Released in August 2022, Space Rescue and Baseball are two new games by Antero Martinez for Amstrad CPC.

PunyInform v4.0 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 v6.35 (or more).

They are tutorials to write adventure game with PunyInform (end of the page) and all the documentation including a 8 page cheat sheet (quick reference)..

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

And finally, to create an Amstrad CPC and PCW disk image, you will have to use the Puddle BuildTools.

VEZZA by Shawn Sijnstra (and Stefan Vogt) is a new Infocom/Inform/Z-machine interpreter for Amstrad CPC and PCW (and other computers) to play adventure games without needing a memory expansion (Inform format v1 to v8), under CP/M and not Amsdos.

The program you need to dowload is different if you are using an Amstrad CPC (vezza-nb.com) or a PCW (vezza-90.com).

Due to compatibility problems between the Amstrad Plus ASIC memory mapping and existing memory expansions, PulkoMandy has designed its own : Gemini.

This is a 1 Mb expansion with a switch to force it to 512K (in case you hit compatibility problems with something). Unlike other RAM expansions, it tracks the status of the ASIC to avoid conflicts if software attempts to map both the ASIC and expanded memory to the same address. At the moment the only software known to hit this situation is the Soundtracker DMA. But let us know if you find (or make) more :)

More info on Gemini's PulkoMandy web page.

Compatibility chart :

• Amstrad Plus (464 or 6128) : this card is for you
• GX4000 : why not, if you have soldered an expansion port
• CPC 6128 : this will work, unless software tries to unlock and map the ASIC. If there is enough demand, I can make a modified (and simpler) version of the Gemini for CPC 6128
• CPC 464 and 664: this will not work. Do not use this card on 464 and 664 machines. Since he doesn't own one of these, he doesn't plan to make a version of the card for them.

Availability : for now PulkoMandy has built a very small batch of 3 cards, and all 3 are already sold (someone really wanted to own the one with serial number 0). But he will build more (parts are on the way) and he will take preorder to know how much I need to build.

The price is 35 € including worldwide shipping. Reduced price if you come to my home to get it, or if you buy it from me during a meeting or demoparty (but tell him beforehand, so he knows how many he should bring).

Longshot has released version 1.3 of the Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium (beware, the english version isn't definitive, only the french one is actually) which is a documentation about the CRTC 6845 (and some others circuits). Note that the CRTC is a generic component used in several computers including the IBM PC.

As seen on CPCRulez, the AMSpiriT emulator by Dmanu78 is respecting by a great margin the SHAKER tests by Longshot than other emulators. SHAKER is a program designed to run on CPC machines produced by AMSTRAD in the 80s-90s. The objective of this program is to carry out extensive tests on the video circuits of this machine. These video circuits are the GATE ARRAY and the CRTC 6845. AMSTRAD produced several series of GATE ARRAY and used CRTC models produced by different manufacturers (HITACHI, MOTOROLA, UMC, AMSTRAD). This has been causing compatibility problems on operations that exceed the functional specifications of these circuits. The identified CRTCs are numbered from 0 to 4.

So AMSpiriT is better especially if you like to see Amstrad CPC demos, and can't be bad either for games. I don't have the time to test extensively all Amstrad CPC games, but for sure I will take time during the Benediction Coding Party #2 to use it.

Reidrac (Juan Martinez) is actually working on two projects : a RPG (Ultima like) and Hyperdrive which is a shoot them up, whose release date will be December 2022, with a loading screen by Titan.

Missile Command is an Atari arcade game released in 1980, and in 1981 for the Atari VCS 2600, ported by Rob Fulop, which sold over 2.5 million copies.

Cyril GOURET (music, code and sprites) et TITAN (loading screen) are working on a WIP remake of this classic for Amstrad CPC. A working demo was available at the RGC 2022 meeting, the final version isn't available for the moment.

A new version of Amspirit, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Dmanu78 is available on the System.CFG forum for windows. There is a 32 and 64bit version. Reading all the thread is a good idea if you didnt read it already as it's a complete genesis of this emulator.

The thread on CPCWiki is here.

Fractoid by the Osmium Path group is an Amstrad CPC demo about Julia fractals. It's written by Optimus (code) and Ham (graphics and music). This little intro was written for the Decrunch demoparty.

After having released a new version of his Amstrad Notepad NC100, NC150 and NC200 emulator, Russell Marks has just released a new version of his version of CP/M for these same machines : ZCN 1.4, the new features are :

• NC150 support, with a custom zcn150.bin kernel. As with the NC200, this is not as complete as the NC100 support. Also, it has only been tested under emulation
• Internal ramdisk support on NC200 and NC150, so you can use ZCN on them without a memory card (to some limited degree). This is really only intended to be used if you lack a memory card - you switch between memory card mode and ramdisk mode using the "ramd" command
• Improved keyboard layout support via keyb, supporting Danish, French, German, Italian, Swedish, and US keyboard layouts, in addition to the old UK and Dvorak. All supported keyboard layouts can be used on any NC model
• Preinstalled memory card images for NC100/NC150/NC200. These are intended for use with emulators like nc100em/MAME/RC2014, but they should also work on the real thing if you have the means to write them correctly. (Serial link installs are still supported, of course.)
• Support for booting from floppy disk on the NC200 - this uses David Given's floppy-boot code from FUZIX, almost unchanged. ZCN itself does not support the floppy disk, so this just loads ZCN and a small ramdisk image then boots it
• Support for displaying some non-ASCII characters, specifically some from the old DOS code pages 437 and 850 like in the ROM software, as well as the euro sign character from 858. Only a few dozen characters are supported (!) and you need to run keyb beforehand (i.e. since boot) for this to work
• NC200 time-reading and time-setting support, meaning that e.g. time and timeset work
• The man command now uses ZX0 compression - the data file is smaller, man.com is smaller, and man pages load faster
• Certain .com files in the support directory, like QTERM, are now also provided in versions using ZX0 compression. So for example, the ZX0-using version of QTERM is 5k smaller. ZCN comes with a "zx0com.bin" file you can prepend to a .zx0 file to run it in this way (limited to .zx0 files of 16k or less)