AmigaOS 4 News – November 2024

Hi,

December 1st is here and it is (finally) time for a new post on this blog.

Thank you for visiting the Old School Game Blog and checking out this month’s AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup.

Some of you have noticed that I haven’t released any roundups for several months. There are many reasons, personal, health, and work-related, but now I’m back and ready to continue where I left off (almost). I’ve got less hardware than before, but I’m looking for a new, affordable setup to remedy the situation.

Now, let us have a look at the news. 🙂

Software News

First up in November was version 0.40 of the PDF generator Compression. This tool is being developed by Achim Pankalla. The goal is to make a PDF generator that is complete with WYSIWYG. Progress has been made since the last version and many errors have been fixed. You can download it here.

TwinVNC is a VNC client, or viewer, allowing control of a computer running a VNC Server. A German catalog has been created for TwinVNC GUI by McFly.

http://twinvnc.free.fr/AuSujetDe.php?menu=2&lang=eng

Andy Broad has released version 1.8 of the driver for UGTABLET base tablets, such as XP-Pen. It has specifically been tested with the XP-Pen Deco01 tablet, and according to the author, other tables with the same ID should work.

SilkRAW is a program developed by Domenico Lattanzi that allows you to work with RAW files generated by digital SLR cameras, acting as an interface to the dcRAW program written by Dave Coffin. Version 3 is out now and can be downloaded from OS4Depot.

Features:

– Thumbnail thumbnail exports, individual RAW files or groups, with metadata extraction and rotation capabilities

– 25 dcRAW options supported

– Batch processing of RAW files, with saving in TIFF, PPM, JPG, PNG, ILBM

– Further postprocessing beyond dcRAW

An update to Report+, a ReAction-based utility with nine functions, has been released by James Jacobs. It was made available on OS4Depot on November 13th. This tool can help you with generating Aminet- and OS4Depot-style readme files, performing batch processing on icons, and much more. Here are the recent changes:

Changes since V8.6:

– Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.

Details:

– f3: fixed incorrect library base name.

– os3: now linked with small.lib rather than amiga.lib.

– f7: fixed: unwrapping: some spaces were being converted to EOLs when they should not have been.

– f3: added import and export buttons.

– f3: improved error reporting for nonvolatile.library operations.

– f3: now user can deselect items.

– f3: revised gadget layout somewhat.

SDL2 for AmigaOS 4 has received an update. Version 2.30.9 is now available for download at OS4Depot.

For more information about the project, please visit the GitHub page:

https://github.com/AmigaPorts/SDL

mGBA is an emulator for running Game Boy Advance games by Jeffrey Pfau. It aims to be faster and more accurate than many existing Game Boy Advance emulators, as well as adding features that other emulators lack. It also supports Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. The port to AmigaOS 4 was done by Marek Glogowski and version 0.10.3 was released on November 21st. More information, as well as a download, is available at OS4Depot.

UHC Tools is a collection of programs and scripts for Amiga computers and their offspring to simplify daily usage and the Amiga more independent. The authors, Patrik Axelsson and David Eriksson released a new version in November.

Version 33.6 of AmiArcadia for AmigaOS 4, a Signetics-based machines emulator, has been released by James Jacobs.

According to the documentation, AmiArcadia supports the following systems:

• Emerson Arcadia 2001 console family (Bandai, Emerson, Grandstand, Intervision, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, MPT-03, Ormatu, Palladium, Poppy, Robdajet, Tele-Fever, Tempest, Tryom, Tunix, etc.) (c. 1982);
• Interton VC 4000 console family (Acetronic, Cabel, Fountain, Hanimex, Interton, Prinztronic, Radofin, Rowtron, Soundic, Voltmace, Waddingtons, etc.) (c. 1978);
• Elektor TV Games Computer (1979);
• PIPBUG- and BINBUG-based machines (EA 77up2, EA 78up5, Signetics Adaptable Board Computer, Eurocard 2650, etc.) (1977-1978);
• Signetics Instructor 50 trainer (1978);
• Signetics TWIN minicomputer (1976);
• Central Data 2650 computer (1977);
• PHUNSY computer (c. 1980);
• Ravensburger Selbstbaucomputer aka 2650 Minimal Computer trainer (1984);
• Hofacker MIKIT 2650 trainer (1978);
• Astro Wars, Galaxia, Laser Battle and Lazarian coin-ops by Zaccaria (1979-1981);
• Malzak 1 and 2 coin-ops by Kitronix (c. 1981);
• AY-3-8500/8550/8600-based Pong systems (Coleco Telstar Galaxy, Sheen TVG-201, etc.) (1976-1977);
• VTech Type-right machine (1985)

It is packed with features, far too many to list here. Examples are ReAction GUI, load/save snapshots, windowed and fullscreen modes, CPU tracing, trainer, drag and drop support, graphics scaling, PAL/NTSC modes, frame skipping, and much more!

Here is an overview of the changes since the last release:

Changes since V33.5:

• Improved Galaxia emulation.
• Added ASM and DISGAME CLI arguments.
• Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.

Kevin Taddeucci has released version 1.6 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.

Version 1.6: (Nov. 25, 2024)

• Added “User Settings to choose ffplay display mode.

• 1 – Waveforms.  Used to much CPU on slower systems.

• 2 – Frequency band. Uses much less CPU time.

• Added “User Settings” to set ffplay window size.

• Made corrections to “User Settings” Player variable comments.

Added keyboard shortcuts to player requester.

The developer Kjetil Hvalstrand is back with a new utility. GIF2ABK is a program for converting GIF animations to AMOS ABK or BOBS.

He also released version 1.1 of IFF-Converter, a replica of a program created many years ago by Metallion of Kefrens. Hvalstrand has added major improvements including DataTypes support for filetypes like PNG, GIF, and others, as well as zooming and drag-and-drop support.

On November 26th, the Sacrificio Pagano magic tool from Juan Carlos Herran Martin became available on OS4Depot. This is a special program for people believing in the magic of Wiccan practices providing a virtual altar.

MCE, Multi-game Character Editor, is a user-friendly open-source editor of character files, saved games, high score tables, levels, and graphics for 121 games. James Jacobs, the author, has now released version 15.23, which provides miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.

Misc News

Issue 171 of the Amiga Future magazine was released at the beginning of the month. There you can read articles such as A1222 from a Coder’s Perspective, Classic Reflections – Whatever Happened to Macrosystems? – Part 1, interviews, game reviews, news, and much more.

The magazine can be purchased from here:

The Amiga Future Website

Francis G. Loch, the author of PowerReboot for AmigaOS 4.1, has published a report about his experiences with the A1222+ on the website of amiga-news.de.

He presents solutions to problems others might encounter when first setting up and getting to know the computer. Highly worth checking out if you are a new A1222+ owner.

https://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2024-11-00057-EN.html

There is currently a games competition being held on Amigans.net. For November, participants compete to get the highest score in Mini Metal Slug, an action game brought to AmigaOS 4 by HunoPPC.

Currently in the lead is Mr_byte with a whopping 48,480 points!

Hans de Ruiter of KSD – Amiga Corner has published a new video on YouTube called Quick Guide: Cross-compiling to AmigaOS 4.x+ the easy way:

The author writes: “Setting up a cross-compiler for AmigaOS 4 used to be a painful task because you had to build the cross-compiler yourself following complicated instructions. Now, there’s a much easier way: using pre-built Docker containers. This video shows you how it’s done…”

You can visit his website here.

The Amiga Retro Channel, hosted by Maijestro, has published a video looking at 3D gaming on the AmigaOne X5000. Here he shows games like Quake 3 and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy running.

Maijestro recently bought an AmigaOne X5000 and informed us that he will be publishing more videos showing this computer in action in the future.

Skateman has written a post on his blog titled “rVNCd 1.38: A New Era of Remote AmigaOS4 Control”. You can read it here:

rVNCd 1.38: A New Era of Remote AmigaOS4 Control

Robert Bernardo has published many photos from the AmiWest 2024 event on his blog:

http://blog.retro-link.com/2024/11/more-amiwest-show-2024-photos.html

Not only that, you can watch his videos from the same event on his YouTube-channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@BIOSJERBIL/videos

Well worth checking out for sure! 🙂

Until Next Time

You’ve reached the end of this month’s AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup.

The next one is scheduled for January 2025, a new year with new possibilities!

I wish you all a nice December and see you soon in other post here on the Old School Game Blog. 🙂

Take care everyone!

Best regards,

Puni