"It’s a reckoning": Worms 30th anniversary

In 2025, Cult game "Worms" by Team17 will have its 30th birthday. To celebrate the occasion, a new, free release of the game is planned - with levels created by the Amiga demo scene!

"Worms - The Directors Cut" (1997) cover artwork

According to sources (see end of article) "Worms" developer Andy Davidson has announced a reimagining of "Worms DC" ("Director's Cut") 1.5, that is set for release in January 2025, and for free. That's a very nice gift to the Amiga scene. 

Actually, he doesn't refer to the occasion a celebration, but a reckoning - which is quite fitting for the game.

To make the new release really special, Amiga demo groups are encouraged to submit their level designs, via a forum thread at amigans.net - which is a nice, and interesting idea. Graphics artists that are active in the demo scene have created some of the most stunning visuals ever seen on Amiga screens, so some eye candy can certainly be expected. "Worms" isn't a very complex game, but maybe, given the deep understanding of maths, bits, and bytes, in these circles, even some unusual, challenging designs might show up, that give the gameplay an unexpected twist.

"Worms - The Director's Cut" (1997) in-game screen

Basically, "Worms" levels are just bitmap images, so all that's required to create one is a paint program such as Deluxe Paint or Personal Paint. A couple of details regarding color palette and depth have to be respected, obviously. 

More details, and your place to submit your application (well, there's no specific process - just leave a note) can be found at this URL:

https://www.amigans.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3282

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2024-10-00078-DE.html

Fantastic animation: "Dance of the Stumblers" (Steve Segal, 1987)

It doesn't happen too often that one stumbles [pun!] upon Amiga material from 1987, and is genuinely surprised. "Dance of the Stumblers" is a staggeringly beautiful, dynamic Amiga-generated animation that just has to be seen.

According to the video's description/comments, Mr. Segal (no, not the similarly named actor), award-winning animator and filmmaker,  created this animation with Aegis Animator on an Amiga 1000, using cues that he had written down from the music track beforehand. Due to high demands on the hardware, playback was slow, so it was set to 1 frame per second, and photographed at the same rate with an animation camera. (See links below for more information.)

The result is an amazing example of Amiga creativity!  

"Dance of the Stumblers" (1987)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bQJu97qxLw

Make sure you check out Mr. Segal's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@SSegal

...and his website:
https://www.segaltoons.com

Find out more about his vita & work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Segal

AMIGA alive software: zx81paint 0.2

A new version of zx81paint has been uploaded to AmiNet.

zx81paint has just learned a couple of new things: 15 steps of undo, drawing lines and rectangles, better menu layout, and slightly improved keyboard control.

Lines! Rectangles!

See Readme-file for usage information, and more.   

Get it from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/gfx/edit/zx81paint

AMIGA alive software: zx81paint 0.1

Do you like to create software for the Sinclair ZX81? This little paint program might come in handy.

zx81paint creates ZX81 character set images, and can save them in file formats suitable for ZX81 development.

Being the first release at version 0.1, it's quite a simple program, but it's already usable. zx81paint has its own file format for loading and saving, and can additionally save raw byte sequences of ZX81 character codes, and ASCII text BASIC program code for processing with "zxtext2p".

zx81paint v0.1, showing its included example picture

zx81paint requires Workbench 2.0. It opens a 320x256px window, so you might need a PAL Amiga, or adjust your NTSC Workbench size. Currently it's unaware of screen resolutions, so it looks best on 1:1-pixel-aspect-ratio screens e.g. Low Res, High Res Laced, or RTG screens.

See Readme-file included for usage information, and more.

You can download it from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/gfx/edit/zx81paint

Feedback on the program, esp. file formats written, is very much appreciated! Leave a comment below, or visit AMIGA alive on facebook or reddit. Thanks!

P96 V3.3.1 is out!

Jens Schönfeld / individual Computers is showing his commitment to Amiga RTG software by releasing another update of P96 graphics card driver.

Here's a copy of the v3.3.1 list of changes:

• The Cirrus5434.chip driver was broken (Piccollo64, Matze's graphics card) and did not switch back from direct color modes to chunky modes.
• One release of UAE had an issue by indicating that it would support mode mixing, but forgot to provide the necessary call-backs in some configurations. P96 provides now default call-backs avoiding the crash.
• Bitmap handling was simplified and streamlined.
• The Visiona driver supports now panning and interlace.
• The installer places now the P96 version into ENVARC:Picasso96/Version so you know what you have on the system.
• The installer no longer provides wrong default selections for the available boards in case the list of installed boards requires more than one page.
• The installer makes a very tiny consistency check on the unpacked files as some people unpacked on the PC, and then protection bits were incorrect.

Also the installer for Buddha has been updated to v1.4. See links below for all the details.

Sources:
https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/33/items/new-versions-buddha-install-v1-4-and-p96-v3-3-1.html
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2022-06-00031-EN.html

The Amiga Art Contest 2022 is on!

Amiga artists, warm up your fingers! 

Since 2019 "10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast" is organizing the "Amiga Art Contest", where all sorts of Amiga art creations - images, animation, sound - can be submitted. The 2022 event has just been announced. 

You can submit your artwork to the following categories:

1. Handdrawn artwork

2. Digital photography

3. Raytracing

4. Music

5. Animation

The rules are quite simple: "As long as your Amiga created it, you can submit it." Prizes will be given to the first place and second place winners of each category, plus an extra "Best of Show" winner.

The contest goes from June 1st 2022 until October 11th 2022.

Here's the official announcement video from 10MARC's YouTube channel (2022-06-06):

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

Go to https://www.amigaartwork.com for more information!

AADevLog #3 - A paint program for the ZX81

The Sinclair ZX81 is a wonderful little machine. It's limitations create both a simple, fun environment to play with, and a challenge for developers.

About four decades ago, I started learning about computers with a ZX81. Type in stuff on a minimalist keyboard, print characters to a simple 32x24 characters monochrome screen, don't worry about colors or sound, because they're just not there. The ZX81 has very little memory, and the user interface is almost non-existent, so you're done pretty quickly. It's great, but also very limited in terms of sophisticated tools - there's just no extra room for such things, and you're having a hard time entering and editing the required data on the ZX81 anyway.

About three decades ago, I started using an Amiga. The Amiga, in comparison to the ZX81, is a highly capable computer. It has plenty of room, tons of screen size, a proper keyboard, several standard I/O ports, and colors and sound on top of it. Well, obviously it became my main computing platform.

About two weeks ago I got myself a ZX81 again. Oh what pleasures. Nostalgia galore. And that great experience of typing in little things which create immediate results.

Of course I quickly ran into some of the aforementioned limitations, so I decided to create some ZX81 support software for the Amiga: a paint program to paint nice game intro screens.

First painting with zx81paint.

It's called "zx81paint" and runs on Amigas with OS2.0 or higher. Currently it can't load or save files, but a first painting was created successfully. 

Due to the simplicity of the ZX81, the data that needs to be handled is also very simple, so there are little to no critical issues. For example the ZX81 picture itself is stored as a fixed-size array of bytes filled with ZX81 character set codes. Most of the development time is spent on putting together a pleasant and useful user interface. With the data and program structure in place, functions like line-drawing, flood fill, etc. can easily be added.

File loading and saving is currently missing - and might be one of the more challenging aspects of this little project. Several file formats used by emulators come to mind, but it would also be nice to have something that can directly be played back to the ZX81's tape-in ("EAR") jack.

There's no fixed feature list for "zx81paint", but an early release version will be put on AmiNet in a few days.

Thanks for reading, c u next time!

* * *

Click here for an overview of all AADevLog articles

P96 3.2.1 is out!

Jens Schoenfeld / Individual Computers says Merry Christmas with an update to P96 (Picasso96) that happens to match AmigaOS's latest version number.

According to the announcement (see link below), it's a bugfix release that addresses many little issues that were reported by users via P96's support forum.

Among the changes are updates to blitter emulation, improved use of hardware sprites (mouse pointer) that increases performance, and added support for the ZZ9000 graphics cards' dual-palette feature, removing artifacts when dragging Intuition screens.

For more details, go to Individual Computer's website:
https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/de/newsreader/items/p96-v3-2-1-herausgegeben.html

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2021-12-00087-EN.html

The Amiga Art Contest 2021 is on

The "Amiga Art Contest 2021" has begun! There has never been a shortage of creativity on the Amiga, and once again this year Amiga artists can submit their work to 10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast's art contest.

Pixel graphics, 3d rendered graphics, photo retouche, sound modules, animation - pretty much everything "creative" is accepted as long as at least the final result has been created on an Amiga computer.

You can take a look at the 2019 and 2020 submissions to the contest for inspiration, if you like. 

This year, a couple of nice little prizes for the winners in each category have been added, for extra creative motivation.

Head over to their website for more information:

https://www.amigaartwork.com

https://www.amigaartwork.com/uploads/1/2/5/7/125726688/promostill_orig.png

 

 

 

"Traces" - "Blender" was born on Amiga

Did you know "Blender" had a precursor? And it's Amiga software?

3D artist and photographer Piotr Zgodziński has held an interview with Ton Roosendaal, original primary author of the well known and widely used "Blender" 3D graphics software, and published an article, including the interview, some Blender history, and information about "Traces" - the earliest precursor to Blender, made on Amiga!


It's a very interesting article, with lots of screenshots of "Traces", and maybe best of all: usage instructions, executable and sourcecode!

"Traces" is another example of the impact the Amiga platform had at the time. Like Samplitude, Cinema4D, LightWave, and many other applications, Traces/Blender was developed on the Amiga due to it's groundbreaking hardware capabilities, and would later spread to other platforms, becoming an industry standard.


Click the link below to head over to Piotr Zgodzińsk's website, read the article and get "Traces"!

http://zgodzinski.com/blender-prehistory/

Note that at the end of the interview is a link to another (video) interview held with Mr. Roosendaal about the history of Blender. At approx. 7:16 in the video, he mentions the Amiga computers in use at his company "NeoGeo" from 1989 to 1991.

 Sources:
http://zgodzinski.com/blender-prehistory/
http://zgodzinski.com/
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2018-03-00047-DE.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)
https://download.blender.org/source/chest/ 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg