mandag 26. februar 2018

My Musical Amiga Projects

AmigaOS 4.1 FE Update 1 Enhanced
Welcome to 2018, all Amiga users around the world! Been quite some time since I last wrote an Amiga blog.

The reason is simply because I had to complete my Atmosphere collection of 16 amazing Amiga songs, which you can find here below, following this link:


It's been a long journey to complete this amazing collection, which you can both find on my HKvalhe account at SoundCloud (that's where the link comes from) and on my YouTube channel HKvalhe. The link to my YouTube channel is:


Doing Amiga music of Ninja Remix

Ninja Remix Amiga Cover
Now that the Atmosphere collection is completed, I wanted to do something nostalgic and special for the Amiga community. A gift...

The work I do now is to improve the Amiga music for the Amiga version of all Last Ninja games, including creating NEW music for the unreleased Last Ninja 4! No kidding, it's true!

However, here is the complete Ninja Remix music I have done for the Amiga version, which you find all of them on my YouTube channel HKvalhe:

*Ninja Remix (Amiga Faithful Theme)
*Wasteland (Amiga Club Mix Edition)
*Wilderness Loader (Amiga Version)
*Wilderness (Amiga Beat Boost Edition)
*Palace Garden Loader (Amiga Harmony)
*Palace Garden (Amiga Edition)
*Dungeon Loader (Amiga Scary Nightmare Edition)
*The Dungeon (Amiga Edition)
*The Palace Loader (Amiga Pulse Edition)
*The Palace (Amiga Edition)
*The Inner Sanctum Loader (Amiga Edition)
*The Inner Sanctum (Amiga Edition)

OctaMED SoundStudio V1.03c on SAM460!
OctaMED SoundStudio V1.03c continues to do wonder on my vastly improved SAM460ex computer, also known as AmigaOne 500!

The goal with these songs is to improve them in a way that they sound modern for the 21th century, but still remain as faithful as possible to the original creations.

A goal I believe the Last Ninja fans will truly appreciate, also on the Amiga platform.

Converting from AIFF to MP3 with CodeAudio
Making music on the Amiga is true fun, especially when you understand most of the unique effect commands you can use in OctaMED.

Alongside saving songs in MOD format, I also record-to-disk in 16-bit as AIFF files of the songs, then I run CodeAudio to convert from AIFF to MP3, so that these songs can be uploaded to my YouTube channel.

The MP3 version of the songs are of very hiqh quality MP3. Very clean and a lot of boost to the bass, without blowing up the amplifier, hehe ;)

Such wonderful music work should show that the Amiga is still very much capable of creating fantastic music, even in the 21th century, in any way!

Does it mean I am proud to own an Amiga? Oh yes, absolutely, until I die! There's no other computer system I would use to create amazing music! Only on Amiga!

Working on Amiga music for Last Ninja 2


Amiga music for Last Ninja 2
These days I'm currently working on improved Amiga music for Last Ninja 2. The first one I'm working on now is The Central Park Loader, which I hope to make as faithful as possible to the original version, but modern as possible.

The problem with the original C64 music for this game is that most of the songs were far too noisy, due to the Arpegiggo effect. Too much of that through a whole tune becomes overbearing to listen to, so for the Amiga version, this one is dumped to make the songs much more pleasant to listen to.

There are total of 13 songs in Last Ninja 2, so when all of them are completed, probably closer to May, work on Amiga music for Last Ninja 3 can start. A long, but lovely journey.

Amiga to get Polaris support in 2018!


Polaris-support coming to Amiga in 2018!
Amiga is to get a couple of really nice surprises in this year 2018! A-EON revealed that Hans De Ruiter is working on drivers for the current Polaris-based Radeon Rx 400 and 500 series of PCIe graphic boards, with both full 2D and 3D support!

Polaris is quite an advanced and modern chipset housed in latest Radeon RX cards, and with Warp3D Nova, Amigans will finally be able to experience true 3D capabilities and 4K support! Another great thing is full hardware-acceleration and being able to use ALL of the video memory found on your chosen Polaris card!

A Polaris-based Radeon RX card with 2GB of video memory should be more than enough power and speed for the SAM460ex, hopefully with a single version of such a card, that fits nicely into my AmigaOne 500. That's the plan for me anyway, as I also want to play 3D games like Wolfenstein - Return To Castle and Jedi Outcast.

Buying AmigaOne A1222 in 2020 instead of 2018

AmigaOne A1222 Tabor

My plans have been to actually buy the upcoming 32-bit PPC dual-core AmigaOne A1222 Tabor from A-EON Technology, which is based on a 32-bit dual-core Freescale PPC CPU at 1.2Ghz, with a unique FPU co-processor doing math operations.

The main reason why I'm waiting to buy this new A1222 in 2020 instead, is that I want to spend money for a nice vacation in 2018 for a chance, and perhaps have money still for something more important.

My SAM460ex is still more than good enough for the kind of stuffs I do, like creating music, editing my photos, browsing the net with Odyssey, doing emails with YAM, converting my songs to MP3 with CodeAudio and playing retro adventure games using ScummVM.

The only thing I need to improve my SAM460ex with, is once driver is ready, to buy a really good Polaris-based Radeon Rx 500 single slot GPU card for 1000 NOK, that fits nicely into my AmigaOne 500. Then I'll finally get full hardware-acceleration, and I can use Warp3D Nova to play 3D games like Wolfenstein - Return To Castle and if I'm lucky, to get the game Jedi Outcast.

I think that is probably the wisest things I can do with my money in 2018, and rather wait with the AmigaOne A1222 for 2020 instead, which is a wise decision.

Another reason for this is simply that there are still very little of new Amiga software and games, and not enough drivers to justify a buy of the new A1222.

It would be pointless to use HALF of the new A1222's resources, as the new long-expected AmigaOS 4.2 is not completed yet, which will have both multi-core SMP support, full memory protection and probably OpenGL. This new AmigaOS has been under development for the past 5 years now, and there is no indication that AmigaOS 4.2 will be completed in 2018. It's probably more likely that it will be completed for a 2019 release instead. So there's no reason to rush out to buy the new A1222 immerdiately when it's released. Waiting until 2020 is better, I think...

There's still a lot of nice power and speed left in the SAM460ex, at least for what I use it for ;) I'm happy and proud of that, and I have had SAM460ex for the past 5 years now and it's still running very nicely as never before! So yes, still very good :)

Well, this completes this blog for now on, so it's time for me to get back to working further on my Amiga music, as well as doing my photo work. See ya soon ;)

Written by
Helge Kvalheim, Norway




























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