Posts Tagged ‘amiga’

  • Pre-order MindCandy 3 and Immortal 4

    MindCandy 3 is (apparently!) nearly ready for release. Which is awesome news as I have been waiting for this for ages now The MindCandy range are a series of DVDs that showcase the best of scene demos. Volume 1 featured 230+ minutes worth of PC demos, both new and the classics.  Volume 2 was another massive set, this time focusing on the Amiga.

    What makes these DVDs different are the love and attention put into the production of them. For a start this isn’t a standard “video grab” compilation. They are carefully mastered:

    “Using a high-end video converter, all demos were captured scene by scene on different machines and hardware variations to get the best possible timing for any single part. In the next step all parts were edited, stitched and re-synced with the (also remastered) sound. The Result: Some demos never ran as perfect in all of their parts as they do on MindCandy :)”

    Volume 3 is now available for pre-order, and will feature PC demos from 2003 to 2010 this time on DVD and Blu-ray. There is a 30 minute sample DVD to download from the web site. The final DVD should release Q4-2010. Fingers crossed!

    Immortal 4

    Also announced for pre-order is Jan Zottmanns Immortal 4. This is another double-CD set featuring stunning Amiga music remastered in ways you’ve never heard it before. I’ve got all of the Immortal CDs and from the samples on the web site this one hit my pre-order list right away. The following is the blurb from the web site:

    “The full-to-the-brim Double-CD set Immortal 4 features no less than 35 newly arranged songs (about 150 minutes) of Commodore Amiga videogame music. Most of them have been created by their original authors – trademark and good tradition of the Immortal series. We couldn’t even stop them to play live-instruments, you’ll become earwitness when Al Lowe himself (Leisure Suit Larry) is playing the saxophone, Jon Hare (Cannon Fodder) being back at the microphone and Dave Govett (Wing Commander) hitting the drums.

    Numerous classics have been rearranged, such as Lemmings (Tim Wright), Turrican 2 (Chris Hülsbeck), Flashback (Jean Baudlot), Gauntlet 3 (Tim Follin), F17 Challenge (Nicola Tomljanovich) and many more. Exklusive new versions were contributed by legendary demoscene musicians, such as Romeo Knight (at the guitar too) and Jogeir Liljedahl.

    The catchy melodies once played by a handful of 8 bit samples on the Amiga now experience their rebirth in a colorful mixture ranging from a complete rock band to the fully-fletched synthesizer-setup.”

    Awesome 🙂

  • Decades album by 4mat is out now

    Matt Simmonds is something of a legend in the Amiga/demoscene world. Under the pseudonym “4mat”  he composed hundreds of famous music tracks for cracktros, demos and games. You can find over 500 of them on the Amiga Music Preservation site. MobyGames also keeps a relatively accurate list of his commercial and freeware audio work.

    Today he released his album “Decades”. All of the 14 tracks on the album were created using the same tools he had available “back in the day”, namely ProTracker and FastTracker 2. I just bought the album from Amazon after having a listen on-line, and I’m really pleased at the mix of styles and raw chip sound that shines through. Some tracks carry better than others, but my personal favourite has to be “Virginia”. You can listen to the tracks below:

    Read more about its production on Matt’s blog: I Hear the Sound of Waves. There is also a great interview with him on IndieGames.com. And if like me, you really enjoy what you hear, then Amazon MP3 has the goods.

    Fellow Photon Stormer Ilija was saying just the other day that Matt has been in contact with him quite a bit recently. Perhaps a graphic/audio collab is on the cards? We’ll keep you posted … and Matt, if you’re up for it, we certainly have a couple of games we’d love to have your audio input on 🙂

  • Flod 3 Beta 2 Demo – SoundFX, David Whittaker support & more!

    Christian threw a new beta of Flod 3 at me today, and the list of playable module formats just keeps on getting better and better! New in this beta is support for SoundFX 1 & 2 and all variants of the David Whittaker format. It brings the list of total supported formats to 18 (listed below).

    He plans on adding support for Rob Hubbard, TFMX and TFMX 7 Voices formats – and I think that will complete the set for Flod 3! It will quite simply be the best mod/chip replayer in AS3. Heck, the replay quality of standard mods is already well beyond the likes of ModPlug. All it really needs is someone to wrap it up in a sexy AIR app shell, and we’ve got ourselves an incredible new multi-format mod/chip player.

    Download the Beta 2 demo (550Kb) which includes 5 tunes: Another World Intro (SoundFX), Leonardo Intro (SoundFX 2), Shadow of the Beast Title, Wrath of the Demo and Xenon 2 Megablast (all DW variants). Needless to say it’s Flash Player 10 only.

    The full list of formats supported by Flod 3 currently stands at:

    • Delta Music 1
    • Delta Music 2
    • Digital Musician
    • Digital Musician 7 Voices
    • Future Composer 1.x
    • Future Composer 1.4
    • His Master’s NoiseTracker
    • SidMon 1
    • SidMon 2
    • SoundFX 1.x
    • SoundFX 2.x
    • Brian Postma’s SoundMon 1.x
    • Brian Postma’s SoundMon 2.x
    • Ultimate SoundTracker
    • Generic SoundTrackers
    • NoiseTracker
    • ProTracker
    • David Whittaker (all)
  • FlxBitmapFont – A Bitmap Font class for Flixel 2 released

    Today I released my FlxBitmapFont package to Google Code. This allows you to use bitmap fonts directly in your Flixel 2 games:

    The bitmap fonts are just an extension of a Flixel Sprite, meaning you can throw them around, collide with them, scale them, rotate them and generally cause havoc. Or of course they could just be UI elements, proving a score/lives count. But at least the choice is yours 🙂

    11 fonts are included, 2 sample programs and comprehensive documentation in the form of a PDF file. I’ve also published that here on my blog: http://www.photonstorm.com/flxbitmapfont and I will update both my blog and the Google Code archive as needed.

    Anyway I hope you have fonty fun with this! Look out for a number of new Flixel classes from me in the coming months, or catch me on the flixel forums where I help moderate the place.

  • Silmarils Collection for the PC

    If you were a real gamer back in the early 90’s you owned an Atari ST or an Amiga (and some poor freaks also owned PCs). But all of you would have been aware of the game developer Silmarils. Renowned for an almost Cinemaware-like level of graphics and attention to detail in their games. Most of them are classic fantasy based such as the Ishar series. This isn’t surprising given that the company were named after the symbolic jewels central in JRR Tolkein’s work The Silmarillion. This love of fantasy was evident in their games, graphics and stunning box artwork.

    I was pleased to read today that DotEmu will be releasing the Silmarils Collection for the PC on March the 10th. This includes 16 games. You can make out most of them from the box shots above. Personally I always thought the Ishar trilogy and the concepts of Robinson’s Requiem were superb, so as long as this collection is keenly priced I’ll be there. Hopefully DotEmu will have done as good a job on these titles as it did on R-Type and Street Fighter.

    You can sign-up to their mailing list here: http://www.silmarils-collection.com and once released (March 10th) this site will probably also contain full details of the games. For now here is a link to their newsletter announcement.