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Amiga Dev News Reloaded - August/September 2024

For those of you who don't have time to follow us on social media every day, we are publishing another collective package of our mini-news from 15 August 2024 - 9 September 2024.

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Amiga Dev News Reloaded - July/August 2024

For the past two weeks, we have returned to publishing daily news. They are published in a minimalist form: a short description (PL or possibly EN), a link, an image and hash tags. You can find them on our Instagram, Threads and Facebook profiles. You can also browse them in a special block on the eXec homepage, both on desktop computers and on mobile devices.

At least once a month we will also collectively publish these news items already here - on eXec. In this way, they will also be available to those who do not use social media applications, and we will also maintain the continuity and archiving of events from the world of "Amiga Dev News".

Why these social media and not the old X/Twitter? For several reasons - the price of access to X, and the constant limitation of inquiries. Well, and the exodus of many in the Amiga community from X recently. We hope you will enjoy this new feature.

Added: 2024-08-14 18:49, Author: redakcja, Category: Software Comments »

Apple and OpenAI

Apple has announced a partnership with OpenAI to add AI to iOS and Siri. This has been criticised by Elon Musk, who has threatened to ban Apple devices in all his companies. On iOS, you can use ChatGPT without logging in. AI will also add new functions for generating text and graphics in other Apple apps.

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Topaz TrueType

The Amiga font Topaz, which is stored in ROM as the default fixed-width 8x8 pixel user-interface font, has been released in a TrueType scaled version. You can find it here, licence... "Others".

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NetBSD 10.0 for 68k and PowerPC

The NetBSD version 10.0 Unix system is available for Amiga 68k computers (including DraCo) and in an "experimental" package for PPC cards. The full changelog for release 10.0 is available in this journal, and the system versions with a list of supported hardware can be found here: NetBSD/amiga and NetBSD/amigappc.

Added: 2024-05-17 14:59, Author: st, Category: Linux Comments »

Secrets of AmigaDOS

The datagubbe website has an article about secrets in AmigaDOS: This is a quick look at a few of these interesting features, some more obscure than others, but all of them decidedly useful. Most of them only apply to versions 2.x and/or 3.x of the OS

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Consumer 1.0

If you have created a game or application for AmigaOS and need to know the system requirements, use the simple tool called Consumer. It displays the Amiga memory usage log and stores the results in a text file in the 'S:' drawer.

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The future of device detection on the web

Andrzej Betts is a member of the W3C Technical Architecture Group - he writes on the Fastly website about changes in the UA for detecting devices. Example of old UA: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 - This is absolute madness. I'm not using "Mozilla" (at least not in the sense it refers to here!), my Mac does not contain an Intel chip, and the browser is not powered by WebKit, nor KHTML, nor Gecko. It is not Safari.

Added: 2024-04-06 13:11, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

Emu68 V1.0

Michal Schulz, the developer, has released the stable version 1.0 of 68k emulation for ARM architecture. The focus is on PiStorm and PiStorm32lite. Emu68 1.0 includes all changes from 1.0 RC1, RC2 and RC3, plus some additional fixes and improvements. Starting with Emu68 1.0, the author recommends all users to use only official versions and not to use nightly builds unless it is really necessary.

See the video »

Added: 2024-04-02 18:56, Author: st, Category: Emulation Comments »

Blog: JavaScript Bloat in 2024

Programmer and UI designer Niki writes on her blog: I was a bit out of touch with modern front-end development. I also remembered articles about web bloat, how the average web page size was approaching several megabytes! So all this time I was living under impression that, for example, if the average web page size is 3 MB, then JavaScript bundle should be around 1 MB. Surely content should still take the majority, no? Niki decided to check this in 2024.

Added: 2024-03-26 13:23, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

PDF: RKRM-Dos

Thomas "ThoR" Richter, one of the developers of AmigaOS 3.2, has started work on GitHub on a PDF manual for dos.library in the style of the Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manual.

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AmiWest 2024

27th AmiWest show will take place as usual at the Holiday Inn Express in Sacramento, California, from 25 to 27 October 2024.

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Roblox has introduced AI chat translator

Roblox presented a translator that enables fluid communication in real time between players speaking different languages. The translator breaks down language barriers and allows players to communicate seamlessly. The system supports 16 languages and is trained in gaming terminology and platform-specific language. It can even recognize internet slang. The elimination of language barriers in communication is becoming increasingly achievable. It is exciting to think about what the future holds...

Added: 2024-03-04 11:12, Author: st, Category: Games Comments »

GCC-Pack 0.2

The GCC package (installer script) by Krashan makes it easy to install the GCC compiler on Amiga. Installs the native (both hosted and m68k-amigaos-adapted) version of GCC 2.95.3. It then integrates it with AmigaOS 3.2 NDK. The package can be downloaded from the RastPort website, where you will also find a short manual and history changes.

Added: 2024-02-07 12:18, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

RedPill 0.9.34

RedPill is a project by Carlos Peris at Amiblitz that allows you to create games of various genres. RedPill is compatible with AGA and ECS, but "player" requires a total of 1.5 MB of RAM. The current version 0.9.34 of the project introduces changes that can be found in the extension of this news.

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CMake VS Make

Developer Hans de Ruiter writes in his blog: Ever wonder what the difference is between CMake and GNU Make? Answers online tend to focus on how CMake is a meta-build system, has a mouse clicky GUI interface available, and GNU make is older. While that's all true, it tells you nothing about what it's like to use either of them. So, let me go through some of the differences that actually matter...

See the video »

Added: 2024-01-19 15:09, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

Internet Artifacts

Internet Artifacts is a website/presentation of the most important events related to the Internet over many years. Anyone who has created Internet content should look at it to find their "point" at which they joined the network.

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ReBuild 0.9.0 beta

Darren "dmcoles" Coles is writing an Amiga E program ReBuild which should allow writing/generating user interfaces for ReAction. The program already has, among other things: ability to support multiple windows, C and E code generation, buffer for temporary copies, menus are displayed in the preview window, much more flexible system for changing the order of gadgets.

Added: 2024-01-16 17:28, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

Git Desktop 0.11.31

Rafał Zabdyr released the third beta version of Git Desktop, a graphical user interface for Git, in mid-December. Git Desktop is based on MUI and written in C++. To use it, you need MorphOS 3.x and Git from the SDK. Here is the list of changes.

Added: 2024-01-11 09:36, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

PED81C

PED81C ("Pixel Elements Dots, 81 Colors" by Simone "saimo" Bevilacqua) is an innovative way of working with AGA graphics without the need for chunky-to-planar operations when displaying 3D graphics. The project also includes the Voxel engine, which is demonstrated in the attached video.

See the video »

Added: 2024-01-10 11:11, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Gemini: Ultra, Pro and Nano

Gemini is Google's new range of AI models that have been unveiled as groundbreaking in the field of multimodal (text, images, videos and audio are used to train the model) AI systems. Ultra, Pro, and Nano models vary in power and usage. Google is dedicated to ethical AI development, considering the social implications and responsibility of AI applications.

Added: 2023-12-09 12:19, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

The Phantom

Czesław Mnich has prepared a gallery - The Phantom, a SMPTE synchronizer and MIDI interface from 1990 (Dr.T's Music Software - USA). The set was able to synchronize the sequence program (in the SMPTE standard) with an audio or video tape, and also cooperate with external MIDI software, e.g. Bars & Pipes.

Added: 2023-11-24 11:00, Author: redakcja, Category: Hardware Comments »

Amiga Graphics Archive

If you work in graphics and create pixel art that uses small colour palettes, you need to check out Amiga Graphics Archive. Daniel Kürsten provides graphics from various Amiga productions, including programs, games, logos and scenes. Many graphics published there show you the colour palette used (under the cursor).

Added: 2023-11-22 11:09, Author: st, Category: Games Comments »

Toolbox: RNOWidgets 1.6., CompareDirs V1.12, PolyOrganiser 1.25 i AmiAuthenticator

Several tools have appeared that can be used as add-ons under the Amiga system. For MOS and OS4 we have an updated set of widgets (you can attach colorful sticky notes) to the WB/Ambient desktop - RNOWidgets 1.6. For OS4 there is an application that compares the contents of selected directories - CompareDirs V1.12 .

See the video »

Added: 2023-11-21 12:38, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Plananarama 2.1

The new version of Plananarama (a plugin for Hollywood that allows you to run scripts on Amiga without a graphics card) includes a new feature that makes it easier to create applications that work on both RTG and planar screens.

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WebKit for OS4 - status of work by walkero

At the start of November, Walkero posted an update on the Amigans forum website regarding the progress of porting the WebKit engine to AmigaOS 4: The port has been at 54% completion for some time, but with the help of Kas1e, the issue was identified and resolved. As a result, the WebCore library was successfully compiled up to 99%. I have begun creating a simple window to display one website. Though it may seem small, it is an important step forward. You can track the progress on GitHub using this link: https://github.com/AmigaLabs/webkitty.

Added: 2023-11-19 11:32, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Mesa 23.3-rc4

Mesa 3D is a library of graphics functions available with source code, which is an open implementation of OpenGL. Its releases were once relevant also for AmigaOS, but currently, we can only follow the library's further development. Mesa version 23.3 is being prepared for release in a week or two.

Added: 2023-11-18 16:38, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

Task Force - an important lesson from the past

Task Force is a turn-based team shooter created by Mark Sheeky and released as "shareware" in the early 1990s. Here you will find a detailed description of how this game was designed. The game was developed in 68k assembly language with 4549 lines of code. Mark included 160 kB of graphics, 100 kB of samples, and two pieces of music, which he produced himself.

Added: 2023-11-17 10:19, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

RedPill 0.9.28 and Scorpion Engine 2023.3

Game creation engines are available in new versions - RedPill 0.9.28 and Scorpion Engine 2023.3. For RedPill there is also a tutorial. SE has introductory video that we have attached to this news.

See the video »

Added: 2023-11-16 21:37, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

The "Apollo" system is under development

Dietmar Planitzer is leading a project to write "Apollo" - an experimental operating system for Amiga 3000/4000 (hardware with 68030 processor - Atari TT and Falcon are also planned). This system is supposed to be multitasking, but instead of threads it uses "virtual processors" and queues. Virtual processors can be moved between applications by Apollo as needed. Applications use dispatch queues to tell Apollo what they want to execute in parallel.

Added: 2023-11-16 17:47, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

SDDDE

SDDDE is a small 3D engine project for the "bare" Amiga 1200 in C/C++ from Rst7/CBSIE. This is a valuable example (for anyone trying their hand at programming) because its source code is available on GitHub servers.

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Identify-library 43.2

Identify-library is a Amiga shared library that assists in identifying various system parameters, such as the Amiga model, CPU, system version, RAM, chipset, as well as card names, alerts, and called functions.

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AmigaOS MUI C++ wrapper

Rafał Zabdyr (TDolphin) writes a C++ wrapper for MUI. The code is publicly available on GitHub. Not all MUI attribute classes and methods are implemented yet - work in progress. In another public repository you can also see C++ code examples for AmigaOS/MorphOS.

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Interview and memories: Chris Huelsbeck and Andrew Braybrook

You can read interview with musician Chris Huelsbeck (Turrican, Jim Power, Apidya, R-Type) and text by Andrew Braybrook (Rainbow Islands, Paradroid 90, Realms, Fire and Ice, Uridium 2 ). He writes about his initial experience with programming, as well as his later 16-bit phase, during which he developed the "AMP" engine.

Added: 2023-10-31 09:14, Author: st, Category: Journalism Comments »

Fixes for Voyager probes launched in 1977

The name "Voyager" is often linked to Bartek Dramczyk, the musician and editor, or to the Amiga web browser from VaporWare. However, space probes launched many years ago, before the creation of the first Amiga, also bear this name. NASA engineers routinely update the firmware that runs these devices beyond the solar system.

Added: 2023-10-29 17:04, Author: st, Category: Events Comments »

Procedural levels in AMOS

Rob Smith, from the RobSmithDev channel, demonstrates procedural level generation technique in the attached video. He creates a game in AMOS, where many levels are produced. The video shows how to accelerate the algorithm and create a basic maze.

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How to code the "X-Rotator" effect

"X-Rotator" is a popular effect used in many old classic Amiga demos. On the blog of Slummi from the Spaceballs group you can " rel="nofollow" class="external">find a description of how it was prepared in the 4k intro of Candiru, which was released in spring 2023 at the Revision Party.

See the video »

Added: 2023-10-29 16:02, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

Amiga38 Community Award for Claude and Michal

During the Amiga 38 event, Claude Schwarz and Michał Schulz received the first prize ("Hardware" category) from the Amiga community - the "Amiga38 Community Award" for the PiStorm and Emu68 project. This was announced by @Claude1079 on social media.

Added: 2023-10-13 20:18, Author: st, Category: Events Comments »

SDL 2.28.4 Release Candidate 1

Juha "capehill" Niemimaki released the first RC 2.28.4 version of the SDL multimedia library for Amiga on GitHub two days ago. SDL 2 requires AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition and optionally OpenGL ES 2.0.

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Video tutorials: Scorpion Engine, Blitz Basic i AMOS

Recently there have been many instructional videos available on the Internet about programming for the Amiga. We have a "live stream" recording of using the Scorpion engine, a similar recording of programming in Blitz Basic, and regular material from Yawning Angel on his channel, where much of the videos are devoted to programming in the AMOS language.

See the video »

Added: 2023-10-11 19:47, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

Visual Studio Code - "Amiga" plugins update

For one of the most popular source-code editors, VSC (Visual Studio Code, not to be confused with Visual Studio - it's another Microsoft project), there are several "Amiga" plug-ins available to support programming. Recently updated ones include a plugin for C/C++ (up to version 1.74), a plugin for Blitz Basic 2 (version 0.9.1) and Amiga Assembly plugin (version 1.8.3).

Added: 2023-10-10 19:01, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

Souce codes for AmiBlitz3 games

Sami Vehmaa has released the source code of his games The Oregon Trail, Mission2Mars and Visual Novel. The games are written in AmiBlitz3. In the archive you can also find the code for the ReelDeck audio player, the QDockLE dock and the Wrapper program. Everything works with AHI and RTG. The price for the source codes is $3 or more.

Added: 2023-10-10 10:37, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Amiga Game Framework 1.1

Amiga Game Framework is a library designed for 2D game and multimedia programming on AmigaOS 4. It offers a user-friendly and intuitive C API for 2D graphics, playing sounds, reading user input, and more.

Added: 2023-09-12 17:55, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Search Engine for AmigaOS NDK3.2

Aris created a search engine for development documentation (autodoc files) that come with the NDK for AmigaOS 3.2. He shared the reasons behind it and the process he used on his blog.

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Scene Archetypes

Carl Svensson in his short article described all the heroes needed to create a demoscene group/production. The topic was also discussed in the intro Scene Archetypes (Istari).

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Forgotten Computer - interview with Paweł "juen" Nowak

On the Forgotten Computer channel you will see a review of IMP3 - Amiga module player. The video contains information about the IMP3 program itself, about Impbox (a hardware add-on for IMP3), and an interview with the developer Paweł "juen" Nowak - the creator of IMP3.

See the video »

Added: 2023-09-04 13:09, Author: st, Category: Journalism Comments »

RedPill 0.9.24

We already have version 0.9.24 of the game development engine for the Amiga classic - RedPill. The full list of changes can be found below, the most interesting seems to be the doubling of the number of global variables to 64 and many optimisations.

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Raster Master

Raster Master is a sprite, icon and map editor developed on GitHub for Windows 10/11 (64 bit). The program can generate images for programming projects using GCC, vbcc, Amiga C, or e.g. LBM/PBM from the DOS XLIB library, as well as JavaScript. Full list of saved formats in the documentation.

Added: 2023-08-23 18:20, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

New TinyGL for testing

Developers of 3D games or applications for the MorphOS system should consider testing their products with the new version of TinyGL.library. Beta versions of this library have been released by Bigfoot, who is requesting bug reports on the MorphZone forum. Currently, this library only supports Radeons from Evergreen and Northern Islands. Support for R600 and R700-based Radeons will be added later.

Added: 2023-08-20 09:21, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Apple iOS 17 beta 6

The release of iOS 17 is scheduled for next month. Currently, Apple is providing developers with beta versions, with the current version being iOS 17 beta 6. During the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple introduced a new version of the iOS system, which includes new features to be added to the iPhone. These include StandBy, Live Voicemail, and AirDrop updates.

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Slack redesign is coming...

Slack is a messaging platform that development teams use to communicate. Users can work together and organize their own projects However, The Verge reported that a significant redesign of this program will be launched soon. According to the report, they will soon launch the most extensive redesign to date, which will change both the appearance and layout of the application.

Added: 2023-08-19 09:44, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Artistic CodePen

You can find inspiration and solutions for creating front-end code on the CodePen website. It is also a place where you can store your HTML/CSS/JS work. We regularly receive a newsletter from this site. We are always looking for artistic and demoscene references. We have added the more interesting ones to this news.

Added: 2023-08-18 13:25, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

AB3_Templates 0.77

Sami Vehmaa wants to encourage more people to create Amiga games with RTG. He suggests to use his ready-made templates for AmiBlitz 3. Version 0.77 was released yesterday - the price of the templates is $3. In addition, the source code of the following games is available: Atri, Battleship SEAHAWK, Dungeon Escape, Last Space Raider, Sky Tower and Slenderman.

See the video »

Added: 2023-08-16 19:55, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

AF update: software and calendar section

On the pages of the Amiga Future magazine, find an updated software section and a new section with a calendar of Amiga events.

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DevCon at AmiWest 2023

The DevCon at AmiWest 2023 will traditionally be hosted by Steven Solie, who will report on the progress of the work on ExecSG for AmigaOS 4. In addition, writing code for various ami-systems will be discussed. If you want to participate in this part of the event, write to inf0[at]amiwest dot net.

Added: 2023-08-12 18:17, Author: st, Category: Events Comments »

POC: Super Earth Defense Force for AGA...

Developer "S0Y" (responsible for the CD32 port of Temptations) took a look at the SNES game Super Earth Defense Force. He made a proof of concept for the Amiga. He found out that a similar production on the Amiga would require a machine with AGA 020/14 MHz and 1300 Kb RAM (672 Chip + 628 Fast). We would get 25 fps, and an additional advantage would be CD audio tracks on the Amiga CD32 console.

See the video »

Added: 2023-08-03 16:21, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Git Desktop 0.9.19

Rafał Zabdyr has released the first beta version of graphical user interface for the version management Git. Git Desktop is written in C++ and has a graphical interface in MUI. MorphOS 3.x with SDK and GIt is required.

Added: 2023-07-18 10:43, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

How Nintendo Solved Zelda's Open World Problem

To celebrate the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the Game Maker's Toolkit channel released a video showing how the world of Open Air was created. This short video seems to be a must for every game developer, including simple Amiga productions.

See the video »

Added: 2023-07-17 08:19, Author: st, Category: Journalism Comments »

AmiWest 2023 and Garry Hare

You can register now if you plan a trip to this year's AmiWest (12-15 October at the Holiday Inn Express Cal Expo, 2224 Auburn Blvd, Sacramento, CA 95821, USA). Ticket pick-up will be at the event. More information about the event is available here. As usual, there will be A-Eon and A1222+ board. There will be a lottery. AmiKit and the Alinea store have sponsored the prizes. The keynote speaker in 2023 will be Garry Hare (the person who took over Amiga Inc. right after Bill McEwen).

Added: 2023-07-15 14:33, Author: st, Category: Events Comments »

E-VO 3.6.1

E-VO is an Amiga E compiler that adds new features, bug fixes and optimisations. Currently version 3.6.1 is available on GitHub, the full list of changes can be found below.

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Scorpion Engine 2023.2

The new version of the Scorpion game development engine includes support for AND/OR conditions. There is also a new optional "sliced blitting mode" for the Amiga to reduce the memory consumption of animations. The MegaDrive version has a parallax mode with a height of 8 pixels.

Added: 2023-07-12 14:02, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

Calypsi C and Amiga

Calypsi is a series of C compilers and development tools. The latest version 4.4 introduces support for the Motorola 68000 processor, and a library project dedicated to the Amiga has been launched on GitHub.

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AmigaOS 3.2 and 4.1 cross compile

Using the gcc compiler, make and configure scripts, it's easy to cross compile: just call configure with --target=architecture, where architecture is the target architecture. In addition, Docker is currently being used to prepare the environment for such work. The required image can be easily downloaded and run on virtually any modern machine. There is still one element missing - the constant updating of the Amiga NDK and SDK.

Added: 2023-07-05 10:48, Author: st, Category: Development Comments »

WebkitOnDocker (OS4)

Walkero created a development environment using Docker to compile the Webkit engine for AmigaOS 4. WebkitOnDocker is available on GitHub.

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Tequila 1.1

Juha "capehill" Niemimaki's is working on a small program for AmigaOS 4 called e Tequila. The application displays tasks running in the system and information about CPU usage, assigned priorities, stack and PID number.

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Stable SDL 2.28.0 and development SDL 3.0

We have the first builds of SDL 2.28.0 for dla AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS. This is the current stable release of this library. From this version on, SDL 2.0 will get bugfix updates and the SDL team will focus on SDL 3.0 and all new features will appear there. At the same time, sdl2-compat will be introduced. This will allow SDL 2.0 applications to run on the SDL 3.0 runtime in the future.

Added: 2023-06-28 11:19, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Hollywood Compile 1.1

Hollywood Compile: interface for OS3, OS4, MOS, and AROS that uses the Hollywood command to compile Hollywood scripts. The script can be loaded or dragged to the GUI, then just select the platform and click Create Executable, the executables will be saved in the same location where the script resides, with the extensions: -68k, -os4, -mos and -aros.

Added: 2023-05-16 09:19, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Google "Studio Bot"

During the "I/O" presentation, Google showed Studio Bot, an AI assistant that Android developers can use to write and debug code. Studio Bot becomes part of Android Studio (Google's integrated development environment for Android developers). The assistant is only available to US developers for now and is in a "very early stage".

See the video »

Added: 2023-05-11 08:29, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

DevPack 1.2

DevPack is a collection of software created by Dimitris Panokostas and Philipp Lonke. The package is intended for Amiga users who want to develop their own software under AmigaOS. Version 1.2 adds AmigaRebol V2, examples for Blitz Basic, EVO version 3.5.1, NDK download link for OS 3.2R4 and M68k vbcc compiler (+ includes). The package is free and available in LZX and HDF versions.

Added: 2023-05-09 07:48, Author: st, Category: Software Comments »

Doom works in a Lego brick

James "Ancient" Brown's design is a small circuit board with an RP2040 microcontroller. This computer is connected to a miniature OLED screen. James put the whole thing into miniature mould. He filled the mould with transparent resin and a small LEGO brick was created. Power comes from the contacts at the bottom, similar to the LEGO motors. In the attached video you can see how the game Doom works in such a brick (this game probably works on everything).

See the video »

Added: 2023-05-08 11:01, Author: st, Category: Hardware Comments »

eXec - magazyn użytkowników komputerów Amiga

The future of device detection on the web

Emu68 V1.0

Blog: JavaScript Bloat in 2024

GCC-Pack 0.2

CMake VS Make

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