lørdag 29. september 2012

Black Racer and the Magic World

A lot of changes have been made since the last blog i wrote. As seen here, i have now picked myself a brand new screenshot! Latest Chevrolet Camaro in pure BLACK, matching the black color of the latest version of Jack, and now with a picture transparent AmiDock in true MacOS X style! Looking truly beautiful, doesn't it?


The latest version of Jack is now fully working, especially now that the whole AmigaOS 4.1.5 is using English language only, and the same for Jack as well.
It now uses about 7 seconds of delay during startup, so now even the weather display is not messed up anymore! Jack works exactly as it should! I'm so happy!


Along with a new wallpaper and a MacOS X styled AmiDock, a brand new theme has also been picked. The theme is the SilverBlue instead of SilverGreen, totally matching the overall color of the GUI! All i had to do was to alter two settings in the config file for SilverBlue to use both the BeOS/Zeta style and round titlebar, saved the modified config, and just brought the address of the SilverBlue Bitmap into the Style section of GUI, where SilverGreen had its' place, without further changes, saved it and then VOILA! A beautiful, true SilverBlue theme as a modern GUI! Made a backup!


For the ScummVM emulator, i managed to find even more games on the net. All 6 King Quest games, Simon The Sorcerer 1 and 2 and Day Of The Tentacles. So you see, there are quite a large number of adventure games to run in ScummVM, keeping you excited!

The first King Quest game here is the SCI Remake DOS version which works perfectly on my setup. Graphic and audio are both beautiful and clear!

Second game of King Quest is the native Amiga version using native Amiga graphic and audio. Lovely nostalgic!


The third King Quest is also the native Amiga version like the second game, being even more exciting and nostalgic, giving you hours of excitement of gameplay!

The fourth King Quest is also the Amiga version, but i happen to lack the manual providing me access to the game. Despite that the game works.

The fifth King Quest is also the Amiga version, being nicely painted and animated. Sound and music are also quite good, using the native Amiga audio. The game is in true SCI style!


The sixth and the last King Quest game is the DOS VGA version in true 256 color, being nicer and better than the Amiga version. This is probably the nicest game of all King Quest games, which also completes the serie.

Playing so many of these fine games in ScummVM never have me bored, but excited for many hours, and many times! They also bring lovely nostalgy, reminding you about the good old days were the Amiga for the first time proved that computing should be fun! Now the Amiga is proving that again! Computing SHOULD be funny to use!


Other games i found along with the King Quest serie are Simon The Sorcerer 1 and 2 and Day Of The Tentacles. The first Simon The Sorcerer game is the AGA Amiga version! Yes, that's correct! The 256 color AGA version with lovely graphic and audio!

The second Simon The Sorcerer is the CD DOS VGA version with speech and text, making the game really enjoyable to play for hours!


Last but not least we have Day Of The Tentacles. This one is the CD DOS VGA version with lovely speech, text, graphic, audio and music! Lovely cartoon graphic and true fun to play!

My overall conclusion is that i am really happy with my system! It runs and works as a charm! It's beautiful and truly enjoyable! All the games i have in ScummVM will keep me excited for hours! This is expecially great when there are boring days!

Well, this completes the blog for now, so stay tuned for another blog in a forseable future! Thank you for reading, and you can leave a nice comment to this blog if you liked what you were reading, and if you enjoyed the pictures.

See you in another blog soon ;) Must the FORCE guide you into the right path ;)


Written by
Helge Kvalheim, Norway


lørdag 22. september 2012

You Lazy SCUMM!

Many of you may know about ScummVM - the greatest and still widely expanding, open-source adventure emulator. On my AmigaOS 4.1.5 system, i have the latest 1.5.0 version of it. The great thing about this emulator is that instead of relying on libraries, it instead relies on shared objects (known as SObjs), making it much easier to port stuffs to AmigaOS4! So what is it all about?

On the net, i found a lot of great adventure games to run in ScummVM! Games like Beneath The Steel Sky, as you see on this screenshot, Flight Of The Amazon Queen, Leisure Suit Larry 1-5 (first game is in Remake version), Space Quest 1-4 (also first game in Remake version), Police Quest 1-3 (first one in Remake version), Monkey Island 1-3, Broken Sword 1 and 2, Colonel's Bequest, Quest For Glory - Trial By Fire, Zak, Indiana Jones The Last Crusade and The Fate Of Atlantis. A great collection of amazing adventure games to play!

Broken Sword - The Shadow Of The Templars is a game i bought from AmigaKit back in 2005. This was also successfully installed into the latest ScummVM emulator, seen here to left.

The game is very thrilling and stunningly atmospheric, with a lot of puzzles and exciting dialogues between characters you meet in the game. A game i love! Both Broken Sword games are Windows version with great cartoon graphic, animation, speech, audio and music! Very cool!

The sequel Broken Sword - The Smoking Mirror is no exception, being even more thrilling and exciting to play. I found the game on the net and downloaded it. The file was 684MB BIG! Being so big makes the game very impressive and cool to play! A worthy sequel!

Other great games are of course Indiana Jones The Last Crusade and The Fate Of Atlantis. Last Crusade is the native Amiga version with true Amiga audio emulation, while Fate Of Atlantis is the CD-DOS VGA version with both speech and text! The Adlib audio emulation works really great in this game, and the graphic looks good!
Another great adventure that is cool to play for hours! You never get bored!
Indiana Jones The Fate Of Atlantis is even more exciting to play, as it has more puzzles. and the dialogues are enjoyable to listen to, with both speech and text! Graphic is looking really good in VGA! I use the Amiga render mode for all games and ScummVM, making them more beautiful! Many excellent options!

The game is a great mixture of adventure and action, as always known in these Indiana Jones movies! Games to keep in your collection!

A similar adventure game would be Flight Of The Amazon Queen, which i also found on the net. The version is FM-Towns with speech and text, with great VGA graphic. Very cool to play! One of the best adventure games that were made for both Amiga and DOS back in 1995! The Talkie version makes this game more enjoyable to play! Another fine game to have in the collection to run in ScummVM!

Now we have come to the Leisure Suit Larry collection. I have 4 of these games of the oversexed, horny bold swinger at the age of 40, trying hard to look for love in several wrong places! He is lucky if he ever gets a LAID!

The first Larry game is the Remake version using a more modern VGA graphic with Point-and-Click feature. I tried a couple of times to convince the game that i am actually 37 (19-39) by answering what is supposed to be easy questions. Answering them wrong will have the game to claim that you are a KID! I popped up and said: "Hey, i am NOT a KID! I'm an ADULT, for GOD sake!" laughing of the game! After a couple of times, i finally managed to answer all questions correctly, and could now play!

The Remake version is not the Amiga version but the DOS VGA version, but the fun is still the same! Truly funny and cool to play with greath graphic and audio! Adlib audio emulation is also used greatly in this game.

Larry 2 - Looking For Love In Several Wrong Places is the native Amiga version also found on the net, and it runs nicely with native Amiga graphic and audio in the ScummVM emulator!

Next up is Larry 3, where he meets Patti. The version is the DOS VGA version also found on the net, with good audio, graphic and music. I like the tropical environment that is used for almost the whole game. This is another fine sequel worth playing!

Last one is Larry 5, which is also the DOS VGA version found on the net, having the same look of the first Remake game. Great graphic, audio and music! Another fine collection!

Do any of you remember Laura Bow - Colonel's Bequest? A creepy murder-puzzle adventure best played on the Amiga? Found the Amiga version of the game on the net, and runs perfectly in the ScummVM emulator!

There is also a sequel to that game, but haven't downloaded it. The sequel to Laura Bow didn' look so exciting, so i left it out and kept browsing for other adventure games to put in ScummVM. Many great games to pick up to play!

Another fine collection would be the Police Quest series. For the first time, i picked up the great DOS VGA Remake version of the first Police Quest game. It was cooler to play than the old text-based version! The Remake version has excellent VGA graphic, audio and music through Adlib!

The second Police Quest is the true Amiga version with native Amiga graphic, audio and music! Probably the best of all three Police Quest games!

The third Police Quest game is the DOS VGA version that appears to be better than the Amiga version. It has nicer graphic, audio and music. Music is played through Adlib emulation and appears slightly different to the Amiga music for this game, but the game is great to play! Lots of thrilling action!

Another great collection is the Space Quest series, starting with the DOS VGA Remake version of the game that is way better than the old text version!
The second game is the native Amiga version based on text and old graphic. It's a great game to play, and a worthy important sequel to Space Quest.

The third game is also the native Amiga version, with Amiga graphic, audio and music. It's probably the best of all the Space Quest games in the serie! The Amiga version is best here!

The fourth game is the DOS VGA version. Graphic is a lot better than the Amiga version. The same with audio and music. An addition is the speech along with text, making it more enjoyable to play! Another excellent game to have running in ScummVM!

There are of course number 5 and 6 of this game, but didn't bother with them as they didn't seem enjoyable. 

Other games to mention are all the three Monkey Island games. The first and the second are pure Amiga native versions with excellent classic graphic, audio and music! Lovely nostalgic to play, with a lot of atmosphere!

The third game - The Curse Of Monkey Island, was bought from AmigaKit back in 2005, along with Broken Sword - Shadow Of The Templars. Monkey Island 3 is the Windows version using true colour cartoon graphic and animation, with great audio, speech and music! This game is truly lovely to play, and is an excellent sequel to the 2 first games!

Many of the dialogues in Monkey Island 3 are really funny to listen to, especially when Guybrush is talking to the bold skull in the sea, trying to scare Guybrush, but instead getting really teased by Guybrush! You could ask him things like: "Was your mother's father bold, too?". How cool is that? Such lines sure had me laughing, and such is a great bonus to the gameplay!

Yet another great game is Quest For Glory - Trial By Fire. The version is the pure Amiga version. Graphic, audio and music are all great in this game. So if you are into magic, fighting and thivering, then this adventure is for you to play! Very exciting, really!

Last adventure game in my collection is Zak Mckracken and the Alien Mindbenders. The pure Amiga version from 1988 installed into ScummVM! Graphic, text, audio and music are great in this adventure! Lovely nostalgic to play, bringing you back into the good, old eighties!

This was another great blog complete for this time. As i love playing great adventure games, i hope you will love to read this blog, and enjoy the pictures, if you are into adventures yourself.

See you all in a new blog in a forseable future. Stay tuned ;)

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway



 

onsdag 19. september 2012

Work and Pleasure

Hello everyone! Today when i got home from work, i downloaded and installed the latest 0.53 version of the RadeonHD driver for AmigaOS 4.1.5!

The updated driver was successfully installed and appeared to work perfectly! Version 0.53 is ready for 3D support and makes use of the VRAM. A great improvement and boost in speed. It also helps that i have a Radeon HD 6570 card installed into my AmigaOne 500, which was a smart buy!

After installing the updated driver, i made a new backup to ensure everything is safe, which is it.

The third beta (a release-candidate) of TimberWolf (AmigaOS version of Mozilla FireFox) works really great under AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5 on my AmigaOne 500. Noticeable slower than OWB, but with full HTML5 support and with a lot of interesting features. TimberWolf is more than just a simple browser, but for the Amiga it's currently the most advanced browser available, hence the slow speed. This will change when AmigaOS 4.2 is released, which will have full 3D acceleration, among many things. For me, TimberWolf is quite useful for creating this blog! An add-on like FastestFox helps give TimberWolf a little speed boost.

AmiSystemRestore was recently updated to a fourth beta release, and this time it was fully working without showing stupid messages during startup.

AmiSystemRestore creates restore points just like seen in Windows, and is useful when some critical problems occur in the SYS partition after changes or updates. Instead of trying to format the SYS partition and bring back a backup of it from another partition, you can just use AmiSystemRestore to restore back to the last safe point before the problem! Very useful! This was installed into SYS:Utilities, keeping it in AmiDock's Utilities drawer when i want to run it, as well as in WBStartup preference to always run during startup. I'm sure such a restore system will be standard in future AmigaOS versions. Made a new backup so not everything is lost.

If you see the first screenshot here, you will notice that Jack is now fully working on my system. The issue with frozen buttons was solved by only choosing English language not just for Jack, but for Prefs:Locate, as AmigaOS doesn't yet have full catalogs for other languages than english, so now Jack is fully working, and i am very happy for that. Jack is really a great multi-tool application to show time, date, month, week, day, weather, you can edit your pictures in Jack and a lot more. Very useful and promising!

Sysmon is another useful tool i have installed into SYS:Utilities, and this was recently updated to a new version. Visually it appears much the same, but features an auto-refresh. It displays system information, it helps you to close the crashed program without having to reset your machine and stop the files that have stopped working, too! Very useful in case something happens.

YAM Mailer works as a charm, as for every 10 minutes, it lets the AmigaOS's new Notification system reply me a message of new mails when they appear, and i only need to click the message to display the new mails!
Love it when things work correctly!

As the title of the blog says, it hasn't just been work to do on my system, but also some pleasures in form of gaming. Seen on the screenshot below, i had just completed the excellent SDL platformer - BlobWars - Metal Blob Solid! An awesome game!

 Apart from work and gaming, i have also had time to create some lovely instrumental music with the old, famous music tracker - OctaMED SoundStudio V1.03c. With TheMaestrix AHI tool, GUIGfx.library, Render.library and Reqtools.library among the things, this tracker does almost not crash at all. Works almost perfectly! The SM502 onboard audio of AmigaOne 500 (SAM460ex) is amazing, clear and beautiful! Really great audio, even if it relies heavily on the CPU for power.

On this screenshot, i was composing an 8-channel Mix song called "Endless Glow Of Light". A soft rock with beautiful bass guitar, piano and string. The song is not yet completed, but already created 2 blocks of the song. Other songs are "Going Back", which is to be an 80ish styled dance beat, while the song "Mindful Head" is a more modern, ambient R&B tune with some fancy rhythms. These should be uploaded to Aminet and my blog sometime in October when completed.

Well, this completes yet another blog, so happy reading and enjoy the shots!

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

onsdag 5. september 2012

Blogging with TimberWolf




Been a while now since the last blog i wrote. Added more to my AmigaOS 4.1.5 system on my AmigaOne 500!



Added programs like AmiDVD for burning either CD or DVDs, and Dopus 4 has been replacing Filer as a program for taking care of copying, deleting and finding files, even copying and deleting hidden files easily! 2 very useful programs!






Haven't done much more else than testing Jack and SabreMSN. Jack was impossible to get fully working, as its' buttons freezed to death, but this was solved with a new version of Jack, which seems to be working better now. As for SabreMSN. Despite the program being fully working, and with both my username and password typed in correctly, and even switched Hotmail to use HTTP instead of HTTPS, SabreMSN could still NOT log me in. Tried over and over again without managing to find the source to the problem, so i removed it, until a new version will appear, hopefully solving it.



6 years away from the Amiga scene and now back, is a long time, and it's easy to have forgotten a couple of things. The good news on this is that i discovered TimberWolf had been released in a new, third BETA release, so i downloaded and installed that into Work:Internett and tested it! FINALLY! Now i could surf the net with TimberWolf, even writing this blog with pictures! Even that TimberWolf is slow compared to OWB, it appears to be fully functional with a lot of impressive features with a lot of potensial for the future. Since TimberWolf now was working, i placed it in my Internett section in AmiDock.






Now i have also registered myself to use Hyperion Entertainment Support Forum for help and advice, which is nice when there are problems.


I have also got PlayCD working, by enabling the use of AHI and UNIT 0 (the Music Unit) of my SM502 onboard audio, along with the CDDB.library, so now name of the CD and the track you're playing, show up, and you can listen to your favourite CD! Very beautiful!




Well, this appears to be all for now, so enjoy reading the blog and watching the pictures!


Written by:

Helge Kvalheim, Norway






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