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Archive 11/2024

30.Nov.2024

Dungeon crawler: Halloween X 1.10 (AGA)
Sami Vehmaa's dungeon crawler Halloween X (video) can be purchased for 5 USD at itch.io. The developer has released several updates since the initial release:

1.10: Demo had a text bug !
1.10: A general speed improvement !
1.09: Vampire autodetect removed, looks like different cores makes autodetect useless ;)
1.09: If music is not playing, hold L-SHIFT down and click game icon and hold it until menu is loaded.
1.09: key V in menu also prints v1.09 Tracker <> MTplayer
1.08: I have added kid/men difficulty mode , so men has added difficulty to prior version
1.08: I have also made it run on Vampire, this is un-official.. I don't guarantee it to work, tested with core 10400

Halloween X requires a fast AGA Amiga, a free demo version is available. (cg)

[News message: 30. Nov. 2024, 13:40] [Comments: 0]
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30.Nov.2024

Universal PCI driver system: OpenPCI 10.5 (Update)
Thomas 'Thor' Richter's universal PCI driver system "OpenPCI" supports all known PCI solutions for the Amiga without recourse to the software of the respective manufacturer. The current version 10.4 contains the following changes:

The algorithm for finding an address space window for the A1200 mediators has been changed. It no longer looks behind the last memory segment, but uses the largest hole from the 24bit limit up.
The installer script has been updated. It now checks whether the archive is corrupt, and also backs up the PCI-Configuration file if it existed.
PCIInit no longer checks whether the version of openpci is larger or equal than its own version. Version 3 of openpci is now sufficient since that version introduced the MMU initialization API.

Update: (01.12.2024, 16:00, cg)

Richter released version 10.5 today:

When tearing down the library due to an Expunge, the code trashed memory due to an incorrectly loaded memory.
When scanning for devices, the scan no longer stops after the first device of a multi-function device that claims not be of multi-function type.

(cg)

[News message: 30. Nov. 2024, 13:25] [Comments: 1 - 01. Dec. 2024, 16:10]
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30.Nov.2024 Amiga 500 keyboard as a USB device: Leonardo 1.2
"Amiga 500 Keyboard - Arduino Leonardo" is a further development of Amiga500-Keyboard, it transforms an Amiga 500 keyboard into a USB input device with the help of an Arduino Leonardo. Compared to its predecessor, it offers some new functions such as the recording of macros. The new version 1.2 also offers support for multimedia keys. (cg)

[News message: 30. Nov. 2024, 12:37] [Comments: 0]
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30.Nov.2024

AmiGameJam: Numerous new games introduced
The deadline for this year's edition of the AmiGameJam programming competition, which has the motto "The Sequel That Never Was", is just a few hours away: Participants are to develop a sequel to a classic Amiga game. A number of new titles have been presented in the last two days, and we are currently aware of a total of 15 games intended for the jam:

Tale of Evil (video) is the successor to Tower of Evil, which was also released this year. An ECS Amiga with one megabyte of RAM is required; additional graphics and music are integrated into the game when installed on a hard disk.

The vertically scrolling shooter Insanity Fight 2 (video) is described by the author as a "quick'n dirty prototype": development only started this month. Currently one level including the final boss has been implemented, the target platform is an Amiga with a 68000 (recommended: 68010) processor and one megabyte of RAM.

Peter Mackay's turn-based strategy game North And South Wars (video) is based on the US Civil War, but uses game mechanics inspired by Nintendo's Advance Wars. At least an A500 is required, the game is controlled entirely with the mouse.

Rintivoorh (video) is also still in the prototype stage, the only existing level does not yet have a final boss. The Hawkeye successor supports a second fire button and runs on any Amiga with at least one megabyte of RAM.

The puzzle game Master of Minefields (video) offers 10 different game modes and 350 levels. Originally developed for the CD32, the title currently runs on any PAL-AGA Amiga. Adaptations for NTSC and ECS/OCS computers are planned.

Unlike its predecessor, the arena shooter Extreme Violence 2 (video) supports four participants instead of just two. The programmer describes the development status as "fully playable but missing some polish, optimisation, and bug fixing.". The title, written in C, runs on any Amiga with one megabyte of RAM; if only 512 KB of chip RAM is available, the playing fields are slightly reduced in size. After several preview videos, the game is now also available for download.

The top-down racer Riviera '79 (video) is inspired by Sega's arcade classic Monaco GP. Two fire buttons are supported, the racer should run on any Amiga with 512 KB RAM, one megabyte is required when starting from the Workbench.

Previously known titles

The following competitors have already been presented in previous reports:

(cg)

[News message: 30. Nov. 2024, 11:03] [Comments: 0]
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29.Nov.2024

Asteroids-style dogfights: Hyper Wings 1.5
Christian Geldmann's “Hyper Wings” (Video) is a shooter developed in Assembler, in which two human or computer-controlled combatants fight each other with a control system borrowed from Asteroids. Version 1.5 fixes some bugs and also features the following changes:

new ingame music
new background graphics + a second background image when playing best of 5 mode. More gfx will follow in the next releases.
new sprite gfx: different space ships can be chosen. More will follow.
weapons: Enemy missiles can now be destroyed with own missiles.
2 disks: the game uses two disks now. This allows loading of data in the game. The additional 880k allows the usage of several background gfx, mod tunes and sprite gfx. The game supports using df0 or df1 for the 2nd disk.

Direct download link: hyperwings_v1.5.zip (539 KB) (cg)

[News message: 29. Nov. 2024, 16:17] [Comments: 0]
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29.Nov.2024
GitHub CLI command: sysvars V0.15.1
sysvars is a small CLI tool that creates several environment variables holding valuable system information (e.g. CPU and FPU, the chipset or Kickstart version). These variables can be used, for example, in the startup-sequence to enable/disable certain patches, assigns etc.

Version 0.15.1 again fixes errors in Vampire V2 detection. (dr)

[News message: 29. Nov. 2024, 09:04] [Comments: 0]
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29.Nov.2024 AmiGameJam candidate: Anguish
Successors to Amiga games are to be created as part of the AmiGameJam 2024 contest. 'lionagony', who previously worked on Silhouette Threat, has released his idea of a sequel to Agony for AGA Amigas.

The first level of "Anguish" (YouTube video) can currently be played. (dr)

[News message: 29. Nov. 2024, 08:57] [Comments: 0]
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29.Nov.2024 Video tutorial: Using the AMOS command "SCREEN OFFSET"
In another video in his tutorial series on AMOS Pro, retro and Amiga fan 'Yawning Angel' shows another way to scroll a screen vertically by using the SCREEN OFFSET command. (dr)

[News message: 29. Nov. 2024, 08:48] [Comments: 0]
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28.Nov.2024
OSnews (ANF) Linux PPC removes support for CHRP (e.g. Pegasos)
The maintainers of the PowerPC port of the Linux kernel are planning to remove support for CHRP ("Common Hardware Reference Platform") systems. The Pegasos/Pegasos 2 systems from bplan are among those affected. However, this change will have no effect on the PowerPC computers from Eyetech, ACube and A-EON: here the community has always been responsible for kernel adaptations. (cg)

[News message: 28. Nov. 2024, 21:58] [Comments: 0]
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28.Nov.2024 Preview videos: Beat'em up "Last Battle 2" , Shoot'em Up "Galactic Plague"
Two developers provide a first insight into the status of their projects developed with the Scorpion Engine by publishing videos showing some gameplay:

Last Battle 2 is to be a beat'em up which sees itself as an unofficial successor to the Sega classic "Last Battle", which was also ported to the Amiga.

Galactic Plague is a vertically scrolling shooter that the designer originally wanted to develop with the Shoot'em Up Construction Kit before deciding to use a more modern platform due to its limitations and instability. (cg)

[News message: 28. Nov. 2024, 21:46] [Comments: 0]
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28.Nov.2024
spillhistorie.no (ANF) Interview: The story of Twintris
The blog “Spillhistory” spoke to programmer Svein Berge about his Tetris clone Twintris, which was first published by Digital Marketing in 1990 and then distributed on various magazine disks in 1991. (cg)

[News message: 28. Nov. 2024, 21:40] [Comments: 0]
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28.Nov.2024
Dimitris 'MiDWaN' Panokostas

Amiga emulator: Amiberry V7.0.0-RC1
Amiberry is an Amiga emulator for ARM-based single-chip systems such as the Raspberry Pi, the Odroid XU4 or the Tinkerboard from ASUS, which comes with some newly developed features such as a "WHDLoad-Booter" or support for controller configuration using RetroArch and is used, for example, in the AmiKit workbench distribution for the Raspberry Pi 4/400. A modified version of Amiberry is also the basis for the THEA500 Mini.

The current release candidate ("RC") of version 7.0.0 is not recommended for weaker systems, for which an update of "Amiberry-Lite" will be provided shortly. The changes in detail:

Amiberry is now delivered as a package, instead of just an archive with binaries. This also means that you don't have to manually install the dependencies, before you can run it (the package will take care of that for you automatically). For Debian or Ubuntu based systems there's a .DEB package, for Fedora there's RPM and for macOS users, there are DMG images that can be used. You can now install Amiberry by downloading the archive, extracting it, and doing something like sudo apt install ./amiberry-XYZ.deb (for DEB). Upgrading to a newer version becomes as simple as installing it on top again. Uninstalling it is simple as well (sudo apt remove amiberry) and it will clean up the dependencies after it. Check the main README for instructions per platform.

The directory structure handling has changed. Amiberry will not install itself into standard locations, placing shared libraries where they are expected in the system, and will use the user's HOME folder to create an Amiberry directory, if it doesn't exist. That will contain the user-configurable stuff, like directories for Floppy images, Harddrives, Configurations etc. Meanwhile, internal directories are placed elsewhere, to reduce clutter. Check the Wiki for more details: https://github.com/BlitterStudio/amiberry/wiki/Amiberry-directories

The MacOS binaries are finally signed with an Apple-recognized developer certificate, and they are notarized. This means you no longer have to manually bypass the system's security, to allow it to run. You can just drag and drop it to your Applications and start it up like any other downloaded App. You'll only get a warning that this was downloaded from the Internet, as expected.

Hi-DPI support has been added, so if you're running this on Linux with scaling enabled, or macOS Retina displays, things should look better now.Integer scaling has been added and improved. Check the wiki for more details on this as well.Serial port support has been fixed, as it was broken for some versions now.GUI Themes have been implemented, so you can now customize the color scheme.The whole list of Expansions from WinUAE have been implemented, including PPC, PCI, DSP, custom graphics cards, network cards, SCSI controllers, etc. The Expansion panel was refactored significantly, but the functionality is trying to match the same one from WinUAE, to make things easier between the two emulators. (cg)

[News message: 28. Nov. 2024, 21:35] [Comments: 0]
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28.Nov.2024 Windows: py-guide-viewer displays AmigaGuide documents
py-guide-viewer is an extended AmigaGuide viewer written in Python. The program is compiled for Windows, it also offers some features that the Amiga originals do not offer: Images, sounds and pieces of music - in modern file formats - can be embedded in the text file using UUencode and displayed or played within the guide pages. The py-guide-viewer also supports emojis, the text-based original symbols are replaced by small graphics. (cg)

[News message: 28. Nov. 2024, 21:21] [Comments: 0]
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