Archives for the month September 2011 of Genesis8 Amstrad Page





The Amstrad CPC generation, are we getting that old ?

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Below you will find an extract of the excellent french site Dans Ton Chat (some IRC chat goodies).

Couchax: Shit, my sister has a new boyfriend, an older man (older than mathusalem), about 10 years older than her ! What a pity ! She bringed him back to the house just yesterday... I am quite ashamed !

Adrien: What's the problem ? It's not you who is dating him, so what... If your sister is feeling well with him, it's what is important ?

Couchax: I dont care about this, I am telling you that I am really ashamed...

Adrien: Why o.O ?

Couchax: I was very badly beaten to Super Street Fighter 4, never has been beaten like that before...

Adrien: What a shame, being beaten by the Amstrad generation...

Couchax: Yes...(-_-)'

Doh, I am feeling 10 years older now in the space of just a few seconds... :-)






Mandelbrot in one line of basic by Demoniak

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Just copy this one line of basic code by Demoniak and paste it in WinApe in the File Menu (or Ctrl + F11, or with any other Amstrad CPC emulator. Just for fun, like the Nyan Cat.

10 MODE 0:e=-1.3:FOR y%=0 TO 199:d=-2.4:FOR x%=0 TO 159:z=0:i=0:a%=0:WHILE a%<15 AND (z*z+i*i)<4:s=(z*z)-(i*i)+d:r=(2*i*z)+e:z=s:i=r:a%=a%+1:WEND:PLOT x%*4,y%*2,a%:d=d+0.0215:NEXT:e=e+0.013:NEXT

P.S. : in the general settings of WinApe, click on display every 1 frame and Turbo Mode, or you may have to wait a bit...

P.P.S : the second image is another basic source (more than 1 line) by Tronic-GPA.

Mandelbrot en une ligne de basic par Demoniak  Mandelbrot NOT one liner by Tronic-GPA



Nyan Cat on Amstrad CPC

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Nyan cat is an internet meme, referring to an animated gif of a cat with the body of a cherry Pop-Tart flying through space, leaving a rainbow trail behind the cat; or to a video of the animated ?.GIF?, set to a remix of the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!",[1] or to any of several Nyan Cat based games.

It's now on Amstrad CPC, with the music adapted by John McKlain and the code by Demoniak (just for fun !).

Beware the Amstrad CPC Nyan Cat video on Youtube isnt the last version available (current version is 3).

If you cant read the french forum, here is the same thread on CPCWiki's forum.



Amstrad CPC on Android and soon on Iphone

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There are already 2 Amstrad CPC emulators on Android : AndCPC and CPCDroid.

Both of them are based on PSPCAP32 by Ludovic Jacomme which is a port of Caprice32 open source Amstrad CPC emulator.

To my dispair, the excellent adventure game Orion Prime cant work with PSPCAP32, is it the same thing with these 2 emulators ?

Anyway, there is an incoming Amstrad CPC emulator on Iphone ! My dream comes true (read the source for more and future informations).



The prayer of the warrior, video and history

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Another HD video by Metr81 of the prayer of the warrior.

Though this time there is more to say about this plat-form game, which was written in 1992 by 2 brothers : Francisco Javier Serrano García (programmation) et Emilio Serrano García (graphics). It was meant to be edited by Zigurat to be finally canceled. It is now available due to ESP Soft (also available on CPC Power). Code has been modified by SyX, the cover is by Lopez ESPI.

cover of the Amstrad CPC game the prayer of the warrior  menu screenshot of the Amstrad CPC game the prayer of the warrior  screenshot of the Amstrad CPC game the prayer of the warrior







R-Type, origine and remake

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R-Type was written in 1987 by Keith A Goodyer for Activion (Electric Dreams label) which gave him only 21 days to write the port, by using the ZX Spectrum version (written by Bob Pape). He used the PDS system written by Foo Katan, probably the world first IDE editor, cross assembler, linker and debugger development. it was running on a PC (ms-dos) with extra hardware that allowed to send the compilted code directly onto the target hardware. It eventually supported development for Z80, 6502 and 68K.

Here is the method he used :

Given the extream time limits i was given to the port this is basic strategy that I took to do the port... (I hope i remember all this correctly).

The spectrum had its ROM in the lower 16K, and the 48K of RAM above it. So I configured the Amstrad to locate the MODE 1 screen in the lower 16K, and loaded the spectrum version in the top 48K (As it would be located on a spectrum - and ran it). I then went through the code line by line, modifying anything that 'plotted' pixels on the screen to something that would plot the equivalent pixels on on Arnolds screen.

As the spectrum screen is 'Attribute Based' I continued to used all of Bobs 'Colour' code, and the whole 768 bytes of the spectrum colour attribute screen is running on the Amstrad version. When ever there was a 'Byte' write to the spectrum screen, I would use a look up table to indexed by the byte and the value of the corresponding spectrum colour attribute to extract the two bytes required to produce the correct pixels on the CPC screen. Then all I had to do was port the control (Sinclair/Kempston) to CPC stuck, and the Sound and the job was done. A few days with DJL to add the 'Protection' and the job was done.

Now the sad news... about 5 years ago, I had a massive leak in my roof, and all my records (including the source code) was destroyed.

Now some Trivia: At the time I had a 464, 664 and a 6128 - I took the final masters down to Activision, and it would not run on their 6128. It tuned out that at some point in time, Amstrad had made a small revision to the design that meant that a the interrupt would fire just before a frame fly back pulse, where on previous versions it would occur just after. The net effect was that when my code was waiting for the frame fly back pulse to occur, the interrupt would trigger just before it, go off do some processing, and by the time it had finished the processing and returend to the main code loop, had missed the pulse - and locked up.

A R-Type remake by Fano (code), TotO (graphics) et iXien(sound) is going to be available very soon, you can actually read Fano's interview on Push'N'Pop.

I let you check differences between the screenshot of the original R-Type and its remake (first screen of the Youtube video)..

game screenshot of the original R-Type on Amstrad CPC



Shadow dancer, review and longplay by Xyphoe

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Metr81 isnt the only one to post videos of Amstrad CPC gameplay on Youtube, there is also Cholo and Xyphoe.

The first video made by Xyphoe announced there is Shadow Dancer written by US Gold in 1991.

loading screen of the Amstrad CPC game Shadow Dancer



Another CPC+ modded, by Badstarr, with the HxC floppy emulator

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Remember the CPC+ modded by DeepFB ?

Here is another mod of a 464+ by Badstarr, with 128 Ko and of course the ubiquitous HxC floppy emulator.

P.S. : go read the source of this news for more photos at the page 2.

CPC 464+ modded with 128 Ko RAM and the HxC floppy emulator running

Inside the modded 464+, there you see the HxC floppy emulator and the whole SD card.

inside of a CPC 464+ modded with 128 Ko RAM and the HxC floppy emulator

Here is the bottom, you can see a tiny part of the SD card from the hole.

bottom of the a CPC 464+ modded with 128 Ko RAM and the HxC floppy emulator



Ikari Warriors on PS3 and Xbox360

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Ikari Warriors is out on PS3 and Xbox360.

loading screen of Ikari Warriors




QuickCMD v2.2 by NoRecess

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QuickCMD v2.2 is out, a shell-based user interface by NoRecess.

These are the changes:

  • Added support for Bryce's MegaFlash
  • Renamed RO and RW commands to READONLY and READWRITE
  • Removed CRTC command
  • Reset screen to QuickCMD’s default if external RSX changed video mode
  • DELROM now clears a rom with &FF value (was using &00)
  • Fixed: was overwriting first byte after HIMEM
  • Fixed: not assuming anymore than Amsdos area is always at &A700

QuickCMD v1.0 in action



Edge Grinder by Axelay is out

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The Amstrad CPC version of the multi-platform game Edge Grinder is out. This Amstrad CPC version was programmed by Axelay (Paul Kooistra), music by the ubiquitous Tom & Jerry and graphics by Trevor Smila Storey.

The video you will find below comes from the C64 version.

loading screen of the Amstrad CPC game Edge Grinder  menu screen of the Amstrad CPC game Edge Grinder  game screenshot of the Amstrad CPC game Edge Grinder




Bomb jack HD Gameplay by Metr81

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Here is a new HD video by Metr81 of Bomb jack written by Elite in 1986.

A classic I remember well, I was able to play 3 or 4 times all levels before loosing all lives, Bomb Jack 2 was disappointing though.

loading screen of the Amstrad CPC game Bomb Jack






ACE v1.1, an Amstrad CPC emulator for MorphOS

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ACE v1.1 is an Amstrad CPC emulator for MorphOS by Philippe Rimauro (written in C).

  • ACE does not allow emulation of a CPC+ with CRTC 1,
  • ACE does not hurt the PSG musics,
  • ACE does not damage what is displayed of the screen,
  • ACE does not embed too many integrated monolithic tools,
  • ACE does not need a nuclear power plant.
  • ACE does only allow emulation of real CPC,
  • ACE does emulate an accurate PSG the way it is mixed on CPC,
  • ACE does show on screen what the real CPC would,
  • ACE does offer infinite expansion capabilities thanks to it's AREXX interface,
  • ACE does run one frame on a small little G4.



Nebulus : theme remix, video longplay and remake

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A remake of the Nebulus music is available on Youtube by Alpiso.

That was a hard game, I only went to the second tower (and there are 8 of them), so if you want to see all towers, here is a longplay of Nebulus by Wanderlain on Youtube.

You can also play remakes of Nebulus : Tower Toppler for windows, linux, BeOS and MacOS X, or Power Toppler for Iphone with 2 missions of 8 towers, it has been developped by Silver Software (the game cost 0,79 €).

loading screen of the Amstrad CPC game Nebulus






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