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Comment AmigaOne Hardware News : Fifteen years of Sam440e (Score 1) 117

by Mike Bouma (#62569990) Attached to: AmigaOne X1000/X5000 Remains Well Supported With PowerPC Linux

"Dear customers,
It was the year 2007 when we introduced our first “baby”, the Sam440ep. Fifteen years ago. We designed and produced the Sam440ep, a lovely mini-itx motherboard that many enjoyed running AmigaOS 4, AROS and Linux.

At that time we, a bunch of mad amigans, resolved to do our best to bring this hardware to life for all the Amiga Community because it was in dire need of a new computer platform to run AmigaOS.

Without the Sam440ep, the future of AmigaOS would have been very difficult.

After all these years, just as the latest batch of Sam460LE is being produced, we choose to release the electrical schematics of the Sam440ep to the community.

We hope many of you will be happy to see one of the first image of our first project.

The ACube Systems team

Sam440ep schematics"

https://www.amigans.net/module...

Comment Re:But ... (Score 2) 117

by Mike Bouma (#62569986) Attached to: AmigaOne X1000/X5000 Remains Well Supported With PowerPC Linux

Most AmigaOS4 / AmigaOne owners dual boot into Linux PPC as well. Most seem to be programmers and technically educated people. Some even triple boot into MorphOS:

Public Release of MorphOS 3.17
"X5000 hardware support was improved to handle two Radeon cards and the HDD activity LED. Several text layout and rendering issues have been fixed in MUI."

https://morph.zone/modules/new...

For mainstream usage, here's an opinion from a hardcore AmigaOS4 user:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Most are using AmigaOS4 as a hobby and own PCs next to their systems.

Submission + - Linux 5.19 kernel adds 500k new lines for graphics (phoronix.com)

Submitted by UnknowingFool
UnknowingFool writes: The current Linux kernel in development, 5.19, added 495,793 new lines of code for graphic driver updates. David Airlie sent in the new lines as part of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem of Linux. The majority of additions were for AMD's RDNA and CDNA platforms but Intel also submitted changes for their DG2 graphics as well. Updates also came from Qualcomm and Mediatek for their GPU offerings.

Submission + - AmigaOne X1000 / X5000 Remains Well Supported with PowerPC Linux

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes: Despite being expensive and having been soldout for quite some time at the main Amiga Dealers, two days after Linus Torvalds' release of Linux 5.18, Christian "xeno74" Zigotzky made the latest PPC kernel available for the AmigaOne X1000 / X5000. Here and here are some screenshots. Linux PPC performs well on AmigaOne computers, for example here is a 5 year old YouTube AmigaOne X5000 demonstration video.

Submission + - Hollywood Designer 6.0 Released

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes: Airsoft Softwair has released Hollywood Designer 6.0, "a full-blown multimedia authoring system that runs on top of Hollywood and can be used to create all sorts of multimedia-based applications, for example presentations, slide shows, games, and applications. Thanks to Hollywood, all multimedia applications created using Hollywood Designer can be exported as stand-alone executables for the following systems: AmigaOS3, AmigaOS4, WarpOS, MorphOS, AROS, Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS."

The current version of Hollywood is v9.1 with various updated add-ons. To see earlier versions of Hollywood 9.0 & Designer 5.0 in action have a look at Kas1e's short demonstration on AmigaOS4 / AmigaOne X5000.

Comment Some more tutorials and examples (Score 1) 35

by Mike Bouma (#62555908) Attached to: How to Write Your Own Games - for the Amiga

Pong for Amiga: How to write a video game in a day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

That game was written in C.

An example Amiga 500 game written in C/C++ is Tiny Bobble:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

To code demo or game in Amos :
https://github.com/alain-trees...

An example of a game currently under dev in Amos (Bubble Story) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Metro Siege is using Enable Software's Engine9000 and apparently they also have a "Super Secret" game under development using this engine. 8-)

https://engine9000.com/

Submission + - IBrowse 2.5.6 Web Browser Released for AmigaOS 3.x

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes: The most popular Amiga Web Browser of the 90s has received another update. This web browser still runs on Amigas equipped with a mere Motorola 68020 processor, which was introduced in 1984. IBrowse was a rewritten follow-on to Amiga Mosaic which was the first graphical web browser on the Amiga back in 1993. However a native AmigaOS4.x PowerPC version is also available.

Submission + - Recent Amiga Games Creation Tutorials and Examples

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes: With the release of the A500 mini (which also supports A1200 games) and its side loading feature you may be interested to get started with Amiga Retro games development. This is why I collected some recent Amiga games development tutorials and added some additional information.

A popular game programming language on the Amiga is Blitz BASIC or AmiBlitz as the freely available and open source version is called now. The latest version (v 3.9.2) was recently released. The best known game developed with Blitz Basic is Team 17's original Worms game for the Amiga 500 in 1995. Meanwhile the Worms franchise has sold over 75 million game units across many different platforms. Daedalus2097 has just started an AmiBlitz video tutorial series on Twitch.tv: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. An example AmiBlitz game currently under development is Super Metal Hero (A1200) and here's a shooter level in the game.

REDPILL is a 2D game creation tool written in AmiBlitz by Carlos Peris and is designed to empower people to create many games for Amiga without programming knowledge. It's still early days but the first games are already being designed using this tool. An example game designed with this tool is Guardian — The legend of flaming sword.

The "Scorpion Engine" developed by Erik 'Earok' Hogan is a closed source game engine with all software developed for it open source. It offers a modern Windows IDE for development. In this video, Erik Hogan guides Micheal Parent from Bitbeam Cannon step by step as they create a legit retro video game from scratch. Various new games have and are being developed using this engine. An already released game is Amigo the Fox and an example game under development is Rick Dangerous (A1200 version).

If you want to dig deeper into Amiga coding then here's a series of Assembly game development tutorials by Phaze101. An example game currently being written in assembler is RESHOOT PROXIMA 3 (A1200).

If you are unexperienced with coding but would like to then here are some Amos (BASIC) tutorials for you: Rob Smith's How to program Wordle in AMOS on the AMIGA and Lets Code Santa's Present Drop Game.

Submission + - New firmware update v1.1.1 for the A500 mini

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes: Retro Games Ltd. has released Firmware update v1.1.1 for the A500 mini. It introduces ADF support, fixes bugs and my Speedlink Competition Pro USB is now properly supported amongst other changes.

But note this update breaks the newly released Pandory Mod (native RetroArch, ScummVM, 2 mice controlled 2 player Amiga Lemmings/The Settlers, etc). The AMiNiMiga softmod is not affected, with an RTG version being worked on.

Submission + - The A500 Mini has been hacked, the new C= Amiga Retro Console by Retro Games

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes: Just while Retro Games are in the final testing phase of their first firmware update for the A500 mini and ahead of the North American launch (sheduled for 31st of May at Amazon.com), Team Pandory just released a softmod for the A500 mini which includes native versions of RetroArch and ScummVM. Check out their YouTube video with them demonstrating Snes, Megadrive and Arcade games amongst other systems.

And just as we at the English Amiga Board finally figured out what the right procedures are to get the Amiga versions of Lemmings and The Settlers working with a GamePad and mouse simultaneously, this for 2 player fun, Team Pandory shows these games running with a 2 mice setup just like on real Amigas! EmuChicken of Team Pandory can be found at the English Amiga Board, there you can also find the latest news regarding other Hacks / Mods. Oh, did I mention in the applications menu they include the Linux Shell!

Submission + - Recently released and upcoming new Classic Amiga Games

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes: The release of the new A500 mini by Retro Games has been well received. How this will impact the Amiga games market is yet to be seen. So I thought it would be good to look at the current situation and maybe compare this again one or two years down the road. Here are some videos of games recently released or are known to be work in progress:

Here's a YouTube video by Alex Harkonnen75, it shows many classic Amiga games released in 2021. The shown games include: 1987 Recate en Berlin, Abu Simbel, Crazy Columns, Follix (AGA), Inca Man, Jackal, Inviyya (voted 'Indie Retro News' — Amiga Game of The Year Award 2021), King's Valley, Metal Gear, Pacman 500, Shadow Warriors, Super Cars 2 (AGA), Super Delivery Boy, Tales of Gorluth 3, The Shadows of Sergoth, Tinyus, Turbo Super Sprint and Wrong Way Driver. It also previews Creeping Me Out and Quest for 2022. Some games not in this video include Turbo Tomato!, Bean Versus the Animator and ArtPazz.

One game from 2020 I have to include though as it's one of my personal favourites: Tiny Bobble. It's a remake of Bubble Bobble as the Amiga original was a simple Atari ST to Amiga 500 port and this has now been greatly upgraded.

Alex Harkonnen75 also posted a YouTube video for 2022. It shows the following games: Black Dawn Technomage, Castlevania (AGA), CyberPunk Alien City, Drag & Drop Deluxe Edition, Green Beret, Quest and Wonderboy. In another YouTube video he shows some more games: Astro Blox, Attack of the PETSCII Robots, Knightmare and Silverman.

Gamesreplay TV also posted a YouTube video showing some games for 2022: Amidar 500, Boss Machine, Double Dragon Remake, Devil's Temple, Final Fight Enhanced, Green Beret (again), JUMP! (AGA), Rick Dangerous (AGA) and Target Renegade.

Some games not included in these videos include: Duckstroma, Lost Asylum, Maria Renard's Revenge, Robocop (AGA), Scourge of the Underkind and Super Metal Hero (AGA).

Last but not least I would like to highlight some Pixelglass games, have a look at the latest development WIP videos of Metro Siege, Dread and AlarCity. And finally Reshoot Proxima 3 (AGA) by Richard Loewenstein is looking mighty fine!

Submission + - The A500 Mini has been hacked, the new C= Amiga Retro Console by Retro Games

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes: Team Pandory recently released Easy Mod (Soft mod) for the A500 mini, this to add access to the Amiberry config, allowing the usage of ADF and HDF files. In their youtube video they show Workbench running Amiga ports of Doom and DukeNukem3D with good performance on the A500 mini.

Now they have hacked the console more deeply. In their lastest video they demonstrate Native RetroArch and ScummVM running straight from the Amiga Games Menu. They state: "Once "The A500 PandoryMod" is in a tweaked and ready state, it will be released fully open source for free."

Submission + - What games to sideload on the A500 Mini? The new C= Amiga Retro Console

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes: The reviews of the A500 Mini have generally been positive. Although I find the included games a little of a mixed bag and prefer a joystick for most games. However games including Qwak, Speedball 2 and the Chaos Engine I really wanted for their 2 player gaming modes! I thought it would be cool to make a list of games known to work well and which games have aged well. I tried to carefully make a list of good games which (already) run flawlessly on the A500 Mini. I tried to select my own 25 games which do not need USB /or/ onscreen keyboard are not needed. Here's my list, what are your top 25 games on the Amiga and how do they run at this point.

1)) Super Stardust (A1200, works very well with a Gamepad)
2) Superfrog (A500)
3) Turrican 2 (A500)
4) Deluxe Pacman (A1200 version, works very well with a GamePad, Freeware)
5) Ruff 'n Tumble (A500)
6) DynaBlaster (A500, works very well with GamePad)
7) Lemmings (A500, two mices supported)
8) Mr. Nutz Hoppin' Mad (A500)
9) Battle Squadron (A500, works well with GamePad)
10) Pang (A500, works well with GamePad)
11) Adam's Family (A500)
12) Rodland (A500)
13) Legends (A1200)
14) Desert Strike (A500)
15) The Settlers (A500, supports 2 mice)
16) Golden Axe (A500)
17) James Pond 2: Robocod (A1200 version)
18) The Lost Vikings (CD32 version because of better GamePad config, but it's a A500 game, it's identical)
19) Rick Dangerous 2 (A500)
20) Mega-Lo-Mania (A500)
21) Silkworm (A500)
22) Turrican (A500)
23) Traps 'n Treasures (A500)
24) Apidya (A500)
25) Speris Legacy (A1200)

You can look these games up on LemonAmiga and the Hall Of Light. What do you think?

Submission + - A500 Mini review: a great intro to the world of Commodore Amiga

Submitted by Mike Bouma
Mike Bouma writes: Eurogamer has published an in depth Digital Foundry review of the new A500 mini retro console. Their YouTube video is here.

Their conclusion: "So in the end, we are left with the usual two-fold answer when taking a look at these mini devices. For rekindling childhood memories or exploring the Amiga library for the first time, the A500 Mini is a very welcoming device indeed — especially given its open nature when it comes to sideloading games. It gives a more modern console experience, allowing access to some incredible games that were previously hard to find as original copies and tough to dial in under emulation. But for those who have already dabbled with the original hardware or extensively configured their emulation boxes via Recalbox or MiSTer devices, there’s nothing new here and you are probably better served within your own infrastructure of custom setups.

Like the C64 Mini before it, it will be fascinating to see if the A500 Mini leads to a boom period for new commercial releases based on Amiga hardware. With that mini console, developers saw an opportunity to target a 'new' platform for their modern retro releases, and sales steadily increased as fans both new and old saw new software specifically optimised for the aftermarket device, something which could be taken even further on the A500 Mini with WHDLoad. The A500 Mini could usher in a new wave of Amiga fans and software, but it remains to be seen if Retro Games Ltd. make it possible."

"Despite some flaws, unique options and solid emulation earns this tiny retro console a DF recommendation."

Already launched in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the A500 mini is set for a North American launch upcoming 31st May 2022.

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