Emulator: WinUAE 5.3.1
The Amiga emulator WinUAE has been released in version 5.3.1. Changes:
New features
Added Picmatic Marbelle Vice and Tierras Salvajes 100Hz TV laser disc arcade game support.
Updates
Implemented OpalVision undocumented automatic VRAM bank switch. King of Karate demo now have working scrolling background.
Implemented Mediator 1200TX 2x4M PCI window mode.
Serial port emulation updates: transmit speed is now more accurate, receive speed is throttled if data is arriving too quickly.
CTRL+F12 windowed/fullscreen switch now remembers previous fullscreen mode (fullscreen or full-window) and it is stored between sessions in registr/ini.
Bug fixes
Fixed GamePorts panel “Swap ports”.
Some screen resolution/font combinations caused crash when on screen keyboard was opened.
Fixed music glitch in James Pond 2 (non-AGA). Most likely also affected some other interrupt based music players too.
Golem SCSI II HD controller configuration didn’t load correctly.
Fixed SPRxPOS modification in last possible moment being missed causing sprite to be disabled. (Fixes Reshoot R background flickering)
Fixed possible crash when AmigaOS 4 resets during boot and switches to PPC mode if directory filesystem emulation was in use.
SCSI CD audio PLAY AUDIO TRACK/INDEX returned error if end track was higher than last track. SCSI spec allows it and it should not cause error.
Prometheus Firestorm PCI bridge interrupt state bit was inverted.
Print/PDF magazine: Amiga Addict, issue 33
Issue 33 of the English-language magazine Amiga Addict is now available from the publisher addict.media and in British newsstands. In the cover story, the editorial team discusses the influence of the Amiga on virtual reality systems.
This issue also contains reviews of the new games Dr. Dangerous and Droid Special Edition and the classic games Donk, Deuteros and The Chaos Engine, a feature on the Dune II Remaster project, a story about games that should have been ported to the Amiga, a downloadable cover disk with Alien Fish Finger and much more.
Amiga Addict is published every six weeks and is available as a single issue or by subscription, in either printed or PDF format. (nba)
Videogames studies: Experimental action game "Squarez" now available
The recently released Squarez is a remake of the Flash game SQUARES 2 and was developed as part of the CHLudens research project (amiga-news.de reported). This abstract action game is controlled entirely by mouse and offers minimalist, rectangle-based graphics. The aim of the game is to catch grey rectangles while avoiding the yellow ones in various levels.
It is interesting to note that Squarez was designed as a research game to explore why abstract games were rare in the home computer era, even though 1970s art was increasingly moving in this direction. While video games have become increasingly realistic, this game questions the urge for hyperrealism and invites players to enjoy a visually reduced experience.
The game was developed using the so-called cryAEngine and is available to download as freeware. The source code and the "Processing" development tool are also provided. Squarez is an exciting example of how creative research and video games can go hand in hand. (nba)
WHDLoad: New installers until 19.10.2024
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 19.10.2024:
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:
Flashback, Main Menu Music (Vandahlia Special Remix)
MorphOS: Future versions of Wayfarer without updated WebKit/GTK engine
As Jacek 'jacadcaps' Piszczek has told at the title link, future versions of his web browser Wayfarer will stay with the current version 2.46 of the WebKit/GTK browser engine. Already porting this one would have taken several weeks. Since the WebKit developers removed the Legacy/Win/Cairo target and its dependencies, which Wayfarer requires, and started to use Skia, further MorphOS ports of the engine wouldn't be feasible anymore.
Apart from this, contemporary websites would also increasingly require more performance than the ageing G4 and G5 hardware can offer. For the time being, however, the existing WebKit core would be modern enough to continue to display the pages that can be displayed so far - probably even for several years to come. Until then, he tends to set up a hosted browsing service under Linux or Mac OS, which then generates the Wayfarer pages externally. Accordingly, the next version of his browser will already offer the option of either displaying the web pages locally or having them generated externally using CEF. (snx)
Book: English edition of AmigaOS 3.2 Reference Manual / French one in progress
In February, Look Behind You published the Reference Manual "AmigaOS 3.2 - Das Handbuch" in German language with 512 pages. Now the 480-page English edition is available as a book and as a digital download as well - either directly from the publisher or from selected retailers: Amiga on the Lake (USA), RetroPassion (UK) and Retro 8bit Shop (Netherlands).
In addition, a French version is now also in the works on the initiative of the Swiss retailer Relec. "AmigaOS 3.2 le Manuel" will be available in three versions: as a book for 35 Swiss Francs, digitally for 20 and both combined for 50. Potential buyers are advised to express their interest using a corresponding form.
Meanwhile, the original German edition has been updated in its digital version. This includes additions and corrections. Registered customers can download the PDF file again via their account at the publisher. (snx)
Worms: The Director's Cut 1.5 for the 30th anniversary
Next year, the legendary game Worms celebrates its 30th birthday. To mark the occasion, its programmer Andy Davidson is planning a free new edition for the Amiga. To this end, demo groups around the world are invited to contribute new levels with their own names.
A level template is available on request. The levels must have a size of 960 x 350 pixels and be sent in by New Year's Eve. Specifications for the 16-color palette: 00 - black or dark color (transparent), 01 - white or near white, 02 - pink, 03 - any color, 04 - lighter shade of 03, 05 - any color, 06 - lighter shade of 05, 07-15 - any colors. Layers: Either one image for a conventional Worms level or two images for a two-layer level, consisting of foreground and background with the same color palette. The background - to be kept darker - is shown where the foreground is transparent or the foreground is destroyed in the course of the game. (snx)
Looking back: Battle Chess was not U-certificated in Germany
At the title link, "Gamers Global" looks 35 years into the past and recalls that the Amiga chess game "Battle Chess" was indexed as harmful to minors in Germany in April 1989 on the initiative of the Bavarian State Youth Welfare Office.
However, this only lasted for about five months, as Electronic Arts successfully appealed against it. Despite the high picture quality made possible by the Amiga 500, the depiction of brutality (video) would not have reached the intensity of violence required for the index.
For this reason, during the reassessment the responsible committee came to the conclusion that also children and young people could maintain the necessary distance from the gameplay, which would be in part also imaginative and funny. (snx)
Amiga Future also celebrated the 25th anniversary of its online presence last month: its website went online for the first time on September 9, 1999. What was initially intended as a source of information for the print magazine has since continued to grow with the news section, over 100 online readable issues of the magazine, 7,000 German and 2,000 English test reports, workshops, specials, etc. (snx)
Reshoot Proxima 3: Tin box variant available
To celebrate the first birthday of the shoot'em-up game "Reshoot Proxima 3", it can now alternatively be purchased in a metal box, limited to 55 copies and signed, at the title link - optionally also with a USB stick. (snx)
Logic game: Untangle V1.1
Grzegorz Kraszewski is in the process of writing the logic game Untangle for the Amiga. The player has a number of dots in front of him, which are connected by lines and cross each other. The aim of the game is to untangle the lines by moving the dots so that no line intersects another (amiga-news.de reported). He has now released version 1.1 with the following changes:
Fixed a bug of freeing a memory block twice at game end.
Added the game ending displaying total number of moves and time spent.
Added 25 more levels, now the game has 175 levels.
The game runs in a Workbench window, an Amiga with any processor and Kickstart/Workbench 3.0 or higher are required.
He also wants to design the game so that it will run on any Amiga, from an Amiga 1000 with 256 KB Ram and KickStart 1.1 to the fastest Amiga with 3.x. (dr)
Developer log: What can be expected from the final 64-bit version of Odyssey?
At the end of August, we reported on an initial test version of the Odyssey browser for AROS version 2.0, which is being continuously updated (the latest version of the 32-bit variant was released yesterday). In a short article, Krzysztof 'deadwood' Śmiechowicz describes various ways in which the upcoming 64-bit version Odyssey 2.0 can execute JavaScript code and what impact this has on performance. Some of the results are quite interesting and come very close to today's (October 2024) Firefox performance. This is all the more surprising given that the WebKit engine Odyssey 2.0 was released in February 2019. (dr)
Update: (06:17, 21.10.24, dr)
Demovesion V1.04 is now available. Since the first version, numerous bugs have been fixed, the "M" key can now be used to switch the music on and off and the CPU load should now be lower. (dr)
AROS distribution: TinyAros 3.4.1
The AROS distribution TinyAros is aimed more at users, which is why no developer tools are included (but can be downloaded optionally), which makes it leaner and therefore quicker to install and ready for use.
The now released version 3.4.1 (video) is based on the current ABIv0 backport and also contains updated libraries and programmes, additional included software and bug fixes. (snx)
Cowboy/shootout game: Demo version of Duel
In "Duel", two cowboys (or so far a cowboy and an alien) that can be controlled up or down shoot at each other, with various obstacles providing cover (video). In the finalised version, you will be able to choose from over 20 characters and the weather will influence the battle. (snx)
AmigaOS 4: AmiUpdate V2.55
AmiUpdate is an update system for AmigaOS 4 and helps to keep system components and applications up to date. There are currently 241 entries in the database. Version 2.55 has now been released with the following changes:
Fixed an error in the main list helphint where the date of the update was not shown correctly.
Made some changes to the routines that handle the Ignore Manager, and saving the list back to
disk. An apparent crash appeared to be located there, although it was unreproducible here.
Fixed a memory leak that occurred each time a scan was started.
Reworked the "Abort" logic. It is no longer possible to abort the scan, but aborting updating
works as originally expected. Whether this fixes the unreproducible crashes or not remains to
be seen.
Following a successfull login, users were complaining the details were not saved. The call to
save the details was commented out. No idea why, or how long it's been like that, but it should
work as expected again!
Added support for double-clicking items to expand them in the Path Manager.
Changed the way the notifications are handled when the preferences change.
Prefs_Updates 53.19: Prefs change notifications are now handled differently to suit the new mechanism.
Development tool: vasm 2.0
After eleven months of development, Frank Wille has released the update to version 2.0 for the modular assembler vasm. The changes in version 2.0 in detail:
Support for architectures which have bytes with more than 8 bits.
Output formats bin, ihex, srec, test and vobj currently support >8-bit bytes.
New options -obe and -ole to define the endianess of target-bytes in binary output.
New options -ibe and -ile to define the endianess of target-bytes in binary includes (incbin).
New option -underscore adds a leading underscore to all imported and exported symbol names.
New option -relpath to treat all include paths as relative first, even when starting with '/' or '\'.
Reworked relocations and added the option to define their signedness.
New CPU backend for unSP (micro-nSP), having 16-bit bytes. Contributed by Adrien Destugues.
New CPU backend for the FPGA-CPU HANS, using 32-bit bytes. Contributed by Yannick Stamm.
New output module "pap", which outputs MOS Paper Tape files, as documented in the KIM-1 User's Manual. Contributed by Dimitri Theulings.
When printing error messages in macros, also print the source text line calling the macro.
A macro redefinition prints a warning with the previous definition. The old macro is correctly replaced.
Also warn about initialized space atoms (.space, etc.) in BSS sections.
Workaround for a Windows bug, when reading a source text from stdin directly via the terminal.
Fixed output of 64-bit symbol values in vobjdump.
Directives to suppress listing file output (like NOLIST) will no longer appear in the listing file.
Fixed string constants (in immediate addressing modes) with non-ASCII characters.
Fixed potential buffer overflow when generating a section name for ORG directives (since V1.9f).
Output modules now show the source line for unknown relocation errors.
m68k: Most out of range errors have now become warnings.
m68k: Out of range 8-bit immediate constants write to all 16 bits of the extension word, with a warning (to be able to simulate the behaviour of some old, faulty assemblers).
m68k: Improved -opt-size optimization for move.l->moveq/lsl, which now optimizes all values below 0x8000 where the highest and lowest bit set does not span more than 7 bits (suggested by Erik Hemming).
m68k: Float-constant optimization (OPT of, enabled by default) now also supports integer constant optimization to 16-bit.
GUI for Greaseweazle Tools: ADFDiskBox v2
Keir Fraser's "Greaseweazle" reads the magnetic layer of the floppy regardless of the format used and stores as much information as possible in a so-called "flux level image" in supercard format (SCP), making it possible to read and write back copy-protected floppies. We have been reporting on FluxMyFluffyFloppy, a GUI for the Greaseweazle Tools, for some time now. In addition to GreaseweazleGUI, there is a third alternative for Windows, ADFDiskBox, which has now been released in version 2.
The author John Brett, who has made the source code of his project available on GitHub, has kindly given us a few explanations about the new version:
Both FluxMyFluffyFloppy and GreaseweazleGUI can handle many floppy formats, while my ADFDiskBox specialises in Amiga DOS floppies. It simplifies Amiga DOS batch read and write operations (for ADF, 82-track ADF, SCP:Amiga DOS and RawSCP).
The programme requires Net Framework 4.8 to run, so it should run on Windows 10 (also runs on the 32-bit version) and Windows 11. The latest version of Greaseweazle Tools must first be downloaded and unpacked before the installer can be executed.
I've been learning C# for a while now and I'm creating this program for learning purposes (which is why the code is a bit messy). When I started, the other programs couldn't handle 82-track Amiga DOS discs or batch mode. Now they can, using the editable diskdefs file. My GUI, on the other hand, uses its own version. I have recently added some more features, such as batch mode for all Amiga formats, which is why I have changed the version number to 2. Now more than one Greaseweazle is supported on the same computer. (dr)
AmigaOS 4: Tutorial for creating a USB boot stick for the AmigaOne X5000
'McFly' has published two tutorials (available in English and German) in the OS4Depot which should enable users of an AmigaOne X5000 to create a bootable USB stick either from a system backup (OS4Depot link) or with the help of the AmigaOS 4.1 installation CD and using an RX graphics card OS4Depot link).
When asked, the author kindly wrote us the following about how it came about:
Since my X5000 no longer started properly some time ago due to a mistake on my part and the install CD also refused to start, I was looking for solutions to persuade my X5000 to start again ;-)
At the time, a Radeon R7 graphics card was still installed and I found the following devastating information on the Internet, which explained why the installation CD could not be booted:
"The basic RadeonHD driver on the OS4.1 CD does not support models with the Oland Chip set (R7 240/250), thus you cannot boot from the CD."
I therefore created a boot medium using a card reader and CF card. I have documented how I proceeded step by step in a small illustrated tutorial.
A little later I upgraded my computer with a Radeon RX580 graphics card. Because of this I collected all the necessary information on how to create a USB installation stick for AmigaOne X5000/20 with RX graphics card. This graphics card requires separate drivers which are not included on the AmigaOs4.1 install CD. I have also summarised this procedure in an illustrated guide in the hope of being able to give some users a little help. (dr)
