24.Feb.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
|
Playable prototype: Castlevania clone 'Akumajou Dracula' (AGA)
'Akumajou Dracula' (Video) is going to be a port of Konami's NES action adventure Castlevania. The game is developed using the Scorpion Engine, a newly released prototype contains the entire first world right up to the end of level boss. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 24. Feb. 2022, 00:05] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
23.Feb.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
|
Music disk: Cheesy Listening
'Cheesy Listening' (Video) released by Alcatraz, Rebels & Offence is a traditional 'music disk' featuring 12 tracks and a total run-time of about 40 minutes. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 23. Feb. 2022, 23:44] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
23.Feb.2022
|
Game previews: New teaser videos for 'Boss Machine' (AGA) and 'Target Renegade'
Two previously announced games for the Amiga had new teaser videos released recently: The horizontally scrolling AGA Shoot'em Up 'Boss Machine' (Video) has been under development for two years now, it's inspired by the Genesis/MegaDrive title Thunder Force IV. 'Target Renegade' (Video) is written in BlitzBasic and is also a port of a classic game.
(cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 23. Feb. 2022, 23:38] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
23.Feb.2022
Twitter
|
CDXL video player: AGABlaster 0.9.90
AGABlaster plays Commodore's CDXL video format. According to the author, it uses a customized version of the CDXL format supporting the AGA chipset with 24 bit colors and variable length frames. Customized CDXL files can be generated with AGAConv. AGABlaster is written in 68K Assembly and runs on native Amiga hardware (no gfx card or sound card required). Changes of version 0.9.90:
- Added support for video playlists
- CDXL videos can be selected with ASL file requester (multi-select with 'shift')
- Jump between playlist videos with 'N'ext and 'P'revious
- Can be started from workbench icon now (AGABlaster.info)
- New playlist/video loop mode ('L' key to toggle loop mode, or command line option LOOP)
- Audio filter is off by default now and can be turned on/off with 'F'
- Optimized versions for 68000/20/30/40/60/80
(dr)
[News message: 23. Feb. 2022, 20:23] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
23.Feb.2022
Twitter
|
Aracade game: 'Green Beret' update
Green Beret is a conversion of Konami's arcade classic of the same name to the Amiga, written using the Scorpion Engine (amiga-news.de reported).
The recent update provides the following changes:
- Added the missing songs (Stage clear cut scene, and Game Over).
- consistent sound design as even player losing a life uses the music module (and its instruments)
- all music are now multi-song modules, meaning there will be no more in-game loading pauses to load the boss music, it's only changing music position which is instantaneous.
- there is some time for player to prepare before a new boss appears, it is not so sudden anymore.
- fixed enemies spawning out of thin air, specially on start of level 2. Score didn't reset if you beat the game and loop it. Some other fixes and improvements.
(dr)
[News message: 23. Feb. 2022, 05:41] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
23.Feb.2022
Daniel Müßener (Mail)
|
Preview video 26: Souverän Soccer
Daniel 'Daytona675x' Müßener (Wings Remastered, MiniGL4GL4ES, Tower 57) is working on a soccer game with 3D view called "Souverän Soccer" (amiga-news.de reported). According to the developer, "the game still runs on a standard A1200 without turbo card and without Fast RAM in PAL lowres with 50 frames per second."
In his 26. preview video he shows the following changes:
- The city skyline has been removed to make room for more crowd. The tons of previous optimizations made that possible. This has the additional benefit that I don't have to come up with 20+ different skylines for the release.
- The crowd now consists out of multiple layers, each of them zoomed, scrolled and animated seperately. For now there are three such crowd layers. Maybe I'll add even more (they are rather cheap in terms of performance and it's coded to be easily adjustable), but I think three is a pretty good amount.
- The crowd's zooming is now muuuuch (maybe I need more even more "u"s here) smoother than before. Was a bit tricky but eventually I managed to come up with a solution that doesn't eat up all Chip-RAM ;)
- The crowd is more colorful. Well, could be even more colorful but because it's a placeholder gfx I didn't put too much effort into it. Just a proof of concept.
- The formerly blank grey crowd stand is now an adboard. The ad is generated procedurally, the text can be changed at match start.
- The top goal is now lapping over into the grass and isn't cut-off anymore at the raster-line where the grass begins. This might look like not being a big deal but was really tough. The main reason is that once the copper is inside the grass area it's ultra-busy, all available instructions per line are already used up. But with the top-goal being inside the grass now I had to somehow get some extra sprite-color and -priority changes being done there, things that were done outside the grass before, because the top-goal sprites are being reused for the bottom-goal... Eventually I found a hacky way to get away almost for free without extra copper instructions by doing the color changes before for a different color bank and switch to the right bank at the right point en passant, phew.
- All lines and circles are more white now and distance fading is smoother here too. Also, the grass texels shine through those lines now, making it all appear much more natural.
- The crowd / skyline change also implied trashing and redoing the whole stats / message area at the top. All that stuff is now done using hardware-sprites. Was a bit messy because I have to reset and modify those sprites in mid of the crowd-copper-handling now (any other approach would have been even messier). Sprite usage is somewhat tricky here because, well, I don't have too many (5) and I need one for the high-flying ball, so there are 4 sprites remaining. Combined sprites to get 16 colors aren't an option, because I need at least 3 sprites inside the same vertical area (# of goals, time and messages); no, there's not enough room to move the messages down, because the goal is too close if zoomed in. So I ended up using two sprites for the team names + # of goals: one pretty slim one for the team-colors, the other for all the text and numbers. Then one sprite for the match time info. And then two for the messages, one of which is the reused slim team color sprite. The color gradient has been removed (would complicate the copper handling here a lot because we're inside the crowd handling, and the visual gain is questionable anyway), drop shadows have been added.
- Some more love has been put into the replay function. When switching between replay and normal play a quick curtain effect now better indicates this mode change. The crowd's animation is now slowed down too if in slow-motion replay mode.
(dr)
[News message: 23. Feb. 2022, 04:37] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
22.Feb.2022
|
MorphOS: PDF-Anzeiger 'SpeedPDF'
Recently Carsten Siegner had released the first public version of his Hollywood-written PDF viewer 'SpeedPDF', which handles meta information (title, subject, author etc.), hyperlinks and bookmarks among other things. Now version 1.1 is available adding other important features:
- Support encrypted pdf's
- Save and load settings
- Print pdf
- Export pages from pdf
- use cairo to display pdf
(dr)
[News message: 22. Feb. 2022, 06:26] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
22.Feb.2022
|
AmigaOS 4: FTP server 'ZitaFTP' 1.31
Hans de Ruiter has released version 1.31 of his commercial FTP server 'ZitaFTP'. He wrote:
"I'm pleased to announce that the first ZitaFTP Server update for 2022 is finally here! As usual, there are bug fixes and improvements. The big new feature is that you can now use proper signed SSL/TLS certificates, which is very useful when making ZitaFTP Server accessible over the internet.
If you're looking for free SSL certificates, I recommend ZeroSSL (affiliate link). Unlike LetsEncrypt, ZeroSSL allows you to create free certificates manually, so you don't need an ACME client in order to create certificates (which ZitaFTP doesn't have built in yet). So, you can generate a free certificate, and enable auto-renewal later, when ZitaFTP gains that ability. I plan to support both LetsEncrypt and ZeroSSL.
I was going to release a video showing how to set up ZitaFTP to be accessible over the internet instead of just your local network. However, I ran out of time, so that'll have to wait until later. I didn't want to delay this release any further.
The process of getting ZitaFTP online is pretty easy, at least on the ZitaFTP side. Configuring port-forwarding on your router may take a bit more work. Either way, you can download this update now."
A single license of 'ZitaFTP Server' costs around 47 euros. The program can be tested free of charge for 30 days. (dr)
[News message: 22. Feb. 2022, 05:40] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
21.Feb.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
|
Arcade conversions: Amidar500 and MsPacman 500, Preview video of Scramble 500
After his Pacman port released in September, Jean-François Fabre seems to have taken a liking to the conversion of old Aracde games: In the meantime, with Amidar500 (video) and MsPacman 500 (video) further Amiga versions of Pacman clones from the early eighties have been released.
Fabre's games are all available for free at itch.io, but it is possible to make a small donation to the developer before downloading. The Frenchman's current project is a port of the shoot'em-up classic Scramble, a preview video shows the current state of work.
Update: (24.02.22, 15:00, cg)
In the meantime, a new preview video of Scramble has been released. (cg) (Translation: dr)
[News message: 21. Feb. 2022, 17:17] [Comments: 1 - 24. Feb. 2022, 15:05]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
21.Feb.2022
Andreas Magerl (ANF)
|
Print magazine: Amiga Future, issue 155 - preview and excerpts
Previews and excerpts of Amiga Future 155 (March/April 2022) have been published today. This issue includes reviews of 'Attack of the PETSCII Robots' and 'Checkmate A1500' as well as a "Special" about AmigaOS 3.2.1. 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.
(cg)
[News message: 21. Feb. 2022, 15:55] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
21.Feb.2022
|
Commercial Jump'n Run: The Dream of Rowan 1.2
The Jump'n Run 'Dream of Rowan' (Video), originally released in 2017, was now updated to version 1.2 which improves the jump routine and "removes any CPU restrictions".
The game requires a harddisk, the ECS chipset, at least 1,9 MB free Chip RAM and Kickstart 3.x. It can be purchased for 10 Euros via itch.io. Owners of the original release of Dream of Rowan should have already received this update.
(cg)
[News message: 21. Feb. 2022, 00:38] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2022
Martina Hřebcová (Mail)
|
Detailed review (Czech): The Pegasos I from bPlan
In June last year Martina Hřebcová had published a detailed review and test on the Czech Amiga portal about the use of graphics cards under the Sam440ep-flex. Now she got her hands on a Pegasos I computer, which she not only reviews in detail (Czech), but also tries to exploit its performance as much as possible by overclocking and installing suitable graphics cards, memory and USB 2.0 card. (dr)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 15:48] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2022
|
Aminet uploads until 19.02.2022
The following files have been added until 19.02.2022 to Aminet:
AmiGemini.lha comm/net 127K 68k Gemini protocol browser
SteMarRegBlitzSources... dev/blitz 38K 21 Stefano Maria Regattin Bli...
HWP_Plananarama.lha dev/hwood 459K 68k Run Hollywood scripts on plan...
Rescue.lha game/actio 306K 68k Game. Rescue the Captive.
MCE.lha game/edit 3.3M 68k Multi-game Character Editor
MCE-MOS.lha game/edit 3.6M MOS Multi-game Character Editor
MCE-OS4.lha game/edit 3.8M OS4 Multi-game Character Editor
scummvm-1.7.0-rtg.lha game/misc 5.2M 68k Amiga RTG port of ScummVM 1.7.0
EXULT_RTG.lha game/role 49M 68k Amiga port of Ultima 7 (EXULT)
AmiDuke_RTG.lha game/shoot 543K 68k Amiga port of Duke Nukem 3D
AmiSpear_AGA.lha game/shoot 1.4M 68k Amiga port of Spear of Destiny
AmiWolf_AGA.lha game/shoot 1.4M 68k Amiga port of Wolfenstein 3D
BOOM_AGA.lha game/shoot 2.8M 68k Amiga port of BOOM (DOOM)
BOOM_RTG.lha game/shoot 2.8M 68k Amiga port of BOOM (DOOM)
FreeSynd_RTG.lha game/strat 2.9M 68k Amiga port of Syndicate (Free...
OpenDUNE_RTG.lha game/strat 275K 68k Amiga port of Dune 2 (OpenDUNE)
AmiVms.lha misc/emu 3.3M 68k Simulates OpenVMS commands
DOSBox_RTG.lha misc/emu 967K 68k Amiga port of DOSBox
Compute.lha misc/math 11K 68k Command line calculator
Vim_8.2-i386-aros.lha text/edit 12M x86 The ubiquitous text editor
Vim_8.2-ppc-amigaos.lha text/edit 14M OS4 The ubiquitous text editor
Vim_8.2-ppc-morphos.lha text/edit 13M MOS The ubiquitous text editor
aiostreams.lha util/batch 263K Stream video from major onlin...
bde64.i386-aros.lha util/conv 57K x86 Encode/decode file as base64
zmakebas.i386-aros.lha util/conv 150K x86 BASIC Text to ZX Spectrum/ZX8...
CDPlayer372p.lha util/libs 10K 68k Patch for 37.0 cdplayer.library
IconLib_46.4.lha util/libs 1.1M 68k free icon.library in optimize...
IdentifyDev.lha util/libs 67K 68k Identify hardware and more
IdentifyUsr.lha util/libs 92K 68k Identify hardware and more
ajoy2mouse.lha util/mouse 10K 68k Control mouse with analog joy...
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:01] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2022
|
OS4Depot uploads until 19.02.2022
The following files have been added until 19.02.2022 to OS4Depot:
arabic_console_device... dri/inp 3Mb 4.1 An arabic console device, line &...
hle-pokercard.lha gam/car 5Mb 4.0 Guess the next card to appear in...
mce.lha gam/uti 4Mb 4.0 Multi-game Character Editor
hwp_plananarama.lha lib/hol 459kb 4.0 Hollywood plugin for planar screen
amissl.lha lib/mis 6Mb 4.0 OpenSSL as an Amiga shared library
vim_mui.lha uti/tex 14Mb 4.1 The ubiquitous text editor
aiostreams.lha vid/mis 263kb 4.1 Stream video from major online p...
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2022
|
AROS Archives uploads until 19.02.2022
The following files have been added until 19.02.2022 to AROS Archives:
vim_8.2-i386-aros.lha dev/edi 12Mb The ubiquitous text editor
zmakebas.i386-aros.lha emu/uti 150kb BASIC Text to ZX Spectrum/ZX81 ....
hle-pokercard.lha gam/car 4Mb Guess the next card to appear in...
base64.i386-aros.lha uti/she 249kb Encode/decode file as base64
bde64.i386-aros.lha uti/tex 57kb Decode/encode base64
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2022
|
MorphOS-Storage uploads until 19.02.2022
The following files have been added until 19.02.2022 to MorphOS-Storage:
MCE_13.6.lha Games/Editor Multi-game Character Ed...
AIOstreams_1.7.3.lha Network/Streaming Stream online video fro...
Protracker_icons.lha System/Ambient/Icons Protracker Icons (Dual ...
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2022
|
WHDLoad: New installers until 19.02.2022
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 19.02.2022:
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2022
Amiga Future (website)
|
AmigaRemix: Further files added
AmigaRemix collects remixes of well-known soundtracks of Amiga games. Since our last news-item, the following mp3 files have been added:
- Campaign II - Intro
- Knulla-kuk (Moving On)
- John Madden Football
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2022
Amiga Future (website)
|
Do it yourself: Amiga 3000 daughterboard
At the title link, Ian Bremner has released the files for his recreation of the revision 9 daughterboard for the Amiga 3000. (snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2022
Amiga Future (website)
|
Do it yourself: Using PC floppy disk drives on Amiga with EZ-FD
Graham Thomson's EZ-FD is based on the same idea as Eyetech's EZ-DF0, which they used in their EZ-Tower cases for the Amiga 1200 to use standard PC floppy disk drives. At the title link he released the KiCAD files for the circuit board. (snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2022
Amiga Future (Webseite)
|
8/16-bit emulator for Mac OS and Linux: Clock Signal
Thomas Harte's Clock Signal is an emulator for various 8- and 16-bit platforms aiming to be invisible to the user. The idea is to simply start the source medium without configuring the emulator oneself. Clock Signal is available for Mac OS and Unix-compatible systems. While there is also an Amiga emulation included, it "remains wilfully inaccurate" for now. (snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Feb.2022
|
Video: The history of the Amiga 1000
In his eighth eposide on Commodore's history, the well-known Texan YouTuber The 8-Bit Guy has recorded a video explaining the Amiga 1000. (dr)
[News message: 19. Feb. 2022, 12:59] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
18.Feb.2022
|
Text adventure: Updates for Hibernated 1 (Director's Cut)
In mid-June 2021 we reported about the remake of the text adventure Hibernated 1 (Director's Cut), which was released for numerous platforms. In the meantime, several updates have been released, which also affect the Amiga version: Release 8 mainly corrected spelling errors, while Release 9 helped to improve the overall performance of the Amiga version, since it uses a new "Z-Machine Version 5"-enabled interpreter. The presumably last update 12, released three weeks ago, "fixes an issue with the PunyInform library that caused a few of the interpreters to throw warnings when playing, particuarly the Amiga and Atari ST version of the game." (dr)
[News message: 18. Feb. 2022, 09:23] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
18.Feb.2022
|
Fundraiser: Preserving Commodore documents
Two days ago Dave McMurtrie of the Commodore International Historical Society and Brian Bagnall, known for his books about Commodore's company history, started a fundraising campaign to finance the retrieval of Commodore documents from a basement archive in Toronto. Brian Bagnall writes about this:
"These documents were gathered in 1965 and contain information about Commodore’s co-founders, including three days of interviews with Manfred Kapp and five days with Jack Tramiel. There are corporate logs (called minute books) and financial documents that can uncover some strange paths the company took, such as a foray into the hotel business in the Bahamas, and the unique story behind Commodore Jamaica. And much more.
In 2020, both Dave McMurtrie of the Commodore International Historical Society and Brian Bagnall, author of Commodore: A Company on the Edge, independently requested documents from the archives. However, the archives were shut down due to the crisis and only reopened in late 2021. Now we have been able to jointly request scans of the documents, but it comes with a steep price. The examination interviews with Tramiel and Kapp amount to 570 pages. At over a dollar per page that the archivist charges, this adds up fast. We want to unearth more than just the examination interviews, we want the thousands of other pages of business records, financial documents, sworn testimony, and evidence.
What it comes down to is we need your help! The best way to preserve these documents before they are lost to time is to back them up digitally and disperse them across the Internet. We will upload the documents to the Internet Archive so they have a permanent and reliable repository for future generations to explore."
Accordingly, one page costs around one US dollar. The initiators had issued the goal of 2000 Canadian dollars, which was already exceeded yesterday with over 3000 donated dollars. Accordingly, Brian Bagnall wrote:
"Thanks to everyone for helping us reach our goal in a matter of hours! It was much more than Dave or myself expected. Today we submitted an order for the first batch of 570 pages of interviews and should see the scans within two weeks if all goes well. The next request is a list of documents drawn up by Dave that includes notes from Commodore Jamaica director's meetings, corporate minute books, and some other evidence from Commodore Drycopy in New York. What we find will help guide us to other documents we might want to request after that. With 314 boxes, I don't think the well of documents will run dry anytime soon." (dr)
[News message: 18. Feb. 2022, 06:20] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
| |
| Recent Discussions |
 |
|
|
|
| Latest Top-News |
|
|
|
|
| amiga-news.de |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
