Top News

Stunt Car Racer gets an STE version (11.09.2021 - 00:12 Uhr)

Geoff Crammond's Stunt Car Racer is surely one of the most original racing games ever. The two cars are on a track several metres high. By the standards of the time, both the frame rate and the graphics (filled vector graphics) were fine. Two computers can be connected via null modem cable, which also works across systems, at least with the ST and Amiga versions. Despite its success, the game remained without a successor and the 16-bit versions of the time remained the best technical versions of the game.

Jonathan Thomas (Lotus STE) wonders if this game could be further improved with the hardware features of the STE, such as using the blitter to draw polygons faster. Should Stunt Car Racer be as high quality a work as Lotus STE, ST(E) gamers can look forward to an update with many small and large improvements.

(mj)

More News

LynXmas 2020 Game Jam (01.12.2020 - 00:50 Uhr)

Please warm up the Assembler and C-Compiler, because Lynx developers are again invited to participate in a contest. The contest is organized by Atari Gamer, AtariAge, ejagfest and SillyVenture - both will not take place this year. There are only fifteen days left to develop something that "puts a smile on the face of the players". The Itch.io site is a bit more specific: the game should have a theme appropriate to the season, be less than 32 KB in size and play on a single screen.

https://itch.io/jam/lynxmas2020

(mj)

GEMGUILib for Nana C++ (30.11.2020 - 23:43 Uhr)

These are posts that cause head shaking for those who have had the "pleasure" of writing a GEM application: The demand to simply put the GEM user interface on a new operating system substructure - which is not a good idea, because GEM stems from a completely different era.

With GEMGUILib you can at least pretend to. The library uses the Nana C++ Library for the design of user interfaces and is roughly oriented on the look of TOS 4.x/MultiTOS. So there is a reunion with alert boxes, 3D buttons and window widgets with shading. In practice, such an app feels more like an application that pretends to be a GEM application - but there were plenty of those on the Atari, too...

https://github.com/emartisoft/GEMGUILib

(mj)

Hatari 2.3 released (29.11.2020 - 11:24 Uhr)

The ST/E/TT/Falcon emulator Hatari has been updated. The release notes of version 2.3 are long, but most of them are small changes or bug fixes. A major change is the revised Blitter emulation, which should come closer to the original. There were fewer changes in the Falcon emulation, although some demos (Electric Night, E.K.O. System) now work better. Hatari 2.3.0 is available with its own intro and precompiled for macOS and Windows 32/64 bit, other systems should follow in the next weeks.

(mj)

EmuTOS is learning color icons (28.11.2020 - 22:23 Uhr)

After the release of version 1.0, the free operating system EmuTOS is making rapid progress: For the first time color icons are supported by the 256 and 512 KB version of EmuTOS in the current developer version. The built-in desktop EmuDesk does not yet benefit from this, but programs that do not use their own routines for color icons do. These are for example Holger Weets GEM game NoMess, but also HypView in version 0.40. Atari once introduced color icons with AES 3.3 (TOS 4.x), together with further extensions (submenus, popup menus, 3D look).

(mj)

Hatari 2.3 released (28.11.2020 - 12:11 Uhr)

The ST/E/TT/Falcon emulator Hatari has been updated. The release notes of version 2.3 are long, but most of them are small changes or bug fixes. A major change is the revised Blitter emulation which should be closer to the original. There were less changes in the Falcon emulation, although some demos (Electric Night, E.K.O. System) run better now. Hatari 2.3.0 is available with its own intro and precompiled for macOS and Windows 32/64 bit, other systems should follow in the next weeks.

(mj)

ST-Computer 07/2020 - Now as a PDF! (22.11.2020 - 20:45 Uhr)

It's time, issue 07/2020 of ST-Computer is now available as a PDF for download. The highlight of the issue is a comprehensive overview of hardware extensions that can be purchased regularly in online stores. Meanwhile, developer Thomas Ilg delights friends of hectic puzzle games with his Randomazer. Anticipation is the most beautiful joy namely for a pandemic-free future, in which ejagfest and OFAM may take place again. These and many more topics in the current issue.

(mj)

ejagfest 2020 cancelled (12.11.2020 - 12:17 Uhr)

The ejagfest 2020 was already cancelled on September 20. The reason is of course the Corona pandemic and the associated protective measures, which are problematic for indoor events. In particular, events like ejagfest and HomeCon thrive on the fact that many like-minded people stay in one room, exchange ideas and play together. Hygiene concepts similar to some retro flea markets - one-way traffic with a lot of distance between the booths - would not be feasible. Whoever would like to support ejagfest with a small amount of money can do so via eBay and Amazon partner links on the website.

(mj)

Songbird acquires rights for further games (13.08.2020 - 23:49 Uhr)

The publisher Songbird has acquired the rights for three more titles. Among the classic brands Ishido has been added, known from different systems - for the ST there was unfortunately never an official conversion. Differently than with Skweek and Battlemorph Songbird may convert Ishido to other systems.
Quadromania and Sky Raider will get a new edition. Both games have already been released, either on module or as ROM. The Songbird versions with the additional title "Redux" will be enhanced with better music and graphics, playable revisions and EEPROM support. Quadromania Redux and Sky Raider Redux should be released this autumn. Xump and Biniax 2 have been postponed from 2019 to 2020. As almost standard for recent homebrew releases, all titles will be released as a curved-lip module, like most Atari modules. Further Lynx announcements are likely: The handheld console is experiencing a real revival in the last years.

(mj)

LED backlight for Portfolio (01.08.2020 - 23:51 Uhr)

There are many mini PCs, but none has such a loyal fan community as the Atari Portfolio. One of the most famous names in the pofo scene was Stefan Kächele, who offered a retrofittable backlight for the Portfolio in 1995. Similar kits for HP's palmtops and the Apple MessagePad Newton 2000 followed, and with backlight4you this has become a whole online store that supplies hobbyists with the individual parts.
25 years later he put together a new backlight kit for the portfolio, a modern version based on power-saving LEDs and an especially thin light guide body. For the first time, different light colors are available: warm white, green, orange-yellow, red and daylight white. An installation service is currently not offered. The price depends on the quantity purchased, an LED backlight kit for personal use costs just under 30 euros.

http://www.backlight4you.com/

(mj)

COPS without WDIALOG (20.07.2020 - 17:50 Uhr)

CPX modules are indispensable for configuring Ataris. Unfortunately, the only open source CPX server, COPS, has one disadvantage: It depends on the operating system extension WDIALOG. But now there are efforts to eliminate this dependency from COPS, and the updated version is part of the FreeMint snapshot builds. Developer Thorsten Otto points out that certain CPX modules that require MagiC or WDIALOG functionality will still depend on these two programs.

COPS appeared as an alternative to Atari's XControl and is compatible with its CPC modules. Additionally, COPS has its own CPX format with variable window size, the CPXe modules. The latter did not catch on like the other modular alternatives (EPXE and HPG). zControl was more oriented towards XControl, Freedom2 combined an alternative file selector with a CPX server. However, the source code of these two programs was never released.

https://freemint.github.io/

(mj)

Texel is open source (09.07.2020 - 20:50 Uhr)

Thomas Much has released the source code of his spreadsheet Texel. Texel was the last and also most modern spreadsheet for the ST, with variable line heights and support for vector fonts. A special feature was the extensive support of OLGA (also by Much): With OLGA and a suitable second application, graphics and diagrams could be integrated into Texel (picture: integration with ArtWorx). The program could be remote controlled via the GEMScript protocol. The last version released was 2.2, but a small update to version 2.30 was still in beta testing. The spreadsheet was developed with a modified version of Pure Pascal.

https://github.com/thmuch/texel

(mj)

VCS games with a menu (28.05.2020 - 23:52 Uhr)

Part of Atari's marketing for the VCS2600 was the indication of the game variants on the packaging: "Space Invaders" was not simply "Space Invaders", but "Space Invaders: 112 Video Games". The selection of the game variants was tedious, because for game variant 112, for example, the switch button had to be pressed 112 times. A menu was omitted in order to save memory and thus costs. Today memory is cheap and AtariAge user Omegamatrix patched several VCS classics and gave them a title and menu screen: Super Breakout, Video Olympics and Space Invaders. The menus give names to the game variants, and individual variants are deselected if they cannot be played with the current configuration.

https://bit.ly/2WQXMrV

(mj)

New owner for Atari-Home (01.05.2020 - 12:00 Uhr)

The Atari Home Forum will continue to exist - in an unaltered form, as Johannes Hädrich has confirmed in the corresponding forum thread. Hädrich had announced last year that he wanted to discontinue the forum, but had given several months time to find a successor. However, this successor had to meet a number of conditions. On January 14, he announced that the Verein zum Erhalt klassischer Computer e.V. would take over the forum. The club publishes the Load magazine and operates its own forum. The Atari computers have two subforums of their own there, but with 2100 posts in 220 threads it is no comparison to the Atari Home Forum, where even the relatively young subforum of the ST-Computer has 1700 posts in 57 threads. In the future, the club will take over the role from Hädrich, but will not integrate the Atari-Home forum into that of the VzEkC. Since February 27th the registration of new users is possible again.

(mj)

Many, many updates! (30.03.2020 - 18:50 Uhr)

Over a dozen ST programs were updated within a few days, for some it was the first update in over twenty years. The reason for this was a "spring-cleaning" for a new website. Updates are available for the HomePage Penguin (3.06), HTML-Help (2.60), En Vogue (1.10), CPX-Basic and Milanopoly (0.61). All programs have been newly compiled with the latest tools, depending on the program, minor bugs have been fixed and cosmetic corrections have been made to the resource file - Milanopoly now runs better in monochrome, for example. The fun program Enhanced Character Interpreter has been ported from GFA-Basic to C.

Besides updates there is also a "new" program: spareCALC originally appeared as a bonus for all registered users of the scheduling software spareTIME. Since there was only a single digit number of registrations, the program rarely was released. Now this unusual collection of a retro calculator, equation calculation and zodiac sign determination is available for everyone. The source code is included and is an example for a simple GEM program with the cflib.

(mj)

Hex-a-Hop (18.12.2019 - 21:46 Uhr)

New food for game fans with powerful hardware: Atari-Forum.com member "jury" has compiled Hex-a-Hop for TOS. Hex-a-Hop is a small logic game, in which all green hexagonal fields must be destroyed without blocking the way. You can undo as many steps as you want, there is no time limit. If a level is completed, the next one is selected on a map.
Hex-a-Hop was programmed by Tom Beaumont and Ari Mustonen, who released the source code on SourceForge. You can control it with mouse or keyboard, the escape key calls up a menu in which you can switch between window and full screen display. The game requires a resolution with at least 16 bit color depth (65536 color tones). Jury tested the game on a CT60 Falcon with SuperVidel, the screenshot is from MacAranym. Under MacAranym the mouse button has to be pressed longer in window mode to make the character jump to another field.

https://bit.ly/2TRY95f

(mj)

maxYMiser High (17.12.2019 - 21:45 Uhr)

After a six-year break, the maxYMiser chip tune tracker is back with a new version. MaxYMiser tries to get as much out of the ST's YM/AY sound chip as possible, using all the modern techniques developed by chip tune artists in recent years, including SID waveforms. In addition to the three channels of the sound chip, the DMA sound of the Atari STE is also supported. The tracker also communicates with the MIDI world and should be compatible with every CPU from 68000 to 68060. Developer gwEm is a chiptune musician himself and has programmed, besides maxYMiser, a VST plug-in for PC-DAWs and the DJ software STj.
maxYMiser has the suffix "High" in the version number. This does not refer to the MIDI latency adjustments, but to the support for the high resolution of the Ataris. In 640x400, however, maxYMiser is not a different program - neither the pixels are used for a particularly sharp display, nor is there more to see on the SM124. It is rather a concession to the musicians, who usually run the ST with a monochrome monitor and now do not need to connect a color monitor for the chip tune tracker. On higher color resolutions - for example the VGA resolution of the Falcon - maxYMiser switches to the low resolution.

http://preromanbritain.com/maxymiser/

(mj)

CD Write Suite 4 is freeware (16.12.2019 - 21:44 Uhr)

When it was finally possible to not only read but also burn CD-ROMs on the Atari, this was big news. In the meantime, memory cards and the Internet have made the CD almost superfluous, but if you still want to burn CDs on the Atari, you can do so with the recently released CD Writer Suite 4 from Anodyne Software, which is available as freeware. The suite consists of the three programs CDwriter (audio CDs), CDbackup (backups to data CDs and DVDs) and CD InScriptOr (burning standard ISO9660 CDs and DVDs). On 68030 systems, media is burned at quadruple speed, on 68000 systems at double speed. If the hardware supports it, the burning process can be simulated beforehand. CD Writer Suite supports many SCSI3/MMC CD and DVD recorders, there is a list of compatible devices on the website. To run it, you will also need ExtenDOS 4, which was released as freeware last year and also offers an audio CD player. The release of the source code is planned at a later date.

http://www.anodynesoftware.com/cdws4/main.html

(mj)

USB driver for graphics tablets in development (15.12.2019 - 21:42 Uhr)

A graphics tablet is a useful acquisition for almost every screen artist, pixel painters excluded. Atari itself offered the Maltafel for the 8-bit computers and for the ST there were later various graphics tablets from third party manufacturers, some of them especially for technical drawings. With PixArt, which supported Wacom tablets, the graphics tablets experienced a small renaissance. But what about more modern tablets, those with USB connection? For these Perdrix24 has announced a driver on YouTube and Atari-Forum.com. The tablet simulates the mouse: The tip of the pen acts as the left mouse button, the buttons on the pen as the right mouse button. The mouse pointer is moved by slightly lifting the pen. Four function keys can be programmed to corresponding Atari keys. Graphics programs can query the pressure strength - a possible candidate for implementation would be the graphics program Vision, which is being further developed.

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=37128

(mj)

KWEST-PD library archived (14.12.2019 - 21:42 Uhr)

AtariAge user rcamp48 has archived a PD collection that has not yet been backed up. The collection consists of 37 of the 38 floppy disks of the KWEST Library from 1989 to 1993 and contains a lot of well-known stuff, for example the utilities of Double Click Software, which are also known from German PD series, but also unusual stuff like the Mozzie Repeller II, which is said to drive away mosquitoes with high frequency sounds. KWEST was a user club for 8- and 16/32-bit computers, the club also maintained a PD series for Atari's 8-bit computers. Archiving the KWEST library does not end the search for PD disks: especially PD series that were never collected on PD/Shareware CDs are only incompletely preserved. This includes many dealer-owned series such as Karstadt or PSG. Often such disks are found sporadically in disk boxes, random finds that are lost in the mass of S-, J- and V-PD disks. Whether there are programs on these disks that are not found in any other series is another question.

https://bit.ly/2k0NDrF

(mj)

Melody PSG for Atari 8-Bit (13.12.2019 - 21:41 Uhr)

Finally a dual PSG/AY card - but for the wrong computer. Lotharek is working on the Melody cartridge, a module that equips Atari 8-bit computers with two sound chips of type AY 3-8910 or 3-8912. These chips were used with different clock frequencies in the Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, Oric Atmos, MSX and ZX Spectrum 128/+2/+3. The frequency can be switched by software, a first program for the module, which is still under development, plays YM/MYM sounds. The price is not yet fixed.

(mj)

Songbird is shopping (12.12.2019 - 21:39 Uhr)

Lynx and Jaguar owners already know Songbird as a company that bought and eventually released games that were developed but never released. The company also offers newly developed games for the two cats of prey. But now the company enters new territory: It has acquired some rights to well-known Lynx and Jaguar games, as Songbird announced on AtariAge.
This includes all games from HandMade Software with the exception of Kasumi Ninja. HandMade had developed several games for Atari, including Awesome Golf, Battlezone 2000, Dracula The Undead and Malibu Bikini Volleyball. Songbird now also owns Gordo 106 (Tenth Planet Software), Super Skweek (Loriciel) and Othello (Harry Dodgson). With Battlemorph from Attention to Detail, Songbird has also acquired a high-quality Jaguar brand.
Othello and Loopz (HandMade Software) were already distributed by Songbird. Short term plans for the remaining games do not exist, Songbird also does not own the source code for the games. Battlezone (rights are now held by Rebellion) and Skweek (Loriciel) are licensed for older Atari systems, respectively the Lynx version.

(mj)