AMIGA alive 05: DREAD demo (A500 Doom clone) (Video)

Testing the demo of DREAD (now: Grind) on various different Amiga setups with CPUs from 68000 to 68040.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRFaX3HJtHk

Games galore #16: Putter, Heart of Darkness, Super-Go-Down-The-Hole, Space Invaders, Inca Man

When I last said it'd become hard to keep up with Amiga gaming news, it was a little bit tongue-in-cheek. By now it has become genuinely - and enjoyably - hard, with projects and announcements popping up more frequently than the average "Games galore" hobbyist writer is able to update his articles.

Putter (demo)

From the author that created "Chicken Coop" comes another good looking game that involves a frog, and what appears to be soccer plus golfing. 

Built using the RedPill engine, in this game developer "Czorny" lets you control the aforementioned frog in order to kick a soccer ball around the playfield into a hole - kind-of like golfing, only with a vertical jump-and-run playfield with bonus items, obstacles and enemies. 

The word "enemies" is a bit of a stretch here - everything looks really adorable, you'll encounter cute fish and a bird, with minimalistic but very funny and fitting sounds (applause!). This should be well suited for the smaller ones in the family, while still being good fun for grown ups.

Watch "Putter - demo" video (2020-12-10):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-Q5MFcdgk

For more information check out the forum thread:
https://www.ppa.pl/rodzynki/putter-wersja-demonstracyjna.html

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-12-00024-EN.html
https://www.ppa.pl/rodzynki/chicken-coop.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/12/putter-charming-little-arcade.html

Heart of Darkness

If you're an 68000 plus OCS purist, then this is not your favourite game. But if you're into heating up your 68040, or the likes (fast WinUAE counts, too), you're gonna want this.

While the Amiga purist scene is exploding with new releases, fueled even further by modern game construction kits like Scorpion and RedPill engine, it's become comparably silent on the next-generation-Amiga side of things, so high-spec game releases are a welcome sign.

"Heart Of Darkness" is a huge 90s era game ported to the Amiga, that requires some horsepower, and the original PC/Playstation game files (full game, or demo). It's a side-view adventure type game similar to "Another World", but has far more advanced graphics and sound, and truckloads of both. 

You control character Andy on his search for his dog Whiskey through the various places of "Heart Of Darkness", avoiding evil shadows, solving puzzles, wild animals, and other obstacles.

Cinematic movie sequences...

In terms of gameplay, "Heart Of Darkness" is a well known concept, but visually it's certainly another world (...pun...), it's been a long time since such highly elaborate graphics were seen in an Amiga game. The 3D rendered characters don't look scary, but actually likeable, the 3D animators did a great job, and the game characters and backgrounds are just beautifully detailed and animated, along with some handdrawn cartoon effects thrown in. It's a cinematic experience that comes pretty close to playing a part in your own animated feature film.

Great job by the original deverlopers, as well as the Amiga porters. If you have lots of harddisc space, and a fast Amiga (or Vampire or WinUAE), "Heart Of Darkness" is a must-have.

...and high quality animations

Click here to download "Heart of Darkness":
http://netsurf.baderman.net/HeartofDarkness.lha

NOTE: requires original game files (from PC installed full game or demo, copy entire folder to Amiga), and powerful CPU. see sources below for more information.

Additional sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness_(video_game)
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/heart-of-darkness-a4h (PC version download)
https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=84905 (Amiga version forum thread / instructions)
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/11/heart-of-darkness-on-amiga-high-end.html

Super-Go-Down-The-Hole

Eric "earok" Hogan has released another game created using his Scorpion engine, called "Super-Go-Down-The-Hole", which is a remake of a PC title by Sergio Cornaga. 

Jump, climb, slide, push, run - the game mechanics are a little bit more sophisticated than your average platformer, and you have to "Super-Go-Down-The-Hole" a hole, which means a cave, figuring out the best ways to avoid obstacles and enemies.

Graphics are simple, but nice and effective, as are the sound effects, with a pretty accurate recreation of the original PC game's music playing along (which probably was played by a MIDI soundcard on the PC). The game requires an Amiga 500 with 512KB ChipRAM and 512KB SlowRAM or better.

Note that "Super-Go-Down-The-Hole" was released beta status - by the time you're reading this there's probably an updated version available, see "Additional sources" below (e.g. EAB thread).

Watch a video of "Super-Go-Down-The-Hole" (2020-12-23):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaKxyqgFw7U

You can download "Super-Go-Down-The-Hole" from earok's website:
http://earok.net/games/sgdth/sgdth.adf

Additional sources:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=105116 (game download adf / lha / iso)
https://sergiocornaga.tumblr.com/post/7416495044/you-have-to-go-down-the-hole-2009
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2020-12-00078-DE.html

Space Invaders

This title sounds familiar, doesn't it? Around December 2020 this new recreation of arcade super classic "Space Invaders" popped up. It's written in BlitzBasic, and the developer's goal is to recreate the original arcade cabinet experience on the Amiga as good as possible.

Meanwhile a couple of updates were made to the game, including "emulation" of the arcade screen overlay that kind-of adds more colors to the game screen.

Well, it's a classic, everybody likes "Space Invaders", and this is a near-perfect implementation. Certainly another entry in the growing list of great new arcade game remakes for the Amiga, created by true enthusiasts, filling the gaps when there wasn't a port before, or surpassing previous efforts.

You can watch a video of "Space Invaders" on Saberman's awesome YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnKjzKhbqj4

Check the EAB link below for latest updates, and download links:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=105132

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2021-01-00074-EN.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/12/space-invaders-amiga-arcade-homebrew.html

Inca Man

And here is yet another good looking platformer game, from Dec. 2020, created by Amiten team from Spain.

The "Inca Man" has to collect diamonds in the numerous single-screen levels of the game, while avoiding enemies and collecting bonus items. When all diamonds in a level have been collected, a little door opens through which the neat looking player sprite can escape to the next level.

Inca Man title screen - you should see it moving

This has quite a BoulderDash-esque appeal, and indeed not only the diamonds, also the pacing is reminiscent of the classic. In other words: "Inca Man" plays great. But of course it's a different game - a side-view jump-and-collect platformer, with it's own really nice visual style. It looks fine, and has a really fitting soundtrack with epic title theme, and driving arcade-style in-game music plus soundeffects. A password system helps you save your game progress, and there are two two-player modes: cooperative and versus. 

"Inca Man" requires an Amiga with 1MB RAM to run. The game is nearing completion, and should be available soon.

Watch "Inca Man" presentation video on Amiten TV's YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4U-TYImj0I

If you want to know more, visit Amiten's facebook pages and their website:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/clubamiten
https://www.facebook.com/Amibroadcaster/
https://www.amiten.es/

Additional sources:
https://www.amigafrance.com/forums/topic/incaman/
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2021-01-00015-DE.html

* * *

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for "Games galore #17"!

Check out "Games galore" main page with all articles -
click here!

* * *

Support Amiga game development! Buy a game!

Amiga Art Contest 2020: A tiger and a mouse on a tablet

Having invested some time on getting a graphics tablet running, and equipped with a now 68040@40MHz driven Amiga, the deadline of the Amiga Art Contest 2020 by Douglas from 10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast (10MARC) and Pixel Vixen popped up somewhere, and pretty much from out of nowhere I started painting...

The graphics tablet is a "Lifetec" branded Tevion/Aldi LT 9310, powered by a homegrown floppy-port-PSU, and connected to the Amiga 1200's internal serial port at 19200 baud and 200lpi, using FormAldiHyd driver from AmiNet.

FormAldiHyd requires MUI, which makes it look a bit nicer than if GadToolsBox had been used, and probably saves the author some typing, but ultimately it's an unneccessary dependency. Anyway, FormAldiHyd hooks into AmigsOS's input handler system, thus is more or less application independent.

PersonalPaint 7 was chosen as the paint program - it's quite fast, straightforward, and system friendly. Basically what I wanted is just some software that's able to properly set pixels on screen according to my hand's movements. 640x512 hires interlaced is my preferred screenmode, and you cannot be more Amiga than a 32 color picture - this will be the artwork's geometry.

Work-in-progress, using graphics tablet and mouse

The tablet works! But over hours of painting it turns out you need some strong nerves to keep going despite all the hiccups. Practice makes a huge difference, once you get an intuitive idea about the graphics tablet's dimensions and haptics - both it's overall physical features, and it's drawing area - and the speed the system is able to handle, you can make really good progress, but the tablet becomes unresponsive from time to time, or stutters badly - resulting in interruptions in workflow, and sometimes random dots and lines in the drawing area. (PersonalPaint's multi-undo is very helpful here.) I wasn't able to identify the bottleneck, experimented with FormAldiHyd's settings, New8n1.device as a replacement for AmigaOS's serial port driver, etc. Most times just touching (moving) the mouse would re-enable graphics tablet input, but at some point I kind of gave up and would keep using the mouse for a couple of minutes for painting, then give the tablet another try.

The tablet is still amazing fun to use, and moving a pen is incredibly much faster and smoother than moving a computer mouse with your entire arm. This may affect the results: I ended up using a drawing tool other than pen/airbrush only for the peace symbol, everything else you see in the final result is hand and finger movement. (Ok, maybe the tiger's eye was flooded.)

After three days of occasional painting sessions, I thought from here on it might get worse, so I stopped. When doodling around the first concept that came to my mind was something with a dog - as you can see it turned into a tiger-dog. I had some horror themed ideas, like a Hound of the Baskervilles or so, but then some positive vibe won't do any harm, and the little mouse was created.

'Nuff said - here's the picture:

The final result, as submitted to the Amiga Art Contest 2020

A lot of amazing pictures (and MODs), have been submitted to the Amiga Art Contest 2020, showing there's no shortage of creativity in the community. Tiger and mouse are very proud to be among the contestants. Thanks, 10MARC, Pixel Vixen, and all artists and judges! 

Head over to...

https://www.amigaartwork.com

 ...to see the rest of images!

Watch 10MARC's Amiga Art Contest 2020 presentation and results video (live-streamed on 2020-10-17, 15:00h):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR7PE1uFfiI

Make sure you visit "10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast" website...

http://www.10marc.com

...check out their facebook page...

https://www.facebook.com/10MinuteAmigaRetroCast

...and keep an eye on their YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/10MinuteAmigaRetroCast/

Follow Pixel Vixen via twitter at:

https://twitter.com/lapixelvixen

New Apollo 1240/40 cooling system

My "Frankenstein" Apollo 1240 accelerator needed some decent cooling, so I built something.

The ACT Apollo 1240 is a great accelerator for the A1200, but it requires some extra care. Among the quirks and issues owners of an Amiga 1200 with 68040 or 68060 accelerator have to deal with is heat, especially when using higher- or overclocked CPUs, in a desktop computer case, and when there's no manufacturer supplied cooling mechanism available. The 68040 CPU present on this specimen of the ACT Apollo, with a 80Mhz oscillator, gets unpleasantly hot, so it is likely to become unstable, wear out, and/or damage other components.

To provide some improved cooling to the CPU, a second heatsink was added next to the first one, where previously a 30x30x7mm fan had been positioned. The fan would now require a case and air duct that fits the Apollo 1240 plus a potential 3.3V voltage converter for potential 68060 upgrade, inside the Amiga 1200 desktop case, and direct air towards the CPU and heatsinks in a reasonable way.

Blender 3d modeling fan case

Using Blender I created a 3d model, printed it, refined it, and re-printed it.

(Current) final version in the center

The 3rd incarnation of the model is the (current) final result. The fan more or less rests on three legs inside the case, and has been glued into place with hot glue, sealing off gaps. The case is 3d-printed from PLA at 0.1mm layer height, with spacer sockets on the bottom to leave room for solder and solder pads below, and glued to the Apollo PCB, also using hot glue.

New cooling system with fan, case and heatsinks

First test runs have shown:

a) The cooling effect seems to be pretty strong! From the previous installation with a CPU temperature that's painful to touch ("ouch! burns!"), it went to somewhere hot that still allows sustained finger contact to CPU or heatsink. Certainly a huge improvement.

b) The noise level is easily tolerable. The fan motor is quite audible at times, but there's comparably little hissing from the air moving through the plastic case. Maybe this can be improved further with a more elaborate shape of the case / air duct.

c) Hot glue is awful because it's somehow neither fish nor flesh, but it's easily removable and makes a very good seal for small gaps in plastic parts. The Apollo 1240 has very few features for extra parts to be be attached to, the CPU might get too hot for direct contact with PLA. Applying and removing hot glue worked very well - at least for development.

b) Overall height, and some space restrictions, are at the borderline. An extra millimeter here and there would be nice - maybe a little cutting and scratching will do, or it's just Amiga case inconsistencies. Otherwise the fan case 3d model might need some modification.

It kind of looks like a mech...

Room has been left for the 68060 voltage converter, but a SCSI connector or second SIMM socket probably won't fit anymore.

One of the heatsinks was already there, so the other one got cut for the 68060 voltage converter "jumpers",
red (left of CPU) and white wires are repairs by previous owner

I'll see how the PLA takes the temperature, and if the system remains stable in the long term and under heavy use. Also time will show if hitting the Amiga's keyboard above the cooling system and Apollo board will affect the installation. I guess with lots of warm air around, the new fan case will deform if there's mechanical pressure from one of the other computer components applied to it.

For now I consider it a success, entering "real-life" testing stage - 68040 power at 40Mhz, plus there's a chance this new cooling system will allow a 68060 to be installed on the board. :-)

* * *

Rise of the undead: AmigaOS 3.1.4 released

In Amigaland, 3.1.4 comes after 3.9: 18 years have passed since the last update of AmigaOS3 - since yesterday you can purchase a new release, AmigaOS 3.1.4!

----- ----- ----- ----- -----
UPDATE 2018-11-06: Software-only distribution of AmigaOS 3.1.4 has stopped, physical media (floppys & ROM) release is available at your Amiga dealer now!
----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Gathering information from various sources (see end of article) it's assumed it has these features:

• Support for large harddisks (HD_SCSI_CMD, TD_64 and/or NSD) and "super floppies"
• Support for long filenames, pipes, softlinks, hardlinks
• "DiskDoctor" program is back, upgraded and matured, recovers data from damaged floppies and harddisks
• Native support for 68000-68060 CPUs, and a more robust auto-configuration process
• many ROM modules and CLI/shell commands bugfixed and updated
• Workbench updated, new Preferences editors in GadTools style, printer drivers and support tools updated
• "edit" and "MagTape" removed
• CrossDOS and CD-ROM filesystem updated, including multithreading and support for Rockridge, Joliet and UDF
• new professionally designed iconsets (multicolor, classic 4-color)
• new intuition.library provides window off-screen dragging (optional)
• workbench.library and icon.library loaded from disk due to increased size

...and more.

No screenshots or reviews have surfaced yet. Judging from AmigaOS 3.1.4's features, it's unlikely it will run on 512K Amigas, but contrary to OS3.5 and OS3.9 the 68000 CPU is still officially supported. Also it looks like this version is meant to replace the OS3.5/OS3.9 branch of AmigaOS, though with a little work it's still possible to keep your existing OS3.5/OS3.9 installation intact, if you prefer.

In other words:

You can buy AmigaOS 3.1.4 from Hyperion as digital download now!

A physical set of 3,5" floppy diskettes and ROMs will be available shortly.



Sources:
http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/index.php/news/1-latest-news/189-amigaos-314-for-68k-releasedhttp://hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php/where-to-buy/direct-downloads/188-amigaos-314
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2018-09-00046-DE.html
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2018-03-00061-DE.html
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2017-10-00059-DE.html
https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=73661.0

Sneak preview: Thrust is the way...

To be continued.

Amiga 4000 opensource mainboard: alive and well

Paul Rezendes' Amiga 4000 mainboard replica is moving along quite nicely. 

Paul Rezendes from California, USA, has started a funding campaign to have PCB data files recreated professionally from an Amiga 4000 mainboard, and publish these under open-source license. A couple of weeks ago the goal of 5000$ was reached, and meanwhile has even been exceeded.

A few days ago, Paul posted another update on his project page, now showing first screenshots of the actual PCB files that have been created. When done checking for errors, the files should probably be released to the public via the project's GitHub page around next week!

https://d2kw0licpa1moo.cloudfront.net/28730374_1527979674.9891_updates.jpg

Amazing stuff - becoming reality.

Here's Paul's GoFundMe campaign page, see there for more information and latest updates - and you can still make a donation:

https://www.gofundme.com/amiga-4000-replica-with-schematics/

Note that GoFundMe does not accept PayPal - if you want to donate using PayPal, the guys from Amiga On The Lake are watching this campaign, too, and are happy to receive your donation and forward it to Paul Rezendes' GoFundMe account!

http://amigaonthelake.com/aotl-donations/

Thanks Paul, AmigaOnTheLake, and the rest of the bunch!

"Mini Metal Slug" for AmigaOS3 by Arti - and many other games by HunoPPC

Arti has ported "Mini Metal Slug", a "Metal Slug" remake, to AmigaOS3. It's a one-man-army comic-style shoot'em up game, and it demands some serious processing power: 68040 CPU, fast emulator, or Vampire accelerator is required.

You can find it on AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/search?query=minislug

Arti's homepage is:
https://artishq.wordpress.com

The AmigaOS3 version is based on HunoPPC's AmigaOS4 port of the game. HunoPPC has done a lot of other ports, mostly for AmigaOS4, and some for AROS, MorphOS, Linux, MacOS, Windows.

Titles include "World of padman", "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", "OpenBor"
"Xgalaga", "Aliens versus Predator 2000", "Enemy Territory: Legacy", among others.


You can find a list of his projects on his homepage:
http://hunoppc.amiga-projects.net/

Here's a video of "Mini Metal Slug" running on a Vampire accelerated Amiga:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvBGARLrPEc

Sources:
http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=3&note=6140
http://aminet.net/package/game/actio/MiniSlug
https://artishq.wordpress.com/

Accelerators galore

In recent times, a lot of new hardware developments for retro computers are popping up. Among these are a remarkable number of different accelerators for the Amiga 500, 600, and 1200 - here's an overview of what's currently available and/or in development.

Please note that information provided here may not be 100% complete. Read about the boards' details on the websites provided, or get in contact with the developers, if in doubt.

Have fun choosing your next-gen Amiga accelerator!

ACA500plus

Individual Computers brings us this accelerator board for the Amiga 500, with some interesting features - like e.g. built in Kickstart ROMs, AmigaOS 3.1 installer software, and a connector for A1200 accelerators.

CPU: MC68EC000 at 14 to 42MHz
8MByte RAM
8MByte FlashROM
two CF-card slots
Action Replay-compatible freezer
7-segment display "DisMo"
Kickstart V1.2, V1.3 and V3.1, and AmigaOS 3.1 installer in FlashROM
Extension connectors: A1200-compatible Clockport, local 16-Bit extension port, connector for A1200 accelerators

Website(s):
https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/de/shop/product/ACA500plus.html

ACA1221ec

Individual Computers' low-budget accelerator for the Amiga 1200, sells for only about 120 Euros.

CPU: 68EC020
17 to 42 MHz
16MB RAM, 9MB of which are usable FastRAM
1MB-MapROM option
2 clockports, one of which is hi-speed (for RapidRoad USB host controller use)

Website(s):
https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/de/shop/product/aca1221ec.html

ACA1233n-40 and ACA1233-55

Individual Computers' 68030 accelerators are still available.

CPU: 68030 at 40 or 55 MHz
128MB RAM
MapROM option
Clock port

Website(s):
https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/produkt-details/product/ACA12xx.html

Furia EC020 for Amiga 600

On sale for quite some time now are the Furia accelerators for the Amiga 600, available via online stores (e.g. http://vesalia.de or http://lotharek.pl )

CPU: 68EC020 at 33MHz
FPU: 68882 (if present) 
9.5MB FastRAM 
Maprom function

Website(s):
http://www.kuchinka.cz/furia/

TerribleFire TF520, TF530, and TF540

Stephen Leary's open-source DIY accelerators for the Amiga 500. Documentation on how to build the 68020 and 68030 CPU versions (TF520, TF530) are already available via GitHub and YouTube (see links below), and just recently Stephen has begun developing the 68040 version (TF540).

CPU: 68020, 68030, or 68040
FPU: 68881
IDE controller

Here's a demo of the TF530 in action, comparing a stock A500's performance to that of a TF530-equipped one, using "Frontier - Elite II":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRO9j2G9owc

Website(s):
https://www.youtube.com/c/TerribleFire
https://twitter.com/terriblefire

https://github.com/terriblefire/tf520
https://github.com/terriblefire/tf530

Wicher 500i

Accelerator board for the Amiga 500, from Poland.

CPU: MC68000/68010
Max. clock: 50MHz
RAM: 1-8 MB SIMM 72 (FPM,EDO)
IDE Controller
SPI Controller

Here you can see it in action:
https://youtu.be/WWG1BVmYEXU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6-r4OQP9Sc

There's also a Wicher 2000 accelerator board for the Amiga 2000 planned.

Website(s):
http://retro.7-bit.pl

HC508

Homebrew accelerator for the Amiga 500 by blogspot/YouTube user "m68k". Not much is known about this one, especially if it'll be sold to the public or made open-source one day.

68HC000 CPU at 50 MHz, 100% MC68000 compatible
IDE-controller (40-pin) for HD and CD-ROM
integrated CF-Card slot
8 MB FastRAM (1 wait state)
512k FlashROM for Kickstart (1 wait state)
Utility to individually (de)activate any module (CPU, RAM, ROM, IDE)

Here you can see it in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK1h65u8UIU

Website(s):
http://amigaprj.blogspot.de

Vampire 500 V2 and Vampire 600 V2

FPGA-based accelerators - and much more - for the Amiga 500 and 600. Amiga 1200 version is in development. CPU performance far beyond that of a 68060, SAGA graphics with Full-HD resolution, HDMI output, 128MB RAM, MicroSD card slot, IDE controller (Vampire 500 only). The ultimate boost in performance!

Website(s):
http://apollo-accelerators.com