Once again public health takes precedence over retro computing.
Due to increased spread of the coronavirus in Germany, an in accordance with expected restrictions to public life, the "Interface XXIX" event by Vintage Computer Club (VCC), Amiga-Club Schleswig-Holstein (ACSH) and Computer-Club Klausdorf (CCK) to be held in Kiel on Nov. 27th 2021, was cancelled.
No substitute event (online stream, ...) is planned - but the organisers already promised to create a new event and send out invitations once the situation is back to normal.
Ok, not reeeally Amiga, but then still very Amiga, is Fabrizio Farenga's Easy1541 website.
If you ever considered somehow doing something useful with your Amiga regarding the C64, it might have been to build an Easy1541-compatible cable, connect the Amiga to a Commodore 1541 5.25 inch floppy drive, and modify disk contents using Fabrizio's "Easy1541" software (see links below).
It's been 25 years since "Easy1541" was created, and many Amiga/C64 users have chosen this solution to access their C64 disk drives and images.
To celebrate the software's 25th anniversary, Fabrizio has created a website that takes his creation to the next level: "Easy1541" goes online!
You can upload disk images, and retrieve individual files from it, or upload individual files, and retrieve a disk image created from those files.
Certainly a useful tool everyone should bookmark, and a nice way to keep the spirit alive!
One of the strengths of the Amiga - at the time - was that it generates a "native" PAL/NTSC video signal, compatible with that of any home TV, making it naturally suited for video and broadcasting production.
Genlocking - the inter-locking of two video signals, allowing blending, chroma-keying, overlaying, etc. - was the latest thing, and the Amiga could provide such a video signal without any expansion devices.
Probably completely unknown in Europe, a US company created a TV channel out of this combination. It lauched in 1981 as "Electronic Program Guide" using Atari 8-bit computers for image generation. Until about 1998, moving to several Amiga setups and undergoing several name changes including "Prevue" and "Prevue Guide", it provided TV program information, weather forecast, celebrity interviews, etc. In it's final Amiga version the software called "PrevueGrid" was able to display video feeds on a split screen, and play back audio feeds, while displaying channel programs. After 1998 the company continued under a different name, and the Amiga platform was gradually replaced with PCs.
So what you saw on your TV on this channel at the time was provided by an Amiga computer (together with video feed, genlocking, and other broadcasting devices). Fast-forward to the present day, YouTube, and a worldwide community supplying video content. A seemingly endless amount of original material, digitized footage, and captured broadcast video are freely available on the internet - including hours of recorded Prevue air time. Which is great, both for Amiga enthusiasts, and TV viewers that enjoy the nostalgia.
But the fun part comes with the mishaps. Of course something goes wrong every once in a while, and AmigaOS running PrevueGrid is no exception. As is the person operating the Amiga computer in question. This results in an enjoyable mix of low-res video, genlocking gone wrong, Amiga and PrevueGrid system reboots, and other little glitches, together with oldskool TV programming - a nice look back at 1990s broadcasting technology and content.
Here are a couple of video links to get you started:
Yet another update of IFF ILBM imageviewer xiffview for Linux computers. Now it can double- or triple-scale image, display individual bitplanes, give color information, and a couple of other features have been added.
xiffview is slowly turning into quite a usable tool. In addition to the aforementioned, it also got a brand new status bar for user messages, a rudimentary online help, and it displays pixel coordinates when the mouse moves over the image.
When the mouse pointer is positioned over a color palette cell, color information is displayed on the status bar in RGB8 and RGB4 format.
Using keys F1 to F8 you can disable display of individual bitplanes of the image, which might be helpful for sprite data generation, color analysis, and other things.
The C code generated by command "to-sprite" now contains a placeholder "xSPRITENAMEx" in the variable names used. You can use it to search-and-replace with your desired sprite name - for example, if you replace it with "ship", this will give you varnames like "sprite_ship_newvsprite", "sprite_ship_colors", etc.
xiffview 0.5 displaying one of four ILBM bitplanes
As always, see AmiNet readme file for more information.
Are you not entertained? Don't worry, we have more new Amiga games!
"The Shadows of Sergoth" available for pre-order
We've reported about beautiful dungeon-crawler game "The Shadows of Sergoth" before, when the first demo was released - let's just sum it up quickly: it's a quite polished enhanced version of an 2018 Amstrad CPC game of the same name, it looks and sounds great, is almost 3d, and if you like this kind of stuff you need to have it.
Since Oct. 6th you can pre-order the full game as digital download, and physical, boxed edition. The box contains three floppy discs, a printed instruction manual, a real compass (!), a die with 20 faces, stickers - and you get the digital download on top of that. That's a really nice package.
The full game requires 2MB ChipRAM (as opposed to 1.5MB ChipRAM for the demo), a faster Amiga is recommended (A1200 / 68020), and the release date has been set for Nov. 13th 2021.
1986 Konami arcade game "Jackal" (aka "Top Gunner") gets a remake for OCS/ECS Amigas. "Jackal" is great, it's a bit like "Commando" meets "SWIV", and being an oldskool arcade title, it's got that certain look and feel that just makes you want to play.
After a first demo was released in August, a second one was in September, proving the author's dedication, but this is still work-in-progress. The pictures below are taken from the game's website (see link below), and you can find demo videos on YouTube. The graphics are obviously appealing, and there's a nice rendition of the original arcade music playing along - but being an unfinished product everything is of course still subject to change.
This kind-of-movie-spin-off point-and-click adventure game by Jose A. Gonzalez / Irongate was announced with a preview video early this year.
In quite an obvious reference to John Carpenter, you direct this very Kurt Russel looking guy through various screens, examining objects and talking to people, on your quest to find some important floppy disk.
With nice, detailed graphics, and sprites with big heads, "1987 Rescate..." (or "1987 Rescue in Berlin") features Jose's characteristic visual style, and you get to hear some really decent music, including a cover of Carpenter's "Escape from New York" theme, and everyone's favourite song, "Girl from Ipanema".
Since July the full versions in Spanish, English, Italian, and Czech is available as digital ADF, and boxed edition with printed manual.
Maybe the first "true" next-generation Amiga game is "Jake and Peppy" - it exclusively requires a Apollo Vampire V4 SAGA board to run on.
It's basically a top view shoot-em-up - with an amount of on-screen colors and graphical detail unseen on the Amiga before, and a crisp 16-bit soundtrack. Apollo Core's 68080 with AMMX, and the Vampire's enhanced video and audio capabilities make it possible. This is not your 30 year old floppy disc game - this is shiny and new, super high-res, super smooth, eye-poppingly colorful, dizzying arcade action for those who are not afraid of FPGA.
Some of the new features are an online highscore table, animations, and added sound effects. And it's still 1 or 2 players, keyboard or joystick, multiple playing modes and difficulty levels, and runs on any Amiga with 512KB ChipRAM.
Now this is really pretty cool: Byron 3D Games Studio has created a Lionheart remake - in Java!
Lionheart is among the best known and most beautiful games ever on the Amiga - maybe the most beautiful - and this remake gets it right: it looks pixel perfect identical. There are of course little differences here and there, but overall it's just... Lionheart. Nothing less, nothing more. Perfect.
Even more games, no time to lose: more first person shooting, yet another puzzle game from Simone Bevilacqua, and two point-and-click adventures in this issue of Games galore.
"Blood"
Shortly after "Exhumed" (or "Powerslave") another MS-DOS first person shooter based on the "Build" engine was ported to the Amiga by BSzili: "Blood", originally from 1997, first shown on the Amiga in June 2021, and uploaded to AmiNet in September, goes deep into horror territory, with graveyards, crazy monks, and rolling heads.
It's
an exciting 3d shooting game that requires a powerful AGA Amiga with
FPU - 68040 and higher - Kickstart 3.0 or higher, 32MB of RAM, harddisc,
and, just as "Exhumed" does, game data files from the PC version (see
links below).
(Note: the AmiNet readme says a
68060 is required, but we have seen video of "Exhumed" running on 68040,
so we're assuming "Blood" has the same CPU requirements, thus probably
runs on 68040, too.)
Watch a video of "Blood" running on Amiga 1200 / 68060 @ 66 Mhz with Roland SC-88 MIDI expander music (yay!) on anouk33's YouTube channel (2021-08-03):
"Cybersphere" was announced in June 2021, and by now we can purchase the finished product - see links below.
Being a Hollywood-MAL based piece of software, it requires quite some harddisc space, and is available for many platforms - the game CD contains versions for AmigaOS4, MorphOS, AROS (x86), plus Windows 32-bit (runs on 64-bit systems, too), Linux 32-bit (runs on 64-bit systems, too), and MacOS.
Simone "saimo" Bevilacqua at it again - over the summer of 2021 he's updated his variation of the good old "Memory" card game concept with bugfixes and new features. "MeMO" is actually a pretty old game that dates back to 1996.
What sets "MeMO" apart from the competition is that it's a saimo game, which means it looks great, plus it
has some super laid-back fusion music, allows two players to play simultaneously - a feature rarely seen in computer card games - and it has some AI trickery designed to make "MeMO" a totally non-frustrating experience.
The game requires 68020 CPU, 1MB ChipRAM plus some other RAM, ECS chipset, PAL video, and AmigaOS 2.0 (or higher).
We've reported about the game before so we won't go into too much detail here - but a new (v1.0j, July 2021) demo release of Michael "Mixel" Dawes' beautiful point-and-click jump-and-run adventure "Creeping Me Out: Hex Night" is certainly worth mentioning.
Here's the - pretty impressive - "CMO Hex Night Demo Launch Trailer" from Mixel's Lab on YouTube (2021-06-28):
Actually I don't like the Competition Pro joysticks too much. A kind-of review.
I think the Competition Pro puts unnecessary strain on your wrist, and has some other disadvantages.
Classic red-black color scheme Competition Pro joystick
You'd probably intuitively grab the Competition Pro's stick more or less from above. That position, plus the height of the body, the placement of the fire buttons, that'll make you put your thumb towards the edge of the top casing instead of across (unless you use the fire button on the opposite side), and the small footprint area of the bottom casing, makes the entire construction work kind of like a lever, twisting your wrists in opposite directions. Depending on the individual specimen of Competition Pro joystick, the spring and microswitches involved with stick movement / directions might be pretty strong, requiring unnecessary force, potentially increasing wrist strain. In addition to the sub-optimal way the (probably left) fire-button-hand is placed regarding overall grip and stability, pushing down the button creates an unnatural motion of the stretched out thumb more towards the index finger than towards the center of an imaginary Tennis ball in your hand, quickly exhausting the thumb's muscles. If the fire buttons slightly tilt, and cant, which they occasionally do, exhaustion is even quicker.
And then, while most microswitches are great, they're also sometimes pretty loud, esp. when put into a bulgy casing like the Competition Pro's. Depending on the situation the clicking of the switches can get a little annoying.
I prefer Quickshot I's, which you'd typically grab more or less horizontally, thus typically applying some downward force. Combined with a much wider footprint area, overall lower-profile body, the (body) fire button positioned less close to the body's edges, and suction cups on the bottom, the Quickshot stands much more firmly, esp. on hard, plain surfaces. It's pretty usable even with one hand only.
A 30 year old, heavily used SVI Quickshot I - is it better than a Competition Pro?
The Quickshot I doesn't have microswitches, but you can easily service it's open tin switches, and they're hardly audible when in use. The stick wears out over time, reducing force required. With a stick moving that smoothly, you can put your steering hand's fingers near the lower end of the stick, creating super fast changes in direction, and almost eliminating wrist strain from both hands.
Of course the Competition Pro is still a great product. It has a lot of advantages - it's die-hard construction and build quality, iconic looks, comfortable ball-stick, and more. Many people got used to it, and rightfully love it.
Certainly not everyone will agree with the above analysis of the Competition Pro's construction and handling. And to be honest it's not 110% serious - it's based on very little test data, and heavily biased. ;-)
But one day it just had to be said: The Competition Pro is not necessarily the best, the only usable joystick in the world. This is just an example where personal experience differs from widespread opinion. Why not try a different joystick? Computec has some not-so-fancy-looking, but really well-working models. Quickshot I and II are great microswitch-less designs. And there are many others.
Computec Quick Gun Turbo Pro - a great Competition Pro alternative
