03.Jun.2025
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Amiga-Emulator for macOS: vAmiga 4.2b2
Dirk Hoffmann has released version 4.2b2 of his Amiga emulator "vAmiga" for macOS, which includes the following changes:
- Enhancement: Names of imported or exported files are properly sanitized
- Bug fixes: Querying the mouse button state via the POTxDAT registers is now possible
(nba)
[News message: 03. Jun. 2025, 18:22] [Comments: 0]
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03.Jun.2025
Rolf-Dieter Klein
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Martin Ulrich, co-developer of Ports of Call, has passed away
Martin Ulrich, the co-developer of the Amiga classic Ports of Call, passed away on 31 March 2025 at the age of 76. The sad news was announced by his long-time developer colleague Rolf-Dieter Klein. Ulrich was born on 22 October 1948. Together with Klein, he developed the popular economic simulation game in the late 1980s, in which players build up a shipping company and lead it to success through skilful route planning and freight trading. Ports of Call was first released in 1987 for the Amiga, later also for other systems, and quickly became one of the best-known and longest-running titles in the genre and one of the flagship games of German game developers. To this day, the game enjoys cult status among retro fans. (nba)
[News message: 03. Jun. 2025, 15:18] [Comments: 0]
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03.Jun.2025
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Tool: EmptyADF 2.0
EmptyADF is an easy-to-use tool with a graphical user interface for creating empty ADF disk images on Amiga systems for use on classic Amigas (with AmigaOS 3.2.x), in Amiga emulators or for backups.
The tool can be used to create DD (880 KB) or HD (1.76 MB) disk images with the OFS or FFS file systems. Images with or without a system boot block and images with custom disk labels are also possible. The date of creation or last modification can be assigned.
EmptyADF, which is available as freeware, is now available in version 2.0 for Amigas with Kickstart 2.0+ (with GadTools GUI) or with Kickstart 3.0+ (with ReAction GUI). The new version also runs under AmigaOS 4.x. (nba)
[News message: 03. Jun. 2025, 01:52] [Comments: 0]
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03.Jun.2025
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Worth a read: The Meaning of Icons
In his latest blog post on datagubbe.se entitled "The Meaning of Icons", Carl Svensson explores how we interpret icons in graphical user interfaces – and why their meaning is often less obvious than we think.
Using numerous examples – from Amiga programs to modern applications such as Microsoft Outlook – Svensson shows that many icons only become understandable through repeated use and cultural influence. He discusses how excessive stylisation and cultural differences can make interpretation difficult and argues for a return to clearer, visually distinguishable symbols.
The blog article is a fascinating journey through the history and design of icons, with a special focus on classic systems such as the Amiga. (nba)
[News message: 03. Jun. 2025, 01:38] [Comments: 0]
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03.Jun.2025
Stefan Hoeltgen
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Scene World Podcast Episode #215 - Torsten Roeder talks about Diskmags.de
In the latest episode 215 of the Scene World podcast, the hosts spoke with Torsten Roeder about the diskmags.de project. This comprehensive online archive for floppy disk magazines (diskmags) is dedicated to preserving these digital publications for future generations.
Diskmags were magazines published on floppy disks in the 1980s and 1990s that contained articles, graphics, music and even software. Many of these magazines were distributed exclusively within the demo scene and are difficult to find today. The diskmags.de project catalogues and archives these historical artefacts to ensure their accessibility and preservation.
The interview with Torsten Roeder starts at minute 27:36 in the podcast episode. (nba)
[News message: 03. Jun. 2025, 01:31] [Comments: 0]
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02.Jun.2025
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AmigaOS 4: E-UAE PowerPC JIT 1.1.1
Three weeks ago, Kjetil 'LiveForIt' Hvalstrand released version 1.1.0 of the integration of a just-in-time compiler into the Amiga emulator E-UAE for PowerPC systems (amiga-news.de reported). The update to version 1.1.1 (video) provides the following changes:
- Fixed two issues with bsdsocket.library
- Fixed issue with stretching in 16bit AGA screens.
- Created accelerator.library
The source code is available on GitHub. (dr)
[News message: 02. Jun. 2025, 22:17] [Comments: 1 - 03. Jun. 2025, 10:29]
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02.Jun.2025
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Windows: WavConvert4Amiga 1.4a
The Windows program WavConvert4Amiga is used to optimize audio files in Wave format for use on the Amiga or with tracker music programs. The range of functions includes any sample rate when converting to 8-bit mono format, support for both PAL and NTSC frequencies and note conversion from C-1 to B-3 for ProTracker. The versions 1.4 and 1.4a released today should fix all previously reported bugs in the workflow. (dr)
[News message: 02. Jun. 2025, 17:46] [Comments: 0]
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02.Jun.2025
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Dungeon Crawler: Bolminok's Kingdom 2 v1.00
Sami Vehmaa's dungeon crawler "Bolminok's Kingdom 2" requires an AGA Amiga with some fast RAM. The title is available for free at itch.io, but requires ownership and successful completion of the first part. The recently released version 1.00 offers a revised menu screen and improved resolution switching. (dr)
[News message: 02. Jun. 2025, 17:34] [Comments: 0]
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02.Jun.2025
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Essay: A Box is not just a Box: Game packaging in the course of time
In a richly illustrated essay, author Beat Suter looks at the development of game packaging over the decades, with a special focus on Swiss games that were available on the open market. (dr)
[News message: 02. Jun. 2025, 07:44] [Comments: 2 - 04. Jun. 2025, 05:13]
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02.Jun.2025
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Shoot'em up: Demo version of AmiSeaFox
"Amiten Games" has created a conversion of the shoot'em up classic Seafox for the Amiga (video) and has now released a first demo version. Using a submarine, you have to destroy the entire enemy before the torpedoes or fuel run out. The game runs on an Amiga 500 with 512 KB RAM expansion, an Amiga 1200 is recommended. (dr)
[News message: 02. Jun. 2025, 06:26] [Comments: 0]
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02.Jun.2025
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SCSI-SD adapter: ZuluSCSI firmware v2025.06.01
ZuluSCSI is a file-based SCSI hard disk and CD-ROM drive emulator, emulating an SCSI-I or SCSI-2 hard disk using an SD memory card (amiga-news.de reported). Version 2025.06.01 fixes a crash when loading ROM in ZuluSCSI Blaster and enables physical eject button for ZuluSCSI V1.2. (dr)
[News message: 02. Jun. 2025, 05:44] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jun.2025
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Aminet uploads until 31.05.2025
The following files have been added until 31.05.2025 to Aminet:
zbbslister.lha comm/bbs 6K OS3 a BBS lister for the Ze...
amigaget.lha comm/net 203K OS3 get https files for the...
curl-amigaget.lha comm/tcp 1.0M OS3 File and data transfer ...
HugeNostalgicDemo.lha demo/mega 61M OS3 Huge Nostalgic Demo by ...
Sevgi_Engine.lha dev/c 841K OS3 open source video game ...
REDPILLGameCreator.lha dev/misc 8.4M OS3 Game Creator with AGA s...
MCC_TabGroup.lha dev/mui 95K OS3 Dynamic tab group custo...
DiskFlush.lha disk/misc 14K OS3 Flush all filesystem bu...
EmptyADF.lha disk/misc 27K OS3 Creates blank ADF disk ...
rdrprep.lha disk/misc 36K MOS Submit jobs to a Hercul...
openpci68k.lha driver/oth 177K OS3 PCI driver for all brid...
G-WARS.lha game/shoot 31M OS3 Geometry Wars inspired ...
AmiArcadiaMOS.lha misc/emu 10M MOS Signetics-based machine...
morsconv.lha text/misc 12K OS3 Modular Morse code gene...
unify16.lha util/cli 6K OS3 CLI utility to unify tw...
unify8.lha util/cli 6K OS3 CLI utility to unify tw...
iGame.lha util/misc 455K VAR Front-end for WHDLoad
(snx)
[News message: 01. Jun. 2025, 07:12] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jun.2025
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OS4Depot uploads until 31.05.2025
The following files have been added until 31.05.2025 to OS4Depot:
libsdl3_gfx.lha dev/lib 3Mb 4.1 Drawing and graphical effects ex...
libsdl3_image.lha dev/lib 2Mb 4.1 SDL3 image file loading library
libsdl3_ttf.lha dev/lib 4Mb 4.1 A Freetype 2.0 wrapper for SDL3
arabic_console_device... dri/inp 3Mb 4.1 An arabic console device, line&a...
uae.lha emu/com 2Mb 4.1 Classic Amiga Emulation (JIT + A...
retroarch_cores_insta... emu/gam 348Mb 4.1 Cores for soon to be released Re...
breakhack.lha gam/rol 17Mb 4.1 Breakhack is a small roguelike game
tmscolor.lha gra/con 388kb 4.0 Converter from BMP to TMS9928 fo...
igame.lha uti/mis 455kb 4.0 Front-end for WHDLoad
rdrprep.lha uti/mis 59kb 4.0 Submit jobs to a Hercules reader
(snx)
[News message: 01. Jun. 2025, 07:12] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jun.2025
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AROS Archives uploads until 31.05.2025
The following files have been added until 31.05.2025 to AROS Archives:
arrakis.x86_64-aros-v11.zip dem/sce 3Mb Arrakis demo x86_64 by Kakiarts/...
nano.x86_64-aros-v11.zip dem/sce 4Mb nano demo x86_64 by Kakiarts
(snx)
[News message: 01. Jun. 2025, 07:12] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jun.2025
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 31.05.2025
The following files have been added until 31.05.2025 to MorphOS-Storage:
ScummVM_2.9.1.lha Games/Adventure 2D Point-and-Click adve...
iGame_2.5.1.lha Games/Launcher A frontend to launching...
(snx)
[News message: 01. Jun. 2025, 07:12] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jun.2025
ALB42 Blog (ANF)
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Hunkster: Amiga and Linux versions
Marcus 'ALB42' Sackrow has created an Amiga and a Linux version of the program Hunkster by 'RetroNick'. The Amiga version also has a MUI interface.
The program can be used to load media files as hunk files into the Amiga's working memory, also specifically into the chip or fast RAM. When writing C or Pascal programs, their addresses in memory can then be transferred to a variable or an array and used for playback in order to integrate them into the executable file during compilation. The source code of Hunkster is available on GitHub. (snx)
[News message: 01. Jun. 2025, 07:12] [Comments: 0]
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31.May.2025
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Amiga-Emulator for macOS: vAmiga 4.2b1
Dirk Hoffmann has released version 4.2b1 of his Amiga emulator "vAmiga" for macOS, which includes the following changes:
- vAmiga now supports folder import for hard drives (#904)
- Improved file inspector (#910)
- The file system creator uses the correct OFS / FFS block ordering (#909)
- Fixed some O(n^2) performance bottlenecks in the MutableFileSystem class (#908)
- RetroShell can manage shader settings
- Shader settings are saved to workspaces
- Bug fix: Fixed a bug in the polling click detector (#907)
- Bug fix: Fixed an issue with the white-noise effect (#911)
(cg)
[News message: 31. May. 2025, 11:42] [Comments: 0]
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31.May.2025
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PowerPC hardware: video showing MorphOS 3.20 running on Mirari motherboard
The Mirari team has released a video showing the "1st beta test" of MorphOS on the recently announced PPC hardware. (cg)
[News message: 31. May. 2025, 11:33] [Comments: 0]
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31.May.2025
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Picture collection: Amiga Graphics Archive updated
The "Amiga Graphics Archive" has been supplemented by further pictures from the German "Amiga Magazin": The illustrations come from a "Colour Cycling" competition from July 1988. (cg)
[News message: 31. May. 2025, 11:28] [Comments: 0]
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31.May.2025
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DeepL frontend: sourcecode for AmiTranslate available
Marcus 'ALB42' Sackrow has made the source code of his DeepL frontend "AmiTranslate" available under a public domain licence. If you want to compile the code, you first need a free API key from the DeepL operator; the source code must then be supplemented with this key. (cg)
[News message: 31. May. 2025, 11:25] [Comments: 0]
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31.May.2025
Pär Boberg (ANF)
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List of "Famous Amiga Uses" updated
‘Famous Amiga Uses’ is a list of well-known companies and organisations that have used Amiga computers. The list, which is already 25 years old, has been updated again and will soon be made available again on Aminet. (cg)
[News message: 31. May. 2025, 11:21] [Comments: 0]
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31.May.2025
Carlos Peris (Mail)
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Game Construction Kit: RedPill 0.9.52
RedPill, developed by Carlos Peris, is a game construction kit written in Amiblitz 3.10.1, which allows the development of games from various genres. RedPill is compatible with AGA and ECS, the "player" for playing the finished creations requires a total of 1.5 MB RAM. Jens 'Farbfinsternis' Henschel has written a tutorial.
The author writes about the new version 0.9.52: "It is quite technical but super interesting on multiple fronts.
First, it has some big optimizations for the features most used in games, it should be very noticeable.
Also, to ease development you can add comments to your objects and triggers.
And finally, you can now use the program from the cli, to generate your projects without loading the editor, this way you can make cool scripts (video)". All changes:
- Now you can Load your projects from the CLI, for example: RedPillEditor
projects/astro/astro18.pill
- You can also Build your projects from the CLI, for example: RedPillEditor
projects/astro/astro18.pill A1200 NOPACK WHDLOAD
- The parameters are GENERIC/A500/A1200, PACK/NOPACK, WHDLOAD. The order must
be this one, PACK and WHDLOAD parameters are optional.
- Big optimization on Collides Obj and Collides Type triggers, speed gain could
be up to 40% depending on the project.
- Improvements on profiler screen, now it shows % of time used by each project
area.
- Optimizations in internal object handling.
- Now comments can be added for Objects and for triggers, to make it easier to
remember what each one does in your game.
- When exporting triggers to text file, these comments are being added to the
text file too.
- Astro project contains examples of these comments.
- Fix for collision boxes not being displayed in the right position after the
previous update.
- Fix on profiler screen total time.
- Fix for cover images and images using HAM.
- Fix for objects of type Shot, which may have failed in concrete cases.
(dr)
[News message: 31. May. 2025, 06:13] [Comments: 0]
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30.May.2025
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Game engine: Sevgi Engine v0.177
Sevgi Engine is a new open source game engine for creating of powerful Amiga games using the C programming language (video) and based on the ScrollingTricks archive by Georg Steger (amiga-news.de reported). Now version 0.177 is available providing the following changes:
- Re-implement all file copy routines used in new project creation
- Add a toolbar button to compile projects directly from Sevgi Editor
- Add a toolbar button to run projects directly from Sevgi Editor
- Popup the Editor Settings window at first run
- Fix labels in Sevgi Editor according to Amiga User Interface Style Guide
(dr)
[News message: 30. May. 2025, 08:55] [Comments: 0]
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30.May.2025
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Universal PCI driver system: OpenPCI 40.3
After several beta versions, Thomas 'Thor' Richter released the first stable version of his universal PCI driver system "OpenPCI" at the end of March, which supports all known PCI solutions for the Amiga without recourse to the software of the respective manufacturer (amiga-news.de reported). The now released version 40.3 fixes a bug in the PCI preferences which caused the device list not to be searched correctly for suitable devices and thus could cause a crash. (dr)
[News message: 30. May. 2025, 08:38] [Comments: 0]
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30.May.2025
Marcus 'ALB42' Sackrow
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YouTube client for all Amiga systems: Source code of AmiTube released
Marcus 'ALB42' Sackrow's AmiTube enables watching YouTube videos on an 68k Amiga. They are converted to Commodore's CDXL format and downloaded (amiga-news.de reported). The author has now published the source code of the tool under the CC0 licence on GitHub. The MUIClass library is required for compilation. (dr)
[News message: 30. May. 2025, 08:25] [Comments: 0]
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29.May.2025
Hackaday.com (Website)
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MP3 decoder for AA3000 prototypes: DSP3210MPEG
Thanks to 'Wrangler', an MP3 decoder is now also available for the DSP on the AA3000/A3000+ models that never went into series production: DSP3210MPEG is an implementation of the mpeg.device that uses the DSP for decoding. According to the author, the software currently still has several known errors and limitations, but these may still change: For example, only MP3 files with a maximum bit rate of 96 Kbit/s are currently played. (cg)
[News message: 29. May. 2025, 23:55] [Comments: 0]
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29.May.2025
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Print/PDF magazine: BrewOtaku, #6
The magazine 'BrewOtaku' presents and tests new games for old computers. The current issue contains 76 colour pages featuring news on around 120 games, including 10 Amiga titles. Additionally, there are reviews of the Amiga releases Sky Shapers (AGA), Yoomp! (OCS) and Wizonk! Magic Arena (OCS), and there is also a 'story' on the "Lotus Turbo Challenge" series.
A printed edition sent from Germany costs eight euros plus postage, while the digital edition (DRM-free PDF) costs 3.50 euros. The first five issues are all still available in printed form. (cg)
[News message: 29. May. 2025, 23:38] [Comments: 0]
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29.May.2025
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Emulator: Mame106Minimix 1.4
Mame106Minimix is a port of the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator to AmigaOS 3, which requires a very fast 68k computer - the author primarily has PiStorm cards in mind. Version 1.4 fixes bugs and contains optimisations and improvements to the user interface. (cg)
[News message: 29. May. 2025, 23:25] [Comments: 0]
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29.May.2025
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WHDLoad frontend: iGame 2.5.2 for AmigaOS 3/4, MorphOS (update)
iGame is a MUI based frontend for launching WHDLoad titles. George 'walkero' Sokianos has again contributed some changes to the open source program:
- Added: Added a file requester in the Properties window, which can be used to set a different WHDLoad slave file for an item. This is useful when a game/demo changed place on the hard disk. (#174)
- Added: Based on the selected file by the new field, the tooltypes text is updated, enabled/disabled, based if the selected file is a WHDLoad slave one.
- Changed: Moved the Properties window code to its own files
- Changed: Added the "Open game folder" menu in the MorphOS version, that was missing
- Changed: Disabled the gamepad usage on MorphOS because it was reported giving problems while playing a game
- Fixed: Fixed starting WHDLoad games in MorphOS using WHDLoadopener (#253)
Update: (31.05.2025, 12:15, dr)
Version 2.5.2 fixes the execution of WhdLoad that broke on v2.5.1 for those that use an old icon library.
Download: iGame-v2.5.2-20250531.lha (455 Kb) (cg)
[News message: 29. May. 2025, 23:19] [Comments: 0]
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28.May.2025
Reddit (forum)
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Mac OS: Amiga tools Send2adf and ADF.inder
With Send2adf and ADF.inder, Mac OS users are provided with two small programs at the title link with which all files in a selected directory can be written to an ADF file or the contents of an ADF file can be displayed. (snx)
[News message: 28. May. 2025, 08:32] [Comments: 0]
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28.May.2025
Rafał Zabdyr (Mail)
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MorphOS: Preview video of Hans Kloss - Agent J-23
"Hans Kloss - Agent J-23" is a fan project based on the Polish platform game "Hans Kloss", which was released in 1992/93 for Atari home computers and the C64.
The new edition is to be released for MorphOS, Windows and Linux. A preview video has been published at the title link. (snx)
[News message: 28. May. 2025, 08:31] [Comments: 1 - 08. Jun. 2025, 09:25]
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28.May.2025
Steffen Häuser (ANF)
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RetroArch port for AmigaOS in progress
Steffen Häuser is working on a port of RetroArch for AmigaOS and AmigaOS 4 - this is a modular emulator system in which only the cores for the different systems are exchanged. After completion, the conversion will be available free of charge in Aminet and OS4Depot, the latter already contains a package with the first cores. He writes (translation) about his port:
"I am currently in the process of porting the modular emulator system RetroArch to AmigaOS. Currently there is already a beta version for AmigaOS 4 and a beta version for AmigaOS 3.x (PiStorm 4 or at least PiStorm recommended). The WarpOS version is unfortunately not yet running, but is also being worked on.
If you don't know RetroArch - it's a modular system where things like video refresh, sound, joystick etc. are done by a central program, and the emulators (like PC-Engine, NeoGeo, NES, Gameboy, ...) then only have to implement the "core". There is a very large field of emulator cores for RetroArch, which can then also be ported relatively easily (some more, some less) to AmigaOS. And you don't have to program video refresh, sound etc. for every emulator from scratch. RetroArch also offers a nice GUI. RetroArch also offers a comfortable GUI for operation.
I offer the current beta version to anyone who sends (for example) 10-15 Euro to my PayPal account (tirionareonwe AT gmail.com) as a donation (in case of a donation, please provide an e-mail address to which the beta version should be sent). The final version will then be published free of charge on OS4Depot and Aminet.
You can also have a look at the video here. (The NeoGeo CD core is not yet included in the video, as it has only been running for a very short time).
There are already a lot of cores, but there is certainly room for improvement.I might want to take a look at a Mame core and possibly also a ScummVM core at some point, once the basic version is ready." (snx)
[News message: 28. May. 2025, 08:31] [Comments: 0]
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