amiga-news.de - Archive

Archive 02/2022

`25.Feb.2022`	Kickstarter campaign: Bluetooth remake of Amiga mouse The Polish designer Lukas Remis has started a Kickstarter campaign for a wireless remaking of the Commodore Maus 1352. His 'Tank Mouse' is outwardly based on the original, but incorporates modern technology: the Tank Mouse is a wireless optical mouse that has been given a touch panel between the two buttons for scrolling. It works with Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz and can also be used with the Amiga computer. A small USB receiver is to be included in the package for this purpose. A prototype has already been built in cooperation with a renowned electronics manufacturer, extensively tested and is now ready for mass production. The specifications: Colour: Black or white Sensor type: Optical Connectivity: Wireless, 2.4 GHz & Bluetooth 5.0 Resolution: 1600 DPI Buttons: 2 Scrolling: Touch scrolling area Power: 2 x AAA batteries Size: 108 x 67 x 31 mm Compatibility: Amiga OS, Windows, MacOS, Linux One of the main goals of the project was to be able to run the Tank Mouse together with an Amiga. This requires a USB to DB9 adapter such as the RYS MKII (supports scrolling) or Lotharek's mouse adapter to connect the wireless receiver (included with the mouse) to the Amiga. The project goal has been set at 78,000 Euros, of which around 21,000 Euros have already been funded. Should 150% of the sum be reached, a native wireless DB9 receiver will be developed, manufactured and added to each Tank Mouse. The minimum donation amount is 31 euros. If the funding is successful, the mouse would be produced and delivered by November 2022 (plus 8 Euro shipping). (dr) [News message: 25. Feb. 2022, 06:49] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`25.Feb.2022` Indie Retro News (Webseite)	Preview videos: Jump'n Run 'Maria Renard's Revenge', Beat'em Up 'Double Dragon' 'Maria Renard's Revenge' (Video) is a Jump'n Run inspired by Castlevania, is developed using the Scorpion Engine. It comes from the same team that has announced a remake of 'Rick Dangerous' recently. The Beat'em Up 'Double Dragon' (Video) is also done with the Scorpion Engine. It's a port of Taito's Arcade classic from 1987, which is aiming to be a better Amiga conversion than the official Amiga port from 1989. (cg) (Translation: cg) [News message: 25. Feb. 2022, 00:37] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`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]

<- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ->