AmigaOS 4 News – June 2022
Hi and welcome to the sixth edition of the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup!
Many thanks for visiting, and I hope you’ll find this months news interesting. There has for sure been a lot happening, which includes a games competition, many software releases, but also an important announcement from HunoPPC.
Now, let us have a look at what has been going on in the community during the last month!
Software
On the 3rd of June, Oliver Roberts released the WarpPNG V45.25 datatype. This update makes it up to 5% faster on OS4. It was recompiled with GCC 11.2.0. Also uploaded to OS4Depot was the Adobe Photoshop datatype V45.7 and the JFIF-JPEG datatype V45.16. Both provides faster decoding than the previous versions.
If you’re into gaming, you will probably be delighted to hear that version 2.1 of iGame is out. iGame is a front-end application for games (both WHDLoad and others) and demos. Users are advised to read the changelog.md file to get a complete overview of all the changes since there has been so many. If you are interested in downloading iGame, you can get it from OS4Depot here.
Chris Young has released an updated version of HTTPhandler called the “Jubilee edition”. 🙂 It has now been updated for AmiSSL v5. You can find the download here.
On the 8th of June, a new version of the OO library was released by Tuomas Hokka. This library brings object class style and easier programming to plain C language and AmigaOS. It also makes it possible to create GUI’s using GUIML.
The same day brought us a brand new version of the spreadsheet program Ignition. This time it’s version 1.20 and it contains nearly a quarter year of work! It’s great to see that progress continues with the program. If you want to download the new version, please click here to be taken to the download page. By the way, an add-on has also been released, which makes it possible to read and write files with the ODS suffix.
A new PDF viewer has been released by the always active and productive jPV^RNO. The program is called RNOPDF and is a compact viewer with a minimal GUI with easy control options. This is handy for viewing PDF files quickly if it is configured as the default PDF viewer on your AmigaOS 4 setup. Download is available for free here.
If you like following the weather on your computer, I’m happy to report that a new version of Wet has been released by Chris Young. The program has been rebuilt for AmiSSL v5 and due to this it should be more reliable.
On the 15th of June, a new version of the AutoDocViewer program was released. This tool makes it easy to read AutoDoc files on AmigaOS 4 and it has a simple to use ReAction interface. It was originally developed by Glenn Hisdal and is now currently maintained by Costel Mincea.
An alpha release 4 of Pixy 1.0 was released on the 17th of June by Sinisrus. Pixy is a drawing program dedicated to pixel art and graphics with alpha channel transparency. It allows you to create several animations in a single project, with each image containing its own layer. This is helpful when it comes to work on animations of a character for example.
If you need to extract data from various file formats, then Deark by Jason Summers might be what you need. It supports a vast amount of formats, including .ABK (AMOS), .D64 (Commodore 64 disk image), Doom WAD and much more. A complete list of supported formats can be found here.
A new version of the chat client Pidgin for AmiCygnix is now out! This is the fifth release of the IM client that supports many protocols, including IRC, Google Talk and XMPP. Discord, Facebook, Skype, Twitter and Slack are also integrated as external plugins. The new release can be found here.
Janne Peraaho has released a new version of RexXMLib, which is an ARexx procedure library that allows you to write XML document with your ARexx script with minimal effort. RexXMLib is ideal when you need to convert data to XML form, general XML document, or to create a multitude of XML data files, like license keys. RexXMLib can be downloaded from here if you want to check it out.
In May we reported that Hans de Ruiter had released an update to the ZitaFTP Server. It is now June and he is once again back with a new update. 🙂 There has been quite a lot of changes, which includes automatic SSL/TLS certificate general and renewal via Let’s Encrypt and ZeroSSL and many fixes. A free trial of the program can be downloaded from OS4Depot.
Here is some news for Sam460ex users. Alexander O. Benedictov has released version 6.4 of the SM502 audio driver. The archive includes the PPC assembler sources. To work correctly, the driver needs certain hardware changes, which you can read about in the included text file. Version 6.4 supports playback and recording in full duplex mode. Download is available here.
David Woolley has released Thumbnail Maker, an ARexx script for ArtEffect 4 from Haage & Partner. It uses FFmpeg to generate a series of frames from a selected video, and paste them onto a canvas to create a sequence of thumbnails. Data about the video is printed at the top, along with a user-definable string.
On the 22nd of June, a new update of AmiSSL was released. This time it is version 5.2. The AmiSSL project is a collaborative effort to develop a port of OpenSSL in a shared library for Amiga-based systems. Download is available here. If you are interested in the SDK, this can be obtained from here.
Now, one of the larger releases this month is Rave. This is a sound editor for AmigaOS4-compatible computers developed by Daniel Jedlicka. It provides functionality for manipulating and storing digital audio files. The program has a modern, configurable GUI, a tabbed environment for managing multiple projects, asynchronous operation, support for multiple clipboard units and more. He has been documenting his work on his blog called Rear Window, which you can check out here.
The final version (1.20) of the game No More Toxic Man has been released by Juan Carlos Herran Martin. The game is in the style of a photo novel with real characters and backgrounds, as well as pixel art in 2D. A time limited demo of the game can be downloaded here.
Kjetil Hvalstrand is back with a new release and this time it is an update to AmigaInputAnywhere (version 2.6). For those who do not know, this program makes games that only support keyboard and mouse to use gamepads and joysticks. If you want to give it a spin, here is the download.
On the 26th of June, James Jacobs released version 8.3 of Report+. This is a pretty handy tool based on ReAction and it has nine different functions. Amongst these functions are generating and editing Aminet-style and OS4Depot-style readmes, view and edit A3000/A4000-type battery-backed memory and batch processing icons.
Now for some big news! HunoPPC has announced a release date for his port of Doom 3 to AmigaOS 4! The date is set to July 9th 2022. 🙂
Here is a small excerpt from the news posted at Amigans.net:
Doom3 for AmigaOS4 will be released on July 9, 2022 in the morning.
This version will be released in betatest while we correct any malfunctions on different machines.
Minimal requirements DOOM3:
Software: AmigaOS4.1, EGL_Wrap library, Opengles 2.0 and Warp3D NOVA
hardware: GFX card RADEON PCI-Express, sound card, 2 GB RAM, HD or SSD.
IMPORTANT: Only registered users will be able to benefit from the executable.
The executable will contain your personal information, in no case should you distribute it at the risk of losing your updates.
Please visit Amigans.net here to view the complete announcement.
Nice work, HunoPPC! 🙂
Here is a video of Doom 3 running from June 5th:
That rounds up the software news for this month. Now let us continue with more community related happenings.
Miscellaneous
On this website, Gaming on AmigaOS 4, I recently published an article about where one can purchase AmigaOS 4 compatible systems in 2022.
The aim is to keep it updated and relevant, so that will be a helpful resource to people wanting to get a new OS4 computer. You can find the post here.
Another news concerning this website is that I’ve finally established a separate section for all of the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup releases. Now you can find them all in one place here.
The first AmigaOS 4 gaming contest on Amigans.net was arranged this month!
During June we’ve played Blastaway, which is a fun and addictive game by Retream. 🙂 The competition is not over yet, since there is a few hours left until July 1st, but at the time of writing these are the top three scores:
1) Levellord – June 28th – 667,215 points
2) VooDoo – June 30th – 649,360 points
3) mcleppa – June 30th – 544,805 points
The thread of the competition can be found here, and I must say that it has been a whole lot of fun. Blastaway is a very nice game and I highly recommend you giving it a go if you haven’t already.
We’ll be hosting a new competition every month on Amigans.net, so please consider joining in on the fun. 🙂
Another edition of The Amiga Art Contest has been launched!
Get Creative on your AMIGA’s, Launch your favourite 2D, 3D or Music program and show off your talents. Every year we have an amazing amount of entrants and wonderful prizes to win. Please visit the official video below for more information.
Ravi Abbot has released a new video on YouTube called the Amiga Computer Buyers Guide 2022. Here he provides an overview of available systems, including those supporting AmigaOS 4.
Until next time
Thanks again for visiting my blog and for reading. Also thanks to everyone for all the positive feedback I’ve received since the last monthly roundup! 🙂
As last month, I wonder if we will hear any news about the A1222+ or the Sam460LE next month? 🙂 What do you think? Time will show!
Thanks again and see you in another edition of the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Round-up!
Best regards,
Puni/Void a.k.a AmigaOldSkooler
Gaming on AmigaOS 4 
[…] the 7th of July, AmiSSL received an update with version 5.3. As has been mentioned in an earlier edition of the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup, the AmiSSL project is a collaborative effort to develop a port of […]
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[…] in June, I wrote about a new release of Ignition, a spreadsheet for AmigaOS 4. In August this program […]
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