juin juin 2012 archives of Genesis8 Amstrad Page

Results of the 3 compétitions held at the ReSeT#8 meeting in Coutances

And the winners are :

• graphic : Rexbeng
• demo : Krusty, graphics by Grim, Beb, Ced and Voxfreak, music by Tom et Jerry, for Glory holes
• music : Pulkomandy

All entries will be available later.

YM-64, an YM player for C64 by Norbert Kehrer

Playing SID music on Amstrad CPC is possible, but you can also play YM music on C64 using YM-64 by Norbert Kehrer.

Source : Norbert's emulators

Boulder Dash - the collection on Android market

Boulder Dash - the collection is available on Android Market, 5 games in on (buy them grouped or each individually) with new graphics or old school.

Source : Boulder Dash - the collection

Sardina Forever by GenSoft ( 2012), a remake of Sabrina (1989)

Sardina Forever by Gen Soft (showed at the RetroMadrid 2012) is available on Amstrad ESP.

It's a remake of the Sabrina game by Iber Soft in 1989. It's the original programmer Javier Garcia who wrote the remake.

The remake include a new loading screen by David (6128) and music by McKlain.

Controls are Q, A, O, P to move Sardina and 1, 2, 3 to beat people.

Source : Amstrad ESP

Les tuniques bleues : nord vs sud is now available on Iphone/Ipad

As announced in march, the remake of the Amstrad CPC game is now available on Iphone and Ipad under the name Tuniques bleues : nord vs sud.

There are 2 versions, the first one at 1,99 € and the other one at 2,99 €, I couldnt see at first glance their differences.

GrafX2 v2.4 WIP, a graphical bitmap editor by Pulkomandy

A work in progress version of GrafX2 is available to draw "mode 5" pictures for Amstrad CPC.

GrafX2 is a bitmap paint program inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. Specialized in 256-color drawing, it includes a very large number of tools and effects that make it particularly suitable for pixel art, game graphics, and generally any detailed graphics painted with a mouse. The program is mostly developed on Linux and Windows, but is also portable on many other platforms.

Source : CPCRulez's forum

Connecting a Bluetooth module to the Amstrad CPC Booster+ (made by Antitec) by Octoate

There is an interesting article on Octoate which shows how to add a bluetooth module on the CPC Booster+ made by Antitec.

Informations, software and manual for the CPC Booster+ are available on CPC Wiki.

Source : Octoate

Interview of Marc Maulin, co-author of Discology, on CPC Rulez

You will find an interview of Marc Maulin, co-author of the Amstrad CPC utility Discology, on CPC Rulez.

Source : CPC Rules's forum

Interview of Alain Massoumipour (alias Poum) on Phenix Informatique

You will find on Phenix Informatique an interview of Alain Massoumipour (alias Poum) who wrote for the french Amstrad CPC magazine Amstrad 100%.

If you throwed all your issues of Amstrad 100%, you will find them on le site des anciennes revues informatiques.

Source : Phenix Informatique

SDCC v3.2.0 RC1 and new SDCC tutorials by Mochilote on CPCMANIA

A new release candidate of the ANSI-C compiler SDCC v3.2.0 RC1 is available for download.

You will find on CPCMANIA 3 new SDCC tutorials :

• using sprites in Z80 asm and C (spanish tutorial)
• SDCC vs z88dk : Comparing size and speed of the binaries generated for Amstrad CPC (z88dk link) (spanish tutorial)
• converting and displaying an image on the screen (spanish tutorial)

Source : CPCMANIA

WYZTracker v0.5.0.6 by Augusto Ruiz, WYZPlayer and cpcwyzlib

WYZTracker is a tool developed by Augusto Ruiz (interface in english and spanish), from Retroworks, that can be used to compose music for WYZPlayer.

WYZPlayer is a Z80 player for the AY-3-8910 sound chip (a 3-voice PSG : Programmable Sound Generator designed by General Instrument) used by (and for) the Amstrad CPC, MSX and Spectrum. It can be used for games and demos due to its minimal use of CPU and RAM, the player takes little code and all musics are compressed.

Finally, you can use cpcwyzlib by Raul Simarro, an Amstrad CPC library to play wyztracker tunes with SDCC. He also wrote the cpcrslib used with z88dk.

Source : ESP Soft

C64 SID on Amstrad CPC, software or hardware ?

The Amstrad CPC use the General Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip, providing 3 channels, each configurable to generate square waves, white noise or both. A small array of hardware volume envelopes are available. The C64 use the SID sound chip with also 3 channels, each configurable to generate 4 different waves forms : sawtooth, triangle, pulse, noise. It offers other features, much more than the AY-3-8912.

So is it possible to listen to SID music on an limited Amstrad CPC ? The answer is yes, and if you are lucky enough to read french, you will be able to read the article "les SID-Voices" on Quasar. So to resume, yes you can do it on a plain Amstrad CPC, but if you play 3 SID-Voices, you wont have enough CPU time to do something else. Otherwise on an Amstrad CPC+ using the DMA, you will be able to do something else than playing music. The Quasar article comes with the AY+ source to play SID-Voices on a CPC+. On a plain Amstrad CPC, you can use a program by Geco, a hungarian programmer. He usually works on the Elan enterprise, he wrote a SID player for this computer, and ported it to the Amstrad CPC. Download this Amstrad CPC SID player (128 Kb only).

Some informations about this utility directly from the author (taken from chipmusic.org) : I created the player used 6510 emulation code of Simon Owen, and CPC header checking. The player spends a lot of time with 6510 code, this is the reason of speed changing on CPC, on Enterprise I met less speed changing, may be the cause of this on EP the processor is running at 4Mhz if the code is not in the video Memory. Yes, only some feature is emulated, frequency registers, envelopes in 50Hz, control registers (without wave formats), and volume register, if I remember well. And the noise emulation is also interesting on CPC, because when noise should apply then I give fix 0f value to noise channel, and drive the frequency with tone channel frequency (set reg 6 tone and noise enable on a channel), with this solution 3 different noises can appear on the AY. The player can play songs in 2 speeds, 50Hz, and 100Hz, does not matter of SID speed, ex if the speed of SID is 60Hz the player plays it on 50Hz.

Finally, you can play it hard too, with an extension. Read about it on CPCWiki (a bit of drama included).

European Soccer Challenge on Amstrad CPC, review and longplay by Xyphoe

European Soccer Challenge is an Amstrad CPC soccer game created by Fun Factory and published by Edos in 1989.

Interview of Prodatron - SymbiosiS by NoRecess

NoRecess is still working on a secret project since last december, about at 40% completion, which should be available for next xmas.

In the mean time, you can go on his web site to read an interview of Prodatron - SymbiosiS, the author of demoes and the Amstrad CPC multi-task GUI SymbOS.

Source : NoRecess

Samdisk v3.3 by Simon Owen, disks tranfers on PC

SAMdisk v3.3 by Simon Owen is out.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Version 3.3 (2012-06-14)
------------------------
- Added built-in support for zipped and gzipped files
- Added support for repairing 8K sectors with bad CRCs
- Added support for raw hard disk images
- Added identify device data reading, where available (non-USB)
- Added --hdf to force HDF version (10 or 11), with v1.1 now the default
- Added --no-identify to ignore source identify data
- Added --no-cfa to suppress CFA festures in generated identify data
- Enhanced identify to include  CHS/LBA28/LBA48 sector counts and CFA
- Enhanced verbose disk list to show serial+firmware and MBR partitions
- Changed disk list to show all devices by default, not just BDOS
- Fixed repairing to blank target tracks, with new density check
- Fixed HDD access beyond 4GB boundary, extended -s range to 2TB
- Fixed SAD image writing with custom sector sizes
- Fixed status messages being written to log and not erased correctly
- Improved FDC integrity checks during sector reads, for suspect hardware
- Improved total sector count to CHS mapping

Source : Octoate

Nightshift, an Amstrad CPC music compilation by Mr_Lou

Nightshift is a compilation of 11 musics by Mr_Lou, artwork by BlueAngel, code by Kevin Thacker (aka arnoldemu) and catart by tastefulmrship.

an iOS program : ZX Nostalgia Arcade edition volume 1 : The Mojons Twins

Looking on Itunes in the apps store with the Amstrad keyword, I was surprised to see an iOS application written by Manuel F. Garcia CABELLO (ZX Nostalgia Arcade edition volume 1 : The Mojons Twins) which let you playing several game written by The Mojons Twins, who are prolific authors of ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC games.

Source : Itunes

Uwol 2 Quest for money, an Amstrad CPC platform game by the Mojons Twins

Talking about the Mojons Twins, I went to their web site and found their latest Amstrad CPC game : Uwol 2 Quest for money.

As usual, you can also download the source of the game if you are curious.

Source : The Mojons Twins

Spirits DS by Nightfox, a Nintendo DS remake of Spirits by Topo Soft in 1987

A work in progress of Spirits DS for Nintendo DS is available on Nightfox and co (spanish link Nightfox and co).

Spirits (see Spirits on Youtube, ZX Spectrum version) is an action/adventure game by Topo Soft in 1987. You must fight an evil sorcerer in his castle and help a poor young woman.

Source : Nightfox and Co

HD Gameplay by Metr81 of the Amstrad CPC game Jet Set Willy

Here is a new HD video by Metr81 of the Amstrad CPC game Jet Set Willy edited by Software Projects in 1984.

If you prefer, you can see the video of Jet Set Willy with comments in spanish.

Jet Set Willy is the following of the classic Manic Miner, you have to find 65 items in a big house and be allowed to sleep with your wife.

A dream come true, an all in one video game console, with a GX4000 inside soon

The Unity project by Bacteria is ambitious, to make an all in one video game console (see Hack a Day).

At the moment, you have the following video game consoles inside :

• Sega SMS (done, not added into system yet)
• Nintendo NES (done, not added into system yet)
• Mattel Intellivision
• Nintendo GameCube
• Nintendo GBA
• Amiga CD32
• Philips CD-i
• Playstation
• Playstation 2

And he is working on adding others consoles, including our Amstrad GX4000 !

Source : Korben

Barbarian 1987, a remake programmed in basic with QB64 by F.L.

For the 25 years of Barbarian, F.L. delivered us Barbarian 1987 : the most faithful remake possible of this game which did cut a lot of heads years ago.

F.L. did program it with in basic (QB64), which is a windows compiler. You can get out your gwbasic or quick basic programs and still run them with QB64, or use the new features bringed by QB64 (like networking).