4.10.0 of the Amiga emulator WinUAE has been released. Changes:

Major update

68000 based unexpanded (with optional Slow or Fast RAM expansion) configurations are now 100% cycle-accurate.
Big thanks to ross for writing test programs that required perfect cycle accuracy. Lots of expected and unexpected hardware features found and implemented.

Featute updates that got delayed but will be implemented in 5.0

OCS and ECS Denise mid screen resolution changes are not pixel perfect, correct chip model specific bit pattern is not emulated yet. AGA is pixel perfect.
Not all blitter line draw width != 2 (invalid line draw configuration, normally not used) conditions are 100% accurate.
Disk status/interrupt timing is not fully confirmed yet.

New hardware emulation features and update

68000 emulation is finally fully cycle accurate, last missing part, interrupt level change detection timing, is now cycle accurate.
Custom chipset interrupt timing is now cycle accurate.
CIA emulation is now fully cycle accurate. Timers were accurate previously but now also interrupt timing, TOD counting, CPU/E-clock sync, and more, including undocumented side-effects are cycle accurate.
Serial port internal timing, interrupt timing, including SERDATR status bits are now cycle accurate (I used serial port interrupts as a timer in my cputester real 68000 interrupt timing tests)
Audio interrupt timing is now cycle accurate (Was almost fully accurate previously).
Blitter timing is now cycle accurate (previously startup behavior and interrupt timing was not fully accurate).
Blitter line mode with invalid settings (for example width not 2, octant and line direction mismatch etc) is now almost accurately emulated. Some conditions are not fully correct.
Copper is now cycle accurate, previously some special cases were not handled correctly.
More undocumented chipset features implemented.
A1000 Denise bug emulated: sprites end horizontally 1 lores pixel later than bitplane horizontal window end. Currently enabled when A1000 Agnus is selected.
OCS/ECS vs AGA EHB on/off mid screen change different behavior emulated.
Emulated chipset mode display is blanked if programmed mode is active but has invalid configuration (for example too short or too long sync pulses or missing syncs, genlock sync enabled without genlock, etc).
Optional display mode change resync black screen delay.
Programmed custom chipset modes again use also blanking timing to position the display in addition to vsync and hsync (Most real world SVGA monitors do the same).
Max allowed programmed mode non-interlaced vertical line count is now 800 (increased from 592), special 700+ line programmed modes are possible and compatible with real SVGA monitors.
Refresh cycles conflicting with bitplane DMA is now accurately emulated, including all display and audio related glitches it can cause.
Optional Chip RAM and Slow RAM power up pattern emulation, enabled by default.
Color palette is now filled with pseudo-random contents at power up (was all black previously).
Monitor type selection. Composite sync or H/V sync. ECS Agnus/AGA programmed display modes can generate different C-Sync and H/V sync signals.

New other features and updates

RTG (uaegfx) Picasso96 v3.0+ mixed mode screen draggging is enabled by default.
RTG (uaegfx) blitter emulation now supports previously unsupported less common blitter operations.
RTG (uaegfx and emulated boards) automatic integer scaling support.
On the fly FloppyBridge drive change to normal or back now triggers automatic disk change condition.
Harddrive panel Full drive/RDB mode is now normal checbox. Hopefully it is less confusing than button that didn’t look like a button.
Larger default GUI size and slightly larger font if Windows desktop is large enough (at least 1600*1024).
CD audio is now always mixed with Paula audio. Separate CD audio output support removed.
Some American Laser Games didn’t have ROM descrambling support, also added missing ROM variants.
Added American Laser Games Quickstart support.
Added NVRAM path to Paths panel. Arcade/CD32/CDTV hardware NVRAM files default to this path.
Keyboard reset change, reset state is kept until at least one key is released.
CTRL+C in console log/debug window does not anymore close WinUAE. CTRL+C in newer Windows versions can be used as a Copy operation.
Changed CTRL+F12 fullscreen/windowed switch: If already switched from full-window to window. Next CTRL+F12 will return back to full-window, not fullscreen.
Optional interlace mode filter profile added.
DirectDraw mode was replaced with GDI mode. GDI mode does not support exclusive fullscreen but supports basic scaling modes and uaegfx hardware cursor that DirectDraw mode did not support.
Palette mode screenshot support. If enabled and screen has <= 256 colors, palette mode screenshot is created. It also attempts to preserve first 32 color entries if possible. RTC is automatically enabled if chipset extra= and system has fast ram, slow ram or chip ram expansion.
Save MSM6242B RTC model control registers to RTC file if they are modified. Previously only RF5C01A (Used in big box Amigas) control registers (and NVRAM) was saved.
If Quickstart ROM based Arcade hardware config (Arcadia or ALG) is selected, NVRAM file name is automatically set to ROM name. Genlock video file path is also set if ALG ROM is selected. Config files are not affected.
ROM file list sorting changed, added grouping, sort by group priority first (KS ROMs, extended KS ROMs, freezer ROMs etc..), then alphabetically.
Sometimes old graphics was temporarily visible in RTG modes if RTG had visible black borders (depends on scaling mode) and screen was switched and new screen had larger size/resolution.
Added “Slow” flag to RAM panel. If set, selected memory bank has Chip RAM timing but is not Chip RAM capable. Advanced chipset panel “C00000 is Fast RAM” removed, it is not needed anymore.

4.9.x bugs fixed

Sprite to playfield and playfield to playfield collisions were unreliable.
RTG (uaegfx) overlay was not drawn. 32-bit Windows only.
Magic mouse mode without virtual mouse driver installed: mouse position was incorrect in RTG modes and it also ignored scaling modes.
If hardware emulated RTG board VRAM was immediately (no gap in address space) after any RAM/ROM region and JIT direct was enabled: first 4096 bytes (host CPU page size) of VRAM was not fully JIT direct compatible and any direct read or write to first 4096 bytes would not access VRAM correctly, causing unexpected graphics glitches.
Quickstart panel floppy bootblock check used current track of drive (not track 0). Broken when FloppyBridge support was added.
Hires resolution and hires BPLCON1 bit set (or shres and shres BPLCON1 bit): single pixel horizontal offset may have appeared in right side of screen. AGA and non-subpixel mode only.
CD32/CDTV Quickstart mode “remembered” previous DF0: setting and didn’t disable it by default (even if Quickstart panel showed it as disabled).
CD32/CDTV Quickstart panel DF0: was not possible to select/enable.
Z2 RAM configuration was unreliable.

Older bugs fixed

CHD CD image CD audio timing fix.
Direct3D11 with custom shaders leaked memory.
Directory filesystem softlinks fixed.
68060 without FPU or disabled FPU and executing FPU instruction that uses -(An) or (An)+ addressing mode: D7 was modified when exception stack frame was created.
Reading from non-existing custom register always returned 0xFFFF instead of data that previous cycle’s possible DMA access transferred.
Higher 68000/010 integer clock multipliers (4x+) in CE mode: chipset access timing was not accurate.
Second 1M extended ROM bank is now internally split to two 512k banks. Non-aligned bank start and size caused problems in some configs.
Hardware emulated RTG boards that have physically swapped red and blue output (Spectrum, Piccolo, Piccolo SD64) had wrong colors in 24/32-bit modes.
Piccolo Z3 and Piccolo SD64 Z3 had wrong autoconfig board logical size (which crashed the driver).
CD audio was not resumed if WinUAE was unminimized and minimize was configured to pause emulation.

Debugging related updates and fixes

Ultra extreme overscan mode. Shows complete full raster including blanking regions. Horizontal and vertical blanking disabled. COLOR0 changes are always visible.
DMA debugger shows CIA accesses (including cycles lost due to E-Clock sync) and Chip RAM RAS/CAS addressing values.
DMA debugger shows CPU memory access type (instruction fetch or data access). Interrupt level and interrupt level change detection are included.
DMA debugger shows CPU opcodes in basic form (“NOP”, “MOVE” etc), vertically. Which can look a bit weird…
Added CPU STOP state information to DMA debugger (| = STOP idle cycle, + = STOP idle cycle and higher IPL detected = STOP ending soon)
Visual DMA debugger shows conflicting cycles as blinking red pixels.
Horizontal and vertical position are now included in debugger history output (H/HH)
Added OR, AND and XOR operators to debugger calculator (|, &, ^).
sp command parsed attached sprites incorrectly.
It was not possible to enter debugger anymore if CPU was stuck in stopped state after entering and exiting the debugger once.
Tracing STOP instruction now works differently, each single step executes one internal STOP “round”.
Memwatch break point that crossed 64k “bank” didn’t map last 64k “bank” if it was only partially needed.
Self modifying code (smc) debugger feature now clears detected modifications if 68020+ instruction cache is flushed.
DMA debugger (both console and visual) better support for variable/toggling horizontal and vertical line counts.

(dr)

[News message: 19. Dec. 2022, 20:53] [Comments: 0]
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19.Dec.2022
PPA-Forum Preview video: Pinball Dreams 2 in development
Polish programmer 'Tukinem' - known among others for his platform game Ami-Tower or the farming simulation Farmiga - has started to port Pinball Dreams 2, released in 1994 only for the PC, to the Amiga in Blitz Basic 2. Target platform is an Amiga 1200 with 8MB Fast Ram (preview video).

As he wrote, he chose this pinball version mainly because of the "cool music". The goal is to write universal code that can be used in other pinball games. For the physics of the game, however, he says he will need at least another month. (dr)

[News message: 19. Dec. 2022, 17:49] [Comments: 0]
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19.Dec.2022 ACube Systems: Production of Sam460LE-Boards completed
Press release: Hello dear customers and friends,
December brought us some gifts that you will soon have on your desk: the first batch of Sam460LE. These boards have brilliantly passed all functional tests from the assembly line, and now we are manually testing every single unit as per our quality assurance standards.

As we complete testing the boards, we will start shipping in chronological order starting from top to bottom of our orders queue.

We are almost there, just a bit more patience and the first customers should start receiving the Sam460LE before the end of the year.

We are confident that yours patience will be rewarded by a well-tested product that you will surely enjoy using. (dr)

[News message: 19. Dec. 2022, 15:55] [Comments: 0]
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19.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 19 - Oliver Roberts
We start the Christmas week with the 19th door and Oliver Roberts.

Without Oliver Roberts we would not have the best and fastest browser for AmigaOS 3 and no current AmiSSL. But in the 90s Oliver was still in Formula One fever (and maybe still is?): In 1994 he started programming and publishing a first beta version 0.2 of F1GP-Ed, an editor for the Amiga version of the games Formula One Grand Prix or World Circuit by MicroProse Software. The homepage is still online and the editor was developed up to version V3.44 in 1999 (History).

1999 was the start for the development of his Warp Datatypes with WarpJPEG: he is still developing the datatypes distributed as shareware. The image formats JFIF/JPEG, PNG, TIFF, Windows BMP, PCX, PSD (Adobe Photoshop®) and WebP are supported; further formats are planned. The main feature of the datatypes, especially on PowerPC systems, is their decoding speed (hence the name Warp) and the AltiVec acceleration. The very efficient memory usage in turn benefits 68K systems.

The main project, however, is undoubtedly the browser IBrowse, which is available for both AmigaOS 3 and MorphOS, as well as AmigaOS 4, and can be tested in each case as a demo version. Just a few days ago Roberts and his team released the current version 2.5.8. The browser has a long history: Originally developed by Stefan Burström for Omnipresence Intl. from 1995 and distributed by HiSoft, from 2003 IOSPIRIT (until 2007) took over the distribution and the IBrowse developer team around Burström and Roberts took over the development. During this time, at the end of 2006, IBrowse 2.4 was released.
In 2008, development was temporarily at a standstill due to Burström's retirement. Due to various reasons, the release of version 2.5 could only happen in 2019.

From now on, not only were updates released regularly again, Roberts also took over the development of the encryption software AmiSSL, a port of OpenSSL for AmigaOS, from Jens Maus in 2020. This gives applications SSL/TLS/HTTPS support.

For your perseverance and long-lasting support of Amiga systems, a heartfelt thank you, Oliver. Your story:

It's never too late to upgrade

If you're anything like me, I tend to upgrade electronics only when absolutely required, especially if your needs are being fulfilled by what you already have. This is somewhat true for my Amiga systems too, but it is great to know that there are still a variety of options out there, allowing us to upgrade and fix our Amigas. What follows is a summary of my Amiga upgrades over the past 15 years or so.

My A1200, purchased in 1995, has gone through many upgrades over the years, but not really much since I made a custom tower case for it and added a BlizzardPPC 68060 603e/240MHz/SCSI card + BVisionPPC. This was quite some years ago considering I bought the BlizzardPPC as soon as stock was available! This all worked great and I had maxed out the upgrade options at the time.
Then, in 2015, the A1200 motherboard went faulty - I had managed to deduce that an area of the 2Mb chip ram had gone bad. To cut a long story short, I managed to find brand new replacement chips and eventually my motherboard was repaired in 2019. Unfortunately, a few days later, the main SCSI hard drive died and would not power up. Luckily, I managed to find the exact same drive model on eBay, so ordered a reconditioned one on the off-chance that swapping the logic boards over would revive my drive - it did and all data was intact! (I did actually have an slightly out of date backup anyway).

This is where my latest A1200 upgrade journey began. Not knowing why the logic board on the hard drive had died, as a precaution I replaced the tower's aging AT PSU with a new ATX one (same model as I put in my AmigaOne XE - more on that later). This involved buying various power adapters, including Ian Steadman's excellent ATX to Amiga power adapter board. Next up, I didn't want to rely on the hard drive anymore and new SCSI hard drives were by then impossible to buy, so I switched to using a SCSI2SD v6 along with a 64Gb SD card. At the same time I retired my IDE HDD, replacing it with an IDE to CompactFlash adapter. This has hopefully future proofed my A1200 for quite a few more years.
Why bother maintaining a 25 year old system? It holds a lot of history for me, where I created most of my Amiga software, including WarpJPEG, later leading to all the Warp Datatypes, plus IBrowse 2.4 development. It also happens to be the very first A1200 in the world to successfully boot AmigaOS 4.0, after I managed to fix the 603e specific TLB exception handlers in the kernel for Hyperion. I still find my A1200 invaluable for testing and development, despite not being my main development system any longer...

Since 2005, my main development machine has been an early AmigaOne XE G4. Again, until recently I have not needed to upgrade this much, except when I first obtained it in 2005. I kitted the case out with two 120mm cooling fans running at low speed via a bay based controller, replaced the stock wobbly CPU cooler with something much better (Zalman VF900), added two temperature sensors, bought a larger new IDE HDD and replaced the stock 256Mb dram with 1Gb. Later, in 2013, I swapped the PSU out with a brand new one, which fixed instability and freezes that had started happening. It has been running perfectly fine since then and I had not considered upgrading anything, especially not a new Amiga motherboard since I would miss the G4's Altivec.

However, only a few weeks ago, something strange happened - I chose to upgrade it when I didn't really need to! It all started when I needed to access a faulty laptop HDD - I didn't have a spare SATA connection in anything and the drive would not respond when used with SATA to USB adapters. I decided to buy a cheap SATA card for an old PC that I had in storage. This is pretty old and took PCI cards - yes, the same cards that the A1XE takes. The plan was to buy a A1XE compatible SATA card, which would also work in the PC and I managed to find a sii3114 card on Amazon for under 4 Euro. My IDE HDD was still running fine with no apparent issues or SMART errors, but it is over 15 years old and I'm sure it sounds louder than it used to. To preempt a potential failure, I bought a Kingston SSD for the sii3114 card and transferred everything from my HDD across. I was surprised at how cheap the lower capacity SSDs are these days - it was much cheaper than buying a SATA HDD, especially as I do not really need much space. As an added bonus, the SSD uses only 3W of power, 10W or so less than my old HDD. Finally, having noticed the CPU reaching higher temperatures than usual this year, my next task was to remove the G4 cooler to renew the thermal paste that I had last applied over 15 years ago - a delicate and somewhat dangerous task, akin to open heart surgery.
The operation went smoothly and now the G4 runs even cooler than I remember at 28 degrees idle / 31 degrees full load - hoping this will help extend the life of my A1XE further still. In case you're wondering what happened with the laptop HDD, Linux diagnostic tools confirmed it as non-recoverable and dead, but as it was 2 weeks before the expiration of the 5 year warranty, I quickly sent it back to Seagate for a free replacement.

After these efforts to keep my Amigas up and running, this allows me to continue with Amiga software development and I'm hoping to not need to open them up at all for many years to come! My first Amiga was actually an A600, which desperately needs attention too - a few years ago, I bought a CF card adapter to replace its dead HDD, but have yet to get around to installing it. There is still much we can do to fix and improve our aging hardware and maybe this article will help provide some inspiration. There are a variety of solutions available, allowing us to use the latest hardware and it is not necessarily expensive either - we can utilize cheap PC components from many retailers online and we fortunately have a few Amiga hardware retailers left too. Who would have thought that when we bought our floppy based Amigas many years ago, before HDDs were affordable or widespread, that it would be possible to use today's latest flash-based memory technology instead. It's never too late to upgrade... (dr)

[News message: 19. Dec. 2022, 09:28] [Comments: 1 - 20. Dec. 2022, 08:22]
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19.Dec.2022 Video tutorial: Programming "Santa's Present Drop 2" in AMOS
Last year, Robert Smith showed how he ported a game from HTML 5 to AMOS in a four-part video series. The result was "Santa's Present Drop". In his latest video, he shows how he programmed the second part of the game in AMOS. (dr)

[News message: 19. Dec. 2022, 06:35] [Comments: 0]
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19.Dec.2022
Andreas Falkenhahn (ANF) Hollywood: ZIP plugin 1.2 released
Version 1.2 of the ZIP plugin for Hollywood is now available for download. This is a minor update which mostly contains bugfixes and optimizations. The plugin is now available for free download from the official Hollywood portal. Thanks to Hollywood's cross-platform plugin system versions for AmigaOS3, AmigaOS4, MorphOS, WarpOS, AROS (x86), Linux (arm, ppc, x86, x64), macOS (ppc, x86, x64), Windows (x86, x64), Android and iOS are provided. (dr)

[News message: 19. Dec. 2022, 06:21] [Comments: 0]
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18.Dec.2022

Aminet uploads until 17.12.2022
The following files have been added until 17.12.2022 to Aminet:

AmiGemini.lha            comm/net   152K  68k Gemini + Spartan + Gopher bro...
CloudDav_1.9.lha         comm/net   990K  MOS A WebDav client
rasm.lha                 dev/cross  890K  MOS Roudoudou's Z80 Assembler
PatchWork.lha            dev/debug  48K   68k Validate library calls with A...
libsamplerate.lha        dev/lib    3.9M  OS4 Library for sample rate conve...
c2plib.lha               dev/misc   185K  68k chunky2planar as an Amiga sha...
Sensei.lha               driver/oth 37K   68k Displays I2C Sensor informati...
nblood.lha               game/shoot 1.0M  68k Blood Amiga Port
ham_convert.zip          gfx/conv   4.2M      HAM graphic converter
WhatIFF1.08.lha          mags/misc  421K      What IFF? #1.08-December-2022
AmiArcadia.lha           misc/emu   4.6M  68k Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadia-OS4.lha       misc/emu   5.1M  OS4 Signetics-based machines emul...
mednafen.lha             misc/emu   12M   OS4 Mednafen
Avalanche_FR.lha         util/arc   7K        French catalog for Avalanche 1.8
AvalancheDE.lha          util/arc   1K        German catalog for Avalanche 1.8
AmiSSL-5.6-OS3.lha       util/libs  3.3M  68k OpenSSL as an Amiga shared li...
AmiSSL-5.6-OS4.lha       util/libs  3.1M  OS4 OpenSSL as an Amiga shared li...
AmiSSL-5.6-SDK.lha       util/libs  2.3M  AOS OpenSSL as an Amiga shared li...
DisLib.lha               util/libs  19K   68k A library based MC68K disasse...
AmiKick.lha              util/misc  45K       Check Kickstart images under ...
Anno.lha                 util/time  291K  68k Reminder and calendar utility
newmeter.lha             util/wb    28K   68k Shows free RAM and storage as...

(snx)

[News message: 18. Dec. 2022, 07:40] [Comments: 0]
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18.Dec.2022

OS4Depot uploads until 17.12.2022
The following files have been added until 17.12.2022 to OS4Depot:

nes_8to1v2.lha           aud/con 10kb  4.0 Converts 8-bit samples to NES�...
amissl-sdk.lha           dev/mis 2Mb   4.0 SDK for AmiSSL
amiarcadia.lha           emu/gam 5Mb   4.0 Signetics-based machines emulator
mednafen.lha             emu/gam 12Mb  4.1 Mednafen Emulator
igame_fr.lha             gam/uti 7kb   4.0 French catalog for iGame v2.2.0
amissl.lha               lib/mis 3Mb   4.0 OpenSSL as an Amiga shared library
sshterm.lha              net/mis 172kb 4.1 SSH client with builtin terminal...

(snx)

[News message: 18. Dec. 2022, 07:40] [Comments: 0]
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18.Dec.2022

AROS Archives uploads until 17.12.2022
The following files have been added until 17.12.2022 to AROS Archives:

whatiff1.08.lha              doc/mis 421kb Magazine on AmigaGuide Format

(snx)

[News message: 18. Dec. 2022, 07:40] [Comments: 0]
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18.Dec.2022

MorphOS-Storage uploads until 17.12.2022
The following files have been added until 17.12.2022 to MorphOS-Storage:

RASM_1.8.lha              Development/Cross         Roudoudou's Z80 Assembler
TuxRacer_0.61.lha         Games/Race                TuxRacer_0.61.lha
SoulFu_1.5.2.lha          Games/Role                SoulFu port for MorphOS
BeastieWorker_0.4.lha     Games/Think               3D Sokoban
AmiSSL_5.6-68k.lha        Network/SSL               OpenSSL as an Amiga sha...
CloudDav_1.9.lha          Network/Streaming         A WebDav client
TinyGL-Update-2022-12-... System/Update             This is the sixth publi...

(snx)

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18.Dec.2022

WHDLoad: New installers until 17.12.2022
Using WHDLoad, games, scene demos and intros by cracking groups, which were originally designed to run only from floppy disks, can be installed on harddisk. The following installers have been added until 17.12.2022:

2022-12-17 updated: Back To The Future 2 (Imageworks/Images) patch rewritten, keyboard routine rewritten, game does not freeze anymore, trainer options added, highscore load/save added, DMA wait in replayer fixed, source code included (Info)
2022-12-16 fixed: Escape from Colditz (Digital Magic Software) random crashes fixed, debugkey handling removed from keyboard interrupt (Info)
2022-12-16 new: Wrong Way Driver (pink^abyss) done by JOTD (Info)
2022-12-16 improved: Fighter Bomber (Activision) uses fast memory, new install script, added manual, hints, cheats (Info)
2022-12-16 improved: Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters (Tengen/Teque) fire button 2 can be used for bombs, manual included (Info)
2022-12-14 improved: Edd the Duck 2 (Zeppelin Games) support for SPS 1726 added, 68000 quitkey support (Info, Image)
2022-12-14 improved: Solid Gold (Night Owl Design) ButtonWait support for level info screens added (Info, Image)
2022-12-13 improved: Akira (ICE) supports another OCS version (Info)
2022-12-13 improved: Venus the Flytrap (Gremlin) crash on 68000 machines fixed (happened if CUSTOM2 was not used), support for fire button 2 added (Info)
2022-12-13 fixed: Assassin (Team 17) graphics problem in title screen fixed (caused by wrong Bplcon0 color bit fix) (Info)
2022-12-13 fixed: The Power (Demonware) new approach for random generator fixes, no more access faults (Info)
2022-12-13 updated: Edd the Duck (BBC) patch rewritten, replayer bugs fixed, keyboard bugs fixed, trainer options added, highscore load/save added, source code included (Info, Image)
2022-12-11 improved: Hellrun Machine (Amiga Fun) keyboard interrupt rewritten to work on 68000 machines, 68000 quitkey support (Info)
2022-12-11 updated: The Power (Demonware) patch rewritten, trainer options added, 68000 quitkey support, CPU dependent delays fixed, source code included, OS stuff patched (Info)

(snx)

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18.Dec.2022
Andreas Magerl (ANF) Print magazine: Amiga Future, issue 160 - 25 years - preview and excerpts
Preview and excerpts of Amiga Future issue 160 (January/February 2023) have been published online meanwhile at the title link. Content includes a preview of Reshooot Proxima 3, a review of Apollo Manticore and an event report from Amiga37.

Amiga Future magazine is available as an English and a German printed magazine and can be bought directly from the magazine's editorial office as well as several Amiga dealers. (snx)

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18.Dec.2022
Amiga Future (website) German Amiga Podcast: Issue 10
The tenth edition of the "German Amiga Podcast" (GAP) reports from the Amiga Meeting in Neumünster and looks ahead to the Amiga Ruhrpott Convention 2023. (snx)

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18.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 18 - Marcus Sackrow
For the fourth Advent, Marcus 'ALB42' Sackrow is our storyteller.

Marcus is a Free Pascal programmer and has managed a lot of projects over the years, which he regularly informs about in his blog.
In 2014, he started porting Free Pascal first to AROS and later also to AmigaOS 3.1. Most recently, he released Free Pascal 3.2.2 for all Amiga systems in May 2021.
Likewise, in 2015 he started working on his text editor EdiSyn with syntax highlighting for AROS (latest version 0.54.
In mid-2016, he began working on his OpenStreetMap viewer Mapparium, which he further developed to version 0.8 and also made available again for all Amiga systems. His extensive creative output also includes his free Pascal programme Leu for loading and limited editing of Excel (xlsx), OpenOffice and LibreOffice (ods), TurboCalc (tcd) and ASCII (csv) files.

The list could go on, but of course his current project AmiTube must be mentioned: a YouTube client for all Amiga systems that makes it possible to watch YouTube videos on an Amiga. To do this, they are converted into Commodore's CDXL format and downloaded.

To shorten the time until Christmas a little, he has kindly put another game behind his 18th door: his "Amigale" is a conversion of the well-known "Mastermind" (or logic trainer) with words for Amigas from Kickstart 1.3, which is currently popping up everywhere as "Wordle". The task is to guess a word, whereby the programme tells you whether a letter is included or even in the right place. "Amigale" (download at the end of the story) contains both a German and an English dictionary:

(I should definitely have some more lessons in English...: what is "Spahi"??)

Thank you very much, Marcus, and keep up the good work on your projects! And with his anecdote, we wish him and all our readers a happy fourth Advent:

Amiga, Chemistry and Internet

In 1997 I started studying chemistry at the University of Siegen. My professor in the General Chemistry lecture (Prof. Meixner) was quite new at this university and had a lot of interest in computers and the internet.
He had a nice new idea for a new website and a student for it. But since he was new at the university, he only knew us first-year students and someone from my fellow students probably gave him my name when asked. So I introduced myself for the job.
The general chemistry lecture I had with him is a very basic lecture on chemistry, a bit of repetition from chemistry classes (so that everyone is on the same level) but also new things quickly so that it doesn't get too boring. One feature in contrast to later lectures was that it contained a lot of chemical experiments as a presentation on the professor's desk. And there were really many, sometimes 5-6 per lecture hour. Especially popular, of course, were all the experiments that had something to do with fire or explosions. (The phophore explosion left a deep memory, after the whole lecture hall had a whistling in their ears for 20 minutes, not healthy).
Professor Meixner's idea was to give the students a better way to prepare or review the lecture, which works best via the experiments. Of course, films work much better than simple pictures and text, so the idea was to record the experiments and put them on the internet with an explanation. I was to be responsible for the technical implementation, i.e. creating the films, converting them and creating the HTML pages. To show that I can do this well, I should first create the website for his research group.

At that time I only had my Amiga 1200, at that time still with modem as connection to the university's network. So I created and tested the whole page on my Amiga and then uploaded it via FTP to the university's server. The HTML texts themselves were all created with a plain text editor (GoldED), I tried some of the HTML editors but wasn't that satisfied. Especially since I tested the pages against the online HTML validator (HTML 3.2 was still quite new back then). Professor Meixner had such a key phrase for his research, "Espionage in the world of molecules", for which I had designed a logo: a water molecule with a magnifying glass in front of it. And since I had just read some 3D course in an Amiga magazine, I implemented the logo as a 3D animation (Lightwave for the 3D, ADPro for converting/shrinking images, MainActor for the GIF animation). I was satisfied and the professor was thrilled.
Later versions of the page are still available on archive.org (a little warning: 90s wepage-overload ;))

For the actual project, money was now requested, a computer with frame grabber card and a very cheap (PAL) camera were bought - cheap USB cameras did not exist yet, hence this combination. The camera was chosen because some of the experiments were very dangerous and we had to expect that the camera would be destroyed or at least damaged. However, this did not happen, as we were always quite careful and protected the camera extra, partly with its own, additionally protective housing.

There were three people involved in total, a technical assistant who prepared and carried out the experiments (she had a lot of experience there as she also did this for the lecture). An advanced student (I think he was about to graduate) for the technical support and texts on the website and me as the person responsible for the technology and the actual website "programming".

The basic idea was to record the experiments, then put pictures of them and descriptions on the web, and if possible even the videos themselves. But we quickly ran into the problem that almost all students only had access to the internet via modem (like me with my 33,600 modem). This meant that the films could not be too big.
On the other hand, there were hardly any video formats that could be played universally. So we decided on MPEG, because you can almost always find a player there (even on the Amiga) and, as a stopgap, GIF-Anim.
Professor Meixner set the file size limit at 500 Kb. The Amiga was again used to create the web pages and especially the GIF animations (including the background image, which was also created on the Amiga with PPaint).

The recording and processing of the experiments took several months, and later the descriptions of the experiments were translated into Spanish and French and supplemented with small quiz questions.

A funny anecdote at the end: when the site went online, the university was very worried because it described how to make explosives (black powder is one of the experiments, but also phosphorus or termite; they are pretty violent experiments). So they didn't want to see these experiments on the free internet, we had to install an IP filter so that only students of the University of Siegen could see these experiments. A few years later, nobody was interested any more.

The website still exists today, on archive.org, but also as a copy on my own site.

Download: Amigale1c.zip (88 Kb) (dr)

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17.Dec.2022
Twitter

Web browser: IBrowse 2.5.8 for Amiga OS 3/4 and MorphOS
Press release: Happy Christmas to all our loyal IBrowse users and thank you for the continued support. In 2023, we hope to share some exciting plans for the future of IBrowse. In the meantime, we are pleased to announce the immediate availability of IBrowse 2.5.8, which may be here downloaded (OS4 users may use AmiUpdate instead). This is the eighth free update for registered owners of IBrowse 2.5. IBrowse 2.1-2.4 and 1.x owners may upgrade to IBrowse 2.5.8 via our store at discounted rates.

Please note: IBrowse 2.5.8 requires AmiSSL 5.5 as minimum, with AmiSSL 5.6 being the latest version at the time of writing, so you are advised to download it before updating IBrowse, otherwise you will be left without HTTPS access.

Due to the bugs that unfortunately crept into the initial 2.5.7 release (although these were quickly resolved with hotfixes) we decided to make a full new stable release. This release contains the previous hotfixes, plus a few more fixes and improvements:

Unescape the URL before showing it in the popup bubble when the mouse is over links
Fixed crash that occurs if the info window failed to allocate memory when updating the URL
Fixed crash that can happen when specifying a non-existent filename on the command line when starting from the shell
OS4: Reversed the protocol and codec modules file lock change in 25.108, unless at least elf.library 53.35 is detected, due to a relocation issue in older versions
Fixed Gemini support which stopped working in 25.108
Include updated Greek catalogs from Aminet

(dr)

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17.Dec.2022

Advent Calendar: Door 17 - Thomas Claus
Behind the 17th Advent calendar door awaits the anecdote of Thomas 'imagodespira' Claus, who as a graphic designer forms the duo of EntwicklerX together with the programmer Frank Menzel.

When one thinks of EntwicklerX, two things come to mind: the commercial media player Emotion and elaborately written games for AmigaOS 4. And there is something for everyone. A small list:

Tower Defense game Swamp Defense (2011)
Arcade puzzle game Balance Blox (2012)
Match-3-Diamant game Tap Jewels (2012)
Space Shoot'em-up M.A.C.E. (2013)
Bubble Shooter DX (2015)
Jump'n Run Spencer (2018)
Asteroid shooter Super Star Blast (2019, Preview)
M.A.C.E. Tower Defense (2022)

They started the development of their media player Emotion in 2016 and released a first alpha version soon after. The official version then was released at the beginning of 2017. An update to version 1.9 is available on the developer page. As Thomas told us, more games and remastered versions are planned - but since they are not pure Amiga developers, of course always depending on other projects. We wish good luck and look forward to today's anecdote:

"My first computer was an Atari 130XE. At the time of the German reunification, there was a "welcome money" for GDR citizens and my brother and I begged "our" money from our parents to be allowed to buy a computer in the Intershop. Of course, we had no idea about computers, we just wanted one. When we were standing in the Intershop, there was only one option for the 200 DM (100,- per child). An Atari 130XE for 192,- (the value is burnt into my memory, I hope it's right ;)). So we bought this one. Of course, there were also C64 computers and Amigas in the corner, but financially unattainable.

Once home, the device was connected to the Raduga TV (Russian brand, very explosive). A blue screen came up with the text "Ready". That was it. By trial and error we got into a screen where notes could be seen. Our English skills were close to zero, so we couldn't even translate "Self Test" (I was 13 and we were learning Russian at school). However, Self Test brought us a tune and made us want to hear more. After that, there was some digging in the manual and we found out that we couldn't go on without external media. We needed a "datasette". We begged and pleaded with parents again and were able to dust off my little sister's money for our Atari and thus buy a Datasette XC12 and a game (Kikstart). That was the entry into my computer world. In the course of time we found out that our neighbour had an Atari 800XL and so we got some software. My favourite game at the time was Montezuma's Revenge. Actually, it's still my favourite game. In the meantime I have an Atari 130XE again, Datasette and every now and then I give myself a round of Montezuma...

Back to my youth. As a happy Atari fan, I dreamed of the Atari ST, MegaST and other Atari devices that were also in our computer shops at some point. Amiga didn't interest me at all. But one day my cousin who lived one street over called. "Come over, I want to show you something". No sooner said than done. Now I was standing in his room. There was an old TV on the floor, an Amiga 500 in front of it and Rick Dangerous was playing. I've never seen such graphic splendour, it looked like the real thing. The sound was amazing, especially the dying in the game. You heard that a lot... Yeah, what can I say. It was a quick conversion. After that afternoon, I didn't even know how to spell Atari anymore. I wanted an AMIGA! Some time later I was able to sell the Atari, my brother was in training and gave money for an Amiga 500 and I shovelled out my aunt's coal cellar to be able to buy a memory expansion... From here on there was no turning back.

To get a reference to today: as some may know, I develop small games with Frank Menzel at the EntwicklerX. Also for AmigaOS 4. I already dreamt of this with the first Atari. Here I drew simple pixel pictures in Basic with the commands "Plot" and "DrawTo" (I didn't have a drawing programme). Later I pixelated in Deluxe Paint, mostly small game scenes for platformers. So running levels and obstacles. Montezuma's Revenge but also Rick Dangerous never really let me go and so we were able to finish our "Pyramid Quest" in early 2021 and release it on Windows, Playstation, Nintendo Switch and Xbox. My 14-year-old Atari self had already dreamed of this, but would never have thought it possible to pull something like this off. We're not well-known developers, don't have a hit, but get by and still dream of new projects that are viable for 2 people. Often our games are interpretations of old games and game principles that we used to love on the Amiga and still love and enjoy playing.

You can find our projects on various platforms, for example itch.io. You will certainly recognise one or two of the game principles, even if the realisations are often somewhat different and the templates usually remain unattainable...". (dr)

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17.Dec.2022 Puzzle game: AmiBlock
After the Amiga conversion of the game "Wood Block Puzzle" by the Polish developer 'Tukinem' (amiga-news.de reported), 'Szafir' has now released his variant under the name "AmiBlock". It is also written in Blitz Basic 2 and requires an Amiga 500. (dr)

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17.Dec.2022
Passione Amiga (ANF)

Italian Print/PDF magazine: Passione Amiga, issue 11

Press release: With great joy and a bit of excitement we are pleased to announce that the new issue of Passione Amiga, where we celebrate two years of publishing, is now available for purchase! The entire editorial team has worked hard to get this issue out slightly ahead of the official date, so that Amazon can deliver it under the tree to anyone who wants to read it or give it as a Christmas present. Content:

Video games: Devil's Temple: Son of Kung Fu Master, Aquabyss, Black Dawn: Technomage, Wonderboy, Wrong Way Back, Chaos Arena, Wood Block Puzzle, Luma
Reviews: Amiga Duel, Amiga Forever 10
Special Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam 2022
Special Amiga games in physical version
Blender course, part 3
AmigaOS 3.2 R4 NDK
And also: Games news, Tech news, THEA500 Mini news, Tricks and Solutions, Demo scene, New Talents, Mailbox

The magazine is available as digital (3 Euro) or printed version (7,50 Euro, via Amazon). Its current issue consists of 48 A4 color pages. (dr)

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17.Dec.2022 Text adventure: The Daring Rescue of Pacuvia the Sheep
Domenico 'Diduz' Misciagna has released his very first game, The Daring Rescue of Pacuvia the Sheep, a text adventure written in Amos Professional 2.0 that can be played in English and Italian.

As an employee of a mysterious "agency", you find yourself on a dangerous mission: the biotechnically bred sheep Pacuvia must be freed from the clutches of a man who has no idea what he has stolen. For security reasons, all digital tools have been taken away from you and you are limited to purely analogue equipment. And Pacuvia doesn't seem to be quite so helpless either...

The game is available for C64, Amiga, MS-DOS and Tandy M100. The Amiga version requires 512Kb RAM and Kickstart 1.3.
As Misciagna writes, he suddenly realised during the 2020 Corona Lockdown that he had never written a video game before. He has been following and commenting on audio-visual art all his life. His bachelor thesis in 2020 was an academic study on video games. In the same year, he launched his website Lucasdelirium, dedicated to LucasArts adventure games. Moreover, since he had been playing computer games since childhood, it was time to write one himself. And the result is this text adventure. (dr)

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16.Dec.2022 Blog: Review of RadeonHD V5 driver with a X1000
While 'Epsilon' had taken a look back at 40 years of English-language Amiga magazine history in his blog "Epsilon's World" two days ago, he now devotes himself to his AmigaOne X1000 and AmigaOS 4: Thus he acquired the latest Enhancer Software 2.2, the new RadeonHD V5 driver and finally the latest version of DvPlayer in order to test all this on his AmigaOne X1000 under his previous graphics card Southern Island's R7 250X, as well as a newly acquired Radeon HD R9 ASUS 270X PCI-E. (dr)

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16.Dec.2022

MorphOS: Sixth beta version of TinyGL
MorphOS team developer Mark 'Bigfoot' Olsen had offered a bounty project for improved OpenGL support as well as drivers for more Radeon graphics cards under the title link, which has been successfully funded (amiga-news.de reported). Now the developer has released the sixth public beta version of his TinyGL update. He wrote:

"The main change in this update is the completion of project 1: Implement the fixed-function OpenGL pipeline as shaders. This change fixes a variety of rendering problems in various apps and games on hardware that currently supports shaders, meaning R300 and newer.

Unfortunately there are a couple of known regressions in this update as well, but at this point they've reached a number and severity that is low enough that I didn't want to hold off this update any longer before getting it out to you all.

The known problems all affect R300 and newer hardware and are:

Virtual Grand Prix 2 runs noticeably slower than before, and the rear view mirrors no longer render correctly.
FooBillard has rendering glitches it didn't have before. However this update also does fix some rendering issues that were previously broken, so this one is a mixed bag.
Descent Freespace is completely broken.
Reportedly there's an issue with the plasma blanker, but I'm not entirely sure of the details at this point.

I will probably release one more TinyGL update this year that hopefully addresses all of the above, plus any other regressions that might be reported by you." (dr)

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16.Dec.2022 Kickstarter camaign: Checkmate 19" IPS Retro Monitor successfully financed
Just three days ago, it did not look as if the Kickstarter campaign to finance the Checkmate 19" IPS Retro Monitor could be successfully completed with 138.938 of the required 239.785 Euro paid at that time. Now, about two days before the end of the campaign, 248.781 euros have been received, and the goal has thus been exceeded. (dr)

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16.Dec.2022 Boing Attitude: Interview with John Girvin (NIVRIG GAMES)
Boing Attitude, publisher of the quiz game Ask Me Up XXL and the file manager Dir Me Up, among others, published the fourth issue of the French print magazine "BOING" at the beginning of July. Among other things, it contained an interview with John Girvin, the developer of games like Turbo Santa (Deluxe) or Turbo Tomato, which is now available under the title link. (dr)

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16.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 16 - Günter Bartsch
The 16th Advent calendar door is opened and we look forward to an anecdote Günter Bartsch.

At the end of August 2021, the developer had not only published the source code of his Amiga QuickBasic (AQB) compiler on GitHub, but also a first early version 0.7.0 and aroused great interest in the comments to our corresponding news item. With AQB, the author wants to provide a "modern, clean, OS-compliant and future-proof BASIC. An important feature of AQB are the modules: AQB has only relatively few built-in commands, but a - also syntactically - quite powerful module concept. The modules can be implemented fully transparently in BASIC (AQB) or also in C (GCC) or even mixed; AQB is fully link-compatible with GCC.

As the developer further explains, it should be possible to give AQB different "personalities" - currently only _aqb is implemented, which is intended as a default dialect and is oriented towards AmigaBASIC, QuickBASIC and FreeBASIC. But it should also be possible to give AQB a GFA, Blitz or Amos personality, for example. In general, the focus of AQB (at the moment) would be on system-compliant application development.

With version 0.8.0 he then introduced a source level debugger and since the last, current version 0.8.2 there are now instructions and functions for sound output, new tutorials and also a simple music demo programs.

Even though almost a year has passed since the last version, Günter continues to work on his project. As he tells us, there have already been quite a lot of further developments, which he "only" needs to finally bring into a release-ready state. We keep our fingers crossed for this and for the further development of his project and look forward to many more exciting discussions about it here. His anecdote or, in this case, short story :)

"The year is 1988. At the beginning of the year an event occurred that would change my life forever: I had gotten an Amiga 500 for my birthday. Ever since I had watched an episode of "ARD Computerzeit" on public TV in which the Amiga was introduced I knew: I want that computer and no other. At that time (I was 12) my funds were very limited - but at some point my parents had had enough of my whining so they fulfilled my wish.

Driven by a lot of euphoria and even more childish naivety and curiosity I had spent every free minute of the year (and also many minutes in which I was supposed to do other things) with this dream computer (I still couldn't really wrap my head around the fact that now one of these actually was sitting in my bedroom).

A lot of people would probably imagine that I mainly wanted to play games on the Amiga - but that wasn't the case. In fact I didn't have any games for it and being a true geek with no friends the temptation to drift into the gaming world through private backup copies was rather small.

Instead, I did with the new computer what I had done - again in the absence of other software - with my Commodore Plus/4 which I owned before the Amiga: I wrote programs in BASIC. On the Amiga that meant coding in AmigaBASIC which was supplied on the Extras disk.

Despite all the euphoria, I soon had doubts as to whether this really was the greatest tool for the job. The execution speed of the Programs might have been OK compared to my Plus/4, but the editor was extremely sluggish. Of course those were thoughts that I first had never dared to say - after all, the Amiga was the best and fastest computer in the entire universe and AmigaBASIC was the official BASIC, which came directly from Commodore, the company where (in my mind) those gods worked who had created this dream computer - how could there be anything better?

Luckily I got my hands on a copy of the german magazine "Amiga Magazin". Even though I certainly didn't understand all the articles in it, from studying it I did learn that there were other programming environments for the Amiga that could possibly represent an improvement over the AmigaBASIC.

And so it came about that, together with my mother, I trudged through the Christmas-decorated downtown Stuttgart heading for department stores and computer shops looking for a Christmas present. So I described to various salespersons my troubles with AmigaBASIC and boldly asked them about compilers and assemblers. Usually the last two terms confused the staff, but at least two of them knew about the problems with AmigaBASIC so each offered their respective in-house recommended solution for that. Luckily I had enough doubts right there on the spot about the "True Basic" which was offered to me in the local "Karstadt" department store that I encouraged my mother to let us try again somewhere else. At smaller computer shop called "Schreiber Computer" I was then offered a product called "GFA BASIC" and the saleswoman actually succeeded in convincing both my mother as the sponsor and me as the user.

Compared to AmigaBASIC, GFA BASIC turned out to be a downright revelation - speed, instruction set, documentation - all a difference like night and day, I was amazed! If there were any last doubts in my mind whether this investment was the right one (the label "Interpreter" on the box bothered me a bit, as I much rather wanted to have a true compiler), these were finally scattered on the day when I got my hands on a copy of the "Sonderheft 3: Basic und Spiele" issue of "Amiga Magazin". It contained an article comparing various BASIC implementations for the Amiga in which GFA BASIC did very well.

The first weeks with GFA BASIC were very productive indeed - all those small sample programs from the manual worked fine, a small vocabulary training program was implemented just as quickly as various small graphics and sound experiments.

Accordingly, I felt well prepared and even more motivated, to tackle bigger projects now. Among other things, I had a painting program in mind, a kind of DeluxePaint clone in BASIC (now that I have this great programming environment, I don't need to buy any more software, I can write everything myself - so I thought). The beginnings of these projects were always done easily, first successes came - opening screens and windows, drawing pixels using the mouse, no problem.

However, as the programs grew in size, so did the number of bugs - not surprising, I knew that even back then. However, those errors turned out to be increasingly difficult to find: Program functions that just worked perfectly suddenly refused to work at all, although the code in question was the same. Yes, even the interpreter's built-in commands occasionally stopped working they way I expected them to. I debugged deeper and deeper, wrote small test programs - most of which worked fine - but as soon as I put the code back into my big program, it suddenly behaved completely differently or crashed completely.

Of course, that didn't deter me one bit - obviously there was just a lot to learn for myself, obviously I just kept doing something wrong and that's why my programs didn't work. I quickly realized that the commands apparently interacted with each other in complex ways - with this insight I was then able to solve many of my problems. "Ah, I have to first set the foreground and then the background color, then it works" - that was the kind of discovery, which I diligently noted in the manual.

Over time, my hypotheses, with which I tried to explain to myself the behavior of the interpreter in particular and of the Amiga in general, grew more and more complex. Apparently there was an enormous wealth of secret knowledge there to discover about how these miracle machines actually worked. Of course, such secret knowledge wasn't to be found in the manual, but could only be acquired laboriously through many experiments and collected from many sources. I wasn't discouraged - quite the opposite, I was fascinated by the thought that there was apparently a mystical world to explore there and motivated by the idea of me maybe someday too would belong to that secret circle of people who possess this knowledge.

So, undeterred, I kept experimenting and consulted more and more literature. "GFA BASIC 3.0 - Training for advanced users" was one of the books from which I hoped for enlightenment. The book - published by GFA Systemtechnik GmbH themselves, at least - actually opened up new horizons for me. Some of the techniques in there I had never seen before, some of the commands never heard of - that most of the example programs on the floppy that came with the book didn't work for me unless I modified them astonished not me in the slightest. For one, the programs I had previously typed in from books and magazines hadn't usually worked right away either and on the other hand I was able to put all that secret knowledge I had accumulated up to that point to good use to get the programs running - which actually was successful for most of them.

Despite all these partial successes and insights - a real breakthrough never seemed to happen for me. My larger programs tended to stay quite brittle and so very slowly a feeling of frustration set in.

During my literature research I came across the book "AMIGA Programming with MODULA-2" from Markt und Technik publishing company. There was even a matching compiler available - though only a very limited demo version - on a fish disk. That then was once again another revelation: a true compiler, I can write real programs like the professionals - and they even worked! Everything so clear and structured everything does what it should, just as it says? Should something like this be possible should there exist a world without any mystical secret knowledge?

At that point, GFA BASIC was quickly forgotten in my life - I was fascinated by Wirth's languages, so I spent the following years happily coding in Modula-2, Pascal and Oberon, but that's another story.

It was then more by chance that at some point during this period I found out what was behind my experiences with GFA BASIC: in some magazine article GFA BASIC 3.5 was reviewed and the author casually mentioned that while the first versions of GFA BASIC for the Amiga were quite buggy, the situation seemed to improve with each update. GFA BASIC had errors?! This product I purchased for money that was packaged so neatly and made by absolute professionals could have been not perfect? Those many surprising properties that I had so painstakingly explored could it possibly be that they were not intended at all?

I can hardly put into words what I felt when the full dimension of these insights slowly dawned on me: I simply had never considered that a bug could not be my mistake! What's more, probably the only mistake I had made was that I had never sent back this software registration card that came with the box - so I was never informed about available updates.

Well, today I like to think back to those days with a smile - those were very important lessons I learned back then, many of them still guide me to this day. Without the Amiga, without these programming environments - I would have never gotten to where I am today, I am very grateful for that." (dr)

[News message: 16. Dec. 2022, 06:51] [Comments: 0]
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16.Dec.2022 Emulator: QEMU 7.2.0 released
QEMU is an open source computer emulator and virtualizer. QEMU is able to emulate a complete computer in software without the need of hardware virtualization. So it is possible to emulate Amiga operating systems like AROS, AmigaOS or MorphOS on QEMU. This support is provided by QEMU developer Zoltan Balaton, who gives lots of tips and info on a dedicated webseite (see also our Excursion of Amiga operating systems on non-native hardware).

According to Zoltan Balaton, the now released version 7.2.0 (PowerPC related commits) contains some changes that mainly affect newer Power CPUs, but also those that affect the entire PPC emulation: for example, the command decoding has been changed to decodetree. This is a generic method of describing commands, using general code for decoding instead of the custom code used before. As the developer kindly explained to us, this can lead to better performance, but it does not have to, as Decodetree is not optimised.

Similarly, there were also some changes to the implementation of AltiVec commands that could improve their speed, but it would depend on how it was used and what the host CPU supported. He had done some tests and found that in some cases it could be a few percent faster, but it did not really make a big change. Since sam460ex does not have AltiVec, it only benefits from the PPC instruction decoding changes, he said. Emulation via pegasos2 and mac99 could be slightly better with code that uses AltiVec. However, he says it is difficult to test this with AmigaOS 4, which has no graphics driver for the graphics cards emulated by QEMU in the pegasos2 version. For tinkerers, however, he has an idea that could be tried out:

One would have to copy some drivers to get the output on pegasos2. This means that one has to edit the boot CD or an installed version (which is not so easy, but feasible). You would have to copy the kernel from the AmigaOS-pegasos2 version and update the PCIGraphics.card and siliconmotion502.chip from the sam460ex version, as he erwähnt before. You would then have to create a CD from this. (dr)

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15.Dec.2022

Encryption protocol: AmiSSL 5.6 (AmigaOS 3/4)
The open source encryption protocol AmiSSL has been updated to version 5.6 and contains a fix for server applications and some other minor changes. The changes in detail:

Fixed TLS 1.3 cipher lookup failure regression on OS4.
The improvement from v5.4 that released file locks on the OS4 libraries is now only activated with elf.library 53.35 or higher.
Minor build changes.

Download AmigaOS 3: AmiSSL-5.6-OS3.lha (3,3 MB)
Download AmigaOS 4: AmiSSL-5.6-OS4.lha (3,1 MB)
Download SDK: AmiSSL-5.6-SDK.lha (2,3 MB) (dr)

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15.Dec.2022 Video: 'DarkG' from Batman Group guest at AmigaBill
In his "Replay" series on Twitch.tv, 'AmigaBill' had 'DarkG', a member of the Batman Group, as a guest three days ago and talked to him about the recently released demo Batman Rises. (dr)

[News message: 15. Dec. 2022, 12:56] [Comments: 0]
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15.Dec.2022
CS-Lab website (ANF)

Warp 560/Warp 1260: Firmware Pack 1.300
CS-Lab has released an update of the firmware for its 68060-based Warp accelerator boards. Changes of Warp Firmware Pack 1.300:

WiFi support through SANA-2 warpNET.device (you need TCP/IP stack like Roadshow or Miami)
Separate driver for onboard IDE (warpATA.device)
Added direct-scsi mode support for warpSD.device and warpUSBDisk.device
P96 RTG driver fix of WHDLoad "freeze" issues
Updated WarpDiag and WarpTool tools
Included firmware for Warp1240 model
Lots of other minor fixes

(dr)

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15.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 15 - Dennis Pauler
We open the 15th advent calendar door and welcome Dennis 'Hurrican' Pauler from Virtual Dimension.

Virtual Dimension can look back on a long history and has incredibly changed and gained versatility over the years: In 1991 the group around Dennis Pauler was founded and focused on programming demos - for example the Red Sky BBS Intro - and games until 1999: so they released "Walls - The 97-Edition" in 1998 and "Othello - Das virtuelle Brettspiel" in 1999 , both to be found on their home page.

At the beginning of 1999 parts of the Virtual Dimension team participate as editors in the German magazine "Amiga Fever", which was discontinued after only four issues and integrated into amigaOS. Likewise the content support of the website was discontinued from the year 2002. Dennis' call to the readers which can be read there "better get involved...send a news message to a news site..." we can only support and is possible via Amiga News Feed at any time.

From 1999 onwards, the "On site" (German) series initially concentrated on trade fair videos - for example on the World of Amiga 2000 - before audio books and dubbing work were added. Over time, many more video series were added.

But also the programming of (Amiga)games has been rediscovered: Dennis works himself (again) into C-programming and develops the game "Danger Dennis" in the series "Coding with Dennis" (German). Not only for this, but also for all further projects we wish Virtual Dimension good luck and are now looking forward to Dennis' story:

Backed the wrong horse?

My friends and I already got thrilled at the age of 11. We no longer wanted to just PLAY computer games, we wanted to DEVELOP them ourselves. But all beginnings are difficult. After moderately successful experiments with Basic on the C64 and AmigaBasic on the Amiga, we were looking for ways to get more out of our computers. A short excursion into Amiga programming with C based on a course from the magazine AmigaPlus didn't lead to the goal either, because the course ended after a few relaxation exercises where it could have become interesting. We lacked the contacts, the books and probably the imagination how we could have developed our skills. That the way was much more complicated than we thought at that time, I should realize more than 20 years later, when I finally opened the chapter "Programming C for the Amiga" again.
Ambitious but slightly frustrated, after experimenting with shell scripts and the RedSector Demomaker, we finally stumbled upon a programming environment that promised what we had hoped for. We're talking about "AMOS - The Creator", and our goal of finally developing decent games ourselves was within reach.

The year was 1994 and the conditions could not have been better. Under the name "Virtual Dimension" a cool troop had come together to make their dream of game development come true. AMOS - first in the basic version, then in the Pro version - enabled fast development progress with background graphics, bobs and music. And our platform was THE game machine: the Amiga, which had just received a contemporary upgrade with the AGA computers and could at least keep up with the PCs in terms of price/performance. We worked on several games at the same time, shared the work and met several times a week for joint development sessions with pair programming.
At the same time, we tentatively began to network with the net community, downloading the latest tools and demos from mailboxes, writing our first emails, and discussing important questions on Usenet such as "Does Warp 9.9 period = Warp 10?"

When the news of the bankruptcy of Commodore, the parent company of the Amiga, reached us, we were initially unmoved. After all, optimism was spread in the computer magazines that a financially strong buyer would soon be found (Samsung, for example, was being discussed) and that the race to catch up with the PC would then be all the faster. But the more months went by without any positive news, the greater our worries became.
First of all, however, we did everything we could to get our first game ready. In autumn 1994, the time had finally come and "Walls", a game fiercely inspired by "Breakout" and "Arkanoid", was ready for release. Unlike our previous programming attempts, which had rarely seen disks other than our own, "Walls" was included by no less than three public domain series (Spielekiste, German Games and Nordlicht-PD) in their programme. The Amiga magazine reported on our game in a small section and one day there were even unannounced fans at the door and the slightly overwhelmed Dennis.

Meanwhile, the rumour mill on Usenet was bubbling over the future of the Amiga. Commodore UK had taken over the Amiga rights in a "management buyout" and would soon bring a new computer onto the market with the Amiga 1300 CD, it was said. This soon turned out to be a hoax, but through David Pleasance's stories we now know that it almost came true.
A group of fans did not want to wait any longer and decided to replace the AmigaOS with a new open source implementation and port it to the PC. The Amiga Replacement OS - AROS for short - as it was called at the beginning, was born.
There was movement in the scene, but time passed and more and more users and developers left the Amiga. If a buyer wasn't found soon who could save the sinking ship, our beloved computer would lose its connection to the PC world for good. The song "Final Countdown" by Europe took on a whole new meaning for me during this time.

One year after the Commodore bankruptcy, a buyer was finally found in the form of Escom, but the hoped-for new start turned out to be much weaker than hoped for. The Amiga 1200, now three years old, was produced again, but without a turbo card, memory expansion and hard disk, no one could be impressed with it in 1995. New computers were announced, but before a new Amiga had made it to the shop counter, Escom had also gone bankrupt and the dithering began again.

So had we backed the wrong horse in choosing the Amiga as a platform for a game development ambition? Yes and no. The three more games that we finally published for the Amiga in 1998 - all written with AMOS - achieved many thousands of downloads from our website, which had been set up in the meantime. But we had finally lost touch with modern game development.
In retrospect, this was certainly not the worst thing that could have happened to us, considering the poor working conditions that still prevail in the games industry today. We then took our professional careers in other directions, even though the thought of developing our own games would never completely fade from our minds.

At the beginning of the 2000s, the Amiga seemed to be history, despite all attempts to breathe new life into the platform with the help of the PowerPC processor. But like us, many others were to remember the time with the Amiga fondly and so, from 2013 onwards, new - also commercial - games for our old friend slowly appeared again. Thanks to the internet, we were able to make contact with many other Amiga fans and finally got back to the old idea of developing our own games for the Amiga. Of course, we don't have as much time as we did when we were students, so the journey is slow. But the conspiratorial community that just won't let the old computer die has given us a home and, despite everything, doesn't let us lose sight of the goal - and this time, even really with the programming language C! But that's another story... (dr)

[News message: 15. Dec. 2022, 06:49] [Comments: 0]
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14.Dec.2022

Advent Calendar: Door 14 - Erik Hogan
Today's Advent calendar door belongs to the game developer Erik 'earok' Hogan.

Of course, the game construction kit "Scorpion Engine", which we first reported on in April 2020 and which he developed and continues to develop, immediately comes to mind. It would probably fill a separate article to list all the games that use his engine, many of which are still in development (for example, "Creeping Me Out Hex Night"). But here are a few examples:

Jump'N Run Duckstroma
the mini game Super Delivery Boy
the arcade game Green Beret or
the Amiga conversion of Wonderboy

A developer has just started his conversion of the action game "Trojan", published in 1986, on the basis of the Scorpion Engine and has published a first preview video for it.

But Hogan himself also logically uses his engine to develop (demo) games: for example, the adaptation of the C64 classic "Raid Over Moscow", the jump'n run "Monkey Ladd" or the platform game "Super-Go-Down-The-Hole".

On his Patreon page he provides information about new releases and games. Thank you Erik. We look forward to many more exciting game projects! His anecdote:

"In English, we've borrowed the word "strafe" (as in, a plane "strafing" or attacking ground targets, itself derived from the old expression "gott strafe England" or "god punish England") to denote sideways movement in first person shooters.

I was working on a game that, while not a first person shooter, was an educational title played from the first person.

When testing, I went to use the standard A or D keys for sideways movement in the game, and realised they did nothing. Since most young gamers would expect those keys to activate sideways movement (games such as Minecraft do), I added a simple item to the project todo list that simply said "strafe".

A little while later, the project manager - who is from Germany and is passionate about educational games but isn't a hardcore gamer themselves - told me at a meeting that they were very confused that, according to my todo list, I apparently wanted to punish someone." (dr)

[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 11:28] [Comments: 0]
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14.Dec.2022 Linux: Kernel 6.1 for AmigaOne X1000/X5000
Right after the release of the Linux kernel 6.1, Christian 'xeno74' Zigotzky has compiled it for AmigaOne X1000 and X5000 and offered the kernel for download in the associated discussion topic of the Hyperion forum. There you can also find a screenshot showing the Debian distribution using the current kernel. (dr)

[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 09:38] [Comments: 0]
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14.Dec.2022 Preview video: Super Metal Hero
At the beginning of 2020, Raster Wizards announced the game "Super Metal Hero". After development was frozen in favour of the game Hyper Runner, work is now resumed. A new preview video shows the first final boss: first draft, revised version. (dr)

[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 06:56] [Comments: 0]
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14.Dec.2022

AmigaGuide magazine: Issue 8 of "WhatIFF?" published
"WhatIFF?" is an English Amiga magazine in AmigaGuide format. Unlike other magazines or journals, WhatIFF? does not deal with games, but is primarily intended for users who want to work creatively with their Amigas (amiga-news.de reported).

Now issue 8 was published containing the following articles:

Reviews

Dell LED 15Khz Monitor
A1200.net Translucent Case
RNOEffects
Aminet Short Reviews

Guides

Watch YouTube Videos on your AGA Amiga Part 1
LightWave 101 - Starfield
Brilliance 101 - Reflections
Storage Solutions

Articles

A Look Back At 2022
American Magazines
First LD Computer?

Interviews

PixelVixen
Anthony (The Amiga Show)

(dr)

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14.Dec.2022 Blog: Review of English Amiga print magazines
In his latest blog entry of his "Epsilon's World" Epsilon gives a review of English-language Amiga magazines of the last 40 years, as usually detailed and and with numerous pictures. He himself had decided to get one copy of each English-language Amiga magazine, with at least one issue per year, covering the entire period from 1985 to 2022. He came across 44 different English-language Amiga magazines in the process. (dr)

[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 06:02] [Comments: 0]
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14.Dec.2022 Minimig: Revision 1.91
In mid-March we reported on revision 1.8 of Minimig: the reimplementation of an Amiga 500 in an FPGA, a field-programmable gate array. After six months of development, Minimig REV 9 is now available.

Accelerator cards like the TerribleFire 534 and 536 can now run at 50MHz, caching of kick.rom of the PiStorm is now possible as BOOTROM has been replaced by a new ESC/OCS chip - MIA. REV 9 offers not only hardware changes but also software updates. In addition, this board is 6-layer and has a revised voltage regulation. And the MC68SEC000 can be operated at up to 60MHz.

The card (without housing) is currently sold out, otherwise it is listed in the shop for around 330 Euros. (dr)

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14.Dec.2022

Debugging tool: PatchWork 1.1
In keeping with yesterday's Advent calendar door, Richard Körber has released version 1.1 of his debugging tool "PatchWork" (amiga-news.de reported). Changes:

New TASKNAME option, which only reports hits caused by tasks with the given name. Note that this is just an output filter. Options like DEADLY still apply to all tasks.
Use short relocation tables, prohibits loading on Kick 1.x

(dr)

[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 05:43] [Comments: 0]
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13.Dec.2022 Kickstarter campaign: Update on the Checkmate 19" IPS Retro Monitor
About three weeks ago, Stephen Jones launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund monitors for retro computers (amiga-news.de reported). Five days remain and so far 138.938 of the required 239.785 Euro have been funded.

Jones has taken this interim status as an opportunity to publish a condensed version of the video presentation of the project. On the other hand, he is now offering a so-called "Festive Placeholder Deposit": here, all those who cannot afford the full contribution can still reserve a monitor for a minimum amount of around 117 euros. However, supporters who pay the full amount will be delivered first. (dr)

[News message: 13. Dec. 2022, 15:39] [Comments: 0]
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13.Dec.2022
Dimitris Panokostas Mastodon-Client: Update on Amidon development status
The author of the Amiga emulator Amiberry, Dimitris 'MiDWaN' Panokostas, is in the process of developing a Mastodon client for AmigaOS 3 (amiga-news.de reported). In a blog entry published on his Ko-fi page he now reports about the current state. Among other things, an "anonymous" avatar is now included by default and is shown until the user logs into the server. (dr)

[News message: 13. Dec. 2022, 14:41] [Comments: 0]
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13.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 13 - Richard Körber
ust in time for lunch break, the 13th door of our Advent calendar opens. We may introduce: Richard 'Shred' Körber.

This could be a record so far: Already on 04 May 1999 we reported (in German) about Richard Körber's newly established website "Palmiga", which was aimed at Amiga users who wanted to connect their computer to a PalmOS PDA. In mid-2001 he was kindly asked by Palm Inc. to rename his site because "Palmiga" and "PalmLink" would infringe trademark rights. So Amiga-PDA was born, which was originally part of his homepage which already existed since 1998. For all those who are still interested today, please refer to his PdaLink library and the corresponding GitHub project.

The developer is probably best known for his identify library, which recognises Zorro cards by their manufacturer and product ID, provides information about the system (CPU, FPU, memory, clock frequency, etc.) and decodes Guru codes and function offsets. Originally, in early 2003, he announced (in German) on our site that he had to stop development due to lack of time and published the source codes of the project on Sourceforge. More than a year ago, however, he not only published the source codes on GitHub, but also resumed development and made the current version 40.2 available for download in mid-October.

He also wrote his own driver for the internal sound card Maestro Professional, developed YAMI, a mouse interface that makes it possible to use serial PC mice on Amiga or ATARI ST computers, and resumed work on his debugging tool PatchWork.

His articles in the Retro Blog of his site are definitely worth reading, for example about the restoration of an Amiga 1000 or the problem of the right mouse button on the Amiga 1200. Many thanks for your development work, Richard! He remembered the following anecdote for us:

"It was in 1998, at a time when the Internet was massively growing. As a young professional, I was working in the web department of a startup in Cologne and felt like a pioneer in a new country.

After weeks of work, our team had completed a new website. The design template had been created by an external advertising agency via Photoshop. We manually converted the designs into individual web pages, which was common practice at that time. In the late afternoon, everything was finally finished, the launch was imminent and the press had already been informed. The other colleagues had already called it a day, and I was just about to pack my bag, too, when an email from my boss popped up in my inbox.

'The agency has asked us to make one last small change to the layout', was his comment. Below that I found a forwarded email with the details. I looked at the request and groaned. I would have to change all one hundred pages by hand for that. Those are the tasks you love. I could forget my plans to leave in time. It would probably even take until late at night.

With an Amiga, yeah, this would have been a piece of cake. I would have opened the web pages in GoldEd, and would have let it do the changes automatically, remote controlled by a quickly crafted ARexx script. With my Windows computer at work this was unthinkable. There was no possibility to control programs with a script language.

Oh, if only I had my Amiga here now, I thought to myself and sighed.

Then I remembered that I had installed an Amiga emulator on my work PC a few weeks earlier because I wanted to try it out. But that was just for fun. Now I have a job to do. Is that professional? Is it even possible to do that?

Why not! I transferred the web pages to the virtual Amiga hard disk, programmed an ARexx script and let GoldEd apply the changes. The plan worked. After less than an hour the change was completed.

So the Amiga saved the launch date. And I made it home in time." (dr)

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13.Dec.2022
Cloanto (ANF)

Cloanto: Amiga Forever and C64 Forever 10
Press release: December 12, 2022 - Cloanto released today version 10 of Amiga Forever and C64 Forever, the official Commodore/Amiga preservation, emulation and support suites for Windows.

The new editions are the result of almost two years of development since the previous major version 9. Cloanto's RetroPlatform framework is the result of a lot of effort to make Amiga and CBM 8-bit features and interfaces appear effortlessly unified. The two packages now encompass more than 700K lines of code written by Cloanto, integrating with a collaborative endeavour of emulation plugins and content preservation.

Before adding visible features, a priority of this version consisted in the removal of speed and space constraints. Some of the old barriers may have been out of sight before, but the result after upgrading is a satisfying sensation of increased freedom and power: the title editor opens and closes in an instant, large media files are handled with more ease, while windows and other elements that used to be fixed can now be resized. Content folders can be added anywhere under Amiga Files and CBM Files, while new personal playlists and improved content shortcuts offer more ways to rapidly access titles and folders stored on any disk.

Amiga Forever 10 includes direct support for FloppyBridge-compatible floppy drive and controller devices (e.g. DrawBridge, Greaseweazle, SuperCard Pro, Waffle). Whereas previous versions only supported floppy disk images, now physical floppy drives and disks can be accessed by the emulation. No additional software is required.

New and improved features:

Revamped Amiga Files: custom folders, subfolders and folder shortcuts can be added anywhere to better organize titles and to handle massive content collections
Improved player, including personal playlists, pervasive Rename, Cut, Copy and Paste commands, and intuitive resize of preview area and emulation window
Faster title editing and application responsiveness: quick opening and closing of the title editor (asynchronous content extraction, differential compression) and runtime optimizations when working with large media images
Direct support for FloppyBridge-compatible floppy drive and controller devices like the DrawBridge, Greaseweazle, SuperCard Pro and Waffle (drives work in Amiga emulation, no additional software required)
Hayes-compatible "internet modem" to access your favorite BBS systems
Improved Windows File Explorer and Search integration: enhanced thumbnail provider to preview screenshots and box shots, and new details in property handler to view and index RP9 title properties
Support for new features introduced in Windows 11 and Windows 10 versions up to 22H2
Hundreds of other new features and refinements

Amiga Explorer 10 has already been released a few days ago.

As always, we are grateful to the many friends who supported this project and our Amiga passion, vision and hope. Special thanks to Toni Wilen. Current and soon-to-be Amiga serial and print integration features would not have been possible without his help. (dr)

[News message: 13. Dec. 2022, 07:09] [Comments: 0]
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12.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 12 - 'Prince'
The Amiga-News.de Advent Calendar starts with 'Prince' and the twelfth door into the new week.

'Prince' is the founder of the demo group 'Phaze101' and an incredibly busy Amiga developer: he might be best known to our readers for his assembler coding course. Between 1994 and 1996, Fabio 'Randy' Ciucci, a member of the demo group RamJam, wrote the assembly programming course "Corso completo di programmazione assembler in due dischi". With Ciucci's permission, RamJam published this programming course as a book in 2016. 'Prince' is currently streaming this course in English on Twitch and then uploading the respective episodes to YouTube.

Almost in parallel, he recorded his 16-part Let's Make an Amiga Game Tutorial and also published it on YouTube. The resulting game "Mr Poo's Journey" is available on itch.io for a price that you can choose yourself.

Among other projects, he also regularly organises "Game Jams" with the aim of expanding knowledge and awareness about retro computers. Recently, for example, there was the Retro Trex Game Jam, which resulted in his version Dino Run or also DRex by another developer. The Racing Cars Game Jam will run until 31 January 2023. His anecdote:

"When I look at the source codes I wrote 30 years ago and more, I am totally fascinated. I love them! As a teenager, I didn't think twice about what I was writing! Mainly I had written demos and tools at that time, and I must confess that these source codes are often a mystery to me as well.

On the one hand, I realise how little I knew back then. On the other hand, I still somehow managed to get programmes to work. Some of these source codes were also written for experimental purposes. They contain all kinds of errors! Mistakes that I wouldn't make now. I have improved my programming skills over the years. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for my memory. On the contrary: sometimes I have the feeling that it is going steeply downhill!

There is one thing that is all over my sources back then that I can't remember. Most of the sources begin with comments that has something like this: "Dedicated to the one ______ I love".

Who was her, "the one I love" back then? Memory is playing tricks on me and this is something that didn't improve :)" (dr)

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12.Dec.2022 Demo tip: "Batman Rises"
It does not often happen that amiga-news.de publishes a recommendation for a demo, but this production of the Batman Group is more than worth it: "Batman Rises" ranked first on the Posadas 2022 Autumn Edition which took place last weekend and only requires an Amiga 500 with 1 MB RAM. Very impressive demo! (dr)

[News message: 12. Dec. 2022, 06:12] [Comments: 0]
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11.Dec.2022 Analogue Pocket: Amiga core V0.0.6 Alpha
The handheld game console Analogue Pocket (Wikipedia) is FPGA-based and as such supports modules from Nintendo, Sega, the PC Engine or the Atari Lynx.

The early version 0.0.6 Alpha of the Amiga core mentioned in our last news item has now been released: some interlaced games have been fixed, and the floppy controller speed has been increased. (dr)

[News message: 11. Dec. 2022, 15:09] [Comments: 0]
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11.Dec.2022

Aminet uploads until 10.12.2022
The following files have been added until 10.12.2022 to Aminet:

ign-AddOn-XLSX.lha       biz/spread 303K  OS4 ignition addon for access xls...
plm80.lha                dev/cross  273K  MOS C port of Intel's ISIS-II PLM80
HWP_XML.lha              dev/hwood  387K  ALL Hollywood plugin for parsing ...
Fussball-WM-2022.lha     docs/misc  11K       TurboCalc Spreadsheet WM-2022...
nblood.lha               game/shoot 1.0M  68k Blood Amiga Port
dMagnetic.lha            game/text  353K  MOS Interpreter for Magnetic Scro...
dvdauthor.lha            gfx/conv   1.8M  OS4 Set of tools for authoring a DVD
AmiArcadia.lha           misc/emu   4.6M  68k Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadiaMOS.lha        misc/emu   4.9M  MOS Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadia-OS4.lha       misc/emu   5.1M  OS4 Signetics-based machines emul...
ASE2019_2.0.lha          text/edit  188K  68k Text editor
avalanche.lha            util/arc   96K   OS4 ReAction unarchive GUI for xf...
aiostreams.lha           util/batch 228K      Stream video from major onlin...
png16_lib.lha            util/libs  235K  OS4 Shared library based on libpng16
HexSee.lha               util/misc  55K   68k Hex File Viewer
HexSee_OS4.lha           util/misc  336K  OS4 Hex File Viewer (OS4 version)
VATestprogram.zip        util/misc  2.7M  68k Versatile Amiga Test Program

(snx)

[News message: 11. Dec. 2022, 07:42] [Comments: 0]
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11.Dec.2022

OS4Depot uploads until 10.12.2022
The following files have been added until 10.12.2022 to OS4Depot:

libpsem.lha              dev/lib 176kb 4.0 POSIX semaphore implementation
libwprintf.lha           dev/lib 32kb  4.0 Wide char printf functions
glsnoop.lha              dev/uti 198kb 4.1 Trace and profile OGLES2 and W3D...
amiarcadia.lha           emu/gam 5Mb   4.0 Signetics-based machines emulator
fpcmines.lha             gam/puz 2Mb   4.0 A classical mine sweeper clone
lazsokoban.lha           gam/puz 1Mb   4.1 Clone of the classic Japanese pu...
pixman_lib.lha           lib/gra 315kb 4.0 Pixman-1 as an AmigaOS shared li...
png16_lib.lha            lib/gra 235kb 4.0 Shared library based on LibPNG16
hwp_xmlparser.lha        lib/hol 387kb 4.0 Hollywood plugin for parsing XML...
ign-addon-xlsx.lha       off/spr 303kb 4.1 Ignition addon for access xlsx-f...
avalanche.lha            uti/arc 96kb  4.1 Simple ReAction GUI for xadmaster
avalanche_ita.lha        uti/arc 5kb   4.0 Italian translation for Avalanche
hexsee.lha               uti/fil 336kb 4.1 Hex File Viewer
muiplot.lha              uti/sci 905kb 4.0 Simple function plotter
dvdauthor.lha            vid/con 2Mb   4.1 Set of tools for authoring a DVD
aiostreams.lha           vid/mis 228kb 4.1 Stream video from major online p...

(snx)

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11.Dec.2022

AROS Archives uploads until 10.12.2022
The following files have been added until 10.12.2022 to AROS Archives:

lazsokoban.i386-aros.lha     gam/puz 2Mb   Puzzle Game
multiview.i386-aros.zip      uti/wor 29kb  Utilities Viewer

(snx)

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11.Dec.2022

MorphOS-Storage uploads until 10.12.2022
The following files have been added until 10.12.2022 to MorphOS-Storage:

plm80_0.2.9x.lha          Development/Cross         C port of Intel's ISIS-...
HWP_XML_2.0.lha           Development/Hollywood/... The XML plugin allows H...
AmiArcadia_29.33.lha      Emulation                 A Signetics-based machi...
dMagnetic_0.34.lha        Games/Text                Interpreter for Magneti...
LazSokoban.lha            Games/Think               A Sokoban clone with skins
AIOStreams_1.7.6.lha      Network/Streaming         Stream online video fro...

(snx)

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11.Dec.2022

WHDLoad: New installers until 10.12.2022
Using WHDLoad, games, scene demos and intros by cracking groups, which were originally designed to run only from floppy disks, can be installed on harddisk. The following installers have been added until 10.12.2022:

2022-12-10 improved: Dragon Strike (Westwood/S.S.I) added joypad controls (Info)
2022-12-10 new: Cobra (Bytec) done by Psygore (Info)
2022-12-10 improved: The Settlers / Die Siedler (Blue Byte) intro bugs fixed, a slave for low memory config included (Info)
2022-12-06 improved: Cadaver (Imageworks/Bitmap Brothers) re-enabled 512k expansion memory (Info)

(snx)

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11.Dec.2022
Amigaworld.net (Forum) Video: Beth Richard disassembles an Amiga CD 1200 (English)
The CD 1200, which was only produced in a few copies as a prototype, was not only to equip an Amiga 1200 with an external CD-ROM drive, but also to ensure compatibility with Commodore's game console Amiga CD³².

In the video at the title link, Beth Richard, who was involved in its development as lead engineer, opens the specimen in the British Retro Computer Museum (amiga-news.de reported) - 28 years after she last saw a CD 1200. (snx)

[News message: 11. Dec. 2022, 07:41] [Comments: 0]
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11.Dec.2022
Amigaworld.net (Webseite) Print magazine: Boing #5 (French)
"Boing" is a French print magazine by Boing Attitude (among others Dir Me Up and Word Me Up XXL) for all Amiga systems and contains 52 A4 pages in colour.

The fifth issue contains among other things an interview with the musician of numerous Amiga titles Barry Leitch (e.g. Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, Silkworm) as well as reviews of THEA500 Mini and the Apollo Core R9 for the Vampire V4. (snx)

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11.Dec.2022
Amiga Future (Webseite) Java program: ham_convert 1.8.7
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 include bug fixes for resizing and an improved HAM8 output in non-CIE94 colour mode. (snx)

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11.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 11 - Alain Fontanin
For the third Advent and the eleventh door, we asked Alain Fontanin for an anecdote.

Alain and his text editor "Amiga Source Editor (2019)", of which he has recently released version 2.0, is on the one hand a wonderful example of how nostalgia and the "memory of the good old days" can give rise to active software development in the here and now, and on the other hand how the Amiga community can help each other and other readers and developers can advance projects through feedback.

In our introductory news item to the new edition of his editor almost exactly two years ago, Alain reported that development had originally begun in 1989. Then, when he watched the documentary "Viva Amiga" in 2019, he was reminded of what was for him a "wonderful time". Since he was no longer programming for his Mac, he decided to pick up where he left off in 1991 with the development of his text editor.

This was driven forward by feedback from our readers, especially in the early days, and now you can see the current state of his project for yourself. In an interview with Alain conducted by David Brunet (French Amiga magazine Obligement) you can learn more about him. Among other things, he has promised implementations for other Amiga systems.

We continue to keep our fingers crossed for his editor and now look forward to his anecdote:

"When Amiga-News.de proposed me to participate in this project, I found it very interesting. Then while thinking about what to tell, I was afraid of "Grandpa tell us the war", well kids sit down, grandpa will start the story!

I participated in only one professional development project on the Amiga, it was during my military service in an electronic squadron in 1992 (my military diploma says C programmer on PC and Amiga!). Why should I tell you about this?

Well, this is the only computer project in my career for which I could neither exchange with the users nor visualize the final result (security reasons). The project consisted in managing through an Amiga 2000, the display of the video network of the electronic operations center. I had to exchange on the specifications, the evolutions and the bugs with a non computer scientist correspondent, who did not have access to the operational center (!) and I had only an Amiga 500 with a color screen (whereas the display of the video network was monochrome).

The first deliveries were catastrophic: nothing worked properly, I was ashamed when I reported to the IT manager. I tried at first to improve my code (without success), before understanding that my salvation lay in the collaboration with the correspondent, I trained him in the use of the Amiga system, I fully integrated him in my development project. He was thus able to exchange more efficiently with the users and to give me reliable information.

Finally, in 6 months (part-time, because I was also developing on Windows 3.0), I had a functional product for my return to civilian life. What I learned from this experience is that it's not enough to be technically competent, you have to be able to interact with all the stakeholders and this is often the most complex thing for a developer to do. This has served me well since then!" (dr)

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11.Dec.2022 Motorola68k emulation: Emu68 graphics driver development
In his latest blog entry, developer Michal Schulz reports on the work he has started with the P96 VideoCore driver and in particular with the VPU (Vector Processing Unit).

In a short Video he demonstrates the VideoCore driver for the P96 RTG subsystem, which is somewhat accelerated thanks to the VPU unit, using a 2560x1440x32 screen with a moving window, loading a large JPG image in MultiView and scrolling the image in the rather large MultiView window on an Amiga 600.

Claude Schwarz, on the other hand, reports in a tweet that the PiStorm32-lite beta boards (amiga-news.de reported) have passed the smoke test and also boot as expected in the Amiga 1200. (dr)

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10.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 10 - Edgar Schwan
We start the weekend with the tenth door and Edgar Schwan.

Edgar has been developing his Unix environment for AmigaOS 4, called AmiCygnix (current version 1.6), tirelessly and with great dedication for many years: it is not an emulation, but all programs are compiled natively for AmigaOS 4. He started with this in 2006 with a pre-release version of X-Window, before the environment still called Cygnix followed a little later. With version 1.0 he renamed it AmiCygnix, as it was no longer compatible with its predecessors.

For his environment, he has not only ported numerous games, but also applications such as the mail client Sylpheed with very good IMAP4 support, the spreadsheet Gnumeric but above all the word processor AbiWord.

Besides, he has released native versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP.

In today's Advent calendar door, the developer describes his chequered history of hardware conquests and why and how he started programming:

"Actually, it was simply the fascination of being able to do something on the computer with a few commands or to create a usable programme. My programming career began with the C64. I still have my first book on it: "Programmieren in Maschinensprache mit dem Commodore-64" (publisher "Hofacker"). It was in the shop where I bought my C64. And yes - it had to be directly assembler! The whole thing was like cracking a puzzle. ;).

Even then, I was more concerned with user software. Among other things, I wrote a font editor and a programme for translating machine code into an executable programme. The highlight was a game called "Pailgame", which was voted programme of the month in the magazine "64er". I got 3000 DM for it - those were the days :) But Pailgame is the only programme I published. The idea for the game probably came to me at a meeting with like-minded people.

I don't remember exactly what I did with the money. I think I saved it and then invested it in my first Amiga, an Amiga 1000. It must have been around 1989. I bought it second-hand from a priest and it replaced my C64. I wasn't happy with it for long. There was simply too little you could do with it. After the A1000, there was an A2000 (bought second-hand again), which I could then really upgrade: A2630 Turbo, A2320 Flickerfixer, A2286 BridgeBoard, Multiface IO and whatnot. The A1000 then went to a friend. After Commodore went bankrupt, I got one of the last A4000Ds. Directly with a WarpEngine 040/33 with full memory expansion. For that, the Amiga 2000 was given away. Later I bought a CyberstormPPC 604e/233. At some point, I bought an A4000T (Escom) screwed together from leftover stock and bought it. That was real high-end :).

Unfortunately, I was still not happy with the performance. When the first AmigaOne-XE boards became available, I bought them straight away. That was a really fine thing. With this computer, I really started programming. The SDK for OS4 with gcc compiler was a bit different from the StormC I had used last time. Unfortunately the board did not last 2 years (not repairable) and thanks to Vesalia I got a SAM-440-Flex. With this computer I started using AmiCygnix. You can always use performance when compiling, so at some point it had to be a SAM-460ex and for a few years now an AmigaOne X5000.

The A4000T and the CyberStormPPC were sold at some point. Everything has to be paid for... I still have the A4000D today and it was also recapped. I hardly use it any more, but I still have my heart set on it. I also still have the SAM-440-Flex and the SAM-460ex as reserve systems.

As you can see: I'm very attached to the Amiga :)"

If you would like to try out Edgar's C64 game "Pailgame", the developer has kindly made the game available to us. If you do not have the original hardware, you can use a C64 emulator such as "Vice" or "Frodo".

Download: PAILGAME.D64.zip (7 KB). (dr)

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10.Dec.2022 Dock: QDock V1.39
At the end of October, Sami Vehmaa published the first version of his start bar "QDock" (amiga-news.de reported), which he continues to develop (YouTube video). In the update that has now been released, he has implemented various improvements: for example, the three rows of icons are now preloaded, which means that it can now be used better even at lower CPU/HDD speeds. The bar can be aligned on the left or in the centre and the last icon row used is saved. Likewise, you can now move icons between rows.

The tool is currently available for 2 euros or more. The originally high CPU requirements have been lowered so that the dock can also be used with a 68030 processor when the reflections are deactivated or with a 68060 when activated. In addition, AmigaOS 3.2 (the author could not test under AmigaOS 3.1), graphics card and 22 MB RAM are required. (dr)

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10.Dec.2022 Puzzle game: Update for "Wood Block Puzzle"
The Polish developer 'Tukinem' has written a conversion of the game Wood Block Puzzle (online variant) for Amiga in BlitzBasic 2 (amiga-news.de reported). In the small update that has now been released, he has fixed a bug that occurred when eliminating a horizontal and vertical line at the same time. (dr)

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10.Dec.2022 Jump'n Run: Minky V1.41
Minky (video) is a Jump'n Run in the style of Super Mario or Giana Sisters, which requires an Amiga 500 with one megabyte RAM (amiga-news.de reported). With the now released update to version 1.41, the selection "Joy Up" or "Joypad 2nd Fire" is available in the menu for jumping. In addition, there is now a WHDLoad installer and a separate Minky version for it. (dr)

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09.Dec.2022

ReAction-GUI for XAD: Avalanche 1.8 for AmigaOS 3 and 4
Chris Young has released version 1.8 of his ReAction-based graphical user interface Avalanche for the unarchiving system XAD, which also supports the xfdmaster.library and can search for viruses using the xvs.library. The developer has written his tool explicitly for AmigaOS 3.2, but has also been tested under AmigaOS 4. Since it uses a new window.class, it might not work with older OS3 versions. Changes:

Some very hefty internal changes!
Multiple windows supported internally. Limitations:

Commodities events only operate on the main (first) window
Does not spawn new process, so cannot use other windows whilst one is busy

Simple ARexx port added.
Config options moved to separate prefs window

Note the options to snapshot the current window and change the default destination are currently not available. They can still be manually set through tooltypes.

Config window

(dr)

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09.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 9 - Jérôme Senay
Jérôme 'Glames' Senay is the patron of our ninth advent calendar door.

He is the manager of and programmer for Boing Attitude and a few days ago could celebrate the tenth anniversary of the quiz game AskMeUp at the beginning of December, which was first available for Android, Windows and Linux, and shortly afterwards also for AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS and has been constantly expanded. To mark the occasion, the game is currently available at half price.

The story of Boing Attiutude and Glames - the nickname is borrowed from the hero of the game "Operation Stealth" and was the first video game he was able to finish - starts much earlier though: so he published an interview with Ben Hermans about AmigaOS 4.0 at the beginning of 2002 (still available and certainly interesting to read). In early 2008 he published the game "Word Me Up XXL" for AmigaOS 4 (and a little later also MorphOS), which combines arcade and puzzle elements.

Since 2021 he publishes the French print magazine BOING, of which the fifth issue was recently announced. By the way, with the publication of the magazine a friendly cooperation between him and Amiga-News began: so we are allowed to provide our German-speaking readers with translations of interesting interviews, for example with Mike Parent (Metro Siege) or the Apollo team. For this, as well as for your many years of commitment, a heartfelt thank you, Glames!

His thoughts on the Advent season:

"(Christmas)Time is running out !

Ahh Christmas! Family, friends, gifts... A good time in perspective! Well, unless you're a coder. Because yes, this event can quickly become a nightmare for us Amiga developers. How indeed not to offer on this occasion a gift to all the players and users of our games and applications?

Remember, some game publishers even made Christmas editions of their games! For example, Psygnosis and its "Christmas Lemmings" with its little creatures dressed as Santa Claus for the occasion but also its Christmas decorations with fireplaces, garlands, ... More recently, the most striking example is the game "Turbo Tomato" and its "Turbo Santa" which is even more than a special edition, a real new game that uses the engine of its model.

In short, you will understand, the pressure weighs heavily on the shoulders of developers, including those of operating systems. We have indeed become accustomed to having a new version of AmigaOS (3 or 4) or MorphOS every winter. Some teams even choose to only release one version per year, just before this family celebration day.

For me, the challenge gets harder every year! In 2008, I only had one game that could possibly receive an update, Word Me Up XXL on AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS. But since then I've added a few new games and apps and... Android and Windows as platforms. I chose not to make a Christmas version but rather to deliver a new update just before Santa's visit.

The first choice to be made is therefore to select the application or the game for which an update will be delivered at Christmas and this should not be done at the last moment to allow time to do this update. Real Cornelian choice! Sometimes in good years, I even managed to update several productions. But I have to admit that in recent years, I'm already happy when I manage to deliver one.

Last year (2021) almost saw no updates delivered by Boing Attitude. As you may know, I launched a magazine (in French) dedicated to the Amiga in the summer of 2021, BOING. And when I released issue #2 in October, I thought it would be great to have a number #3 just before Christmas. But what an idea! As a reminder, I am independent in IT, so I had my 8 hours to do with my main client at the moment, a smaller simultaneous project to manage for another client and... the writing and design of the magazine ! I worked more than 50 hours for 6 weeks, sometimes more than 60 hours or even 70 hours the week of wrapping up! But the hard work paid off and BOING #3 was released on December 16, just before Christmas. The bad news is that I couldn't update my apps or games...

Alright, I need to leave you! I have a Christmas update to prepare! ;)" (dr)

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08.Dec.2022 Blog: Review of the UltimatePPC Expansion Card
The blog "Amiga alive" not only presents own, partly older projects, but also reports about other software and hardware products. In the latest blog entry, the developer once again traces the development and the missed opportunities of the UltimatePPC board for Amiga 3000/4000 that was announced but never went into production. (dr)

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08.Dec.2022

AmigaOS 4.1: Update of Excel addon for spreadsheet ignition
With the release of the spreadsheet ignition 1.21, Achim Pankalla had also provided the xlsx-AddOn for reading MS-Excel files for the first time (amiga-news.de reported). For this he has released a small update to version 0.11 today:

now it handle "empty" marker
corrects two errors in shared formulas-handle
now changes %-values, that ignition handles they correct

(dr)

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08.Dec.2022 Video: Building a new Amiga 2000 - part 2
The YouTube channel "Casual Retro Gamer" (CRG) is dedicated to repairing and building retro hardware (amiga-news.de reported). The recently launched video series (part 1) shows how a new Amiga 2000 is assembled. The board used is the EATX form factor version reworked by developer 'jasonsbeer' (amiga-news.de reported). In the second part, the slots are installed and the bluster chip. It also deals with the keyboard and the case. (dr)

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08.Dec.2022

Advent Calendar: Door 8 - Daniel Müßener
For the 8th door of our Advent calendar, we were able to win Daniel 'Daytona675x' Müßener.

Who would like to play "Battle Squadron" again? :) Originally developed by Cope-com in 1989, the game was re-released for AmigaOS 4 (and iOS, Android, Windows, OS X) by the makers together with Daniel at the end of 2013.
At the end of 2015, a port of the game "Wings! Remastered Edition" for AmigaOS 4, AROS and MorphOS was announced and a first preview was published. A new demo version was then available at the beginning of 2020.

In addition, Daniel released the AmigaOS 4 version of the arcade shooter Tower 57, which was crowdfunded in the summer of 2015, in early 2018. Likewise for AmigaOS 4 on behalf of A-EON, he is developing the OpenGL ES 2 wrapper, first announced in 2016, which is part of the Enhancer software.

The developer is currently working on two projects: Atomic Bomberman Fan Rewrite is a revision of the eponymous Bomberman variant for Windows from 1997. The improvements include that it runs again on current Windows versions in addition to Amiga systems, USB input devices can be used, up to ten players can be active on one device and the game modes have been revised. There is also network support for online competitions. Version 2.15 is currently available on his website.

Finally, Daniel regularly informs about the development status of his football game in 3D optics, "Souverän Soccer", whose target platform is an Amiga 1200 in delivery condition, by means of preview videos. And quite "incidentally", his CV also includes the Amiga Future honorary offices of "translator" and "Gamescom man for everything"!

Thank you, Daniel, for your commitment to the Amiga and of course for your Advent story which now follows:

"It was neither during the contemplative Christmas season nor Easter, New Year's Eve or Carnival, although a corresponding overkill of red wine, eggnog or Kölsch would have been an explanation for my mental derangement, which I would like to tell you about now, my dear children.

Not so long ago it happened that I was desperately tinkering with the serial-link feature of my Amiga soccer game. It was already late at night and the rain was pattering on the office window, the sound of which could hardly be distinguished from the clicks of the maltreated keyboard.

Unfortunately, our Amiga's serial isn't something she can brag about. But if you stuff her slowly so that she can look at each bit three times and from all sides, then she can swallow'em just fine. The protocol for the game is very compact so as not to overwhelm the ladies. If initialized with the same random seed then the game is fully deterministic, the outcome only depends on the player-input sequence being applied over time. Therefore, it turns out that fortunately a meager 2 bytes per machine must be transmitted per frame. That's a good thing because there's not enough performance remaining for more, at least on a naked A1200 running "Souverän Soccer", where you're already at the extreme limit and absolutely must keep 50 fps with minimal latency.

Anyway, all joystick and key commands, implicit synchronization and error correction information are contained in these 2x2 bytes. But it was a rocky road until I got there, and the protocol's evolution consisted out of many repeating circles of trying out, crying and throwing away again. And of course, at the beginning there was a much simpler protocol.

First it was merely a proof-of-concept. For that Amiga #1 (let's call her "Santa") simply sent 1 byte with its current joystick bits to Amiga #2 ("Rudolph"). Rudolph, on the other hand, sent 2 bytes, namely his own joystick data and the last one received from Santa. Exactly this input pair was then used by both for the calculation of the next simulation step.

And here we are, back in that night outlined above. Team "Santa" and team "Rudolph" were finally about to show on the pitch what they had rehearsed in theory. But apparently our two minions were conspiring against me or some Poltergeist in the machine was involved:

If you moved Santa's active player, then Rudolph's focused player would also run in the same direction - and as if that wasn't wrong enough, they only did that on Rudolph's screen, on Santa's both player objects didn't move at all! And when you used the joystick attached to Rudolph, the same thing happened, only from his mirrored perspective!

That cannot happen! Every programmer knows this sentence well enough, but it has rarely been more appropriate than in this case. This behavior simply could not and should not occur, completely impossible! Nevertheless, it happened. But even after two more terribly long hours, all I managed to do was to make things even worse.

At one point I felt like Tom shredding up Jerry's diary. But before the poor Amigas or Competitions had to die an undeserved death, I preferred to pull the plug and leave my workbench with a shuffling gait and sagging shoulders towards bed.

But even there I was not allowed to rest: in my dreams I found myself in the middle of a storm on a greasy, sodden soccer field. With each flash of lightning, the outlines of spaghetti-code-text-fragments shimmered through the clouds, forming ludicrous sigils. Tens of thousands of morbidly bloated zeros and worm-like squirming ones cavorted in the grandstand. My ears were ringing not so much from the cracking thunder as from the deafening fan chants, which most closely resembled a C64 tape played on the stereo. After a moment of dizziness and disorientation, I realized I was standing in one of the two goals. Then a very sharply shot apple hit me at the skull! The shooter used my near knockout, followed up and converted the rebound all too confidently. The fact that all players were two-dimensional pixel men was not particularly remarkable. But what caught my eye were the team shirts: while my team's jersey featured a & ampersand, the opposing team showed a simple vertical line, much like a pipe symbol. But before I could wonder any further, I got a ball in the stomach - and another - and another. When I got my hands on the last one, I saw that it wasn't a classic football, but a green, round, shriveled something, which stared at me with two teary eyes and said with a grin: "Get up, stupid dad!".

After waking up in a sweat and stopping my daughter from continuing to bounce on my stomach, three things revealed themselves to me with absolute clarity:
Firstly, years of C64 and Amiga gaming definitely left some marks, secondly, children give you so much in return, and thirdly, there was something about those nasty pipe strokes and the ampersands, my subconscious had noticed something that had escaped the higher-level part.

All right, cat bath, coffee, morning stool, freshly back to work! And lo and behold, it took less than a minute to discover and correct the cause of the problem. So, what had happened?

Within the whole game logic there is a variable that stores various on/off states as bits. Among many other things, there's one bit indicating whether a serial link match is currently running and another one which determines if the respective Amiga acts as Santa in that case. Accordingly, there are locations where these bits are tested to decide which code path to take. In C this looks like this, where gf_Santa simply represents this specific bit:

if(gameplay_flags & gf_Santa) {
// Santa-stuff comes here
} else {
// Rudolph-stuff comes here
}

And right here a tiny but mean typo had crept in. Instead of this & (binary AND) there was a | (binary OR):

if(gameplay_flags | gf_Santa)

In contrast to the desired bit test, this is just crap, unfortunately syntactically completely legal crap which doesn't even trigger a compiler warning here. I could also have written if(true) here, the effect would have been the same, namely that only the Santa code was ever executed - even if running on a Rudolph :P This typo can only be explained with temporary mental derangement. To crown it all, as a programmer you are lazy by nature. Which is why this error had doubled because I had copied the wrong line to another place, so this quirk was in both the receive and the send logic.

Ultimately, this is what happened if you pushed Santa's joystick to the left:

Santa sends his joystick data, "to the left"
Rudolph sends his joystick data, "idle"
Santa wants to receive 2 bytes, but so far there is only 1, so nothing to do
Rudolph wants to receive 2 bytes, but so far there is only 1, so nothing to do
Santa sends his joystick data, "still to the left"
Rudolph sends his joystick data, "still idle"
Santa has now received 2 bytes and interprets them as "Player1: nothing, player2: nothing"
Rudolph now has 2 bytes and interprets them as "player1: to the left, player2: to the left"

Argh! Of course the whole serial-link construct didn't really work properly after the & correction, but the penny had dropped and a first test match was successfully held on the same day.

And the story's moral? Never underestimate your own routine-blindness and goofiness, stupid dad! Well then, good night, dear little children!" (dr)

[News message: 08. Dec. 2022, 04:15] [Comments: 1 - 08. Dec. 2022, 09:32]
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08.Dec.2022 RTG Solitare: Demo version of "Solitare match"
Sami Vehmaa has released a demo version of his graphics card Solitare conversion "Solitare match" (YouTube video), which is primarily intended for Amiga emulators or Apollo cards due to the high CPU requirements. The demo version contains five levels. Those who want to encourage the developer to continue working on his game can buy the game for around three Euros and currently receive ten of the intended 100 levels in return. (dr)

[News message: 08. Dec. 2022, 03:17] [Comments: 0]
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08.Dec.2022

Print/PDF magazine: Amiga Addict, issue 17
The seventeenth issue of the British magazine "Amiga Addict" is now available as a digital version for about 5.20 Euros. The printed version of the Christmas issue (from 15 December) including shipping costs about 11.50 euros. The current issue contains the following topics:

A free Xmas game made for us by Amiga Drawbridge genius Rob Smith
A pull out poster with suggestions on what you might want to play with the family when you've polished off Christmas dinner
Ravi reports back from the biggest Amiga event of the year, Amiga 37 in Germany
Reviews of brand new games Devil's Temple, Minky and None of Us
A look back on some classic Christmas games, like Fire and Ice and Xmas Lemmings
Getting animated with Cinema 4D in The Creative Revolution
Demoscene at Christmas with h0ffman
Special guests AmigaLove, Andrew Korn and Chris Winter tell us about their connection with the Amiga
And much much more!

(dr)

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07.Dec.2022

Amiga emulator for MacOS: vAmiga 2.2
After developer Dirk Hoffmann released the first beta version 2.2 of his Amiga emulator vAmiga for MacOS in mid-November (amiga-news.de reported), he has now released the final version 2.2. Changes:

Fixed a bug that caused the emulator to crash when a Copper list was viewed in RetroShell.
Fixed some minor GUI issues.
Cleaned up some code.

The minimum system requirement for the emulator is macOS 10.15. (dr)

[News message: 07. Dec. 2022, 19:56] [Comments: 0]
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07.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 7 - Christian Zigotzky
Door 7 of our advent calendar is filled by Christian 'xeno74' Zigotzky.

You could almost say: he is the fairy godmother for everything to do with Linux on PPC Amigas. However, his "amiga-news.de career" began with the port of SuperTuxKart to AmigaOS 4. In the following years, he diligently published not only new Linux kernel versions for the various PPC Amigas, but also entire Linux distributions: for example, Lubuntu 13.10 for Sam440ep at the end of 2013, openSUSE 13.2 for the AmigaOne X1000 in May 2015 or afew months ago Void 5.1 for AmigaOne X1000/X5000 (for which we published an installation guide). Recently, there have also been various game ports for Linux PowerPC, such as Billy Frontier.

Please read his advent anecdote:

How I joined A-EON...

It started quite harmlessly in 2010. I needed a cable and was looking for it in my boxes in the attic. I found the cable, but also my old Amiga 4000D in another box. To this day, I don't know what had driven me there, but I simply took the Amiga down to the flat. On my journey of discovery through various Amiga websites, I noticed that the development of hardware and software had continued and was on fire.

After buying an Indivision AGA MK1, I was able to start my A4000D (CPU Motorola 68040 with 25 MHz, 16 MB Fast-RAM) with a connected TFT monitor without any problems. I was totally impressed by the Indivision AGA MK1 because of the tapping of the data from the Lisa chip and the processing and output via VGA. It whetted my appetite for more.

As a Linux fan, I then installed Debian Linux 3.1r8 m68k on the 4000D (screenshot). Which worked so well that I always wanted to continue with Linux on the Amiga.

After a while, the desire to buy an Amiga 4000T arose. That was a dream that I didn't fulfil at the time. So I looked for advertisements and found someone who wanted to sell his A4000T. I went there and was totally disappointed about the condition of this A4000T.

But I had already heard about the X1000 at that time and was totally excited. Only the price put me off a little and availability was still a problem. However, a dealer had a used ACube Sam440ep-flex (trade fair exhibit) on offer. I thought, why don't I buy a more powerful and cheaper NG-Amiga instead of an expensive A4000T? So I took the plunge and bought it.

The Sam was just great, so I quickly forgot about the Amiga 4000T. I used OS4.1 with all my m68k games and suddenly didn't need my A4000D anymore. I also installed Linux (as befits a Linux fanatic) and was very happy with the result.

But I couldn't get the desire for the X1000 out of my head, and in a rush I ordered it at the end of 2012 and got it at the beginning of 2013. I used it just like the Sam and also installed Linux again (what else?).

I was super happy except with the hardware 3D acceleration under Linux. There were problems when I played SuperTuxKart, which frustrated me.

The problem was fixed in newer kernel versions but these were not yet available for the X1000. With the help of Markus, I was able to compile a new kernel that solved the problems. I then also released it.

After the release of another kernel, Trevor asked me if I would like to join the A-EON Linux support team. And so fate took its course, with visits to trade fairs and many new contacts to other Amiga enthusiasts. A development I wouldn't want to miss and which I hadn't expected.

Well, that's what happens when you look for a cable in the attic and rummage through the treasure chests. So think twice about looking in boxes of computer stuff in the basement or attic, because memories and dreams might be awakened. ;-)" (dr)

[News message: 07. Dec. 2022, 06:18] [Comments: 0]
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06.Dec.2022

Module player: NostalgicPlayer 1.9.0 for Windows
NostalgicPlayer is a program for playing Amiga music modules under Windows, based on APlayer. The development of the player had been started by the author Thomas Neumann in 1993 on the Amiga, later continued on BeOS and now on Windows (amiga-news.de reported).

Today, version 1.9.0 has been released, providing the following changes:

Several players show 0 as volume in the Sample Information window instead of 256.
The sub-song detection change in last version contained several bugs. The module could stop too early if you changed the position. When looping is on and the module loops, if you then stop the loop, the module ended the next time it changed its position. Also some modules timed out when the duration was calculated. All this should be fixed now.
The Unreal Music File loader was broken by a change a couple of versions ago, so the modules could not be loaded.
The piano visual did not show anything when opened while a module is playing. It only worked if already opened when a module starts.
Fixed a critical bug in the Spinning Square visualizer. When stopping or switching modules, there was a potentical risk for memory leaks or even a crash.
Added tooltips to the sample information window, so it is now possible to see what the different icons means.
Updated Krypton.Toolkit and Krypton.Navigator to version 70.22.11.312.
Updated libsidplayfp to version 2.4.0.
Added these new module formats: Game Music Creator, Quadra Composer, Delta Music 1.0, Delta Music 2.0.

An installation package can be found on Microsoft Store. (dr)

[News message: 06. Dec. 2022, 20:54] [Comments: 0]
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06.Dec.2022

AmigaOS 4.1: SDL 2.26.1 Release Candidate 1
At the end of October, Juha 'capehill' Niemimaki had published version 2.24.0 of the multimedia library SDL for AmigaOS 4.1 (amiga-news.de reported). The library is intended to make it easier for programmers to develop portable applications and is used by numerous open source games. SDL requires AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition and optionally OpenGL ES 2.0. Today he has published the first release candidate for version 2.26.1 inclusing the following Amiga specific changes:

Compile with GCC 11.2
Fix shaped window alpha bitmap creation
Enable virtual joysticks
Add a workaround for game controller detection (AmigaOS 4 GUIDs are unfortunately broken)
Add 2in1 game controller
Update installer: delete old libSDL2.so soft links

(dr)

[News message: 06. Dec. 2022, 20:40] [Comments: 0]
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06.Dec.2022

Programming language: Amiga C/C++ Visual Studio Code Extension 1.6.8
Bartman', member of the demo group 'Abyss', provides with 'amiga-debug' a 'Visual Studio Code' extension for "compiling, debugging and profiling Amiga C/C++ programs compiled by the bundled gcc 11.2 with the bundled WinUAE" (YouTube video). Today version 1.6.8 has been released. Changes:

NEW: update gcc to 12.2.0, binutils, GNU gdb (GDB) 13.0.50.20221127-git
FIX: WinUAE/FS-UAE: don't enable "Full stack frame tracking" (caused WinUAE to crash due to stack overflow in certain situations)
NEW: assembly: View memory for symbols in assembly
NEW: assembly: Support other Motorola assembly language providers
FIX: assembly: Cycle count was missing on last line of source
NEW: assembly: Cycle decoration improvements
FIX: assembly: Async parsing
CHG: disassembly: New CPU cycle count implementation with improved accuracy
NEW: disassembly: Tooltip improvements
NEW: debugger: Disassembled memory view
NEW: debugger: Add symbol offset labels to registers

(dr)

[News message: 06. Dec. 2022, 20:31] [Comments: 0]
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06.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 6 - Matthias Böcker
For St. Nicholas Day and the sixth door, Matthias 'UltraGelb' Böcker has something special for all MorphOS users: especially for our Advent calendar, he has written a wintry Screenblanker module.

Already in the early days of amiga-news.de Matthias was also in the headlines with his ingenious FTP client AmiTradeCenter (ATC): On March 27th 2000 we reported about his first prerelease of ATC. He continued to develop the client until version 1.4 from 2010. As an industrious developer especially for MorphOS he has published over the years for example the fun program ShapeShow, the digital clock ClockToy or from more recent times and also for AmigaOS 3 and 4 the utility for automatic updating of version, revision and build numbers RevFlex or the magnifier tool Lupe.

We say thank you for his commitment and of course for the nice surprise and hand over to Matthias:

"This is my contribution to the amiga-news.de advent calendar. In keeping with the festive theme, it is a screenblanker module for MorphOS that sprinkles the active screen with snowflakes that accumulate on windows and at the bottom of the screen.

Many thanks to the team of amiga-news.de for the good work! I wish all users a wonderful Advent season and a Merry Christmas! :-)"

Download: Snow.lha (55KB) (dr)

[News message: 06. Dec. 2022, 18:52] [Comments: 2 - 06. Dec. 2022, 20:12]
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06.Dec.2022

SCSI-SD adapter: ZuluSCSI firmware 1.1.5
ZuluSCSI is a new generation of file-based SCSI hard disk and CD-ROM drive emulators. ZuluSCSI emulates a SCSI-I or SCSI-2 hard disk using an SD memory card (amiga-news.de reported). Version 1.1.3 of the firmware was released today. Changes since 1.1.3:

Report proper termination on ZuluSCSI mini v1.0
Fix reporting time of firmware version
Dont show ROM drive log messages when platform has none - for ZuluSCSI V1.x boards
Add compressed file suffixes to exclusion list

(dr)

[News message: 06. Dec. 2022, 06:15] [Comments: 0]
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06.Dec.2022

Floppy emulator: GoFloppy
Andrew 'LinuxJedi' Hutchings had already reported about his new floppy emulator project "GoFloppy" on Twitter some time ago (Tweet 1, Tweet 2) and now also found the time to report about it in more detail on his blog: the "GoFloppy" drive is a floppy drive emulator, similar to "Gotek", in the form of a 3.5 inch floppy (short YouTube video), which uses the same FlashFloppy firmware.

However, when reverse-engineering the Gotek drive, the developer made some changes:

An SD card is used instead of a USB stick
A jog dial to control the device
A 1.3" OLED display
Much simpler hardware configuration (slide switch for drive ID selector for example)

There are many other internal differences too, but these do not affect users so much.

On his website Retro Supplies, he offers the GoFloppys for around 70 Euros plus shipping, but they usually sell out quickly, as they do currently. If they are no longer in stock, you can sign up for the list on the product page so that you will be notified as soon as new ones are available. (dr)

[News message: 06. Dec. 2022, 06:12] [Comments: 0]
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05.Dec.2022 Sokoban clone: LazSokoban for AROS, MorphOS and AmigaOS 4
During his work on the Pascal-based Lazarus Component Library (LCL) for AROS, in April 2016, Marcus 'ALB42' Sackrow had also tested some third-party LCL applications to compile for AROS. One of these was the Sokoban clone LazSokoban, written by Ukrainian programmer Vadim Vitomsky. Sackrow released an AROS version of this (amiga-news.de reported).

Now he has revised this version, backported the recent Halloween update of the game and compiled it with the latest LCL. Since this now also offers the possibility to compile programs for MorphOS and AmigaOS 4, the developer has provided versions for all three systems on his website. As he writes, it seems to work well except for a few missing button images. An implementation for AmigaOS 3 is also possible, but according to his tests it is much too slow. (dr)

[News message: 05. Dec. 2022, 20:37] [Comments: 0]
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05.Dec.2022

Advent Calendar: Door 5 - David Brunet
Our new Advent calendar week begins with the fifth door and David Brunet.
David Brunet is inextricably linked to his French AmigaOS and MorphOS magazine Obligement. The long history of this magazine starts in the mid-1990s: inspired by Christian, a friend at high school who owned an Amiga 1200, David switched from his Amiga 500 to this Amiga with hard disk and 68030 card.

Both were interested in word processing, graphics, etc. and exchanged documents created with Wordworth every week for fun. These documents were called "Obligement", a made-up word that came from one of their friends. This term, which basically means "obligatory", basically marked the birth of the magazine.

This gave rise to the idea of producing a printed Amiga magazine: the first issue left the "editorial office" on 1 January 1997. It was written with Wordworth 6 and the graphics were done with Personal Paint. It had 15 A4 pages, stapled by hand and all in colour, coming straight from Christian's printer.

As the circulation never exceeded 15 printed copies, David suggested that they discontinue the paper version (after six issues) and start a digital version produced with Scala. In the following years they then switched to Blitz Basic 2 or Blitz Basic 2 RTG and the AmigaGuide format. Obligement 37 (January/February 2003) was then the first issue in HTML.

From issue 51 onwards, the magazine exists as a direct online version. Due to time constraints, the magazine's articles were henceforth published directly on the Obligement page. The bimonthly issues were no longer produced, the magazine was from then on a purely online magazine. Instead of the traditional issues there is - and this is how we have known and reported on amiga-news.de for a very long time - a newsletter every two months to summarise new articles and updates.

Equipped with this rich history and wealth of experience, David shares a few tips on how to "successfully" run an Amiga project for such a long time. His contribution for the fifth door:

"There have been many Amiga volunteer projects in the past and some of them are still present, stronger than ever, like Obligement and Amiga-News.de. In this cold weather and with Christmas approaching, it is always comforting to see websites like these that do not let their readership down.

I have witnessed the end of almost all Amiga fanzines/magazines. Their demise has allowed me to increase my experience so that I don't do the same thing. There is no miracle formula to perpetuate a magazine in a voluntary activity. I can simply state these few points:

You should neither do too much (overwork is harmful)...
...nor do not do enough (you get used to doing nothing and in the end, you don't move forward).
You have to know how to surround yourself with a few reliable people.
You should not always do the same thing and vary the subjects/activities.
You have to be open to criticism while rejecting unconstructive negative judgments.
Don't forget that this is only a hobby.
Projects motivated only by money do not last in time, especially on the Amiga.

Believe in yourself and have a wonderful Advent and Christmas season!" (dr)

[News message: 05. Dec. 2022, 06:38] [Comments: 1 - 05. Dec. 2022, 09:37]
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05.Dec.2022

Aiostreams V1.7.6: Scripts for Streaming Twitch.tv and Mixer.com videos
George 'walkero' Sokianos has created Python scripts and bundled them in aiostreams ("All In One Streams") for viewers of the Amiga and other retro streams on Twitch.tv and Mixer.com, so that they can also watch the videos under AmigaOS 4, AmigaOS 3, MorphOS and AROS instead of on the PC.

Yesterday, version 1.7.6 was released. Changes:

Added

Added some extra info in the amigaguide file for the youtube script
Added pagination to youtube script with the new argument -p/--page

Changed

Updated the scripts to work with python3
Now the -x argument in youtube and twitch script prints out the extra info but doesn't start the video playback

Removed

Removed the skaitv, lbry and dlive scripts as they are not working and they need a rewrite

Download: aiostreams-v1.7.6.lha (228 KB) (dr)

[News message: 05. Dec. 2022, 05:27] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022

Text editor: Amiga Source Editor 2.0
At the end of 2020, author Alain Fontanin resumed the development that had originally started in 1989 by releasing Version 1.2 (2019) of his text editor "Amiga Source Editor" (ASE). The author continues to work on his editor and has now released version 2.0 (2019) with the following changes:

Integration of BOOPSI 'scrollbar' gadgets;
Possibility to number the lines
Possibility to define the default size and position of the document window
Possibility to define the scrolling speed with the wheel
Possibility to move one page with the wheel (CTRL key)
Optimization of 'Copy/Cut/Paste' functions
Integration of the 'Redo' functionality
Improved compatibility of ASE2019 with AROS
Added 'Count occurrences' function
Ability to repeat the last used menu item
Improved documentation

(dr)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 20:09] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022

Floppy disk images on PC and Mac: Greaseweazle Tools 1.4
Keir Fraser's "Greaseweazle" does - similar to Kryoflux - read the magnetic information on a floppy disk independently from the format used and saves as much information as possible to generate a so-called "Flux Level Image" in Supercard format (SCP), which enables reading and back-writing of copy-protected disks (amiga-news.de reported)

The adapter gets connected between a floppy disk drive - e.g. a standard 3.5" PC one - and a USB port of the PC or Mac. A few moments ago version 1.4 of the Greaseweazle Tools was released providing the following changes:

Read support for DIM, FDI, HDM, XDF, and D88 image formats: primarily used with Japanese computers
Renamed pc98.hd and pc98.dd formats to pc98.2hd and pc98.2dd
Fixed head count on pc98.2hd and pc98.2dd formats
Support pc98.2d format (used e.g. by PC-88 and X1)
Support pc98.2hs format (used primarily by late PC-98)

(dr)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 19:25] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022
Andreas Falkenhahn (ANF) Hollywood: XML-Plugin 2.0 and APK Compiler 4.3 released
Pressemitteilung: Airsoft Softwair, the hardest working men in code business, are proud to announce the immediate availability of version 2.0 of the XML plugin for Hollywood. This plugin, previously known as XML Parser, was one of the first Hollywood plugins and has now received a major update with many new features. The biggest new feature in version 2.0 of the Hollywood XML plugin is that you can now serialize Hollywood tables to XML documents with just a single function call. In the same way you can also deserialize XML documents to Hollywood tables with just a single function call. This is made possible by Hollywood 9's new serialization plugin interface which is why the XML plugin now requires at least Hollywood 9.0. Further new features include lots of new callbacks to handle advanced XML features like namespaces, entities, attlists, and more. Finally, the XML plugin now includes a comprehensive documentation that describes all features and contains many examples.

The plugin is now available for free download from the official Hollywood portal. Thanks to Hollywood's cross-platform plugin systemversions for AmigaOS3, AmigaOS4, MorphOS, WarpOS, AROS (x86), Linux (arm, ppc, x86, x64), macOS (ppc, x86, x64), Windows (x86, x64), Android and iOS are provided. Note that Hollywood 9 is strictly required by the XML plugin 2.0.

Besides, Hollywood APK Compiler 4.3 has just been released. This fixes a major bug that was introduced in version 4.2 so everybody using version 4.2 should definitely update. The update is provided free of charge for all existing APK Compiler customers and can be downloaded in the restricted download section. (dr)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 14:13] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022
Christian 'TheoTheoderich' Wiegel

Turn-based strategy: River update for "Settle the World"
Christian 'TheoTheoderich' Wiegel has released a river update for his turn-based building and trading game "Settle the World" - see detailed introduction on amiga-news.de (YouTube developer video).

Compared to the playable preview from the beginning of November (amiga-news.de reported) there are many improvements:

Rivers wind through the landscape and can be navigated by small sailing ships
There is a new terrain type that is good for planting tobacco
A button for unloading units from ships
The F1 key shows an overlay in the map and city view with the most important shortcuts and explanations of icons
Warnings when leaving a city, e.g. if no production has been set, or the city does not produce enough food
Dozens of bugfixes

As the author explains, the game is far from finished and this update is just another small step on the way to the full version.
You can load "Save-Slot 1" in the game and see what a slightly advanced game state looks like. Furthermore, the developer recommends to save frequently and to use different save-slots, because the game still contains a lot of bugs. Some of these bugs - such as units that suddenly appear twice - could be solved by saving and reloading. Also the game music would sometimes run too fast and can then be turned off and on again via the game options.

"Settle the World" is primarily intended as a duel between human opponents, but can also be played alone. The game requires 1 megabyte of ChipRAM and 4 megabytes of FastRAM, a hard disk and at least a 68020 processor. (dr)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 13:56] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022

Aminet uploads until 03.12.2022
The following files have been added until 03.12.2022 to Aminet:

apccomm.lha              comm/misc  196K  68k transfers files between Amiga...
brainfuck.lha            dev/lang   1K        "Urban, it's coming home!"
anaiis.lha               driver/oth 208K  68k ANAIIS USB Stack Release 1.22
F1GP2022Carset.lha       game/data  15K       2022 Carset for F1GP
AMCommand.lha            game/shoot 90K   68k Arcade Missile Command
pcexhumed.lha            game/shoot 674K  68k Exhumed / Powerslave Port
AmiArcadia.lha           misc/emu   4.6M  68k Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadiaMOS.lha        misc/emu   4.9M  MOS Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadia-OS4.lha       misc/emu   5.1M  OS4 Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiVms.lha               misc/emu   3.4M  68k Simulates OpenVMS commands
LN4Lv9.lha               mods/misc  3.1M      4ch LN4 Lv9 MED track by HKvalhe
SoftIEEE.lha             util/libs  57K   68k math lib&881/882 FPU emulator...
ScreenTime.lha           util/time  66K   68k Screen clock, configurable wi...

(snx)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 09:33] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022

OS4Depot uploads until 03.12.2022
The following files have been added until 03.12.2022 to OS4Depot:

amiarcadia.lha           emu/gam 5Mb   4.0 Signetics-based machines emulator
hode.lha                 gam/pla 2Mb   4.1 One of best cinematic platform v...
quickstarter.lha         uti/wor 322kb 4.0 Quick program start menu

(snx)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 09:33] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022

AROS Archives uploads until 03.12.2022
The following files have been added until 03.12.2022 to AROS Archives:

portable.lha                 dev/lan 13Mb  E Compiler
aros_one_x86.zip             uti/mis 232b  Aros One x86

(snx)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 09:33] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022

MorphOS-Storage uploads until 03.12.2022
The following files have been added until 03.12.2022 to MorphOS-Storage:

Iris_1.5.lha              Email                     New email client suppor...
AmiArcadia_29.32.lha      Emulation                 A Signetics-based machi...
BootClock_1.30r1.lha      Misc                      A little and easy progr...
Wayfarer_4.5.lha          Network/Web               Wayfarer is the latest ...

(snx)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 09:33] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022

WHDLoad: New installers until 03.12.2022
Using WHDLoad, games, scene demos and intros by cracking groups, which were originally designed to run only from floppy disks, can be installed on harddisk. The following installers have been added until 03.12.2022:

2022-12-03 fixed: Flashback (Delphine Software) chipmem size increased, color text in in holocub seq can be changed (Info)
2022-12-03 improved: Fate: Gates Of Dawn (reLINE) slave uses fastmem, mouse buttons delay patched, manual and solution added (Info)
2022-11-30 improved: Killing Cloud (Vektor Grafix) fixed a crash, added an option to speed up logo (Info)
2022-11-30 improved: Dogs of War (Elite Systems) supports another version (Info)
2022-11-29 improved: Kick Off 2: The Final Whistle (Anco) support for another version added (1.9f), minor problem in keyboard patch fixed, WHDLoad v17+ features used (Info)
2022-11-27 improved: Killing Cloud (Vektor Grafix) fixed keyboard fix (Info)
2022-11-27 new: Megademo (Brainstorm) done by StingRay (Info, Image, Image)

(snx)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 09:33] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022
ANF Analogue Pocket: Video shows Amiga core under development
The handheld game console Analogue Pocket (Wikipedia) is FPGA-based and as such supports modules from Nintendo, Sega, the PC Engine or the Atari Lynx.

According to a video at the title link, 'Ultra FP64' is working on the adaptation of an Amiga 500 core, which is currently still in the alpha stage. According to the developer on Twitter, he wants to release it as soon as he has added keyboard and mouse to the current joystick-only support, improved the speed and tidied up his program code. (snx)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 09:33] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022
ANF

AROS distribution: AROS One 1.9 (x86)
The distribution "AROS One", based on the AROS binary interface ABI v0, is now available in version 1.9 for x86 computers. It can be downloaded as a DVD ISO file or as a USB flash image at the title link, where video recordings can also be found.

In addition to updates to the included programs and games, this version of AROS One features visual additions such as a new "white" set of drawer icons that can be switched between and the updated "blue" one, a new background image for walkers, and various design "themes".

Changes in detail:

Update AROS One System

AROS One English Manual in PDF, GUIDE, HTM, DOC format
AROS One Italian Manual in PDF, GUIDE, HTM, DOC format
New "White" Folder Icon Set (to be installed)
Update "Blue" Folder Icon Set
Updated Application Icons Set (better quality)
Installer Icon Set White or Blue (Folder Extras)
Fix "DiskInfo"
i8042.hidd (fixes Touchpad problems on some PCs)
Update Dopus4 Config (add Mount/Eject ADF/DMS)
Dopus4 Preset Palette Skin (Gray,White)
Update Wanderer (add def_Icons Mount/Eject ADF/DMS)
Auto Mount from Icon ADF, DMS and IMG (MS-DOS Floppy) Image File
Auto Mount from Icon ISO CD/DVD Image File
Icon to install NTFS-Handler For Mount Disks or Partitions NTFS (Read and Write)
New Backdrop ArosOne created by "Damir"
Added Theme by "Damir" PixBlue (Tab resize)
Added Theme by "Damir" Pills (Tab resize)
Added Theme Style AfA OS
Shell-Color (Shell-Black, Shell-White)
CLS 1.0 (Compiled by me for AROS x86)
libglfw.i386-aros
libglew.i386-aros
Added RNOTunes.catalog (Italian)

Updated Apps

Amitube 1.3
PerciMan 0.7.5
Vim 8.2.4424
PintorWeb 3.20
BeeBase 1.0
uCommander
Murks IDE 0.6.1
WebpTools 1.2.4
UHCTools 1.6
HWP AVCodec 1.5
TextMio 0.2
AnimWebConverter 5.00
PortablE r6b
RNOEffects 1.4
RNOTunes 1.0
RNOInfoScreen 1.8
Image2PDF 1.2

Updated Games

SuperMarioWar
Beret
Gilbert
GianaReturn
SuperTux
SuperTux 2

(snx)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 09:33] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022
Puni (ANF) AmigaOS 4: Blog summary of November
For the month of November 'Puni' has again published a news summary in the areas of hard- and software for AmigaOS 4 at the title link. (snx)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 09:33] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022

Advent Calendar: Door 4 - The Apollo team
For the fourth door and thus for the second Advent, the Apollo team contributes an anecdote. Their approach of FPGA-based turbo cards for Amigas represented a new alternative in terms of upgrading aged hardware besides the accelerator boards carrying a real 680x0 processor. The history started with a presentation of a NatAmi developer board in 2008. Announced in 2011, there was a first stable running version of the Vampire 600 for the Amiga of the same name in 2013. In 2016, Vampire variants for the Amiga 500 and 2000 followed, all of which used the V2 Apollo core.

In 2017, development work was already underway on the Apollo V4 FPGA accelerator board, including a standalone variant. The following versions are currently available:

Apollo-V4 standalone
Apollo Firebird V4 for Amiga 500/A1000/A2000
Apollo Icedrake V4 for the Amiga 1200
Apollo Manticore V4 for the Amiga 600

Yesterday, Gunnar von Boehm announced an update of the Apollo core that provides 16 DMA Amiga audio channels instead of the four available on the standard Amiga. Each of the 16 channels provides stereo sound. In addition, one can position the sound from each individual channel to the left or right.

The anecdote for the fourth door written by the Apollo team:

"Back in the days of Silver core for V2, we used to put an Amiga video game character in the boot image. At that time, the war between the team TuKo "Simon the sorcerer is better than Monkey Island" and the team guibrush "Monkey Island is of course superior to Simon the sorcerer" already existed.

A discussion in the team took place to decide which character between Simon and guibrush should be used for, I believe the Silver 5 release (I'm not sure anymore if it was the 5 of the 6). In the end, as it was TuKo who was doing the releases, he decided to put Simon, against any democratic decision.

He was well punished, since this core was replaced in a few days by the next one because of a bug that made it unusable on several machines, which made it the core with the shortest lifespan in the history of the Vampire." (dr)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 08:13] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022
Dimitris Panokostas Mastodon client: Amidon in development
After the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, one or the other Amiga and retro enthusiast is thinking about either using the microblogging service only to a limited extent or, as for example announced by Jan Beta, leaving it altogether: either to set up his own website like him or, as for example Jens Schönfeld is thinking about using the alternative service Mastodon as well.

The author of the Amiga emulator Amiberry, Dimitris 'MiDWaN' Panokostas, not only already has his account there, he is also developing a client for AmigaOS 3. Currently he is using Hollywood for this, but he is thinking about using C as an alternative. So far the biggest problem is that the HTMLview MUI class on OS3 is old and buggy and does not work with MUI versions higher than 3.9.

If you would like to support the developer, then you can do that, for example, by buying him a coffee on his Ko-fi website. (dr)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 06:49] [Comments: 0]
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04.Dec.2022

Puzzle game: Wood Block Puzzle
The Polish developer 'Tukinem' - known among others for his platform game Ami-Tower or the farming simulation Farmiga - has written a conversion of the game Wood Block Puzzle (online variant) for Amiga in BlitzBasic:

In terms of design, the game is reminiscent of Tetris: full horizontal or vertical lines must be formed by means of the wooden blocks so that they disappear. However, the blocks do not fall from above, but are grabbed from the bottom player edge, but can not be rotated. (dr)

[News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 05:20] [Comments: 0]
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03.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 3 - Joerg van de Loo
For the third door of our advent calendar, developer Joerg van de Loo took a lot of time. His main Amiga-side project is the text editor BareED. Unlike other editors, BareED is a RAM-based and pixel-oriented (not character-oriented) text editor for the Amiga. This means it can display proportional fonts (characters can vary in width) and use real tabs. Also it supports syntax highlighting, which requires a fast CPU (68040 CPU or better).

Furthermore he writes tools like RTF-Riddle for converting RTF files into the HTML5 format. Always worth reading and of great help for other developers are his comments to various software news on amiga-news.de. A big thank you for that at this point. His anecdote for the third door:

Police - Friday, December 23, 1988

I arrived home late in the evening (at night!) after two weeks of work and immediately ask my girlfriend if she got the necessary cables to connect the monitor, because at the moment everything is only in black and white and also silently. At first, I had operated the Amiga on the TV, but now I am the proud owner of a 1084S monitor, but the accessory pack was not included...

She denies it, and my mother agrees that they both tried everything to get these cables in a hurry, but it was impossible. Bummer. I call a friend, who I know is still sitting in front of his Amiga late at night. He has these cables, but he can't spare them. Again crap. He gives me a phone number of an Amiga hardware developer with a store in the area - I should try there.

I can't sleep in today, it's the 24th of December - but not because I'm preparing for Christmas Eve, but because I can hardly sleep, as I'm racking my brains to find a way to connect the old 1084 S monitor to my A2000(B), because the right cables weren't included. I actually want to call the hardware developer at 7:00 am, but refrain from doing so until 9:00 am. A friendly woman's voice answers and I ask if they have these cables. She refers me to her son. He answers and points out that today is 24 December. Yes, yes, yes, I know. I ask if he has the cables he needs. "Of course," is his reply. My next question is when I could pick them up. He means on the 27th, his mother calls in and says they are closed until the beginning of January. Ouch. I'm about to hang up in frustration when he says he'll be in the shop for another hour. Hmmm, might well be a bit more than 40 kilometres - I could manage that. I agree to hurry and leave a little later.

My Opel Manta with its tuned engine and balloon tyres (but without the foxtail and wiggly wiggly!) doesn't mind this rainy weather, and neither do I, because as a frequent driver who works in southern Germany, I have to cope with completely different weather conditions. Here on the Lower Rhine, however, the drivers are apparently already overwhelmed by this rain. I'm just overtaking and set the guide speed to something above that of motorways. At a junction with a stop sign, I make it a priority eight-way road. Three kilometres further on, a lorry turns left into my subordinate road, so I ignore the stop sign and turn right. The 70 zone is quickly behind me and then it's just straight ahead - so I have to overtake all the time.

Then I am close to my destination and have to turn left. After fifty metres I stop on the right and take out the folding map (yep, there were no sat navs back then). I orientate myself - and it doesn't take long, because I've had a lot of practice at that. As I turn left, I suddenly see blue lights behind me - oh, police on duty - I'll just let them pass. So I put the indicator back and wait for the police car to pass me. 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds - nothing. I look in the rear-view mirror - they are now right behind me! Do they want something from me? I am not aware of any guilt!

A policeman gets out and immediately gets wet because of the rain. He knocks on the window and says "General vehicle inspection". Man, does this have to be now - I'm in a hurry. I open the window and he asks for my papers. I hand them over. He asks me if I know why they stopped me. I answer in the negative. He lectures me: excessive speed, inappropriate driving, running a stop sign twice and if they hadn't switched on the flashing lights, they would have lost the connection. Ouch.

He asks me if I hadn't seen the blue light. I again answer in the negative. I suddenly realise that I am threatened with a driving licence suspension and a fine without the policeman having to point it out to me. I get out - and get wet too. I explain to the policeman why I am in such a hurry - workplace southern Germany, primary residence Lower Rhine, computer, monitor, no matching cables, Christmas, shops closed, black and white, no sound - and all because of the missing accessory pack - and that the shop where I bought this monitor would not be able to supply the missing accessory pack until the middle of next January.

He tells me that this is no reason to disregard the traffic regulations. I point out that I can prove that I drive more than 110.000 kilometres a year and that I don't have any points in Flensburg (at that time this institution still existed), so that my current driving style would be an exception and I would realise that I had screwed up. He just says: "Wait here". He goes to the police car with the papers and gets in.

A short time later he comes back and opens the instruction with: "I have consulted with my colleague. Since today is Christmas Eve and you are reasonable, do you agree to a warning fine of 20 DM?". I can't believe my luck! Of course, I agree! I have already mentally parted with my "rag". I pay the 20 DM and listen to his instructions - although we both get soaking wet. He hands me my papers and wishes me a good trip and a Merry Christmas - I wish him the same, and I mean it! They turn around and I continue my journey.

Soaking wet, I press the bell of the private entrance. The mother of the hardware developer opens the door - and takes good care of me, handing me a towel to dry off. Then she leads me into the actual shop, which is closed today but where her son assembles electronic things. We get acquainted and he has already picked out the cables I need and laid them on the counter. As I look around, I discover floppy disk drives, memory cards and much more. We start talking and after a while, during which his mother interrupts us and urges us to leave, I leave the shop with the necessary cables and a 2 MB loaded 8 MB memory card as well as a second drive.

I drive back, deeply relaxed and looking forward to the coming Christmas. (dr)

[News message: 03. Dec. 2022, 14:24] [Comments: 1 - 03. Dec. 2022, 16:38]
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03.Dec.2022 Video: Building a new Amiga 2000 - part 1
The YouTube channel "Casual Retro Gamer" (CRG) is dedicated to repairing and building retro hardware (amiga-news.de reported). The recently launched video series shows how a new Amiga 2000 is assembled. The board used is the EATX form factor version reworked by developer 'jasonsbeer' (amiga-news.de reported). The chipset comes from a battery-damaged A500+. (dr)

[News message: 03. Dec. 2022, 05:58] [Comments: 0]
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02.Dec.2022
MorphZone (Forum) MorphOS: Web browser Wayfarer 4.5
Jacek 'jacadcaps' Piszczek has just released version 4.5 of his web browser Wayfarer for MorphOS including an updated libcURL to fix issues with HTTP/2

Download: wayfarer.lha (29 MB) (dr)

[News message: 02. Dec. 2022, 19:46] [Comments: 1 - 03. Dec. 2022, 20:13]
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02.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 2 - Daniel Jedlicka
Behind the second door with the initials "DJ" of our advent calendar, Daniel 'trixie' Jedlicka has prepared a story for us. The AmigaOS 4 developer is best known for his recently developed audio editor Rave, but he has been involved in AmigaOS 4 for much longer: He wrote some articles for OS4 Coding (for example about programming screens), published the English dictionary WordNet (latest version 3.5) and has taken over the development of ADRipper since 2015 (latest version 1.13).

In addition, he runs his blog Rear Window, where he not only publishes status updates on the development of his audio editor, but also far-reaching and very readable articles, for example recently about the Amiga37 or the question what motivates him as a developer. And here is his Advent Calendar anecdote:

"It’s the 3rd of August, the year is 1990, I’m seventeen years old and I’m sitting on a tour bus. My father and I are going back from Nuremberg in Germany. But make no mistake, we didn’t go sightseeing; in fact, we couldn’t care less about the city’s history, landmarks and tourist attractions.

The bus is fully loaded with all sorts of electronics. Eight months after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Western goods are still quite a rare sight in Czech shops. Tour operators are thriving because shopping trips like the one we’re returning from are extremely popular in the first year of freedom. The mood on the bus is upbeat. The most excited, and the loudest, is a group of hi-fi enthusiasts occupying the front seats: they just won’t stop their bickering about Sony, Panasonic and something called the Nakamichi Dragon. I don’t understand any of it.

Our bus stops at the state border. After a few minutes, a young Czech customs officer climbs onboard and asks: "Has anybody got anything to declare?"

His words are met with an awkward silence, the kind of silence that is supposed to mean "no".

He looks at the flood of boxes protruding from luggage racks and bags half-blocking the aisle. The lie is so bold and obvious that the officer needs some time to process it. He steps off the bus, taking our tour guide with him. I can see them standing beside the vehicle and talking about something with a lot of agitation. The guide is gesticulating wildly.

After a few minutes, the officer is back on the bus and we all know we’re in trouble. Row by row he moves along the aisle inspecting the cargo, and if a particular box looks too pricey to be dismissed, he commands the unlucky owner outside the bus, where other uniformed officers take it over. After a few minutes there’s already a small crowd. Through the window I can see them fumbling with passports, customs forms and banknotes.

The bus is almost half-empty and my dad is sweating profusely. We didn't account for this! We spent all of our money in Germany, so how on Earth are we now going to pay the customs fee, possibly even a hefty fine for not declaring our goods? It’s sure as eggs that we’ll return empty-handed because what we’ve bought will be retained or confiscated.

The officer approaches our seats. There’s no way we could pretend that the tall cardboard box painfully stuffed between me and dad doesn’t exist. The officer sets his eyes on me. I realize he’s practically my age, perhaps a little bit older, fresh out of school. He looks at the box and his thin lips read the word "Commodore" silently. He looks at me again.

And then he moves on. My dad starts breathing heavily as if he's just had a heart attack.

In about forty minutes the bus finally crosses the border. My Amiga story is about to begin." (dr)

[News message: 02. Dec. 2022, 06:01] [Comments: 2 - 03. Dec. 2022, 11:22]
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01.Dec.2022 CD32 adventure game: Wrong Way Back
Richard Perrin is a former indie game developer who wrote, among other things, the science fiction adventure game The White Chamber (Wikipedia entry). In his spare time, he continues to develop adventures for retro systems. As he explains to us, he never owned an Amiga growing up and was always envious of AMOS. So when he got the chance to make something for the Amiga using AMOS, he jumped at the chance: This is how his game "Wrong Way Back" for the CD32 came about, which he wrote entirely using the Amiga emulator FS-UAE.

He goes on to say that the game is more of an experiment than anything else, which is why it is so short. He wanted to create a game in which you are trapped in a room that is constantly changing. As a result, the style of play is also constantly changing. (dr)

[News message: 01. Dec. 2022, 06:54] [Comments: 0]
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01.Dec.2022

Advent Calendar: Door 1 - Achim Kern
Our Advent Calendar is opened by Achim Kern, who is known for various Hollywood applications with his label KeHo Software. Besides various games like Balloons or Mars Tank Attack, he mainly dedicates himself to his SmartHome project for the automation of his own four walls.
Here is his Advent story:

"It's 1981 and Achim and his buddy Martin - passionate electronics hobbyists - are competing to see who can build the best radio transmitter and the most powerful hi-fi amplifier (at that time, watts and distortion factor counted). As every year, they set out for Hobby & Elektronik on Stuttgart's Killesberg to get their hands on the latest hardware (transistors, kits, etc.). But this time, history was about to be made: Achim discovered a stand where a small black membrane keyboard was on display. This was capable of displaying numbers and letters on a small screen...! Achim and Martin had no idea what it was, what the point of it all was - but their curiosity and fascination was immediately aroused.

Problem: the part cost DM 398! And they didn't know what you could really do with it. Achim then decided to sacrifice his savings and bought the black box (ZX81 Computer). At home, the "magic box" was connected to Dad's black-and-white TV. Everyone gathered in front of the machine as he typed his first (BASIC) demo, like this:

A=5
B=5
PRINT A+B

His father asked dumbfounded: "Achim - and what is that supposed to bring?". He told him: "I don't know yet - but that is the future that is coming!

And as we can all see today: Achim had recognised the signs of the times correctly! And years later he became one of our most loyal AMIGA disciples. Achim's (KeHoSoftware) latest project, which all AMIGA fans can look forward to, is called "MERMAID AMICA" - free again - made with Hollywood - Hallelujah."

(dr)

[News message: 01. Dec. 2022, 06:34] [Comments: 1 - 01. Dec. 2022, 09:29]
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01.Dec.2022
John Girvin Arcade-Action: Turbo Santa Deluxe Edition 2022, Highscore competition
At the end of last year, Nivrig Games released the arcade action game "Turbo Santa" (YouTube video), which is based on Turbo Tomato he also wrote. Now he has released a Deluxe Edition 2022 of his Christmas game, which has been rebalanced and now also features an endless mode. Golden gifts bring additional points and bonuses for delivery.

Furthermore, like last year, there is a high score competition with prizes donated by Amiga Addict, Bitmap Soft, Geezer Games and Retro32. The six best Turbo Santa DX22 scores in endless mode and normal difficulty submitted between 1 and 24 December 2022 have the chance to win various prizes.

Finally, Santa Rocks by the same developer is also available again. (dr)

[News message: 01. Dec. 2022, 05:47] [Comments: 0]
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