wee doors banging

The Amiga Revival Fair 2009 was held on Saturday 12th December 2009 in Enfield. Organised by the Amiga North Thames user group, it featured a number of Amiga hardware and software exhibitors as well as demonstrations of new products (yes there are a few!) and games competitions. I couldn’t make it, but a fellow Northern Ireland based Amiga user did and this is what he found.

Greg Wood, a web designer from Nottingham in the UK, has posted a list of his top 5 Amiga games and why he likes them. “So what?”, you may ask. It’s hardly the choice of games, rather it’s the unique take Greg has taken on the design that makes his post remarkable.

Markus has released an updated version of the open source Amstrad CPC emulator package, JavaCPC. JavaCPC Paint, a utility to draw directly into the emulated CPC screen, has been added and CRTC registers 6 and 8 are now fully emulated, allowing several more advanced demo effects to be properly displayed.

The latest issue of games™ magazine hits the shelves today. Up until now it’s not a magazine that I would normally have read, so normally the publication of another issue wouldn’t be much call for remark. But issue 89 contains an in depth feature looking back at one of the all time great – and personal favourite – Amiga games: Team17′s Alien Breed 3D.

I’ve enjoyed the previous Academy books (with reservations) but I’m not sure what to make of this one. One the one hand, Odyssey is excellent and worthy of the award nominations it has receieved, but on the other the pacing fails in spots and there’s a gaping back story hole you could, well, fill a book with.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the launch of Public Records Office of Northern Ireland’s new searchable archive of Belfast Street Directories. I’ve now uploaded some coverage of the launch event, originally broadcast on UTV on 23rd September 2009.

Alien Breed 3D (AB3D), published in 1995, is the fourth game in Team17′s classic Alien Breed franchise. As the title suggests, AB3D breaks the 2D mould of the previous games; it’s a 3D first person shooter much like DOOM but with a more advanced graphics engine. It’s also one of my favourite Amiga games, if not my actual number-one-with-a-plasma-bolt favourite Amiga game, even though I was never much of a fan of the 2D games in the series.

Based on publically released source code and information, I started four AB3D modification and remake projects and I thought I’d list them here for posterity.

Omega is typical McDevitt, but one of his better efforts.

I referred to Chindi, the previous novel in the series, as an “action movie of a book” and Omega is no different. Expect a fun read, filled with mishaps and adventure, but with a certain lack of depth.

On the other hand, who has time for chat when a civilisation is at stake?

Elite, the groundbreaking space trading and combat game created by Ian Bell and David Braben, was released 25 years ago on September 20th 1984. In celebration of this milestone, Frontier Developments have launched a new website dedicated to Elite.

I’ve released an updated WHDLoad patch for an Amiga game that nearly wasn’t, Expose’s platformer No Buddies Land. This release updates the installer script and fixes a lurking access fault in one of the Synthdream module replay routines. Credit is again due to Don Adan of Wanted Team for helping identify and explain the problematic sections.