Archives for the month February 2010 of Genesis8 Amstrad Page

Axelay is the author of Star Sabre and Star Sabre 128 (a shoot them up). His new creation is Dead on Time, an arena shooter, where you have to last the longer possible vs waves after waves going for you. It reminds me of Time Pilot by Konami.

The final version of the SDCARD HxC Floppy Emulator is ready (there is also an USB version with the CPC connected to a PC). It can read and write DSK files.

You can see this SDCARD HxC floppy emulator on Youtube.

Contiki v2.40 (a small but modern operating system) is available since 16th February 2010. A previous version has been compiled for Amstrad CPC with the Small Device C Compiler.

Targhan (Arkos) has announced on the CPC_FR mailing list a preview of Arkos Tracker for windows. You can see a video of this Arkos Tracker preview on Youtube. Final version could be released in 2 or 3 weeks.

Seing the video, you can export to .WAV et .YM, and import .SKS (STarKos Tracker). The program can send the sound directly to an Amstrad CPC with a CPCBooster (I have some to sell, cant remember at the moment the price I paid for them, but they will be selled without a profit) or of course directly on the sound card of the PC.

More features given on the CPC Wiki's forum :

• 256 patterns available
• Each pattern is composed of 3 independent tracks
• 512 tracks available, each being reusable in any pattern, or even several times in the same pattern
• Each track can be transposed independently in a pattern
• A track has a height from 1 to 128 lines, independently of the pattern that uses it
• 255 instruments available
• The instrument editor allows you to modify each registers of the PSG
• Replay frequency of 13, 25, 50, 100, 150 or 300hz
• Possibility to put "events" in your song. They can either be used to synchronize your music with your production, or trigger digidrums for exemple
• Big news : instruments are divised into two channels : a Software, and Hardware one. These channels can be independant or dependent from each other. Allows using two waves at the same time
• Allows you to play sound effects in a very flexible and powerful way. You can also play the SFXs without any music
• You can import any STarKos song
• NO SID/DMA for CPC+ for now. I may plan that...

About the Player :

• Only 25 scanlines maximum used !
• On top of being faster than the STarKos player, it's lighter : one and a half kb.
• The player works on Amstrad CPC, MSX, Spectrum or Pentagon (using conditional assembling : only the necessary code is used).
• The generated songs are very light (about as much as the STarKos song. Sometimes a bit lighter, sometimes not).
• Can be used in Basic (call the player by yourself, or use it under interruptions), and Assembler.
• The source of the player is given, and documented.
• The format of the music is given. So you'll be able to create your own custom tools (conversion, new players...).
• Fade in/out available.

About the sound effects :

• Every instrument of your song becomes a sound effect.
• You can play/stop a sound effect on any, or all, of the 3 channels.
• You can choose the note, volume, speed of any triggered SFX.
• You can add Pitch to them (useful to add randomness to the sounds, for example).
• Sound effects are in a seperate file : you can use the same sound bank even if you change the music.

The following links will allow you to download some old Amstrad CPC newspapers, links comes from a spanish forum (seen on CPC Wiki).

• Cpc Attack
• Amstrad Computer User 1 / 4
• Amstrad Computer User 2 / 4
• Amstrad Computer User 3 / 4
• Amstrad Computer User 4 / 4
• Amstrad Action 1 / 4
• Amstrad Action 2 / 4
• Amstrad Action 3 / 4
• Amstrad Action 3 / 4
• Amtix
• Computing With The Amstrad 1 / 3
• Computing With The Amstrad 2 / 3
• Computing With The Amstrad 3 / 3

And for french newspapers, you can find some on le site des anciennes revues informatiques.