A new version of Mod Master XT beta 27 by FreddyV is available on Vogons. It lets you hear a lot of music modules formats on any PC under msdos even a PC XT (CGA), for example an Amstrad PC 1512/1640 or a PPC 512/640...

There was already in the Sierra adventure games a mode to support the special 16 color mode of the Amstrad PC 1512. This driver has been updated by ripsaw8080 :

• scrolling issue resolved so no more screen corruption: instead there are screen transitions that are better suited anyways for the slow PC1512 (additional changes were needed in the driver's dispatch routine to preserve the value of the DI register)
• color issue that resulted in unreadable areas is now resolved so newer EGA games are now readable (issue was the driver inexplicably reporting support for 65535 colors instead of 16), this made some later EGA titles playable: KQ5, SQ4, PQ3, SQ1 remake, LSL1 remake

PunyInform v2.7 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.

New articles are available on 64 NOPS, a blog about programmation on Amstrad CPC by Hicks (Vanity) and Toms (Pulpo Corrosivo).

Rainer has released CPCemu v2.3.2. It's available for MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux (x86_64 and ARM, in particular on Raspberry Pi) and Windows.

New version features :

• Almost complete emulation of the M4 Board using a host directory as drive C: (i. e. SD card; even for SymbOS), including network/internet connections, dynamic ROM simulation and (replaceable) Hack ROM (lower ROM). The only thing missing is the web interface
• CRTC emulation of type 0 (register 8 ) and type 1 (register 6) even better than before
• HYSNC and VSYNC emulation still a bit improved
• Online help updated
• Mouse pointer visible on movements
• Correction of many small and big errors (in particular, 576 KB RAM work correctly now for the first time after decades) and improved error reporting.

Dr.Roland is an Amstrad CPC reflexion game by John Lobo, which couldnt be participate to the CPCRetroDev 2020.

The patient is suffering a terrible virus infection, and your role as Dr.Roland is to get rid of those ugly and funky viruses, throwing them colored vitamin capsules. If four elements of the same color get together, all of them will disappear, and you will be one step closer to cure the infection. Dr.Roland is a tetrislike game that you can enjoy alone with your Amstrad CPC, or in a fun battle with a friend side to side.

John Lobo is also the author of another game released in 2016 : Amsthree a free adaptation of the mobile platforms game : Threes. The main goal of the game is to slide cards in a grid to combine them to create the highest multiple of three.

Basito is an old project of Julián Albo (download) which allows to run the Amstrad CPC Locomotive basic on a ZX Spectrum +3. There are of course some limitations as only be able to use integers in numeric variables.

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.

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.

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).