AmigaOS 4 News – January 2023
Hi,
First of all, I’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year! Let us hope that 2023 will be a good year for our platform. 🙂
Also thanks for visiting my blog, and welcome to the 13th edition of the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup!
Please read on and discover what has happened in the world of AmigaOS 4 in January.
Software
Edgar Schwan is back with a new version of AmiCygnix! 1.7 brings innovations around the topic “start of external programs” (remote start). In addition, a Unix shell and an Amiga shell adapted to AmiCygnix are now available. With the complete revision of the utility library “libaos4util”, some bugs have been fixed. The addition of the coreutils package also removes some dependencies on the OS4 SDK. There are a lot of new features and changes in 1.7. A list of these is available here, as well as a download. 🙂
MCE, Multi-game Character Editor, is a user-friendly open-source editor of character files, saved games, high score tables, levels, and graphics for 108 games. James Jacobs, the author, has now released version 14.1, which includes a Dragons of Flame save game editor, Heroes of the Lance & Dragons of Flame high-score editor, as well as miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.
Exutil, A small MUI-based utility that batch-renames pictures have been released by Ulrich Beckers. The program has been written in Hollywood and requires the RapaGIU plugin. If you’d like to have a look, it is available for free on OS4Depot.
Version 1.8.0 of ZMakebas by Russell Marks (ported by Chris Young) was uploaded to OS4Depot on January 5th. The utility converts a Spectrum Basic program written as a text file into an actual speccy Basic file (as a TAP file, or optionally a raw headerless file).
If you are looking for an AmigaGuide to HTML converter with a GUI, then you’ll be happy to read to version 3.7 of Guideml has been released by Chris Young and Richard Koerber. Changes since 3.11 are as follows:
- Add basic support for at {system command with OpenURL command.
- Add color theme management with new light and dark color themes in addition to the default AmigaGuide compatible one.
Bernd Assenmacher has released an update to the Image2PDF utility. With this tool, you can convert PNG- or JPG files to PDF. The author labels it as “EmailWare”, so please send him an e-mail if you use the program. 🙂 He has also released a new version of LhArchiver, which helps you to create LHA archives intuitively, easily, and fast.
An updated version of the Intel HD Audio (Azalia) AHI driver for AmigaOS 4 has been released by H. Kanning. This driver supports PCIe soundcards that comply with the Intel HD Audio (Azalia) specification. More information is available here.
In previous monthly roundups, we’ve read about the FlashMandelNG tool. Dino Papararo and Edgar Schwan are once again back with an update. In version 4.6 they’ve included new functions, such as the possibility of scrolling the fractal map with the keyboard arrow keys, as well as zooming in and out with the “i” and “o” keys. Granularity can be selected by pressing from “0” to “9”. LibGMP has been optimized for Altivec support, but sadly the speed increase is very minimal for this version, according to the authors.
Version 9.0.1158 of Vim has been released! It is a highly configurable text editor. MUI-Vim is mainted by sTix (Ola Söder). It has support for hundreds of programming languages and file formats, powerful search and replace functions, and much more.
Among its features are:
- Persistent, multi-level undo tree
- Extensive plugin system
- Support for hundreds of programming languages and file formats
- Powerful search and replace
- Integrates with many tools
The new version is available for download here.
Steffen Gutmann released version 1.7 of BeeBase for AmigaOS 4. This is a relational, programmable database system with a GUI for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Amiga. It is well suited for managing structured data with clear semantics that can be organized into tables and fields. It can be regarded as an application development environment. You can find more information about the program on its website. https://beebase.sourceforge.io/index.php
Version 1.10 of Avalanche, a GUI for xadmaster.library using the ReAction gadget set, has been released. An overview of the changes since the last version can be found on OS4Depot.
Daniel Jedlicka, a.k.a. Trixie, has returned with a brand new version, 1.5, of Rave, a sound editor for AmigaOS 4 compatible computers. New features and updates include:
- New function in the Process menu: “Reverse”.
- New function in the Edit menu: “Paste at”.
- New function in the Edit menu: “Insert Silence”.
- A user-defined amount of silence can also be inserted when creating a new
project. - Updated documentation.
The new version is available for download at OS4Depot. 🙂
Version 2.1.1r1 of the lightweight text editor Lite XL has been ported by George Sokianos. There have been many changes and fixes. You can find the complete list below as well as the download:
- Binary name changed to lite-xl
- Updated the color themes and the plugins that are included in the release
- Compiled with the latest SDL 2.26
- Compiled with GCC 11
- Synced the code with the upstream master branch on 8th January 2023
- Set the default locale on AmigaOS 4, to fix some issues with decimal
numbers
Please click here to download the program.
WildMIDI is a software MIDI player by Mindwerks. It was brought to AmigaOS 4 by Raziel. It has a core softsynth library that can be used with other applications. It uses Gravis Ultrasound patch files to convert MIDI files into audio, which is then passed back to the calling application. The library API is designed so that it is easy to include WildMIDI into applications wishing to include MIDI-file playback.
The final version of the game Los Chinos has been released by Juan Carlos Herran Martin. This is a classic Spanish game where you must guess the number of fingers you and your opponent throws.
Juha Niemimaki is back with Shaderjoy 1.24. This program allows you to display and create Shadertoy (https://www.shadertoy.com) compatible fragment shaders. Fragment shaders (sometimes called pixel shaders) are programs that are executed per fragment (pixel) on the GPU.
Fenachistoscopio is a program that loads and displays animations based on phenakistiscopes, instruments from the 1800s that shows small animations. The author, Domenico Lattanzi, explains that “The frames of these animations were placed along a disc that was rotated and while watching them, the viewer had the impression that the figures came into motion. The phenakistiscope is an ancestor of modern cinema.”. This is fascinating stuff, so if you want to have a look, OS4Depot is your friend. 🙂
SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) 2.26.1 was released on January 22nd. You can download it from OS4Depot, as well as find more information about it.
Smb2-handler is a filesystem for accessing files remotely using the SMB2/3 protocols. Fredrik Wikström released version 53.4 of Smb2FS on January 20th. The download is available here.
A new version of the WHD-Load front-end iGame has been released. This time it is version 2.2.1. It has many features:
- Multiple WHDLoad slaves repositories on hard disk partitions
- On-demand scanning in repositories for installed WHDLoad slaves (games,
demos etc.) - Use game tooltypes on the run
- Shows game screenshot (screenshot window can be altered through
tooltypes/settings use datatypes to load foreign formats) - Categorization of the games and filtering
- Manual addition of non-WHDLoad games, demos, etc.
- Simple statistics
- Find-as-you-type search filter
Ask Me Up XXL is a video game about general knowledge. The principle is quite simple: 1 question, 4 possible answers … Choose the right one! The 2022 FIFA® World Cup add-on has been released and is now available freely for Ask Me Up XXL, the quiz of general knowledge released for AmigaOS 4, MorphOS (and Windows) computers. It adds 96 new questions about the World Cup of soccer, more than 2300 in all.
amiga-news.de reports that an update to the graphics card driver RadeonRX has been released. This time version 2.12. This driver has been written for a group of Radeon RX cards with the Polaris graphics chip. Please visit amiga-news.de for more information.
That was all of the software news for this time. Let us move on to other news. 🙂
Other News
Issue 160 of Amiga Future for January and February 2023 has been released! In the magazine, you can read about DAPlayer, Hollywood Plugins, AmigaOS 4.1 SDK, a report from Amiga 37, and much more. You can purchase this issue directly from the publisher here, or an Amiga store.
The first batch of Sam460LE has been shipped, but unfortunately, the second one has been delayed due to faulty Ethernet controllers from a supplier. The replacement controllers will arrive in the middle of February, after the Chinese New Year. Apart from this, I must say it is great that motherboards have been shipped to customers. Well done ACube! 🙂
You can read the press release in full here:
Dear customers,
We have sent out as many boards as we could prepare.
Unfortunately, we received from our suppliers some faulty Ethernet controllers and therefore some boards failed the stress tests.
This will create a delay in the delivery of the remaining Sam460LE. 😦The replacement Ethernet controllers will arrive in mid-February, after Chinese New Year.
Again, we will perform our extensive testing because we would rather not release a poor product.We apologize for yet another delay caused by companies that do not play fair.
We will keep you informed.Thank you.
The ACube Systems Team
Dave “Skateman” Koelman has published an excellent tutorial about how to use two graphics cards in an AmigaOne X5000. The tutorial is illustrated and available at amiga-news.de via this link.
The YouTube-creator Wzdymacz released a new video showing the top 10 games on AmigaOS 4 in 2022:
The video includes footage from games such as Breakhack, Payback, and Cromag Rally. 🙂 Well worth checking out! Please have a look at his other videos too, plenty of AmigaOS 4 goodness. 😉
On Amigans.net we’ve had a fun competition playing Amazing Voxel Bird Saga. 🙂 Be sure to have a look at the highscore-list to see who is the Amigans.net champion of this game!
Last, but not least, the Amiga user and YouTuber Hirudov, has made a video of an unboxing of an AmigaOne X5000!
Be sure to check out his channel for many AmigaOS 4 related videos. 🙂
Until next time
Thanks for reading and for visiting my blog. Also thanks to all of you who are following the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup series, as well as sending in feedback and commenting on forums. It is much appreciated! 🙂
Thanks again, and see you in the next AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup!
Best regards,
Puni/Void a.k.a AmigaOldSkooler
Gaming on AmigaOS 4 