AmigaOS 4 News – August 2023

Hi,

Thank you for visiting my blog! 🙂

How time flies! Tomorrow it is the 1st of September! This means that it is time to do a roundup of what has been happening in the AmigaOS 4 community since July.

If you’ve missed any of the previous roundups, you can find them all listed on a separate page.

Hope you’ll enjoy the news and see you again next month!

General News

Raziel, who is working hard to keep the AmigaOS 4 port of ScummVM up-to-date, has uploaded a new version to OS4Depot. Release 2.7.1 contains a lot of changes and improvements, too many to list here, but you can click here to find an overview of them, as well as a download link.

AmiSSL received an update to version 5.10. As mentioned in earlier editions of the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup, the AmiSSL project is a collaborative effort to develop a port of OpenSSL in a shared library for Amiga-based systems. The download is available here. If you are interested in the SDK, it can be found here. It is a must-have if you use AmigaOS 4 to browse the web!

ACube Systems has released an updated version of the SiliconMotion 502 video driver. One of the changes is that it “now uses MicroDelay instead of udelay, to be compatible with boards other than Sam460s”. More information is available in the readme file.

Deark is an application that can extract data from a wide range of file formats. Developed by Jason Summers, this tool can help you get data from everything from AMOS ABK files to Doom WADs. You can read more about supported formats, as well as download the utility from OS4Depot.

George Sokianos a.k.a Walkero has ported three games developed by Titus Interactive to AmigaOS 4. These are Blues Brothers, Blues Brothers: Jukebox Adventure, and Prehistorik 2. All of them need the original data files, but links are provided in the readme file. Grab the release from OS4Depot! 🙂

Libsdl_ttf is available for download for SDL and SDL2. This library is a wrapper around the excellent FreeType 2.0 library, which makes it possible to use TrueType fonts to render text in SDL applications.

HarfBuzz by Behdad Esfahbod is a text-shaping library. Using the HarfBuzz library allows programs to convert a sequence of Unicode input into properly formatted and positioned glyph output— for any writing system and language.

Juan Carlos Herran Martin, author of many games and programs for AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, and other platforms, has returned with a new version of V.A.M.P. (Virtual Amiga Multimedia Player). With this program, you can play a wide range of formats. A full list is available here.

If this was not enough, he has also released updates to two games. The first one is Blackjuan Poker Card. This is a Blackjack clone that supports the use of different card decks. You can even create your decks using the included SDK.

The other is The Siete y Media. This is a Spanish Blackjack version with a Spanish deck of 40 cards. The aim of the game is not to get 21 which is common in Blackjack, but the sum of 7.5. You can read more about this in the readme. An SDK is included for those interested in making their decks of cards.

CiccioView is a new graphics viewer for AmigaOS 4. It was created in Hollywood. The program can be downloaded from OS4Depot.

Owlong by Lorence Lombardo is yet another program that times the duration of a command from CLI for the Amiga platform. The one the author liked the most was still not quite to his satisfaction, so he decided to write his own instead. You can find it for download on OS4Depot.

Sylpheed for AmiCygnix is an email program based on the GTK GUI toolkit. The design and user interface are similar to many well-known email programs from the Windows world, such as Outlook Express. Sylpheed has very good support of the IMAP4 protocol, which is currently only available with a few Amiga mailers.

If you are interested in making cocktails, you might be interested in checking out the Cocktails Shaker database. AmigaOS 4 support has been added, along with a German catalog thanks to Heinz-Raphael Reinke.

Aamp version 2.0 has been ported to AmigaOS 4 Edgar Schwan. He states as follows:

“This package offers a development environment on your Amiga, with which you can create and test your web projects. Similar to the well-known XAMPP package for Linux and Windows, it contains the HTTP (web) server “Apache” with compiled-in support for the scripting language “PHP” (version 8.0.28 and 5.2.10) and the database server “MySQL” version 5.5.10.”

Kevin Taddeucci has released version 1.5 of his script aimed at MediaVault 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 allowing the user to choose the stream player or to download a stream via a requester.

Libx264 is a free software library and application for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC compression format and is released under the terms of the GNU GPL. Version r164 is now available on OS4Depot.

Libfreetype 2.13.1 has been re-uploaded to OS4Depot to fix dependencies in freetype2.pc and freetype-config. According to the readme, FreeType is a software font engine that is designed to be small, efficient, highly customizable, and portable while capable of producing high-quality output (glyph images).

Mediathek is a program you can use to download videos from various German TV stations, such as ARD, ZDF, and 3Sat. It is based on MediathekView, which is available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS, and uses the same database. The author, Joreg Renkert, uploaded version 0.30 to OS4Depot in August.

Version 1.13.0 of Libvpx was uploaded to OS4Depot on the 23rd of August. According to the information provided, it is “(..) a free software video codec library from Google and the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). It serves as the reference software implementation for the VP8 and VP9 video coding formats.”.

Lyle Hazelwood has released VUMeter, a simple audio level meter. It displays audio level information on a 2-channel vertical bargraphc display. Configurable size, color, and ballistics. He has also released a new version, this time 53.1, of USBAudio2. The program records and plays back audio over USB to a select type of USB audio device. It also supports VU meters over CAMD.

AmiArcadia has been updated to version 30.01 by James Jacobs. The latest version includes many miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes. A full list is available here.

Fraunhofer FDK AAC is an open-source library for encoding and decoding digital audio in the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format. Version 2.0.2 is now available for download on OS4Depot.

Version 6.2 of AHI-handler (AUDIO:) has been released by Fredrik Wikström. This release fixes the packing of structures in “main.h”.

PDF2JPG version 1.1 has been released by Bern Assenmacher. As the title of the program suggests, you can use this tool to convert files from PDF to JPG.

Misc

Tekmage posted news concerning the upcoming AmiWest event in Sacramento, California, on Amigans.net recently. I have included it below.

AmiWest 2023 Oct 12th-15th

Hello Amiga Community,

AmiWest 2023 is coming fast! Going strong since 1998, this year will be the 26th year of the longest-running Amiga-focused show in the world. Set in Sacramento, CA, the Sacramento Amiga Computer Club and a dedicated group of volunteers host the event.

Kicking off on October 12th is the AmiWest Developer Conference. AmiWest has been hosting a DevCon for about a decade. This is two days of focused learning and sharing from experts worldwide on the latest AmigaOS developments, and this year will be no different. Hosted by Steven Solie, lead developer on the ExecSG team, the DevCon will cover various AmigaOS flavors, discussing topics like debugging, DMA routines, and more.

The main exhibition opens at 10:00 AM on Oct 14th. Trevor Dickinson of A-Eon will launch the show with A-Eon news and announcements. Following Trevor will be a full schedule of speakers from across the globe. Speakers include RJ Mical (original Amiga dev), Michal Schulz (author of EMU68k), and more. For those who can’t make it, we will livestream the day on YouTube. All the details are on the AmiWest webpage.

The exhibit hall will feature over 10 exhibitors. Many returning friends of the show, like Doug Compton of 10 MARC and Mr. Toast. We also expect Matthew Leaman of AmigaKit to return to the show for the first time since 2017. Also joining us for the first time is Ricardo Quesada with his UniJoySticle2 product. A full list of exhibitors is posted on the AmiWest website.

The banquet starts at 7 PM on Saturday, October 14th, featuring Garry Hare, Ph.D. He was the CEO of Amiga Inc. from 2003 to 2005, directly following Bill McEwen. You can read more about Garry’s involvement in the latest edition of “From Vultures to Vampires” volume two. Garry will provide unique insights into Amiga’s history from a rarely heard voice.

The SACC Sales Table will be back, offering a variety of Amiga parts, books, and software. There will also be some complete Amiga classic systems for sale! We expect to have on sale an A2000 and an A500, possibly more.

The show will also have a raffle filled with cool gadgets for all your computers. After you grab your raffle tickets, be sure to stop by the game’s competition table and give Knightmare a spin for a chance to win this year’s trophy.

Keep an eye on the AmiWest blog for the latest update on the show. In 1994, folks said the Amiga was dead. Boy, were they wrong!

A preview of the Amiga Future magazine issue 164 is available to view Online. Here is a list of articles that will be featured:

Interview Christian Wiegel (Settle The World) Part 2
Show Report Retcon Gaming Festival 2023
Show Report Kickstart 01
Amiga 38 Preview
Preview Castlevania AGA
Preview Hamulet
Preview Bulbmaster
Review Night/Shift – A Cyberpunk Adventure
Review Board game vs. Amiga – Monopoly
Review Absolute Zero
Review Commodore: The Inside Stroy
Review Amiblaster Deluxe
Review TF 1260
Special Trevors Soapbox
Special A1222+ Part 1
Special Demoscene
Workshop Pagestream Part 2

If you are interested in purchasing an issue or perhaps getting a subscription, please click on this link.

A game called AI Kills All Humans developed by One Joyful Day is scheduled for release in the 4th quarter of 2023.

This is a tactical RTS game in which you play as an AI sending robots to wipe out humans. It will be available on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2234780/AI_Kills_All_Humans/), and also for NG Amiga systems including AmigaOS 4.

Many of you have probably read about the upcoming production and release of the A1222 Plus from A-EON Technology and ACube Systems. If you haven’t, please have a look at the news here. One aspect of the many related discussions found in forums is that the A1222 Plus has an NXP P1022 CPU which lacks a normal FPU found in most PowerPC designs. Instead, it has an SPE. Eliyahu explains what this means in his guide for the A1222, which you can read by following this link. Due to this, some software needs to be optimized and recompiled to fit the new CPU.

Fortunately, one of the well-known developers on the platform, Daytona675x, is on the case! Previously he uploaded videos to YouTube showing how well the SPE versions of Tower 57 and Battle Squadron are running on the A1222 Plus. Recently he also released videos showing the Atomic Bomberman Remake and Voxelnoid:

amiga-news.de reports that Janne Peräaho has started a new project called “Amiga Game Framework”. According to the article, this is intended for programming 2D games under AmigaOS4 in a user-friendly way. You can read the report in full here.

They also report news concerning an installation guide for AmigaOS 4.1 under QEMU. You can read more about it on amiga-news.de.

The Rear Window blog has been updated with a new post where we get to learn about Trixie’s (Daniel Jedlicka, author of Rave for AmigaOS 4) history when it comes to computing. I enjoyed reading it a lot, it is well-written and contains an interesting perspective from back in the days in then-Communist Czechoslovakia.

Plenty of AmigaOS 4-related YouTube videos were released in August!

Kas1e has released a video showing the history of E-UAE on AmigaOS 4, using it to run AmigaOS 3.2.2.1, information about the Compositing Engine, double-click integration, and more. 🙂

The Amiga user Maurizio Casolari uploaded a video to YouTube showing Dark Forces running through Petunia with MIDI.

McFly PPC has made a video showing ScummVM 2.6.1 running Bladerunner on his AmigaOne X5000/20.

The Lost C uploaded a review of the Sam460, which has a playtime of nearly 1 hour. The video is in Italian.

That was all the news for this time. 🙂

Until next time

Thanks again reading this roundup and for visiting my blog.  Thanks to all of you who are following the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup each month. It is much appreciated! 🙂Also thanks to all new readers for popping in! Welcome!

I wish you all a great day! See you in the next roundup!

Best regards,

Puni/Void a.k.a AmigaOldSkooler