amiga-news.de - Archive

Archive 10/2023

`03.Oct.2023`	Introduction: The AMOS game "The Gate" (in development) For quite some time now, we have been reporting on Fabio 'Allanon' Falcucci's projects such as the Hollywood GUI system HGUI or the Hollywood utility APPBuilder. After G.E.M.Z., the programmer has now again started writing a game, which he has given the provisional name "The Gate" and is being written with AMOS Professional and AMCAF & Turbo extensions. We asked Fabio to write something about himself, his development history and that of the new action adventure. Thank you very much, Fabio! "I grew up with the Commodore 64, the mighty C64! This magic box is responsible to have opened my mind to the world of programming, first with it's embedded basic, and then with the incredible Simon's Basic, and I've to say that it was a blessing for my life :) I still remember when it happened: I was playing with a game and after a while that game crashed reporting a line number error, so I listed the program and I saw all these amazing commands! So what I was doing was to load that game, make it crash and use the Simon's Basic to create my own programs :D At that time there was no Internet, you had to guess and think to learn stuff, or buy magazines! While having fun with the C64, and later an Amiga 500, I've also faced the dark side at school, where we had an Olivetti M24 we were using to code with GW-Basic. But the Amiga was on another planet, I have a debt with the Amiga 500 because it unleashed my creativity, and I'm now what I am because of this wonderful machine: I started to code seriously on it, learned assembler, started to think logically, composed several tracks with every musical software available at that time and I learned so much that it's impossible to list them all here. The last step on the Commodore adventure was to upgrade to an Amiga 1200 (that I still have and I still love), and along with the Amiga 500, it has signed my life forever starting to code seriously with AMOS and BlitzBasic. Time passed, and I bought a PC, and then another, and then another... while the Amiga 1200 was watching me without saying a word :) After the school I worked as accountant since my school graduation was "programmer-accountant" but being an accountant is soooo boring! I created many VBA (Visual Basic) programs for the companies I worked for and learned modern programming concepts like OOP (Object Oriented Programming). For a brief period of time I tried the Amiga NG world buying a SAM440ep... well, I was completely confused about this product, I didn't feel at home, and my Amiga 1200 was still there, staring at me, and waiting for my return. After a couple of years I sold the SAM and all my attention was focused into the emulation with WinUAE, when another spark hit my head: Hollywood by Andreas Falkenhahn. I will not describe how good is Hollywood and how many features it has, instead I'll only say that I felt at home with it since when I discovered it I was seriously programming with LUA (Hollywood is based on LUA and has many similarities with it). I started to code with Hollywood and I ended up building very big projects like HGui (an almost complete GUI tool kit written completely in Hollywood without any plugin) and several libraries, simple Hollywood includes, published on my GitHub. Now I'm a freelance programmer and I'm still using Hollywood for some jobs since this amazing language can compile for almost any machine in the world. But something was still missing: since Hollywood is not a viable option for old Amigas I tried experimenting with several languages and I ended up with AMOS Pro, my first love :) I've started to remember it and I started to experiment with it, and a couple of ideas for possible games was born. I always wanted to create something good for the computer that has signed my life, so I started, once again, to code with AMOS Pro. The project I'm working on in these days is called "The Gate" (temporary name) and I'm trying to create a mix between "Impossible Mission" and "Project Firestart" with my own ideas and concepts with (at least for me) nice results. I've chosen AMOS Pro instead of Blitz for a matter of available free time, I tried to remember Blitz but, well, AMOS memories was still alive in my head :) We are all aware that Blitz is faster, but way more complex than AMOS, but AMOS Pro has a more familiar editor and there are no time critical requirements for the projects I would like to create, so AMOS was a good choice for me. At this time I'm adding features trying to optimize the code as much as I can, I'm trying to target stock Amiga 1200, but I'm still experimenting because I need to know how far can I go with the logic: I'm still too used with modern programming languages and without CPU restrictions, but with this project every single CPU cycle counts! Here is a brief description of the main idea: the player is a detective investigating into an huge building, the building is composed by maps connected each other by doors. In every map there are rooms where you can find hints about your investigations, items, terminals you can interact with and of course enemies and NPC you can talk to. The player control the main character using the keyboard and the mouse, with the keyboard you can move around the main character (w-a-s-d keys) and jump, he can also perform actions (space key) using a special action menu. The mouse is used to aim and shoot (left mouse button) and/or use a secondary item (right mouse button). Keyboards controls are configurable. I'm planning to add persistence to the maps: you shoot into the walls and the bullet holes are persistent, you destroy a furniture and the furniture is still destroyed when you enter again on that map, and so on. I have so many ideas, but as I said earlier, I need to determine exactly how far can I go :) Technically I'm using big images as maps, the one I'm using for testing is 960x600 pixels and the scrolling is achieved using hardware offsets since the cpu cost is almost zero. I've tried using tiles but after having achieved a very smooth multidirectional scrolling I was in trouble with all the stuff I wanted to implement so I've chosen the more-memory-used & less-cpu-used road. The graphics for the main map screen is 64 colors EHB mode, Lowres and I have built a palette that is studied to make use of special effects like darkening & brightening stuff, and I will be very honest: I got a huge boost to my motivation from the videos published by BitBeamCannon where they have explained some advanced technics used while prototyping their new game "Daemon Claw" on the Amiga. Right now results seems promising, the latest test I did was with the map I mentioned above had the player (that is already able to move, shoot and jump), fully working collisions with the walls, and 5 animated doors (all of them animated, of course during opening/closing, but also when they are closed or opened). The action-menu has been implemented and the main character is now able to interact with doors. The graphics are not mine but I bought some assets from itch.io and I give credit to the authors when the project will be completed, I only remapped the colors and changed some frames to my own personal taste :) I will do the soundtrack, that's for sure :P To finish this very long wall of text here are the biggest obstacles, I've encountered when I decided to start these projects: Missing so much OOP, working with arrays instead of objects was a nightmare at the beginning of this adventure. Trying to remember how to create smooth scrolling & animations Trying to figure out how AMAL worked Well, now that my memories are back and that I was able to collect several manuals from Internet I can go on a see how this adventure will end up." You can get an impression of the current state of the game from a small video that the author attached to one of his last Mastodon posts. On his Patreon page, you can support the author and thank him for past and future projects. (dr) [News message: 03. Oct. 2023, 15:25] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`03.Oct.2023`	Event: Amiga Ireland 2024 The next Amiga Ireland will take place on 19/20 January 2024. The venue for the meeting, which is regularly attended by more prominent members of the Amiga community, is as usual the Sheraton Hotel in the town of Athlone, located in the heart of the island. Tickets can already be purchased at the title link. The coming Amiga Ireland is to be much more relaxed in terms of the schedule: so there will be neither an "official" dinner nor a main guest. This should leave more time for workshops and games. (dr) [News message: 03. Oct. 2023, 07:05] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`02.Oct.2023`	Introduction: Research project "CH LUDENS" "Confoederatio Ludens", or "CH LUDENS" for short, is a joint project of the two universities of Bern and the universities of Lausanne and Zurich that began in February 2023 and is intended to research Swiss games culture in the period from 1969 to 2000 by 2027. The name of the project is based on the Latin name of Switzerland, Confoederatio Helvetica, whereby Helvetica has been replaced by the Latvian word for "to play", ludere, or its participle present active form, ludens. Among other things, the thesis will be explored that new technologies are always met through playful approaches and that there are pretty much more games and game culture around the introduction of digitality than we are aware of and know. However, these have often been dismissed as children's or hobby stuff. For decades, digital games were programmed in Switzerland in niches, but also with commercial success. They bear witness to many sub-scenes and a society that is changing due to digitalisation. The Confoederatio Ludens team explores this largely disregarded games industry and takes a step towards the broader preservation of a highly ephemeral and disappearing cultural heritage. An existing project has already done some preliminary work for this: Swiss Games Garden has taken on the task of listing all computer games originating in Switzerland. As far as the Amiga is concerned, one of the best-known games is certainly Traps'n'Treasures. Now Adrian Demleitner, a member of the research group, has thought about how to deal with video games on floppy disks as research material, using the Amiga as an example in a blog entry. To this end, as he writes on Mastodon, he had first procured a complete Amiga 500 set, including some common joysticks, a mouse, a Commodore 1084 monitor and dozens of floppy disks. In a sense, this brought Adrian full circle, as he had grown up with an Amiga 500. In his dossier, he raises, among other things, the question of how to play a game released in the 90s, for example, authentically today. Because not only the game itself, but also the game environment contributes to the overall experience: is it important to play the game with the original joystick? Is it acceptable to run the game on an emulator and display it via a 3.5-inch display in a time- and resource-efficient way? What role did the materiality of the original hardware, including the sounds it produced, play in the gaming experience? (dr) [News message: 02. Oct. 2023, 09:50] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`02.Oct.2023`	Chiptune tracker: Furnace V0.6 for Windows, Mac and Linux A year and a half after the last release, a new version of Furnace is available: a tool which allows you to create music using sound chips ("chiptune"), most from the 8/16-bit era. It supports a wide range of functions and sound chips, from NES, SNES and Genesis to ES5506, VIC-20 and of course the Amiga. Every chip is emulated using many emulation cores, therefore the sound that Furnace produces is authentic to that of real hardware. An English-language manual is available. (dr) [News message: 02. Oct. 2023, 08:49] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`01.Oct.2023` Amiga.org (forum)	AmigaOS 4: Blog summary for September For the month of September 'Puni' has again published a news summary in the areas of hard- and software for AmigaOS 4 at the title link. (snx) [News message: 01. Oct. 2023, 19:06] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`01.Oct.2023` Frank Wille (ANF)	Development tool: vasm 1.9e Frank Wille has published an update of the modular assembler vasm. Changes: Exit before reading the source (from stdin) when there were errors already. Make sure the relocated blocks within all sections are closed after parsing. Otherwise the first pass may find the section in a wrong state. Output modules may define the default section, when no SECTION or ORG directive was given. "bin", "ihex" and "srec" now default to "ORG 0". New output module "woz", which outputs sections as "wozmon" monitor commands, suitable for ASCII transfer via a serial connection. Contributed by anomie-p. m68k: Improved -opt-movem (OPT om+) optimizations, for MOVEM with two registers. m68k: Fixed Apollo ADD/SUB->ADDQ/SUBQ optimization with AMMX registers. m68k: Enabled Apollo FPU instructions using 64-bit data registers: Fxxx.D Dn,ea, FMOVE.D Fn,Dm, etc. m68k: Added missing PC-relative destination addressing modes for Apollo shift instructions and FMOVE, FMOVEM. m68k: Apollo bchg/bclr/bset/btst Dn,An must not be allowed (conflicts with MOVEP). m68k: New Apollo instructions FDBcc.L, DBcc En,lab; EXTUB.L and EXTUW.L. 6809: Fixed typo in the opcode for the 6309 LDMD instruction. mot-syntax: Allow multiple consecutive relocated blocks within a section. mot-syntax: New directives LOCAL and RSEVEN for compatibility. mot-syntax: Allow any type of expression for RSSET, SETSO, SETFO. madmac-syntax: Allow multiple consecutive relocated blocks within a section. oldstyle-syntax: The label defining the size of a STRUCT block may have been moved into the previous section, or caused a segfault at ENDSTRUCT, since V1.9b. tos-output: Also write absolute symbols (equates) into executables. tos-output: New option -szbx to enable unlimited symbol names using the SozobonX extension. bin-output: New option -start to define the start address for the default org-section. (snx) [News message: 01. Oct. 2023, 19:01] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`01.Oct.2023`	Aminet uploads until 30.09.2023 The following files have been added until 30.09.2023 to Aminet: TGD-MrRobot2023.lha demo/aga 1.1M 68k Mr Robot by The Gentlemen Dem... MCE.lha game/edit 3.7M 68k Multi-game Character Editor MCE-OS4.lha game/edit 4.2M OS4 Multi-game Character Editor AmiArcadia.lha misc/emu 5.0M 68k Signetics-based machines emul... AmiArcadiaMOS.lha misc/emu 5.3M MOS Signetics-based machines emul... AmiArcadia-OS4.lha misc/emu 5.5M OS4 Signetics-based machines emul... Sunshine.lha mods/misc 411K Sunshine 16bit 4ch Reggea R&B... deark.lha util/arc 4.0M 68k Extracting data from various ... ModelerConverter10.lha util/conv 10K 68k 3D Object Converter from 1991 PDF2JPG.lha util/conv 16M MOS convert PDF to JPG PDF2PDF.lha util/conv 15M MOS convert PDF to PDF listercompare.module.lha util/dopus 17K 68k DOpus Magellan II: Compare li... Turkish_Packs.lha util/wb 123K Turkish Catalog packs some ap... (snx) [News message: 01. Oct. 2023, 07:28] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`01.Oct.2023`	OS4Depot uploads until 30.09.2023 The following files have been added until 30.09.2023 to OS4Depot: nallepuh.lha aud/mis 411kb 4.1 NallePUH (Paula emulation) for O... touchdevice.lha dri/inp 216kb 4.1 Device API for touch devices amiarcadia.lha emu/gam 5Mb 4.0 Signetics-based machines emulator soniccd-rsdk.lha gam/pla 10Mb 4.1 A Full Decompilation of Sonic CD... mce.lha gam/uti 4Mb 4.0 Multi-game Character Editor avalanche.lha uti/arc 115kb 4.1 Simple ReAction GUI for xadmaster touchbench.lha uti/mis 59kb 4.1 Mouse emulator for touchscreens (snx) [News message: 01. Oct. 2023, 07:28] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`01.Oct.2023`	AROS Archives uploads until 30.09.2023 The following files have been added until 30.09.2023 to AROS Archives: lilcalendar.i386-aros.lha uti/wor 3Mb Calender scheduling and reminder... (snx) [News message: 01. Oct. 2023, 07:28] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`01.Oct.2023`	MorphOS-Storage uploads until 30.09.2023 The following files have been added until 30.09.2023 to MorphOS-Storage: GPSTool_1.0.lha Devices/GPS A GPS tool by by Marcus... AmiArcadia_30.30.lha Emulation A Signetics-based machi... Deark_1.6.5.lha Files/Archive Extracting data from va... listercompare.module_1... Files/Manager Dopus Magellan II: Comp... Easy2Install_1.0b37.lha Network/PackageManager A package manager to do... LilCalendar_2.7.lha Office/Organizer Versatile calender and ... (snx) [News message: 01. Oct. 2023, 07:28] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`01.Oct.2023`	WHDLoad: New installers until 30.09.2023 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 30.09.2023: 2023-09-24 improved: Bismarck (PSS) german version supported (Info) (snx) [News message: 01. Oct. 2023, 07:28] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`01.Oct.2023` 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: Scumm Bar Theme Live Performance The Great Bath Live Performance Details Shadow of the Beast (Plains 1) (snx) [News message: 01. Oct. 2023, 07:28] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]

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