What we want you guys to do for this competition is to create a Commodore game related banner like the ones we have made for the header of our website.
You can choose any Commodore game theme from any Commodore machine, even the PET if that’s your thing ;-)
You can use Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Gimp or really any paint package you feel comfortable using.
We have made it easy for you by supplying banner templates. One is for Photoshop and the other one is for any other paint package that can load a .png file.
Rules
01. Banners must be saved as a png file only, any banners submitted that arn’t png will be disqualified.
02. You must use the provided templates below as they are the correct size for our website.
03. Only Commodore game/demo related banners, we are a Commodore Website.
04. The png version of our banner template has pink outlines, make sure you keep the banner within those outlines and when you have finished your banner remove the lines afterwards.
05. Don’t cut or resize the banners they are exactly right for the website.
06. Only one entry per person.
07. When you have finished you banner please zip it up with a text file with your name and email address.
08. Upload all finished banners here
We have set a 4 week deadline, this should be ample time to create your masterpiece ;-)
(Deadline date is June 19th)
Prizes
Cloanto have generously sponsored the prizes for this competition, thank you Mike ;-)
1st prize - Amiga Forever and C64 Forever fully registered versions and your banner displayed on our website.
2nd Prize – Amiga Forever fully registered version and your banner displayed on our website.
3rd Prize – Amiga Forever fully registered version and your banner displayed on our website.
4th Prize – C64 Forever fully registered version.
5th Prize – C64 Forever fully registered version.
Download: Photoshop Template
Download: PNG template
Upload your banner: http://awesome.commodore.me/upload-files
Good Luck!
Whilst exploring underground caverns you chance upon a deep black pool. A ripple in the mirror-smooth surface draws you closer to the edge – a powerful hand slides out and swiftly drags you under! It is the hand of Thelric, master of magic, plunging you into his strange mythical world of magic and mystery.
It is written in the book of magic that only Thelric has the knowledge which blends time and space into a powerful spell. He will not cast this spell to return you to your own world until you retrieve for him the lost amulet of immortality, without it he will age and die.
He teaches you some useful spells, then you embark on your dangerous quest…
What a douche. Not only does he drag you against your will into his world. But he then has the cheek to ask you to find his amulet of immortality otherwise he won’t send you home. All because he doesn’t want to age and die like the rest of us. To which I know what I would be doing instead.
Repeatedly kicking him in the family jewels and demanding that he sends me back otherwise I will make him wish he was a eunuch.
Putting unreasonable requests to one side you will find that The Master of Magic is a pretty entertaining game. Made all the sweeter by the fact it’s actually a budget release with a £2.99. in 1985 money, price tag from Mastertronic’s M.A.D label.
Graphically and audibly the game belies its budget roots. Rob Hubbard, one of my favourite composers, has done a great job with the soundtrack. Which feels both fitting and atmospheric. The graphics are maybe a little basic but functional. The static images of the monsters and items that you encounter are really well done. It just feels to me like the screen space has not been utilized to it’s full potential. While it’s nice that they have given us a space for the monster portraits, I do feel that this could have just as easily been used for the text description. Thus freeing space for the map to be made bigger. But this is merely a personal aesthetical view. And all in all it’s a reasonable effort.
The controls, however, are a little too fiddly and twitchy. On several occasions I found myself been killed by a spider because I got stuck on a door. This is due in part to having to hit the doors pretty much straight on. Another cause of some needless deaths was because the menu system. While comprehensive for a budget release, and maybe putting some more mainstream titles to shame, was too cumbersome and needed some streamlining.
But these are not game breakers and are easily forgotten. And, on the whole, The Master of Magic is a rare example of a budget title been done right. With a good mixture of atmosphere, challenge and fun. It wouldn’t have been hard to imagine this title been a full price, mainstream release. The only down side is the controls. To which if they had been tightened would have made this game truly amazing. Certainly a nice budget title that makes some full priced RPG games look cheap and tacky.
However I don’t get the same sense of satisfaction that I do when I power on my real Amiga 600 and 1200.
Emulated Amiga’s are all good and well. Yet you don’t get the feel of the keyboard on an emulated Amiga like you would and a real one. You don’t get the same sense of drama and excitment of loading a disk like you would with a real Amiga. And you certainly dont get the same sense of satisfaction when you accomplish something on an emulated Amiga like you would on a real one.
Obviously this is all from my own personal perspective. I wouldn’t expect someone who prefers an emulated Amiga to feel the same as I do about a real Amiga. And obviously there are things that you wouldn’t have to contend with on an emulated Amiga, such as hardware faults and corrupted floppy disks, that are all to common with our aging hardware.
But there is still things that I would rather do on my Amiga’s over the soulless black tower of my PC. Such as gaming.
Gaming on my Amiga still feels as great as it did back in the day. I have a Zipstick controller that I got with my original Amiga 500+. It has had all the switches replaced inside and it now feels like a new controller again. Loading a disk into my 1200, because the 600 has had it’s faulty disk drive replaced with an HxC, happens with a satisfying clunk and that sense of childlike excitment perks up again the moment Turrican II starts.
I can still do word processing on my 600 and other day to day computing tasks. Sure I might not be able to run flash stuff but I can still access the net through my wifi card. And I can do all my emailing and Twitter stuff too. People laugh when I tell them this. And I know that for the vast majority of things I will still be using a modern computer. But for everything else I use the Amiga’s. Because I still love the old girls. And thats whats important and missing from modern computers. You don’t feel attacthed to a modern computer like you did with the Amiga. Because the Amiga has a soul and a spark that you simply don’t get now.
- D3D crashed if Vista or newer and D3D9Ex couldn’t be used (shaders didn’t load for reason for example) (2.3.something)
- Vsync dynamic adjustment algoritm updated.
- Added vsync debugging command line options:
- -vsync_min_delay <val>: val is value from 1 to 90, minimum guaranteed extra time left for display rendering. Automatic dynamic adjustment system can still use higher values if needed.
- -vsync_forced_delay <val>: val is forced extra time, dynamic adjustment is disabled. <val> is percentage of total frame time, the bigger the value, the less chance for tearing and slower CPU emulation performance (if fastest possible mode).
Above Parameters work in low latency no buffer mode and in all legacy vsync modes.
- -vsynclog shows frame counts (total, missed, errors, time waited for frame relative to total frame, average of previous value, current frame time difference) Low latency only parameter.
- -vsynclog2 starts logging current adjustment parameters. Mostly undocumented values except last 4: current adjustment value, time/scanline, total frame time, adjustment percentage value.
Note that time unit is internal PC time counter (Rate can be seen in winuaebootlog.txt)
- Added -rtg_blitter <val> command line option (0 = disable native RTG blitter acceleration code)
- Show more correct vertical and horizontal frequency in display mode change log line.
- Added -bsdlog command line parameter, enables full bsdsocket emulation logging. (This was previously compile-time option)
- Support PC screen resolutions that have both progressive and interlaced modes.
- PC interlaced modes work in D3D mode, fixes blank screen.
- Added 50i/60i switching support to autovsync.
- Added timing compensation to low latency vsync for some drivers (nvidia only?) that don’t count any lines inside vblank period. (MinV=1 in the log)
- IOCTL 32-bit overflow fix, CDFS DVD read error when accessing data outside of first 2G.
- Built-in CD image mounter 32-bit image size restrictions removed.
Download: winuae_2420b2.zip
Source: http://www.winuae.net
New release from Vinny over at Hackersoft this time it’s Cosmic Cruiser+37D
Press the following keys during game play to turn on/off the extra features:
1 = Level complete!
2 = Freeze timer
3 = Unfreeze timer
4 = Infinite lives ON
5 = Infinite lives OFF
6 = Invincibility ON*
7 = Invincibility OFF
8 = Teleport to base*2
9 = Initiate Enemy attack!
0 = Call an Alien!*3/*4
- = Stop Aliens exiting ship
+ = Let Aliens exit ship
Q = Infinite Bullets ON
W = Infinite Bullets OFF
E = “I feel sick!”
R = Sound Effect 1
T = Sound Effect 2
Y = Sound Effect 3
U = Sound Effect 4
I = Sound Effect 5
O = Sound Effect 6
P = Sound Effect 7
@ = Sound Effect
* = Title Tune – F7 to EXIT
A = Spaceman Colour
S = Border Colour
D = Alien Colour
F = Enemy Ship Colour
G = Massive Sprites!
H = Normal Sprites
J = White Space Station
K = Red Space Station
L = Cyan Space Station
: = Purple Space Station
; = Blue Space Station
= = Yellow Space Station
Z = Normal Space Station
Notes
—–
* You can’t collect a floating man when invincibility is turned on. Turn is off using ’7′ to collect the floating man.
*2 You can use this to get out of sticky situations, or when you have collected a crew member from the ship and want to teleport straight to safety ;-)
*3 You’re only allowed two on the screen at one time.
*4 This will only work if you have the “Let Aliens exit ship” selected.
Download and Source: http://www.hackersoft.co.uk
New releases over at CSDb are as follows:
Would You Love a Monsterman, Bock+PHD, Cosmic crusader+3H, Munch man 64+H, Snakes+2H, Time Res-Q+5H and The Sugarsteeler
Source: http://csdb.dk
A new entry on the GTW64 web page is Exodus. Exodus was a game developed by Paul Clansey in the late eighties. The game was a mix of Elite, Civilisation and Traveller RPG. Paul is now searching if he can find any diskettes with the game. Updates of other games: Angel of Hell 2, Al The Fish, Bilbo, Car Game 2, Charlie Chaplin, Marc in Wonderland, Mission of Mercy, Sword of Abbadon, Sun Ball, THC Bros and Where time Stood Still.Website: http://www.gtw64.co.uk
Source: http://commodore-gg.hobby.nl
The BitJam podcast number 151 is a tribute to “Turrican”. In this BitJam the following music: Turrican Anthology Teaser Demo, Mega Turrican Second Floor – Level 1, Turrican 1 Amiga Intro Remake, Turrican 2 Main Title (Dosk Mix), Turrican II (Concerto For Laser And Enemies Enhanced Mix), Turrican 2 – The Final Challenge, Super Turrican 2 Submerged – Level 3, The Great Bath (of the Seven Seas), Turrican 3 (reloaded), Super Turrican Steam and Pressuren – Level 2, Turrican 2 – The Explorer. Mega Turrican Turrimann OC ReMix, Super Turrican II Wormland Remix, Turrican 3 Freedom – Credits. Total playtime: 50:30 minutes.Website: http://www.bitfellas.org/page.php?100
Source: http://www.richardlagendijk.nl
The Amiga Lore web page had an interview with Steven Day. Steven also known as STE’86 and STE made artwork for the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. A few examples of games he worked on are: Stormtrooper, Fireforce and Prince of Persia. You can read the complete interview on the Amiga Lore web page.Website: http://www.abime.net/interviews/view/interview/id/70
Source: http://commodore-gg.hobby.nl
VintageStudio is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for 8-bit computers (C64, VIC-20 and Atari). The program is made by Pawel Kadluczka with the help of Visual Studio 2010. In a video Pawel shows the features of VintageStudio and how it works. Now you have a modern way of building, running and debugging your 8-bit programsBinaries and source code of Vintage Studio.
Source: http://www.richardlagendijk.nl
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