Winter AmigaOS4 Thoughts ;)

Assassin Creed 3 Winter and Blue Jack style!

This time i am just writing a quiet relaxing blog. The changes i have made this time are a blue Jack with an amazing Assassin Creed 3 Winter background, which i feel is a perfect combination now that there is winter in my city in Norway, and due to the fact that i am a great fan of the Assassin Creed games popular on the XBox 360! I'm soon buying Assassin Creed 3 for my XBox 360!

The little bad news is that i was forced to remove the game Nightlong from my system. Although it was excellent game to play, there was no possibility to complete the game without CD2 and CD3. It wasn't even possible to load ISO 2 and ISO 3 of Nightlong, despite been mounted with DiskImageGUI. It appeared clear that the game would run to completion if one had the original CDs from the original game. Sad, but true, so i had to delete the game.

Blue Jack showing winter in my city!

But it's not all bad news. Recently, there have been some interesting reports from the previous AmiWest show, especially 2 announcements from A-EON Technology. These are:

1. Libre Office is to be ported to AmigaOS4, finally giving AmigaOS4 a serious, open source office bundle! Soon Amigans can take their office work at home and continue where they stopped at work!

2. Hans De Ruiter will help A-EON Technology to bring Warp3D to the RadeonHD cards, supporting serie 5, 6 and 7, as a stop-gap solution until AmigaOS 4.2 with Gallium3D and Mesa is completed!

Hans De Ruiter is also considering the possibility to intergrate Warp3D compatibility/support into Gallium3D and Mesa, making it possible to run old Warp3D based games and applications with AmigaOS 4.2 using the new graphic system! I think that this is going to be pretty cool!

Warp3D for RadeonHD is said to be ready before the end of 2012 to registered customers of the RadeonHD driver! Watch this space!

When we are speaking of the game Nightlong, it would be nice if somebody were making an AmigaOS4 version of the game, with 32 bit graphic (perhaps OpenGL) and an AmigaOS4 Installer to install the game easily on any AmigaOS4 system. This is too good a game to miss, so i really hope some will consider it.

Another game i look forward to see, but for AmigaOS 4.2, is of course the game Wolfenstein - Return To Castle. The game is already available for both AROS and MorphOS, and it's quite lucky for me to have the whole PC version of the game! With this game ported to AmigaOS 4.2, then it will be awesome to play it again!

We are moving closer to Christmas. Amazing how fast the time is running. Already winter in my city in Norway. A city that is mostly known for rain, but looking out the window, i see the sun shining and some white snow! Yes, it IS winter in my city. There is no real, magic Christmas withouth the white snow.

This completes another blog for now. Time to do some serious work soon, like the music i am so into as a hobby of mine, as well as photographing the nature.

See you in another blog soon. Will try to make some videos, too. Stay tuned.

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

E-UAE SDL with Picasso96 driver!

E-UAE SDL with UAEGfx Picasso96 driver!

Hi again, fellow Amigans! This time i am writing about running the classic Amiga emulator E-UAE SDL version in Window mode and how to get the best possible performance and look.

Instead of using the RunInUAE which uses the whole screen to run classic Amiga applications and games, i found the SDL version of E-UAE that opens the emulator in Window mode from OS4Depot.net, along with the UAEConfig GUI that allows me to setup E-UAE the best possible way.

A Kickstart ROM from a classic Amiga hardware, or found from Cloanto's Amiga Forever CD was needed, along with some useful datas found in the Emulation drawer in SYS, which came in handy.

E-UAE configuration window seen above

Using the UAEConfig GUI to mount 4 partitions in E-UAE's Workbench 3.1 was quite easy. The config creates a "map" for all 4 partitions, which appears to be System, Work, Diverse and Spill, without disturbing the settings done for the OS4 partitions, by having the config to use these "maps". Very useful to keep it tidy and clean, but that's not the only thing i did with the configuration of E-UAE SDL.

A friend of mine told me that in order to get more speed and better graphic handling in Workbench 3.1 under E-UAE, Picasso96 driver for UAE called UAEGfx had to be installed. I firstly picked up the Lha C command from Aminet (the 68k version anyway) and Picasso96 68k version from the same site. I copied the packed archives into where the E-UAE was stored. The Lha was successfully copied into Workbench 3.1's C drawer. From Workbench 3.1's Shell, i managed to unpack the Picasso96.lha file into the same place the drawer was. Copied it further into the same place as Workbench 3.1, as the Picasso96Install drawer was now visible among the drawers in System. I clicked the Setup icon in Picasso96Install and followed the guide from the net about installing Picasso96 under Workbench 3.1 in E-UAE! When finished successfully, i rebooted the whole Amiga system and restarted E-UAE, and checked Screenmode in E-UAE! Voila! I could now use 16.7 million color in 32 bit mode in 640 x 480 using the UAEGfx driver, and it was filling up the whole E-UAE window nicely seen in first shot!

Shadow Of The Beast in E-UAE SDL!

While Workbench 3.1 was looking a lot fresher and a bit faster, it still had a way too "classic" look of it. One option is to get AmigaOS 3.9 and the AmigaSYS to really get a more modern look. It will therefore take some time to make classic Amiga emulation a close to a modern look and feel of an AmigaOS4 native system. Everything needs patience.

Performance of the E-UAE SDL on AmigaOne 500 with AmigaOS 4.1.5 might vary from very good and average to okay, depending on some games. Picasso96 helps a lot, but there might be some other useful tools and tweaks to install in the classic Amiga setup. Classic Amiga is not really my thing anymore. It's not quite the same native feeling as to running a classic Amiga hardware with classic AmigaOS. Keep in mind that E-UAE acts as a VIRTUAL classic Amiga.

There is one important thing missing in E-UAE, and that is the JIT-implementation. JIT stands for Just-In-Time and is the thing that will make Classic Amiga emulation really run as a true, native classic Amiga in any way! When that is in place, running E-UAE will finally be just as when you were running AmigaOS on your classic Amiga hardware the native way, as it was meant to be! But for now we have to make the best possible out of E-UAE.

Now it was time to test some classic Amiga games, so how did they perform?

Shadow Of The Beast was the first game to test, being 2 ADF disk files to let  UAEConfig run them. E-UAE SDL located these 2 ADF files and was loading the game. Took only a couple of seconds! Graphic, audio and music appeared just as they do on classic Amiga hardware! That was impressive, as UAEConfig was set to emulate a 68060 AGA Amiga with 2MB Chip and 16MB Fast, using Kickstart 3.1 ROM. Most impressive! The screenshot of Beast above speaks for itself.

Without a USB joystick, it was not possible for me to get into the game, so could not tell if the game ran smooth or not. Need to get myself a USB joystick. What is important here is that the game is fully compatible with the setup i used.

Fighting the way to top in IK+ in E-UAE SDL

Another fine game that had to be tested, was IK+ which is also known as International Karate +! This game ran smoothly with really nice graphic, audio and music just as supposed to, but of course without a joystick, i was not able to play it. Still the game would surely be great to play!

Yet another game was the Amiga version of Space Quest 2. Since the game was old and had simple graphic and audio, the game ran quite smoothly under E-UAE SDL. Another
cool, old game to play in E-UAE!

Vohaul's definitely back in SQ2 in E-UAE SDL!

Last but not least i managed to find the game Adventures Of Willy Beamish from Emuparadise. The game appeared as a couple of ADF files to run under UAEConfig.

Music played as supposed to and the graphic was really nice to look at. Took some time to load the game with the disk files. If the game was HD-only, it would be faster. The game was cool, with cool music and lovely cartoon graphic quality! Definitely worth testing out!

Willy Beamish bored at school in E-UAE SDL!

Well, this completes another fine blog for now! As for me using E-UAE. I'm not sure if i am keeping this emulator as the state of it is now.

Perhaps it IS useful to have, perhaps not. If i had AmigaOS 3.9 and AmigaSYS, it would probably be easier for me to say yes to keeping this emulator on my system.

I can only hope that future versions of E-UAE using JIT, will have MUI, AHI and such pre-installed into an AmigaOS 3.9 setup within such an Amiga emulator. I prefer to run such emulators in Window mode as an option, as in case with E-UAE SDL. Future versions should have an intergrated Application/Game Launcher for UAE where you can configure them to run fullscreen, as well as some other important and useful configurations without disturbing the main AmigaOS 3.9 in E-UAE running in Window mode. I'm sure the possibilities are many, so only time will show.

That's all for now! Enjoy the read and the pictures, and drop in a nice comment if you want to ;) See ya soon in another blog.

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

 

From MODs to MP3 ;)

Recording MODs to Disk 16 in SoundStudio

Greetings, my dear Amigans! In this part of the blog we open up our ears and start digging deep into music.

I spend a lot of time creating stunning instrumental music with the famous old tracker - OctaMED SoundStudio v1.03c, which works quite well under AmigaOS 4.1.5, even with some GR messages now and then, but they are easily ignorable.

I felt the urgent of converting my mods to MP3, so i realized i had to open up my mods, then choose the Disk 16 Mode with Smoothing and press Play, then it will record the songs to disk as AIFF files. AIFF worked as a better file solution than MAUD (WAV). I chose the HKMods drawer i put into the SoundStudio section.

Converting AIFFs to MP3s with CodeAudio Lite

Converting the songs was easier than thought in the first place.

As the songs were recorded to disk in 16 bit AIFF, all that was needed to do was to let CodeAudio Lite use LAME to convert the AIFF files to MP3. 

Convert was a great success, as the songs were saved happily as MP3 in HKMods along with my other songs! Now the time was to test them out!

Playing my MP3s in AmigaAMP!

I restarted my machine by soft-reboot directly to AmigaOS, then brought up AmigaAMP by clicking the program from my Music drawer on AmiDock. I picked up all of my 4 converted MP3 songs in the playlist seen on the picture to the right here.

I have yet to try finding a net site to upload the songs. I was hoping for Aminet, but it currently doesn't provide direct upload yet. If any of you are interested in my songs, contact me on a private message or email me at hkvalhe@broadpark.no, and i'll see what i can do. Enjoy the blog for now!

Soon i hope to be able to run some amazing 3D games, as Warp3D driver has been announced for the RadeonHD cards as a stop-gap solution until AmigaOS 4.2 has been released with OpenGL 3D system in form of Gallium 3D and Mesa.

When the Warp3D driver is ready before the end of 2012, it should be possible for me to show off many 3D games, both as pictures and videos in a blog!

Another excellent blog finished for now ;) Hope you like it ;)

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

Playtime with DOSBox and Nightlong ;)

Playing Prince Of Persia in DOSBox

Greetings again, fellow Amigans! In this blog i am going to tell you how i managed to get games running in the DOSBox emulator in AmigaOS 4.1.5 on my AmigaOne 500 computer system, and how i got the excellent graphic adventure Nightlong running as well.

After reading a blog about running games with DOSBox from an X1000 owner on the net, i realized the process was easier than first thought.

DOSBox was installed to Diverse:Emulators, which was JFXS-formatted. In the DOSBox section there was a C drawer as well. As explained carefully from the DOSBox blog from one X1000 owner, which you can find in my AmigaOS group on Facebook if you happen to be a member, you can create sub-drawers in the C drawer. I created a sub-drawer called Games (making it hidden). You can add several sub-drawers with the name of DOS games you install there as well, making it easier to locate different games you have installed for DOSBox.

How to get the games running, you might ask. Well, in DOSBox Config file opened with NotePad, i changed the line where it mentioned the mounting part to something like this: Mount C Diverse:Emulators/DOSBox/C/Games. This is also the command that has to be typed when you start up DOSBox. From there you should easily allocate the games you have installed in their own sub-drawers in the C/Games section of DOSBox. It's easier than what is usually thought.

First game i installed for testing, was the fast action platformer Prince Of Persia, as seen in the above screenshot. The first time i played it, was on an Amiga 1200 back in the early 90-ies, as i recall. Prince of Persia happened to be one of many games that ran smoothly without distortion in DOSBox. Graphic was looking good, animation was very smooth and the SoundBlaster audio emulation was really good, without a cracking, annoying sound. Just like playing it on PC.

The game was truly very enjoyable to play. You can find a lot of DOSBox games here on these links below:

http://www.emuparadise.me/Abandonware_Games/51 or just Google for DOSBox games and a lot of suggestions will pop up. You can find games very easily!

Playing Pinball Fantasies in DOSBox

Another fine DOS game i found was Pinball Fantasies to run in DOSBox. The game was truly cool to play, even that it was a bit slower than the native Amiga version. The DOSBox version had a "crackling" sound, too.

This left me to think that DOSBox hasn't yet reached a level where every game and application would flow flawlessy in this emulator. Also, there are at least 3 limitations to bear in mind. I will try to explain. 

1. The onboard SM502 of SAM460ex uses about 94% CPU power and doesn't support MIDI.
2. Missing full 3D hardware acceleration (will come with AmigaOS 4.2)
3. The way DOSBox has been made. Probably needs better speed etc)

I actually tried to run a 3D-shooter in DOSBox called Blood. The game was successfully installed, but too slow to be playable. Especially the audio was playing too slow as well, leaving a cracking sound. Again i will advice anyone to leave out 3D games and applicatons until AmigaOS 4.2 with full 3D hardware acceleration is ready. Normal 2D games and adventures run nicely in DOSBox.

Playing Police Quest 4 Open Season in DOSBox

Another game i tried out for DOSBox was Police Quest 4 - Open Season. The game looked amazingly cool, but nearly unplayable in the current state of AmigaOS 4.1.5. Like already mentioned. We urgely need a full 3D hardware accelerated system and some speed improvement to DOSBox. Then such games will run flawlessy within the emulator.

However, there are plans to implement the IGame launcher into DOSBox, according to one of my many Amiga friends whom have asked the author of DOSBox to kindly intergrate this launcher into DOSBox. There is always room for improvements, so this appeared as a good, interesting news.

Now we are moving onto another threat of the blog. The game Nightlong. What is Nightlong? Well, Nightlong is in fact one of the best and biggest games made for Amiga, on 3 (!) CDs (ISO files to you), dated back to 2000 by ClickBOOM! Nightlong is a modern graphic adventure game with 16 bit graphic and audio!

Nightlong - The game cover

As for many, i was thinking that Nightlong would be next to nearly impossible to get running on an AmigaOS 4.1.5 system. One of my Amiga friends managed to get the game running first on his own AmigaOS 4.1.5 system, and he explained to me in my AmigaOS group in Facebook carefully how it was done, as i will try to explain here, too.

Firstly, you will need the tool DiskImageGUI installed into your SYS partition by its' Installer. It was when mounting the game's ISO file i realized how useful and important DiskImageGUI is to have in your system. You will find this tool here: http://os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=driver/storage/diskimage_device.lha

Mounting devices with files like ISO is not really difficult. You just click the next-last blue button (the blue one with a white line in the middle) to the right, after marking the line saying ICD0 (that would happen to be your first CD/DVD-drive on your Amiga). From there you choose the ISO plugin and double-click on that, then you find the ISO file to mount. Nightlong was found in www.emuparadise.org, by typing in the word Nightlong in the Search part, then it will show you the 3 ISO files that have to be downloaded.

Hi, my name's Joshua - main actor in Nightlong

Adding the 3 big ISO files, all being around 450MB each, they will all appear in over 1GB space! Really big, but excellent game!

It will take some time to download all these ISO files, so be patient and have a nice break while the files are downloading.

It's adviceable to download them to say...the Diverse partition, as i did, because you might want to look for these files again easily if something should go wrong. You will discover a little later that you actually only need the FIRST ISO for the game. That is for DISC 1, where the main Installer for the game is. You still need to download all 3 ISO files before installing the game where you want to, as you will need the data files that are part of DISC 2 and 3 as well. When you have unpacked the game to a game partition, do the following things (the screenshot below will help guide you):

Mount Nightlong ISO with DiskImageGUI

 1. Install Nightlong to your decided destination with the 3 ISO files. 

2. Open DiskImageGUI (if you have it installed. If not, pick it up from OS4Depot.net here by searching for DiskImage

3. Click ICD0 to activate it so it appears marked, then click the next-fatherest blue button with a white line in the middle to the right. From there you choose ISO as the plugin, then choose Options to allow the ISO to be a CD-ROM, click Save.

4. You should now see that ICDO appears as a CD-ROM icon (yellow round disc icon). Now, find the ISO file for DISC 1 of Nightlong (you can now delete ISO for DISC 2 and 3, as the whole game has been installed now). DiskImageGUI has now mounted the ISO file for Nightlong to be run, but don't run the game yet. 2 more things to do.

5. As the game was made back in 2000 and firstly for 68K Amigas with RTG, you will need the Nightlong 1.2 PPC patch to be installed into the Nightlong drawer. You will find out that it's the file Nightlong 1.2 (the main file) you later will have to click to get it running, but not yet.

6. You will also need to install RTGMaster found on Aminet here:
    http://aminet.net/package/driver/video/rtgmaster_user
   You can also install this:  http://aminet.net/package/driver/video/RTGoesWarpOS if you want to. Helps speed up C2P operations. Just follow the instructions carefully. Say YES (Always) when installing the main RTGMaster.

7. More important, you will still have to get the RTGMaster_OS4fix, which you find here: http://os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=driver/graphics/rtgmaster-os4fix.lha You will discover that the RTGMaster.library is OLDER here than in the other main RTGMaster you installed. Simply ignore that it's older and install it anyway, overwriting the existing library, as the OS4fix of RTGMaster.library is the one you will need. Flame, rtgAMI.library and rtgP96.library should be overwritten as well (if not previously installed) and moved to Libs:rtg. There, now you are ready!

8. If you did everything right now step by step from point 1 to this, then all you need to do now is to restart your system, then just run DiskImageGUI again clicking the ICD0, then insert the ISO file for Nightlong, go into where you installed Nightlong, and double-click Nightlong 1.2 (the main Nightlong 1.2). You will notice a Guru Meditation Yellow Warning, but ignore that by doing nothing and wait around 10 seconds. Suddenly you should see a screen showing up, showing you the 16-bit screenmode the game uses (don't worry, it won't affect your Workbench settings as the game runs standalone), then just click SAVE, and the game should now run! Mission accomplished! The game should then look something like this seen on the shots below!

Joshua investigating the appartment

The game is really cool and exciting to play for hours! It would be nice if the game got a facelift or two.

The graphic could need to be upgraded to 32-bit, using OpenGL, and the HD installer should be upgraded to support AmigaOS 4.1 and AmigaOS 4.2 through a simple installation to harddrive.

What is important now is that the game runs, even after all these configurations. I've had plenty of fun with Nightlong! It's just the beginning! Just take a look at many of the screenshots! The game is so cool!

Joshua finds something mystical here

Well, that should be all for now. Hopefully my next blog will have some videos and music, as i am trying to create more songs with OctaMED SoundStudio v1.03c!

Feel free to read my blog and leave nice comments if you find the blog interesting. You can even ask for something you need help with, regarding the blog, and i will provide with answers the best i can.

Thank you for reading ;)

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

Joshua searchs dark areas in Nightlong

Milky Coding ;)

Tidy system icons

Greetings, my fellow Amigans! Another fine blog to read that have recently been written by me, Helge Kvalheim from Bergen in Norway.

Seen on the picture to the left, i have cleaned up my system icons in such a way that the RAM Disk icon has been moved to the top, with AmigaOS SYS partition, Work, Diverse and Spill following closely. I like it that way, because it seems much more tidy, and modernly familiar.

Cleaning system icons are not the only thing i have done. I realized i needed another music program to help me convert my MODs to a readable file format to be easily converted to MP3. That music program appeared to be the powerful, open source MilkyTracker! This one runs in PowerPC mode and uses the AHI audio system! It supports Fasttracker and Screamtracker (S3M) modules, and can save them to both AIFF and WAV, which again can be converted to MP3 through CodeAudio (Lame).

Coding MP3s with CodeAudio

As told in the previous blog, i have composed a great number of MODs i want converted to MP3. I might as well convert them firstly to both AIFF and WAV with MilkyTracker, and then use CodeAudio (Lame) to convert them to MP3. Then the last thing would be to figure out where to upload the songs.

Combining MilkyTracker and OctaMED SoundStudio with each other is a really smart choice, and makes it easier to convert to certain formats when you want to distribute your music to the public. Very useful, really!

MilkyTracker - a modern multi-tracker

This was a short blog, like the previous one, but keep your eyes on my blog regularly to learn new stories from me. In a forseable future, i might even look at the possibility to add my Amigaish YouTube videos, too ;) One step at a time. These will come!

Thank you for reading, and if you liked what you read, then please add a NICE comment to this blog. See you again soon ;)


Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

DiskImageGUI and Music

Mount devices with DiskImageGUI

Been a while since my last blog. Now i have found a very useful tool called DiskImageGUI. This tool allows the user to mount several more sources than what was possible standard in AmigaOS4! With DiskImageGUI you can mount ADF, ISO, FDI and even XBox ISO files! Very handy and much-needed!

Other than than i have done a lot of music work with OctaMED SoundStudio v1.03c! Using TheMaestrix AHI tool along with the onboard SM502 audio chip in AmigaOne 500 is a marvellous combination, and sounds truly beautiful! 

Compose music with OctaMED SoundStudio

For now i have composed a couple of songs with OctaMED SoundStudio, from some easy up-tempo 4 channel songs to some stunningly beautiful ballads and body-shaking 6 and 8 channel songs! Pretty cool, really!

I have yet to get them converted to MP3, but i don't have the tools to convert OctaMED SoundStudio mods straight to MP3. One way around might be to save the songs as a WAV
file by saving the song straight to Disk, or to ask somebody to help convert them to MP3. For now they will be uploaded as MMD3 mods done in OctaMED SoundStudio, as the Mix mode was used to create the songs.

One song that is actually finished, is the song "Mindful Head". This song is a 6 channel R&B tune with fancy rhythms. You can read about the song in the annotation for that song. In addition i have some songs i managed to recover that were composed back in 2006, just before my old AmigaOne G4-XE running Pre4 AmigaOS 4.0 was broken. These songs are "Broken Soul" (a 7 channel song), "Desert" (6 channel guitar country) and "FunkyLA" (early funk demo).

3 other are the latest songs. They are "Endless Glow Of Light", a beautiful 6 channel piano ballad with strings! Secondly is "October Dawn", my favourite! It's a 6 channel lovely guitar ballad! Notice the excellent use of command 19 for the 4 guitars playing simultaneously, creating a studio-like echo in the room! This song is an almost finished version. Calling it a demo in it's previous state is rare, but i am thinking of creating more blocks for the song where the rhythm changes, becoming more touching. Watch this space! Going to be amazing!

The other song is "Survival", a groovy 8 channel soft-rock. The bass and the bass guitar together create a beautiful groove! The rhythm might be simple and remain much the same, but seems to add the right feeling to the song. It's amazing what can be done once you can use multiple channels more than the 4 channels from the past, and through AHI! TheMaestrix is very handy in such a way that it FOOLS the music program to think that the Maestrix is an AHI audio card, and that way the onboard SM502 audio of SAM460ex can be used easily!

Well, this completes the blog for now, as more music work has to be done.

If you are curious about my music and want to listen to them, even able to help me convert them to MP3, send me a private email to: hkvalhe@broadpark.no

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

AmiCygnix on AmigaOne 500

My AmigaOS 4.1.5 Black Camaro Desktop

In this blog i want to show you AmiCygnix - the X environment used in Linux running on AmigaOS 4.1.5 on my AmigaOne 500 system! Installing AmiCygnix went like a charm, along with many applications that are made for AmiCygnix and not the native AmigaOS4. Many of these applications have also been configured to run standalone without relying on AmiCygnix. I will explain this later on.

AmiCygnix running the X environment

Running the main AmiCygnix will take you to an X desktop environment seen on the picture to the left. Looks familiar, doesn't it? Yes, from Linux.

I'm not a big fan of this environment, but it's quite handy if you need to work on applications that are not yet available to AmigaOS4 platform. Luckily, most applications can now run standalone, so what does it actually mean? Allow me to explain carefully.

Duplicating and editing standalone scripts

In my AmigaOS group on Facebook, some members were extremely kind to provide a direct link to a blog an AmigaOne X1000 owner wrote about running AmiCygnix applications standalone. That guide was very helpful. As seen on the picture to the right, that program had to be installed into AmiCygnix, as this is where the whole idea to duplicating and editing standalone scripts happen. It's easier than what one might think. The guide explained very well how this was done step by step.

The first program to show off is AbiWord - an open source wordprocessing very similar to Open Office's Writer. It supports a wide range of formats, including the Open Office document format (odt)! This is extremely useful if you have done a lot of serious stuffs at your work, and want to continue at home without having to start from scratch, no matter what computer system you originally used, as long as the common program was Open Office or a wordprocessing program that save documents in Open Office and Microsoft Word formats, which AbiWord actually does. In the future, AbiWord could be ported straight to AmigaOS4.

Wordprocessing in AbiWord is cool!

That's why i love to run such an application standalone. Using AbiWord is very handy for me as i can keep working on important stuffs both at home and at work. This is probably the closest thing you come to having Open Office on AmigaOS4!

It's amazing what you can do on the Amiga nowadays! No kidding, really!

The second program is the well-known picture editing program GIMP, which is open source. Designed primarly for AmiCygnix, but configured to run standalone, as done with AbiWord.

What is GIMP? Well, take a look at Photoshop, then you will see many similarites to them. GIMP has adopted many of Photoshop's unique picture editing features, and because GIMP is open source, porting it to other platforms allows other systems than Windows to use clones of Photoshop. Not bad, eh?

My GIMP, there is a naked woman over there!

I remember that last autumn, i was trying a graphic design job, which was very interesting, running Photoshop on a Mac. Using GIMP on my AmigaOS 4.1.5 system on my AmigaOne 500 helps me improving what i have learnt. It's a really fine picture editing program. It's very powerful and flexible. I'm really happy to have installed this program along, and i can run it standalone in AmigaOS4!

Third program is Gnumeric for AmiCygnix, which is the open source version of Excel and similar to the one you find in Open Office. This program has also been configured to run standalone. Very handy if you want to keep track of your economy, bills and other payments. Perhaps you even want to make a list of what food and stuffs to buy, how much they cost and more important, how much money you will have left after buying and/or selling stuffs. Very useful and important. A must-have program to have!

Gnumeric, XCalc and ROX-Filer in one shot!

As seen on this picture, both Gnumeric, XCalc calculator and ROX-Filer were all configured to run standalone. I would say just about all important AmiCygnix programs and tools have been configured successfully to run standalone.

Another fine AmiCygnix program is NetSurf (which has also been ported to AmigaOS4 in own version). Not as powerful as TimberWolf and OWB, but a fast open source browser anyway for easy surfing. NetSurf for AmiCygnix has also been configured to run standalone, as seen on the picture below.

NetSurf, Xpdf and GPicView in one shot!

This picture shows NetSurf, Xpdf and GPicView all running standalone. Last one is a useful picture viewer.

Next up is a flexible open source messenger called Pidgin, which supports about all different messengers! I made myself a new MSN Live account, and have just started to get some of my old contacts over to my new account. My new MSN account will only be given to my true friends, family and loyal contacts who are all on my Facebook profile's friend list, and will be used for messenging ONLY, NOT for emails!

Along with Pidgin, i also managed to get SabreMSN for AmigaOS4 working with my new MSN Live account. Even though that few are using MSN now that Skype and Facebook Chat have become extremely popular, these messengers still come in handy, especially as long as Skype or something similar is not yet made for AmigaOS4. I suppose this will happen in a forseable future. We will see.

Chatting with Pidgin Messenger

Chatting with SabreMSN Messenger

Before i end this blog, i will only show you the scanner program XSane for AmiCygnix and a couple of board/card games for AmiCygnix.

These programs run best under the X desktop environment of AmiCygnix. 

As i have experienced myself, not all AmiCygnix programs are developed to run standalone, even if you duplicated and edited a standalone script for it. XSane and the XGalaga game are two applications i couldn't manage to get a standalone script for them working. Perhaps a future version of these programs will provide a working standalone script, but for now they are best run into the AmiCygnix X desktop environment.

Well, another fine blog completed, so i hope you enjoy the read and the new pictures. Feel free to leave a nice comment into this blog if you liked what you have read here. See you soon!

Written by:

Helge Kvalheim, Norway

Bunch of games in AmiCygnix X Desktop environment

And a couple of other games in AmiCygnix X Environment