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10.Aug.2023
Janne Peräaho (Mail) AmigaOS 4: Amiga Game Framework
After Janne Peräaho dedicated himself to porting Python games to AmigaOS 4 among other things in the past (amiga-news.de reported), he has now started a completely new project: the "Amiga Game Framework". "Amiga Game Framework" is intended for programming 2D games under AmigaOS 4 and offers a user-friendly and intuitive C-API for 2D graphics, playing sounds, reading user input and more.

Asked about the motivation and intention of his project, Janne explains that he intends to use it in future game ports, but also hopes it will inspire other programmers to write new 2D games for AmigaOS 4. The goal is to make the programming interface so simple that anyone with basic C programming skills can write a game with it.

And he continued explaining: "The programming interface (API) is object oriented. First you create a game object by calling GetFrameworkInterface() function and then you can call the returned object's methods, like OpenWindow(), Line(), etc.

The framework is a set of include files that you include in your code like this: #include <frameworks/game/game.h> "

Janne has not yet published the source code of the framework because the event handler is still missing. Without it, you can't write real games because you can't recognise keystrokes or mouse movements, nor can you close the game window by clicking the close button. Currently, he is working on elementary geometric shapes, so-called graphic primitives. The project status picture on "OS4 Coding" shows which parts of the framework are finished and which are still in progress:

All the planned drawing functions (graphic primitives) are ready, but some of them still need to be improved. Currently, he is still thinking about how music should be integrated: should one be able to control a CD-ROM drive to play music, should there be a software synthesiser that one controls, MIDI support, or should the music be streamed from an OGG/MP3 file. On his project page, he has published a few example pictures as well as archives. (dr)

[News message: 10. Aug. 2023, 21:49] [Comments: 0]
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05.Aug.2023
ko-fi AmigaOS 4.1: "Blues Brothers" games and "Prehistorik 2" ported
Titus Software Titus Software was a French software publisher and developer that also released numerous games for the Amiga. Among them were The Blues Brothers and Prehistorik. On GitHub, the developer 'cyxx' had published a new version of the engine on which the games "The Blues Brothers", "Blues Brothers: Jukebox Adventure" and "Prehistorik 2" are based and which now offers, among other things, configurable screen size and unlimited lives.

George 'walkero' Sokianos has now ported this engine for AmigaOS 4.1 and published it both on his GitHub page and under the title link in the OS4Depot. The accompanying readme explains exactly how the additionally required data of the original games (demo or full version) have to be installed. (dr)

[News message: 05. Aug. 2023, 11:35] [Comments: 0]
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04.Aug.2023

Introduction: Mediathek V0.1 for all Amiga systems
For some time now Jörg Renkert (among others AmiBrixx or ModExplorer) has been working on an implementation of the programme MediathekView - a program searching the online media libraries of the German public television broadcasters - for the Amiga systems, based on Hollywood, and has now released a first version 0.1 (from left to right the versions for AmigaOS 3, AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS):

The programme ran very smoothly and flawlessly on our two test systems (Amiga 1200 with PiStorm-lite and AmigaOne X5000). After a search query, the results are displayed in the right half of the window. If you select an entry there, you get information about the file sizes for high, medium and low quality in the lower area and even lower information about the program itself. If you don't want to set everything up again for the same search each time you start it - keyword, channel, storage location, etc. - you can do this under a profile. - then you can save this under a profile. The only difference between the AmigaOS 3 and the other two versions: under AmigaOS 3 you have no possibility of sorting the result list, for example according to the length of the contributions.

When choosing the film quality, the high quality is ruled out for the test systems, as it cannot be played smoothly. Under AmigaOS 3, neither FroggerNG nor RiVA could be persuaded to play the present mp4 format (low quality), but this may also be due to the inexperience of the operator. Under AmigaOS 4, the X5000 manages to play the low quality without problems using Emotion Mediaplayer and DVPlayer. The latter also masters the medium quality, whereas with Emotion Mediaplayer V1.9 sound and picture no longer run synchronously.

Mplayer under MorphOS, on the other hand - here, however, in version 1.1 - manages both quality levels without visible problems.

In addition to the download (D), you can copy the link to the clipboard (C) or transfer it to a previously selected video player (E). However, the latter did not work on any system. In principle, it would be advantageous if not only the pure title were saved, but also the correct mp4 file extension.

Mediathek by Jörg Renkert is without doubt one of the best (Hollywood) Amiga applications of recent times, for which one likes to boot up the Amiga computer again more often. Even in the early version 0.1 the programme makes a very mature impression and one can only guess how much time was invested in the project. Hats off! (dr)

[News message: 04. Aug. 2023, 22:55] [Comments: 0]
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