Games galore #22: Exhumed, Dread (demo release), Henry's House, Krogharr, Polar Panic

Amiga game development is moving fast - so are we: this time we have two first person shooters, a port of an 8-bit platformer, a new fighting game by the author of "Invyya", and another new jump and run game.

Exhumed

Recently, a couple of PC games based on the "Build" 3d engine were ported to the Amiga - on of which is 1997 PC first person shooter game "Exhumed", also known as "Powerslave".

Well, what can u say - great stuff! Ancient Egypt is a nice subject for a game, and from an Amigan's point of view this is next-level first person shooter gaming finally making it's way to the Amiga (along with DREAD, Blood, and others) on a regular basis. It requires a fast CPU (68040/68060/FPGA/Emu), AGA, 16MB RAM, harddisc, Kickstart 3.0 or higher, and some data files from the PC version (see links below).

Watch a video of "Exhumed" on Amiga Fan's YouTube channel (2021-05-06):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_UJ-luz2oY

You can download "Exhumed" ("Powerslave") for Amiga from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/game/shoot/pcexhumed

Additional sources:
https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=106747
http://www.indieretronews.com/2021/05/exhumed-powerslave-egyptian-themed-fps.html
http://www.jonof.id.au/buildgames/ps.html (PC demo / game data)

Dread demo released

Yeah, you heard the news, it's on facebook, it's on YouTube, it's pretty much everywhere: DREAD demo is out!

Now you can more or less play Doom on your 7Mhz OCS 512KB Amiga 500. It's amazing, and not much more has to be said about this great project by KK/Altair.

Here's a video of DREAD running on several different Amiga configurations from 68010 to 68040 (2021-09-27):

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

You can download the demo (ADF and executable, zipped) from KK's website: http://devkk.net/Dread-1905-Amiga.zip

 

Henry's House

...is a conversion of an 8-bit (C64, Atari) platform game from 1984 that got very positive reviews.

You control Little Henry, climbing ladders, jumping around, collecting things, and avoiding obstacles. The game has some visual similarities with maybe Donkey Kong, or titles like that, and adds a couple of nice effects on top.

Thanks to coder Marecheck / MC Studio it's now available for the Amiga.

Here's a video of "Henry's House" from conversion author Marecheck's YouTube channel (2021-05-06):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLqu-E1krxY

Go to MC studio's website for more information, and download of "Henry's House": https://www.mcstudio.pl
(you can click the UK flag for English language)

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2021-05-00019-DE.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2021/06/henrys-house-first-of-many-8bit-to.html
https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Henry%27s_House

"Krogharr" announced

In May 2021 the author of Inviyya announced a new project for OCS Amigas that goes by the name of "Krogharr". It's a fighting game in development, that seems to sit somewhere near Golden Axe and Barbarian II. Only static graphics have been shown so far - but these look pretty amazing, with detailed, manga-esque game characters, somehow watercolor-style background graphics, and a lo-fi, atmospheric color palette. Judging from the reviews Inviyya got, this will be another great game by Tigerskunk.

https://www.amigafrance.com/wp-content/uploads/hm_bbpui/117758/rufgreco4yvhzw6obi2wv4lupdf60ear.png

To keep up with the latest news about "Krogharr" visit the game's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/krogharr/

Also keep an eye on the author's itch.io pages: https://tigerskunk.itch.io

Additional sources:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=106945
https://www.amigafrance.com/forums/topic/krogharr/
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2021-05-00031-DE.html

Polar Panic

Remarkably detailed sprite graphics, and a seriously groovy soundtrack are two of the features of upcoming, work-in-progress jump'n'run game "Polar Panic".

Not too much is known about this project so far - the game uses the Scorpion engine, an early video has been released around mid-May 2021, and it looks quite promising!

Watch "Polar Panic Amiga Edition v1.1" on Gaz Marshall's YouTube channel (2021-05-13):

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4FWXA8znX8

Additional sources:
http://www.indieretronews.com/2021/05/polar-panic-new-wip-amiga-ocs-game-with.html

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Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for "Games galore #23"!

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

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Support Amiga game development! Buy a game!

Games galore #21: Turrican 2 AGA, Follix, ArtPazz, Knight Rider 77, Super Delivery Boy

It's been quite a while, we've got some serious catching up to do, let's go: Turrican returns to the Amiga in AGA colors, Simone Bevilacqua is developing some slick puzzlers with cool graphics, Luigi Recanatese goes full retro-racing, and as always we have some beautiful platformer.

Turrican 2 AGA

Yeah, it's Turrican, the legend. At the end of April 2021 a ("back"-)port of the MS-DOS conversion of Turrican 2 was released to the public. It's still work-in-progress, but judging from user comments it's already really good. 

Not much needs to be said about this - everyone has played Turrican, it's one of the best action-shoot-em-up-platformers on several platforms, Amiga included. And now it looks even better!

As expected from an AGA game, "Turrican 2 AGA" runs on Amiga 1200 and 4000 (and emulators, of course), some FastRAM is recommended for best experience.

Updated AGA graphics and Turrican gameplay - you certainly don't want to miss this. A third demo version has just been released. A very exciting project, very much looking forward to further progress.

Here's a video from Saberman's YouTube channel (2021-09-29):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw0CVwbn-mI

If you want to try the latest demo of "Turrican 2 AGA" yourself, you can find a dropbox link in the forum thread (as of now latest release is on page 8):
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=106735

Additional sources:
http://www.indieretronews.com/2021/08/turrican-2-as-in-progress-ms-dos-amiga.html

Follix, and ArtPazz

Developer Simone Bevilacqua from Italy - creator of games BOH, SkillGrid, and many more - always comes up with nice new ideas, and gives his productions a recognizable, polished style. 

He's been working on "Follix" and "ArtPazz", two arcade puzzle games, which introduce some technical marvel that goes by the name of ALS (AMOS Layer System), allowing for some visual effects rarely seen anywhere else on the Amiga.

Here's a video from Simone's YouTube channel showing "Follix" gameplay (2021-07-10):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4mO9JiaGQ0

In both games you move tiles to restore the proper order of things and advance to the next level, but the presentation is very different. While "Follix" is more fast paced, and feels very arcade, "ArtPazz" with it's recreations of famous historic paintings and laid back music creates an entirely different atmosphere.

And here's another video from Simone's YouTube channel, showing "ArtPazz" gameplay (2021-03-17):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqf3FWCT09g

Read more about Follix and ArtPazz, and find more of Simone's creations on his itch.io website:
https://retream.itch.io/follix
https://retream.itch.io/artpazz

Make sure you visit Simone's patreon page and show your support:
https://www.patreon.com/RETREAM

Additional sources:
https://www.lemonamiga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17560 (ArtPazz)
https://www.lemonamiga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17621 (Follix)

Knight Rider 77

Now we're getting reaaaally retro. So you think an Atari 2600 is an old gaming platform? You have no idea. We're talking b/w TV game consoles retro here, the ones with built-in games and a switch. Or just a built-in game, no switch. 

"Knight Rider 77" by Luigi Recanatese, uploaded to AmiNet in April 2021, is one of those good old, very simple, quick and fun to play arcade games.

It's a straightforward racing game, looks super fun, and requires an Amiga with 1MB RAM.

Watch a video of "Knight Rider 77" on Per-Ola Eriksson's YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ97VH1tygc

You can download "Knight Rider 77" from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/game/race/Knight

Super Delivery Boy

This is a platformer featuring simple, beautiful, smartphone style graphics, some cute abstract dudes, nice music, and all the game mechanics that make platform games fun. Does that sound good to you? Demos have already been released for you to download (see below), and a physical, boxed version is planned with a release date tentatively set to some time near end of 2021.

Here's a video from Amiga Fan's YouTube channel (2021-07-03):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku9gAK0nUuI

Go to NEESO games itch.io page to find out more, and download "Super Delivery Boy":
https://neesogames.itch.io/super-delivery-boy

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2021-05-00012-DE.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2021/05/super-delivery-boy-neesogames-upcoming.html

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Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for "Games galore #22"!

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

* * *

Support Amiga game development! Buy a game!

AMIGA alive software: xiffview 0.4 (update)

IFF ILBM imageviewer xiffview for Linux computers has a couple of new features, one of which is a command mode that allows you to extract image data as C code for sprite creation.

If you're a C programmer and want to create sprites with your program, this might be interesting for you. xiffview now has a command that takes a couple of arguments, namely x and y coordinates, height, bitmap numbers and color indices, and saves image data from that region of the image to a C code file for use in your program. 

xiffview v0.4 with test pattern image

Also xiffview now includes a "contrib" folder with a test pattern image for you to play with, and a generic Makefile kindly contributed by S. Haubenthal (thanks!).

And it now shows the image's palette below the image display.

See Readme-file included for more information.

You can download it from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/misc/unix/xiffview

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

AMIGA alive 04: Floppy drive repair (write-protection switch) (Video)

A little repair job on a faulty floppy disk drive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9eVTkj3hlU

IBrowse 2.5.5 released

IBrowse has received another update, increasing it's version number to 2.5.5.

According to the release announcement, not much has changed visually, this is a maintenance release primarily addressing bugs, but also bringing a couple of new features - here's a quick (incomplete) overview of the changes in version 2.5.5:

• catalog translations updated (Danish, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish)
• improved cookie information display
• added third-party cookie detection / blocking
• added AmigaOS3.2 detection
• performance improvements (memory management, JavaScript)
• bugfixes to form submission (OS4), installation (OS4 with "Enhancer Software"), <EMBED> tag handling, resumed downloads
  

IBrowse 2.5.5 demo in 32 colors (imageset) on a 64 color WB screen

Ibrowse 2.5.5 demo displaying AmiNet.net

Go to IBrowse's homepage for more details, download, and purchase:
https://www.ibrowse-dev.net/news.php?id=1628931465

 

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Note: The installer script from the demo archive seems to have some small bugs - read below on how to fix.

Bugs were encountered installing IBrowse 2.5.5 demo (downloaded 2021-08-15 from ibrowse-dev.net) on a Amiga 1200 / KS3.0 / WB3.1, choosing "68020-030" version in installer dialogue. Line numbers in the screenshots below might be slightly inaccurate (e.g. due to additional comments).

Error "GETENV: String too long!" is probably caused by a "getenv" that doesn't properly evaluate under AmigaOS3, you have to make a little change to this "if" statement (near line nr. 1640):

Error "Unterminated string literal" might be a quoted string that has to be properly terminated on the same line (near line nr. 1507):

...and it works! :-)

Fixed installer script completes installation!

AmigaOS 3.2 Native Developer Kit updated, rel. 3

Hyperion and the team of AmigaOS 3.2 developers show their dedication with an updated release of the Native Developer Kit.

The new NDK was released on June 30th 2021. According to the file description, it improves compatibility with different compiler environments. Also there seem to be "strategic" changes, simplifying future updates (see "ReadMe" picture below).

Probably not directly related to the NDK's contents, but also mentioned in the file details is what appears to be a new strategy of distribution with wider availability through additional sources.

An odd feature of this latest release (just like rel. 2) might be that it's incomplete by design (see "ReadMe" picture below), and it speaks of a "worthwhile endeavour" of "seeking out on earlier NDKs" - umh, maybe not exactly "worthwhile". (But we've done the work for you, see link at end of article.)

Whatever the case, this is certainly another welcome update, and a must-have for all Amiga developers.

A look at the NDK3.2R3 ReadMe file

Go to Hyperion's website to download AmigaOS 3.2 Native Developer Kit release 3:
https://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/index.php/downloads?view=files&parent=40

If you don't have one of the earlier - complete - NDKs, you can get the "Amiga Developer CD 2.1" with NDK3.9 (yes, 3.9 comes before 3.2 in Amiga land) and lots of other stuff from your preferred vendor, or download NDK3.9 from Haage&Partner's website - here's a link: https://www.haage-partner.de/download/AmigaOS/NDK39.lha