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News Archive: April 2003

Saturday, April 26, 2003

Scummvm Posted by CyRUS64 @ 1:08
Paras has released new binaries / self-booting images built from the latest scummvm cvs, which includes some new compatibility fixes. Thanks to Paras for the news in #boob.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

Kos cvs Posted by CyRUS64 @ 9:13
Lots of KallistiOS updates added to the CVS by Dan:

  • KMG files are in. This should be really helpful if you want to pre-twiddle your textures. It additionally supports mmap'ing, so for example you can place a bunch of textures in a romdisk and blast 'em to the PVR fast. I'm doing this now in FoF and it's _significantly_ faster than the old way of loading PNGs and twiddling them on the fly. I find too that making KMG files into a romdisk and then gzipping the bundle still gives good compression (as good as PNG anyway) but is much faster overall.
  • Tsunami got a huge overhaul and now supports parent-relative coloration and positioning. So it really operates a lot more like a windowing system at this point.
  • fs_ramdisk has an attach/detach function now. This nifty feature lets you take a chunk of malloc'd memory you have laying around and attach it as a file on the ramdisk. You can also write out files to the ramdisk and then detach them to use as standard malloc'd buffers.
  • I started (and got sort of minimally working) a "native" dc-load client. I asked AndrewK and got permission to import the GPL'd code from dc-load-ip under the standard KOS license. It's still not terribly functional, but if someone wants to pick up the torch then let me know and I'll try to help you get started. To enable it, start a program with the dc-load-ip console and set INIT_NET on the init flags. You also need to go remove the dbglog() messages from the ethernet module you're using, and enable the spin until link stabilized loop.
  • There's a new generic vblank hooking system. Lots of things want to hang off the vblank IRQs so I went ahead and wrote this thing. Maple is now using it, and the PVR uses this for page flipping now instead of the somewhat unreliable SCANINT1 (we were having troubles on 50Hz PAL with it).
  • fs_iso9660 can (FINALLY) detect and properly handle tray opening. So at this point it should behave exactly as you'd expect when you swap out CDs and such. It uses the vblank checking to do this.

    Links:
    KallistiOS cvs

    Tuesday, April 22, 2003

    Tux and Barrels Posted by CyRUS64 @ 2:12
    A new version of this Donkey Kong style game has been released including an Easter theme!

    Links:
    Official Site

    Monday, April 21, 2003

    Codewright 7.0 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:39
    A couple of weeks ago 2Coder released a plugin for integrated DC/KallistiOS development under CodeWright 7.0. Download it from this thread.

    Mame Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:59
    Reaper has been releasing a variety of single game MAME releases of late, including Gun smoke, Green Beret, Rygar, and Contra. (Thanks to Dejay for the news)

    DC64 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:45
    Bigboy has released a new version of his Commodore 64 emulator with a variety of speed improvements and other fixes. Grab it from his site.

    Friday, April 18, 2003

    LinuxDC Posted by CyRUS64 @ 1:36
    LinuxDC has been updated with some progress news, including a new HIT-0300 Lan Adapter driver and further improved VMU support.

    Wednesday, April 9, 2003

    dcplaya Posted by CyRUS64 @ 9:53
    A new music player has been released, which supports mp3, ogg-vorbis, soundtracker, sid music, sc68 music and cd audio. It also touts an excellent gui and supports plugin addons such as for new visualizations.
    Binary downloads and source distribution are available at the Official site.

    Ravenous Games Posted by CyRUS64 @ 1:46
    Ravenous games have updated their site with two screenshots of a work-in-progress rpg. They are also on the look-out for an artist to create some original tilesets for the game.

    Wednesday, April 2, 2003

    Egoboo and FreeCraft Posted by CyRUS64 @ 8:11
    Bero has released ports of Egoboo, a 3d dungeon crawling adventure in the spirit of NetHack, and FreeCraft, a real-time strategy gaming engine.
    He states that these are still far from complete but he has put up preview downloads for those interested at his site - Egoboo for instance will display the title screen and scenario selection menus, but crashes before game, and FreeCraft currently only displays the title screen.
    Thanks to Jake for the email.