Atariscne.Org takes a look at the 4x4 truecolour rotozoom race
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- evldhs
Recently there have been a number of rotozoom demos released in what's called truecolour or RGB screenmodes. They got quite...
Due to lack of own competence, let me just forward this latest article by Tat/Avena, who is dismantling HiSoft's Debugging Line Number format in his blog. I am sure it is another gourmet-read for the one or other.
🔗 Full article in Steven Tatersall's blog
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- Written by: 505
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Marty aka ST Graveyard and his team from Atari-legend.com published the full version of their thorough investigation about the Atari STE and Falcon game "The Ultimate Arena". The game has been an actual homebrew wonder of the mid-90 era, when Atari STE game development was generally taken a big step forward and the Falcon game sphere was not fully explored. It was highly anticipated and exceptional, as it was a serious attempt to bring "Mortal Kombat" gameplay to the Atari, including digitized game characters and sound.
Atari-legend's documentary dives deeply into the topic with it's typical, unmatched precision and production quality. The half hour video reportage emphasizes the individual achievement as well as the motivation, production process and outcome of the game, including personal notes of the game creator. It is an amazing travel back in times, when home computers still were machines to make dreams come true. The text script for the production is provided as well. Highly recommended!
🔗 Text script of the documentary on Atari Legend
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- Written by: 505
So it seems that nothing can beat nostalgia as ATARI has launched preorders for 5 new games on the 7800. Even though I am no expert the games should run on the good old hardware as well as on their lastest breed, namely the 7800+ as can be seen below:
The 5 games announced for release this year are
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Atarinet.info - an interesting website providing Atari & Internet related content (and more), do now also offer a web-rendering-proxy service (wrp). The service allows to render complex webpages on the server and send the result as simple website suitable for Atari browsers like CAB and various resolutions and color depths.
Resulting output can be rendered as image in various formats or basic HTML for a quick browsing experience on low-end platforms. The tool itself has been developed by Tenox.
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Cas writes:
The Vintage Computer Festival Europe (VCFe) will take place in Munich on the weekend of May 3-4, 2025.
This year's main theme is: 50 Years of Cheap Computers
In 1975, 50 years ago now, a price-breaker was introduced that would shake up the fledgling microprocessor world: the 6502. As a simplified 6800 for less than 10% of the price of the 6800, the 6502 was an ideal candidate for the second generation of microcomputers and the first home computers. Names like Commodore PET, Apple II, and Atari 800 continue to have an impact today. Not to mention Atari's VCS, which dominated the console market for years.
The lectures and exhibition offer fascinating information about Atari systems (8-bit and 16-bit).
Lectures
https://www.vcfe.org/E/Vortraege.html
Exhibition
https://www.vcfe.org/E/Ausstellung.html
Getting there:
https://www.vcfe.org/E/Anreise.html
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- Written by: Cas
Even though not much has been seen nor even said so far, Songbird Productions has announced that the world famous Vroom game will be ported by Reboot to the Jaguar in 2025! At the moment everything needs be done from scratch as the original code is not available but Jaguar fans can expect a few surprises. In the meantime a short teaser has been published.
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A port of the original Defender arcade have been in the works for a while, and is released in a finished v1.0 form today by Therealsark02.
The port is for ST, STe and Falcon machines. It features more or less perfect conversion of the arcade with lower border removal, digisound and 50 Hz refresh. The port is open source and mostly made in the C language.
Williams Defender v1.0 on the Atari ST
🔗 Visit the Github source code repository
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- Written by: evldhs
While serious Atari computing ended latest in the early 2000s, we see a general revival of activities regarding old computer platforms since a few years now. This sudden re-interest is also branded as "Retro computing" and may even be a suitable midlife crisis compensation ;-)
Hallway to middle-aged men's paradise
But many factors come into play. In contrary to fast-paced modern times, there is a calming aura about those old devices with their limitations and understandable technology. On top of that we have the opportunity for new technical developments which make long lasting dreams come true: hardware extensions, modding activities, modern software development approaches or maybe just a good dose of nostalgia crawling into former old school computer users.
As an accompanying effect we see a growth of communities, helping each other and organizing projects and events. This happens mostly online in forums or chat groups, but after COVID times, it is even more exciting to see communities finding together in real life again.
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Read more: Ataris spotted in the urban wilderness - a visit at Retro Computer Dresden e.V.
When an Atari legend like Markus Fritze updates his Github repository with something that starts with 'AtariST', it's bound to get interesting. Of course someone like Markus does not need any introduction (🔗he 🔗really 🔗doesn'🔗t), so let's just dive in:
this time Markus prepared a very tasty dish - a completely re-engineered source code of Midi Maze! Plus there's literally tons of documentation on the internals in there.
Where other people merely disassemble and/or use commercial/government tools to generate some higher language source from the binaries, this specific Atarian just writes his own assembly->C toolkit to do the task, like, properly. Marvelous.
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Already about a month ago, Ultra/Cream has published his latest findings and updates on his "ultraDev" device which obviously justify the name "ultraDev+". The full details can be read in his development diary.
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This annual and also biggest Czech Atari event is taking place from 16th to 18th of May 2025 in Olomouc, a magnificient university town, located not too far away from the Slovak and Polish border.
photo by Krupkaj
On a personal note, I really hope to make it there one day! 🍺
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Rajah Lone/Renaissance has updated his tools P2SM and Hexedit.
P2SM stands for "Pixels to Sprites & Masks" and Hexedit is a Hexeditor as one may have guessed.
The tools are targeting on high end Atari platforms.
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- Written by: 505
Djamm/Eko just published an interesting video about the story of Eko.
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This is not a formal chronicle, nor an attempt at perfect historical accuracy, but rather a heartfelt recollection, stitched together from memories spanning over three decades. Like all stories told from memory, it’s coloured with nostalgia, and perhaps a few gaps and fuzzy edges.
So, with all due imperfections and sentimental asides, let me, Tronic of Effect, take you on a walk through time… and share the story of how a floppy disk, a few lines of code, and a spark of curiosity grew into something truly special.
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- Written by: Tronic
The traditional Outline demoparty has now put information online for the 2025 edition. A website to feel home at immediately.
The party is taking place from 29th of May till 1st of June 2025. It is said the the event is leaning a bit more towards a "back to the roots" oldschool kind of party. If you like, get your travel planning and Atari releases ready!
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- Written by: 505
Maybe you remember the French Atari demo group Passion? They were active on Atari ST as well as on Falcon with their early "Arrival" demo. Cooper/Paradize has now recorded and published a comprehensive video compilation of their Atari releases in high quality. As I understand, they feature the full length scrolltexts, so 3 hours well-spent I would say!
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Vicomte, the main organizer of the now well established Gemtos convention has just sent us some last minute news about the 2025 forthcoming edition, let's have a look at what he wrote:
"Hi to all Atari fans,
The 2025 edition of the Gemtos convention is coming closer, few tickets left as the registration deadline gradually comes to an end. On the spot we will organize a great Midimaze 2 tournament on Atari computers, places running low!
Want to take part to game compos? Play Vroom, Jupiter’s masterdrive, Flight simulator 2 or Barbarian? You only need to send me a picture showing your best score (running low on room for competitors as well).
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Lotek style writes:
German coder Jonas Eschenburg is working on his Voxel-Engine for quite some time. Inspired by Comanche on MS-DOS machines he asked himself if it's possible to port an effect like this to the ST in decent speed. He posted several stages of his work on Twitter and you can find a binary on his github-site.
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- Written by: lotek style
Preview videos of a new Atari Jaguar racing game called "Neutron Drive" are circulating. It looks promising and very atmospheric. Read more on Atariage forums.
🔗 More videos on the official YT channel
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- Written by: 505
Hot on the heels of 505's party report on this very site, D-Bug and Data Airlines have created a mini site with another report, plus all entries from the cracktro showcase running on a browser (powered by tIn's hatari build)
🔗Visit the D-Bug website for the announcement, plus some bonus pictures (permalink)
🔗Visit the mini site hosted by Data Airlines
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- Written by: ggn
