We all love to use our old joysticks like the Competition PRO with our retro hardware, but to be honest, sometimes we wish to use a more modern input device like an XboX controller, don’t we? Impossible? No! Duke, also author of the great M4 WiFi interface for the Amstrad CPC, has designed a device, called Imperium Solo, that allows you to connect your modern game controller to the Amstrad CPC and play your games with it. It already supports a variety of USB input devices (like the already mentioned XboX controller or a USB NES gamepad), but the firmware is constantly improved by Duke to support even more input devices.
You can get more information and the latest firmware on Dukes Imperium Solo web page and discuss and order it in the CPC Wiki forums.
NoRecess, who is well-known for his demos, tools and also interviews in with CPC sceners, released a work in progress video of his game for the Amstrad Plus / GX4000 computers. It is called SonicGX and obviously it is a Sonic the Hedgehog game and features a framerate of 50Hz and around 40 colours on screen. He plans to show other previews during the development and wants to release the game at the end of 2020. So keep your fingers crossed that we will have a cool jump and run game at the end of next year :-). Until then: subscribe his Youtube channel to get informed about his next previews and enjoy the preview…
8BP (= 8bits of power) is a set of RSX commands (commands that are directly integrated into BASIC) that helps you to create games in Locomotive BASIC for the Amstrad CPC. It features new commands for sprite handling, animation, scrolling, music (based on the WYZTracker), etc. With only 8kb of code, it is very small and leaves 24kb to be used by your BASIC program. You can download the latest version from GitHub, read the (spanish) development blog or participate on the technical discussions in the CPCWiki forums.
Main features
- 32 sprites with clipping, overwrite, ordering (4 order types) and collision detection (mode 0 and mode 1)
- 4 modes of sprites sorting, based on Ymax or Ymin, partial or complete
- sprite/image flipping (mode 0 and mode 1)
- animation sequences, and macro-sequences. Any sprite can change automatically its animation sequence depending on its parameters Vy,Vx
- multi-directional scroll (based in command MAP2SP)
- allows in-game music based on WYZtracker 2.0.1.0 tool (commands MUSIC and MUSICOFF)
- layout ( which is a kind of “tile map”), with collision detection
- only takes 8 KB, leaving 24 KB for BASIC programs. 8BP reserves 8KB for sprites and 1.4KB for music, but your BASIC program can have up to 24 KB length
- STARS command for sand effects, rain, snow and stars planes
- commands for move N sprites at the same time (such as MOVERALL, AUTOALL, ROUTEALL…)
- routing sprites through user-defined routes, simplifying game logic. These routes can be loopings, jumps, complex trajectories or whatever
- inks animation command (RINK) for racing cars games, bricks. etc
complete sprite editor included (SPEDIT) - customizable mini character set for printing in mode 0 (using command PRINTAT)
- Pseudo 3D capability for “pole position” style games (racing games, tanks, etc)
Do you remember BSCs AyAy Kaeppttn SID player for the CPC? He started to work on it again and improved it even more so that it supports three SID channels on the CPC now. When running his new SID engine, the CPC uses about 100% of the CPU, so there is nothing left for anything else. Well, since this is currently work in progress there is no official release, but you can listen to a conversion of the song “The Last Hero” by Future Freak of Dexion. You can join the technical discussion about the player in the CPC Wiki forums.
You still love to write programs with the awesome Locomotive BASIC that was delivered directly with the Amstrad CPC? Maybe you still have a BASIC program that you want to run on a modern computer without using an emulator? Great! Then Marco Vieth, well-known for his CPC emulator CPC-Emu, has a solution for you: CPCBasic. It can run you BASIC program in a webbrowser (serverless) and sends its output to the HTML canvas.
To learn more about CPCBasic, head over to the CPCBasic GitHub page and test it by yourself.
Features:
- Run old an new BASIC programs in a browser
- “Wrap factor” Speed: Frame Fly and other events in real-time, calculations as fast as possible
- CPC Basic Unchained: Less restrictions, extended by new features, breaking out of the CPC box
- BASIC compiler and not just interpreter
- Lots of memory, no memory full
- Runs locally without a server (even on mobile devices, but without input)
- HTML5 / JavaScript without external libraries