AMIGA alive - the demo

Going back to the oldskool: first demo by Amiga alive.

It was about time to create a demo. It runs on MC68000, Kickstart 1.2, 512KB RAM.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oettY1Dj10

 

Pete Cannon and OctaMED 4

British electronic music producer Pete Cannon and his Amiga/AtariST driven studio.

The video is a bit old, but if you haven't seen it, like Amiga, OctaMED, and old electronic music gear, it's a must-watch. Pete Cannon creates jungle/house/hip-hop music, and is an avid OctaMED user. This report shows some of his synths and samplers, oldskool production techniques, and is also a nice, pretty extensive demonstration of OctaMED (he uses version 4). We also get to see some vintage AtariST Cubase, hear some groovy jungle music (OctaMED playthrough), and of course listen to Pete talking about his experience. 

It's always nice to see Amiga computers still getting some proper creative and professional use, and Pete seems to be a very nice guy - very enjoyable and inspiring watch.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDn7ZDcx9w0

If you wanna get the true retro experience with OctaMED on your Amiga, you can download version 4 here:

https://aminet.net/package/mus/edit/OctaMEDv4

The most advanced version to date is "SoundStudio":

https://aminet.net/package/mus/edit/OctamedSS1.03c
https://aminet.net/package/docs/help/OctamedSSManual (updated manual)

Additional sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Cannon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OctaMED

Capital Punishment, Myst, Quake, Napalm - an in-depth history of ClickBOOM

Aleksandar Petrovic, producer for legendary Amiga games company ClickBOOM, has published an extensive video, in which he shares his experience.

It began with a Sinclair ZX81! And from there went on to become the most daring and most respected Amiga game company ever. ClickBOOM was active on the Amiga from about 1995 to 2002. "Capital Punishment", "Myst", "Quake", "Napalm - The Crimson Crisis", "T-Zer0", "Nightlong - Union City Conspiracy" all are legendary Amiga game titles that broke new ground, each in its own right.

Aleksandar was actively, and highly intensively at times, involved in coding some of ClickBOOM's games, but had, and has, even more to say about directing the company, publishing developers' games, obtaining rights, and why things happened the way they did. Did you ever wonder how much of "Napalm 2 - Euroburn" actually exists? What happened to Bitmap Brothers' "Z" on the Amiga? And how was Jackie Chan (almost) involved with ClickBOOM?

It's a more than 2hrs long video, packed with nice anecdotes and very interesting details, and Aleksandar Petrovic's voice and talk is just very pleasant to listen to. If you're in a hurry, or looking for something in particular, an extensive video description with timestamps helps you navigate.

Watch "Step-by-step how [not] to make a 90's computer video game hit: complete history of clickBOOM Amiga" on Aleksandar Petrovic's YouTube channel (2025-06-16):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbmM3y3d3U8

AMIGA alive "Quick Clips"

"Quick clips" are a number of quickly recorded and little edited videos of what you might call "everyday Amiga issues" - installing a software package, fixing some C code, transcoding a file from one format to another, and the likes.

So far, these "quick clips" can be found on the YouTube channel:

Rewriting AMOS code in C

Some "live" examples of how to translate AMOS code to C code. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jRAXVnV6cg

How to run AmigaAMP 3 on AmigaOS 3.0

With a little bit of manual effort, AmigaAMP 3 is nearly fully usable on OS3.0.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTu3J9nA8tk

Speech synthesis with "say"

Some experimentation, and a little story, with AmigaOS' "say", translator.library, and narrator.device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e4m2Yqt51A

How to sleep() with AmigaOS

How to substitute an eventually missing POSIX sleep() function in AmigaOS. 

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

 

...with more to come. Is there anything specific you'd like to see? Leave a comment - here, or on one of the videos' pages.

"Quick Clips" full playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFqkmsX-uEeIA7uBhdPvHLV1QCO27hU5l

* 

Subscriptions to the channel are highly appreciated. :-)

Thanks for watching!

Great Amiga Demos!

Just in case you didn't notice: There's a growing number of Amiga demo videos on the YouTube channel.

Amiga demos are just fun to watch, and oftentimes feature some fantastic music. 

This is a collection of classic Amiga "multimedia", featuring demos by Ephidrena, Capsule, The Black Lotus, Spaceballs, Digital, Parallax, etc., captured from real hardware. Part of the mission is to preserve and expose the Amiga's somehow unique video capabilities, with lots of different screen resolutions, different bitmap color modes, interlaced and non-interlaced screens, changes in screen size (aka overscan), and programming of the Copper video co-processor, which results in some effects that are normally hidden beyond borders of the screen. (See for example the pink spinning shape in Digital's "Lethal Exit", that expands for a couple of seconds - nifty.)

To get you started, here's Spaceballs' "State of the Art" from 1992:

Spaceballs - State of the Art (1992) demo

Maybe you wanna subscribe to the channel to get notified of new uploads?

"Great Amiga Demos" YouTube playlist:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFqkmsX-uEeK9ij8dvSnpTiY24ZZ7LbhS

 

The Art of the Algorithms

Not strictly Amiga, but very Amiga nonetheless: "Moleman 2 - Demoscene - The Art of the Algorithms" is a 2011/2012 documentary film from Hungary about the home computer demo coding scene.

If you're into swapping, trading, cracking, coding, intros, demos, cracktros, and that kind of stuff, "Vakondok 2 - Demoscene" - the film's original Hungarian title - by Director Szilárd Matusik is just perfect for you.

It explores the Hungarian demo scene, a fascinating insight into the history of demo coding, how demos are made, who makes them, who watches them. Amiga related content pops up here and there, but where it doesnt it's still a very enjoyable watch for anyone interested the demoscene, digital visual and audible art, computer programming, or computer hardware.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRkZcTg1JWU

Note that large portions of the audio track are in Hungarian, but you can use YouTube's subtitles for an English translation.

You can go to http://www.molemanfilm.com to find out more about "Vakondok 2" and the other "Vakondok" movies.


Sources:
http://vakondok.com / http://www.molemanfilm.com
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2170661/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRkZcTg1JWU