Archives for the month November 2019 of Genesis8 Amstrad Page





A new adventure game : On the Queen's footsteps by Davide Bucci on Amstrad CPC

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Seen on Twitter, Davide Bucci is the author of adventure games, including On the Queen's footsteps for several platforms.

His game is written with The Adventure Writing System (AWS) by Aristide Torrelli and his own utility aws2c which translates AWS ascii files directly in C code. As his utility uses Z88DK to create the ZX Spectrum version, it was easy for him to write an Amstrad CPC version, thanks to him.

Here is the introduction of the game : today is August 27th, 1904. Nine months ago, you, Emilia Vittorini, joined the Italian Archeological Expedition in Egypt led by Ernesto Schiaparelli, the director of the Egyptian Museum of Turin. You are now back in Genova, Italy: your steam ferry arrived three days ago with 25 wooden boxes containing Queen Nefertari Meritmut's grave goods, a real treasure! They left Genova by train, heading towards Turin, yesterday evening. While they were in transit, you were invited to a sumptuous reception organised by a wealthy art lover, Eugenio Collovati, count of Raligotto, but it would be hard to say that you appreciated the evening. But the reception was yesterday: now, you must catch the train to Turin and check that the treasure arrived safely. I will be your eyes and ears. Good luck.

After the loading screen, press the Return Key to get the start of the game (see second screen below).

On the Queen's Footsteps par Davide Bucci, loading screen On the Queen's Footsteps par Davide Bucci, start of the game





Sonic GX for the Amstrad GX-4000 by No Recess at the Alchemie 2019

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No Recess did announce a WIP Amstrad GX-4000 game, and now the information is known, it's Sonic GX.

The game is programmed by NoRecess (Condense), graphics upgraded by CeD (Condense), audio by Targhan (Arkos) and tests by TotO, Overflow and Longshot.

There is a thread about Sonix GX on CPCWiki. More informations will be revealed in the Blast Annual 2020 (WIP newspaper). The game will be released officially in 2020.

A second video of Sonix GX is on Youtube.




An Amstrad PPC 640 with a LCD color screen and a Gotek

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I did just buy an Amstrad PPC 640 (sold starting 1988) on french site le bon coin. It's a PC weighing 6 Kg, with a green monochrome screen, a real standard keyboard, 640 Kb (no EMS/XMS), a NEC V30 (8 Mhz) replacing the 8086 found in PC 1512 or 1640, two 3,5 disk drives, a 2400 bps modem (v22bis, v23), printer and serial ports, a standard MDA/CGA/EGA video port, a port to connect a PC 1512 or 1640 screen and two extension ports. It runs msdos 3.3

Amstrad PPC 640 closed, up view Amstrad PPC 640 opened, up view Amstrad PPC 640 right side, with the handle

And tonight I am reading on CPCWiki (link below) a quite nice information linking to Hackaday about a modded Amstrad PPC 640 by Retrohax.

He changed one of the two 3,5 inch disk drive with a gotek, but he especially replaced the green monochrome LCD screen with a color screen (coming from a television set) using the MCA2EVGA available on Serdashop. The MCA2EVGA isnt visible as it is now in the room where you could put 1O C size batteries to run the computer (about 1 hour of autonomy).

But even without changing the screen, the MCA2EVGA can be used to connect a VGA screen with the video port at the back of the PPC 640. Doing this you wont need to look for an Amstrad PC 1512 or an Amstrad PC 1640 whose screen can be connected to the PPC 640 for the video (dont forget to change the switches at the left of the PPC) and bring him electricity at the same time, avoiding using its own alimentation.




SDCC v3.9.0 (C programming for Amstrad CPC) on PC and MacOS

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A new version of the ANSI-C compiler SDCC v3.9.0 is available since the 15th April 2019 for windows, linux and MacOS.






ISS Emergency, a new adventure game for Amstrad CPC

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Seen on MO5, a new adventure game is out on Amstrad CPC : ISS Emergency, also on ZX Spectrum, Commodore Plus/4 and C64, and PC too.

ISS EMERGENCY has been originally written for the Commodore Plus/4 et C64 by John Whatson, then adaptated by Gareth Pitchford with DAAD converted by Siz for the other 8bit platforms.



The Pawn by Magnetic Scrolls, remastered From Original Source Code by Strand Games

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Strand Games has released in 2017 a remastered version of The Pawn, Guild of Thieves and Jinxter by modifying binaries. Since them source code of The Pawn has been found. So it's time for a remastered verion from this original code source which let adding ambient sounds with new adjustable volume, improved sound handling on Linux, item icons and an option to put text below graphics.

For at least 1,49 pound, you can buy the windows (32/64), linux and mac versions of The Pawn. There are also Iphone and Android versions of The Pawn.




When The Alan Parsons Project meets the Amstrad CPC and the Amiga

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Fabrizio Radica has written a MOD of the well know instrumental piece of the Alan Parsons Project : Mammagamma (original on the official youtube channel). This track was out on the eye of the sky, released in June 1982 by Arista Records.

You can listen to these three versions of this MOD :

Credits : original music by The Alan Parsons Project, conversion by Fabrizio Radica, graphics by Devilmarkus, player by Prodatron, videos Amstrad CPC done with the JavaCPC emulator.




A speedrun of Trantor by Kukulcan in 4 minutes and 40 seconds on Amstrad CPC

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Trantor is a run and gun released in 1987 on Amstrad CPC, edited by U.S. Gold. It was programmed by David PERRY, graphics by Nick BRUTY and music by David WHITTAKER.

On OursoN Retrogames's youtube channel, Kukulcan is showing a speedrun of 4 minutes and 40 seconds on Trantor.




GameBase CPC (v33) by Loïc Daneels is back

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GameBase CPC v33 is available since today.

Please download only one file at a time.



iMPdraw v2 by AST/Imp4ct is released

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The draw utility by AST/Imp4act Impdraw v2 is out since the 8th November, coming also with the release of iMPdos 512 (a FAT16 ROM for your xMass, M4 or Symbiface 3, it doesnt need Amsdos so an CPC 464 can use it). Click on the source link below for download (at the end of the first message).

La précédente version (v1.2) date d'avril 2016, les améliorations sont les suivantes :

  • a huge zoom zone
  • using he 4096 palette of the Amstrad Plus
  • fullscreen support for the 3 graphical modes of the CPC (0, 1 et 2)
  • possibility of creating plugins with OrgAms or any other assembler
  • adds Undo/Redo
  • 100% compatible xMass with iMPdos, M4 wifi board and Symbiface 3 (thanks to @Kris for testing it)
  • in case of basic return or reset, you can get back your file
  • an included utility to create frames
  • Load/Save .win
  • Load .scr 17 kb files
  • integrated help

Beware, Impdraw uses more than 128 Kb, if you use WinApe please choose 4 Mb of RAM. Also a new version will be out in a few days




An interview of Stéphane F. author of an adventure game The Carnival Masks

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There is an interview of Stéphane F. on Amstrad.EU about his game the Carnival Masks which I wrote about last month.



The results of the Amstrad CPCRetroDev 2019 competition

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The results of the CPCRetroDev 2019 competition are out, see below. Congratulations too all the teams for their efforts from the last to the first. Writing a game is certainly not the easiest thing to do between programmation, gameplay, graphics and sound. Thanks to you for all your work which helps the Amstrad CPC live still.

I will try to take time to test them all in the following days. My first try will be the 31th game : Cpcrogue as I like roguelike games.

  • 01 - Miss input
  • 02 - Ludic Break the loop
  • 03 - EPIMETEO
  • 04 - Cobra
  • 05 - Bike masters
  • 06 - Super Tongue Dino
  • 07 - Hey Sailor !
  • 08 - Ratones y mazmorras
  • 09 - Woods rescue
  • 10 - ManPac
  • 11 - Happy Monty
  • 12 - Jackstrad
  • 13 - Shinobu
  • 14 - League of tanks
  • 15 - Dragon egg
  • 16 - DiscRespect
  • 17 - UFO driver
  • 18 - Shadow soul
  • 19 - Invasion a Marte
  • 20 - Fitzroy in the dark
  • 21 - Runninja
  • 22 - Jack's bubble island
  • 23 - PP space mercenary
  • 24 - Combat tendency
  • 25 - Project thing
  • 26 - Retro tennis super wave
  • 27 - Angry Kitten
  • 28 - Area51Raid
  • 29 - Mediaval brawl
  • 30 - Plant Attack
  • 31 - Cpcrogue
  • 32 - Ronin Revenge
  • 33 - Resignation Quest
  • 34 - DJD
  • 35 - CAPITAL QUIZ!




CPCEPower v1911, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Megachur (linux, windows)

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The last version of the CPCEpower Amstrad CPC emulator by Megachur is the v1911 (download link in the first message). The goal of this emulator is to emulates as best is possible the Amstrad CPC, like ACE. For linux users, you must use Wine.



8BP v038, a RSX library to create Amstrad CPC games in Basic

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Jose Javier Garcia Aranda has released a new version of 8BP v38 (8bits de poder : 8bits of power), a RSX library to write Amstrad CPC games in basic (26 Kb max). You can download 8bp on github.

One thing about this version is the game Happy Monty (11th at CPCRetroDev 2019), you should read this article about how the game is done (spanish).



Building the Aleste 520EX, a russian clone of the Amstrad CPC/MSX

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The Aleste 520EX is a russian clone of the Amstrad CPC and the MSX. It works not with AMSDOS but with the MSX DOS (see this russian site in english). There was already a thread about the Aleste 520EX on CPCWiki, but this time Sebastian Blanco is talking about the Aleste kit he just bought. Finally he isnt the only one in the Amstrad CPC community to have one. If you are interesting it's seems to possible to buy one kit by writing to tetroid at inbox ru like Sebastian did.

You can see a youtube video of an Aleste 520EX running the Phortem demo by Condense (and MSX games at the start of the video).

A modified version of Caprice32 permits to emulate at least in part the Aleste 520EX.






CrocoDS v2.1, an Amstrad CPC emulator for Nintendo DS and RG350 by Kyuran

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The last version of the Amstrad CPC emulator CrocoDS v2.1 for the Nintendo DS went out in 2013 and is available on github. It is based on the WinCPC emulator by Ludovic Deplanque.

And now Kyuran has ported CrocoDS (RG350) on the portable console using OpenDingux (debian) : the Retro Game 350, which you can find easily on Amazon.

But a Sony PSP or PS Vita will let you emulate the Amstrad CPC better on a graphic point of view :

  • Nintendo DS : 256 × 192
  • RG 350 : 320x240
  • Sony PSP : 480 × 272

You can see a vidéo by Oldschool is beautiful (french) which will show you how to use emulators on Sony PSP. To do the same thing on the PS Vita, you can check the site of Wololo.



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