News in brief - RISC OS News, Software and Information

News in brief

Published: 28th May 2004, 22:19:10GMT Source: drobe.co.uk
By Chris Williams

Page 1 of 1

New and re-released games, new software and other news

Now that all the recent excitement and hype that the Wakefield show radiated has passed, we've got a barrel full of news to round up. Which is handy because I always had a feeling that we'd need those old barrels for something, and to think that some people called me crazy.

Games and toys
Cman screenshot

Neil White is back with a new game, Cman (pictured left). It's an extremely tricky Pacman clone in isometric form, and is also Neil's first game written in C - source included if you fancy a peek. In most computer games, the hero has some fighting chance agains the bad guys (and bad girls) - but Neil's fighting for the Deadly Spheres Union, and made the enemies indestructible, so player beware. Moving right along, we'll fold this round and get another drink from the bar, because AcornArcade is holding all the aces this month, entertainment wise, with online re-releases of Tom Cooper's classic games, Lemings (remarkably similar to DMA Design's Lemmings) and Gyrinus 2 (think Cycloids vs. Mad Professor Mariarti). AcornArcade is also distributing 'Yamilo', a 20KB demo written by The Xperience, who are best known for their 64KB 'Blu' demo. Despite being famous for their relentless arrogance, it seems that the German demo group is too scared to reply to email, however their demo is quite pretty and imaginative for its size, as the screenshots below will attest.

Yamilo screenshot 1

Serious software
Andrew Sellors has released a brand spanking new remote desktop client, which is "based on" the open source rdesktop client. The client allows users to connect to a Windows PC running Terminal Services to control and administrate the PC from the comfort of a RISC OS computer, or as Andy himself explains: "Remote Desktop allows a client machine to log onto a server over a network and be presented with a virtual desktop display. Applications run entirely on the server under control of the client's keyboard and mouse with the display graphics being rendered on the client machine." This screenshot should give you a better idea of how it all works.

Next is VirtualAmp, developed by Ian Jeffray, which allows you to control WinAmp from RISC OS, when using an emulation environment from VirtualAcorn. "The point of all this is that playing MP3s with AMPlayer or somesuch wastes a lot of emulated MHz - with VirtualAmp, you can play MP3s with almost no speed impact on the emulated machine," explains Ian, on the VirtualAmp website. The release of VirtualAmp raised some discussion amongst users as to whether or not Ian's work will set a precedent, as Neil 'Aemulor' Spellings worried: "How long before we see 'RISC OS plugins' to launch things like Internet Explorer, Outlook, Office etc? I can understand 'saving emulated MHz' in this instance but if we start pushing people towards Windows software, how long before they will save all their emulated MHz [and] not bother running RISC OS at all?" Where's that stiff upper lip?

Marc Zinnschlag has written Graphite, a sort of flowchart drawing application for RISC OS 3 and 4 (and it really, really means RISC OS 3 and 4 only), that's in an alpha state of development. Oh and do read the documentation beforehand for God's sake, you'll need it. Otherwise, it's a promising, handy little application.

Art package Compo has been bugfixed and now supports Select alpha sprites while its cousin, Variations, now provides extended mask editing, Select alpha sprite support and PNG loading and saving plus usual dose of bugfixes and updates. Debugging aid Reporter is up to version 2.58 with extra BASIC trace functions. Version 2.02 of AppBasic, the Toolbox based DDE for BASIC programmers, is available and there's also a new mailing list for you to join. For Iyonix and VirtualAcorn emulation users, Nat Queen has released anti-spook snoop app Erase, which "uses random data to overwrite files or entire directories on disc before deleting them, thus making it virtually impossible to recover the original data by means of disc editors or 'undelete' utilities." Finally, version 0.14 of ext2 and ext3 filesystems reader, IscaFS is now online, with some bugfixes

And finally
Daniel Hanlon is the lucky winner of the A6+ that was given away in the grand prize draw at the Wakefield show earlier this month. Also, Iconbar have opened an online screenshot database, where you can impress your fellow RISC OS using friends, and perhaps impress passing non-RISC OS users who want a peek at our GUI. More interestingly, Iconbar appear to have removed the ability for people to post comments to their site without first logging in, which is a welcome change in policy.

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MoAco (+1.0) 29/5/04 9:43AM	Hhmm ... I send a mail to TXP 1 1/2 year ago an received a very friendly answer. I tried to invite them to a ATARI-Demo-Party (Error in Line) in Dresden. I know some active Atari-Sceners interested in Acorn / RISC OS. TXP was the only Crew I got a reply from. They told me they can t come, because they went to holiday at this weekend. They still have all their RiscPCs and their is still a open projekt (Intro), they sadly working very rarely on - I don t know if it was Yamilo . BTW: Scholltime is far away now - sorry for my bad english
Guest 29/5/04 9:55AM	Can I edit my comments? It has to be "there is still a projekt". The typing-mistake in the last sentence makes it a funny one.
AndrewDuffell (-1.0) 29/5/04 3:00PM	Why is the removal of comments without logging in more interesting than the screenshots database? Are there any rdesktop servers for RISC OS?
mavhc 29/5/04 4:09PM	An rdesktop server seems very pointless. Someone should be sending VDU codes over the network or something for RISC OS. RDPClient is very very useful.
md0u80c9 29/5/04 7:23PM	Agreed totally mavhc - RDPClient is EXTREMELY useful. I've got a PC with a crossover cable to the RISC OS box, both controlled with a switcher box. It's a fantastic little tool for those occasions when you want to control both machines from the same PC. Now, if I run VirtualAdjust on my PC, I'd have two RISC OS machines working one inside the other, one emulated, one non-emulated. And if I ran VirtualAmp, I'd have one emulated and one non-emulated system, one running an x86-based application from (within RISC OS)^2 - because it's RISC OS within RISCOS. OK. Now I'm freaking even me out. Yikes. Must go take more of the little happy pills
Gollum 31/5/04 12:53PM	Yamilo is a nice demo but it crashes near the end on my RO 4.02 SA-RiscPC. So I have to miss the fantastic 'worddust effect' (words re-organizing from multiple dots). Has someone also noticed such a crash? BTW, Yamilo works fine when running the demo with cache off.