What software does the Amiga NEED?

[B14ck W01f]

I own a iMac and have been able to find Native Mac versions of my Windows programs. The rest of them that are non-native I was able to port several programs over with Wine. (I did this already with WinUAE and VICE.) Having said that, it would be good if such a program existed on the Amiga. Let's call it AmiWine.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by Cobe

Atari 2600 would be nice for a start too. For low spec Amigas if it's possible.

Indeed, a stock A500 should be able to emulate it relatively easily.

Originally Posted by Thorham

A new OS written from scratch that's not compatible with AOS, with a range of newly written (from scratch as well) programs for it. The Amiga software revolution, if you will. Not going to happen, I know

I sometimes envision a low tech console-like OS with debugging capabilities and minimal communication layer (with an external PC). But actually I'd love to have an OS X like sleep mode where before launching a game to debug, the OS would make a copy of the whole OS state (at a very low level) in the higher reaches of memory and install a reset handler with a minimal menu allowing to go back safely to the saved state in a matter of seconds.

This would help reduce iteration times when debugging which is really important when coding large or complex programs.
Sure Amiga usually boot quickly but when you repeat a procedure hundreds of time waiting even 5 seconds less makes an enormous difference.

Originally Posted by ED-209

Not exactly new software.. but I've thought about how cool it would be for whdload games to have some sort of trophy/achievement system.. similar to that of PSN, XBlive , with online leaderboard etc.
[...]
It wouldn't have to be limited to whdload either, newly developed games could make use of it..

Could be a real boost for the amiga gaming community!
Or it could be an overly ambitious undertaking that nobody really cares about

I think that is a fantastic idea and moreover this doesn't seem too complicated. Steam's API offers these services and can be taken as inspiration material.

Originally Posted by zerohour1974

One thing I have never understood is wanting to connect the Amiga to the Internet. Sure if you have the NextGen machines yes I can see the point but the originals no.

To share high scores between fellow Amigans. (cf above point)

Originally Posted by zerohour1974

Obviously a nice collective of original games.

And people to buy them.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by B14ck W01f

I own a iMac and have been able to find Native Mac versions of my Windows programs. The rest of them that are non-native I was able to port several programs over with Wine. (I did this already with WinUAE and VICE.) Having said that, it would be good if such a program existed on the Amiga. Let's call it AmiWine.

What makes it possible is that both Windows and OS X run on the same kind of CPU (x86). So something like that would be feasible only between the Amiga and another 68k computer/platform.

Which is exactly what some Atari/TOS "emulators" for Amiga do - and part of the reason why Shapeshifter is so fast (I think it also does some additional emulation on top of trapping instructions?)

[dirkies]

I agree with the idea of having a VNC/RDP/Teamviewer-alike client for Amiga, so that from a PC you can control the Amiga.
More advanced would be the opposite, you can RDP from an Amiga into a PC.

[NorthWay]

Ah, remote stuff yes.
I wanted a debugger that would let me control it remotely over the net. So I could send it to people who complained about crashes and then run the debugger client end from my own machine to find out what was going on.

[bubbob42]

Originally Posted by dirkies

.

More advanced would be the opposite, you can RDP from an Amiga into a PC.

This has been implemented some time ago: use RDesktop on the Amiga - works great, fast and is not expensive.

[turrican3]

Finally what will you do galahad ? I think i have an idea about it...

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by turrican3

Finally what will you do galahad ? I think i have an idea about it...

The Galahad kitten only has limited time on his hands alas.

I think we should make a list of wanted Amiga software somewhere, all vote for it and setup a bounty of some kind for the kittens who code it.

Note that I am kidding, financial incentives are proven to decrease quality and creativity. But a public list with votes is probably a good idea.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by Toni Galvez

I would like to see a music tracker that works with small sample waves (32 bytes, more or less), to make 8 voices music, but later, this tracker mix the voices on small samples that allows to play the 8 voices on 4, but not real time mixing, no CPU expended on that. I am making this by hand. A program can do better.

I am curious, why do you want small samples? To recreate very simple square or triangle waves? I am certain it is possible to make really cool sound effects with very small samples but I would like to know why you want to concentrate on these small sizes.

Also, note that small samples are extremely inefficiently played by the Amiga due to the way Paula handles looping sounds. Once Paula reaches the end of a sample it raises an interrupt which must be absolutely serviced otherwise Paula cuts the sound short.
This means that short samples generate an awful lot of interruptions, slowing down the rest of whatever is running in the background (a game for example).

If I could go back in time and fix a few things on the Amiga this would be on my list.

[zerohour1974]

After having several attempts at Amiga stuff. I think a decent browser would nice. One that shows downloads. Netsurf is getting there but once a file is downloading you have no way of knowing how far it has got.

Unless I am missing something in OWB and Netsurf which I probably am

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

The Galahad kitten

[Jack Burton]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

I am curious, why do you want small samples? To recreate very simple square or triangle waves? I am certain it is possible to make really cool sound effects with very small samples but I would like to know why you want to concentrate on these small sizes.

I think it's intended to create sounds similar to the Konami SCC audio chip (as found on some MSX game cartridges) and/or the PC Engine audio chip since it sounds similar too.

Also, note that small samples are extremely inefficiently played by the Amiga due to the way Paula handles looping sounds. Once Paula reaches the end of a sample it raises an interrupt which must be absolutely serviced otherwise Paula cuts the sound short.
This means that short samples generate an awful lot of interruptions, slowing down the rest of whatever is running in the background (a game for example).

Taking this into consideration, I wonder how Antonio Gomez did with his AmiMSX emulator because the SCC(+) chip emulation is pretty good. Anyway only 4 channels are emulated (instead of 5) and the PSG chip isn't emulated. But still...

[saimon69]

@Jack Burton

I would love to see a tracker variation that can handle sonix-like synth instruments; the synth machine included on Sonix was pretty good and underused in my opinion...

[Leffmann]

Have you tried MusicLine or AHX? They're both trackers that can do a bit of sound synthesis.

[4mat_]

Originally Posted by Jack Burton

I think it's intended to create sounds similar to the Konami SCC audio chip (as found on some MSX game cartridges) and/or the PC Engine audio chip since it sounds similar too.

Taking this into consideration, I wonder how Antonio Gomez did with his AmiMSX emulator because the SCC(+) chip emulation is pretty good. Anyway only 4 channels are emulated (instead of 5) and the PSG chip isn't emulated. But still...

You can load .HES PC Engine music rips into a sampler and rip the waveforms out directly for use in Protracker. This is how the same method "chipmods" used, using 16/32/64/128 byte sized waveform samples. (Depending on what octave range you wanted) Dunno why he'd need a new tracker really.

[Jack Burton]

Originally Posted by saimon69

@Jack Burton

I would love to see a tracker variation that can handle sonix-like synth instruments; the synth machine included on Sonix was pretty good and underused in my opinion...

Yes, I always liked Sonix too, it sounded a bit like FM at times. As for FM, I always wished we could use FM on the Amiga (on a hardware level). But halas it's not possible since there are no hardware available (except for the Picasso's audio module which is an OPL 2, IIRC). Amiga has always been PCM and always be, most to my chagrin : you have bazillion PCM cards (and some are still in development) and when you ask about FM people generally do not seem to be interested or even elude the question.
That's regrettable because it would be a nice addition to the Amiga : an FM card for the clockport would probably be doable. When you think you can make song on 8-9 channels at ~50Khz with 12bits resolution for a mere 3KB-5KB it's quite appealing, no ?
Well, at least I can use FM with my MSX2+, but on the Amiga it would be a dream come true !

[Jack Burton]

Originally Posted by 4mat_

You can load .HES PC Engine music rips into a sampler and rip the waveforms out directly for use in Protracker. This is how the same method "chipmods" used, using 16/32/64/128 byte sized waveform samples. (Depending on what octave range you wanted) Dunno why he'd need a new tracker really.

Maybe to create his own sound/patch ?

[4mat_]

Originally Posted by Jack Burton

Maybe to create his own sound/patch ?

you can draw them in a sample editor.

[redblade]

An Amiga port of TURACO which can output to IFF/ILBM to make ripping of MAME sprites a lot easier.

[NorthWay]

In preparation for getting my Amigas repaired and getting back in the saddle after >10 years I have been looking at what stuff I need to update.

And I think we could seriously use an "update manager" of some sorts. Not necessarily exactly like you see linux distros use, but something a little bit more loose and community driven.
I'm thinking a client that can scan your LIBS: DEVS: C: and whatnot and build up a local repository of what files you have installed in which version (with filesize and checksum etc) that can talk to a server somewhere and upload and log this info (if the user permits) for items the server does not know. Similarily the client can query the server for most recent versions of items in its repository and be told where and how to download this (could be using ftp or curl with a URL). There could be some sort of subscription system where the server will mail you when it is notified of new versions of your files (preferably the client would query and discover this first, so the notify might have some delay before going out).

The community part could be annotating reported versions if they contain known bugs (and suggested replacement version), info on developers and homepages, pointers to source if available, valid download links for binary, active or EOL development, and suggestions for other programs that can replace in all or parts the item in question. Having a bugtracker tied in wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Getting a server up and running could take a bit of work to get in place, but perhaps something could be worked out with AmiNet admins? I would expect that most files refer to there anyway.