Archives for the month June 2021 of Genesis8 Amstrad Page






Dave Rogers' Amstrad CPC Chiptunes emulated on PICO-8 by carlc27843

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Carlc27843 has written for PICO-8 an Amstrad CPC AY-3-8910 sound chip emulator using undocumented 5512Hz 8-bit mono PCM channel, to compose or convert Amstrad CPC music by Dave Rogers :

  • Netherworld
  • Zynaps
  • Uridium
  • Cybernoid
  • Cybernoid 2: The Revenge
  • Nebulus
  • Marauder
  • Stormlord
  • Stormlord 2: Deliverance
  • Anarchy
  • Battle Valley
  • Herobotix
  • Turbo Boat Simulator
  • Bear-A-Grudge (ok this was Speccy only never on CPC, but it was one of Dave's favorites so had to be included)


The source code of the Amstrad CPC demo TriangulArt (Impact) is available

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TriangulArt by Impact is a really nice Amstrad CPC demo made only with triangles which you can see on Youtube.

The source code of the demo is now available on :



Open Tower Defense by Roudoudou, an Amstrad CPC strategy game

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Open Tower Defense is the last work of Roudoudou, a strategy game of the tower defense type, whose sources on Github are available.

The game was written by :

  • roudoudou (Edouard BERGE) for code
  • hwikaa for GFX cover and more
  • e-dredon for 6 channels music (Playcity)
  • Tom&Jerry for 3 channels music
  • Ast for mass-storage version of the game

It was tested yesterday by JB Le Daron on Twitch.

For playing you must use the following keys :

  • T => create Tower
  • B => create Bash tower
  • H => create Hurricane tower
  • S => create Swarn tower
  • U => upgrade
  • D => delete
  • ESC => instant quit

If you have a GOTEK/HXC/FlashFloppy, you should update your firmware if you want use the .DSK version of the game, otherwise use the .HFE to avoid firmware bugs.



Hibernated 1 Director's Cut by Stefan Vogt, an upgraded adventure game

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Hibernated is an adventure game by Stefan Vogt which was released in 2018. He also wrote a addon to this game : Eight Feet Under.

He has now released an upgraded version of the first game : Hibernated 1 (Director's cut). The initial version was using the DAAD engine, the director's cut version is using Puny (infocom's engine) which is text only.

You can pre-order a physical box of Hibernated 1 (Director's Cut) at PolyPlay.



A new adventure game : Silk Dust by Davide Bucci on Amstrad CPC

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After The Queen's footstep, Davide Bucci has finished writing a new adventure game : Silk Dust for many platforms including the Amstrad CPC.

Here is the introduction of the game : Today is April 19, 1907. You, Emilia Vittorini, arrived yesterday in Varenna, on the shore of the beautiful Lake Como. You are hosted at the magnificent Villa Briccorosso; Princess Lucilla Briccorosso is preparing the Silk Road Race, a 10,000km rally raid between Cairo in Egypt and Peking in China, to be done by car. You represent ITA, founded by your father, the company that built the car the Princess just bought to use during the rally. The car is supposed to be delivered today. Your role will be to assist the delivery and make sure everything is perfectly functional.

Silk Dust par Davide Bucci, loading screen Silk Dust Davide Bucci, start of the game



Willy by PulkoMandy, an Amstrad CPC(+) adaptator for using parallel PC sound cards

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On Serdashop you can found audio and video cards to be used mostly on PC. For example there are two cards which are connected to the parallel port of a PC, especially those which can't use ISA/PCI sound cards such as old portables :

Pulkomandy has created a card for Amstrad CPC(+) : Willy which lets you use an OPL3LPT or S2P on it. He wrote two programs to use the OPL3LPT which you can found on his page :

Check the CPCWiki thread for more informations and short videos of the Willy + OPL3LPT being used.

By the way, there are other ways to use MIDI on an Amstrad CPC, but it will be for another day (hint, use serial, usifac, LambdaSpeak...).



CPCEPower v2105, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Megachur (linux, windows, MAC, PI)

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The last version of the Amstrad CPC emulator CPCEPower by Megachur is available on cpcwiki.

The goal of this emulator is to emulates as best is possible the Amstrad CPC, like ACE.



Aeon, a game converted for the Amstrad CPC by VincentGR and Kukulcan

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Aeon is a game written with Multi-Platform Arcade Game Designer 0.7.10 originally for the ZX Spectrum. It has been converted for Amstrad CPC by VincentGR and Kukulcan, music conversion by SuTeKH and help by Kees Van OSS. The game includes 4 mini-games (action, platform, labyrinth).

Xyphoe has played the game in a recent streaming. Better use this link than the video below as it starts at 35 minutes and 31 seconds.



PunyInform v2.6 by Fredrik Ramsberg and Johan Berntsson to write text adventure games

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PunyInform v2.6 by Fredrik Ramsberg and Johan Berntsson is a library written in Inform 6 to create adventure game (pure text, no graphic support contrary to DAAD) using the Z-machine virtual machine which will run on 8bit computers (or more recent computers too). PunyInform has a parser, knowing of common verbs and a framework to write adventure games.

PunyInform is based on the Inform 6 library written by Graham Nelson. Its goal is to make easily adventure games in Inform 6, with a manual describing the differences between the official library and PunyInform..

Games using PunyInform can be compiled in z3, z5 and z8 format (z3 being the best format for 8bit computers, other formats have more features). Compared to the Inform 6 library, it means that there is no support for the Glulx virtual machine but z3 format is important as Inform 6 doesnt support it.

To compile games written with PunyInform, you should use the Inform 6 compiler maintained by David Kinder. Binaries are available on if-archive. PunyInform needs Inform v6.34 (or more).

They are tutorials to write adventure game with PunyInform (end of the page).

To try your game after compilation, you can use WinFrotz by David Kinder, to create map easily you can use Trizbort.



Budrumi, an Amstrad CPC graphical adventure game by Sakis Kaffesakis and Manossg

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Budrumi is an Amstrad CPC graphical adventure game by Sakis Kaffesakis and Manossg, which you can see the solution on Youtube if you are stucked.

The game on the author's web site is in english, a frech version is available (third version), also one in greek (same link than english version).




How to impress your girlfriend on Robocop by Xyphoe

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Xyphoe did find two years ago an exploit, also found Green Beret, to easily finish levels in the Robocop game. He is doing it in this new video. This exploit can also be done on a ZX Spectrum, in both computers only the levels 1 and 3 which are withough heights. So you just have to keep 4 enemies behind you, and you will have no boss at the end of the level.

Reading commentaries of the video is interesting as the one by Roi Eclair who wrote : here's actualy another exploit you can do to get infinite energy, but so far i've only been able to do it with the bikers. you need to be almost dry on energy, and kill the biker right when he will hit you. you'll be out of energy, but still alive, and able to end the level taking any more amount of damage you want within the remaining time allowed. found this one by pure accident when i was a kid back then. may not be that easy tu pull, but once you get the right timing, you can be invincible. works on the cpc version, never tried on specy.

For Green Beret, as there are at most 3 sprites of ennemies plus yours, just find 3 ennemies going the same direction than you and you can go to the end of the level easily.



Plus2CPC, an Amstrad CPC Plus cartridge slot for the vanilla CPC by Abalore

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Abalore (look for his Youtube channel) is not at his first Amstrad production (see below), and today he is at his best as he made a simple electronic interface adding a cartridge slot for the plain Amstrad CPC (464, 664 and 6128) which can only be used normally on an CPC+ or the GX4000 console.

Beware, it doesnt add magically the CPC+ features. But it's the key for games with a monstruous size up to 4 Mb with a simple memory banking.

And you can also use it on an CPC+, the internal cartridge with Burning Rubber or basic is still usable, the Plus2CPC will let you load games or another operating system.

A file to be used with a 3D printer is available on his web site (see above). He can make a version with edge or centronics connector, or MX4, v3 without reset button or v4 with reset button.



Soundtracker DMA v2.0 by Zik for Amtrad CPC+

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Soundtracker DMA v2.0 by Zik (Futurs) is released. It's a music composition software for Amstrad CPC+. It takes advantage of CPC+ audio DMA lists to allow AY-SID and AY sample sounds while keeping CPU load low. You may have heard of it before as the musics of CRTC3 demo by Roudoudou was done with a preliminary version of the tool. It needs 128 Kb of RAM, so 6128+ is needed.



Le voyage de Nephi by Patrice Brochard, an Amstrad CPC game inspired by a comic book

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Patrice Brochard has released an Amstrad CPC game : le voyage de Nephi which is written in basic 1.1 (464 with basic 1.0 won't work). This game is inspired by the comic book by Patrice himself : Les Damnés du Royaume des Ombres.

It's a labyrinthe game only playable with the keyboard, using mode 1 ith 3 colors (the 4th is used for some effects). The game is free but if you want to help its author you can buy tome 1 and 2 of the comic book and you will get a box for your game.

The game will be played by JB le Daron on Twitch tonight at 11pm (french hour).




Nova v1.2 by PulkoMandy, a NVRAM and RTC expansion card for Amstrad CPC

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Pulkomandy has made in February 2021 a new expansion card for Amstrad CPC(+) : Nova. This card is now at version 1.2 and let you use non volatile RAM (32 Kb) which is kept even when the Amstrad CPC is off, and a real time clock. The NVRAM can be used by Unidos (about which I really must write).




M4FE v2.0.3, a frontend in ROM for the Amstrad CPC wifi extension card M4 Board

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The new version of M4FE v2.0.3, a frontend for the wifi M4 board by Abalore is available. It fixes a problem loading SNA files with name lengths other than eight characters.



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