What software does the Amiga NEED?

[Galahad/FLT]

So, theres a few people making games, utilities, converting ST games, WHDLoad is constantly improving.

But what software do people actually want to see, whether or not that means updating software or something the Amiga simply doesn't have but would be useful TODAY and would be used.

Ideas?

[adrdesign]

I think we underestimate the amiga audio chip

http://www.amiga.org/forums/archive/...p/t-54117.html

based on this, we could really have an instrument by itself applying some new concepts using our lovely Paula.

I thought the easiest thing to do is a Live Sample player based on Fasttracker instruments. It could work on a productivity screen to achieve >28k samples even on a plain a600.

I could easy convert multisample instruments to 8 bit XI, so the amiga could be used as a drum player connected as MIDI slave. Some kind of "Fairlight CMI" emulator for amiga would be nice.

[turrican3]

Myself, i would like to see an easy tool to display 32 colours pictures or 64 colours pics and playing sound in the same time.
something like play img0001 to img1500 sound.8svx (or music.mod).
With that it should be easier to copy megacd intros or else and use them for making cd32 intros. cdxl is ham and ham is too heavy for making fullscreen videos. Perhaps i'm wrong and it eist already, then if someone could make an easy tutorial ?
Thank you for the question fairlight.

[Megol]

This claims to playback a HAM video on a A500+:
[ Show youtube player ]

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Megol

This claims to playback a HAM video on a A500+:
[ Show youtube player ]

Description says 020

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by Megol

This claims to playback a HAM video on a A500+:
[ Show youtube player ]

Aww ... don't you just love it when the A500 gets upgrades. Used to think of it as the budget computer!

But interestingly, it mentions software also working on "stock amiga500"?

[tolkien]

I miss an IDE to code like stormc4 but modern. Our coding tools are a bit rudimentary.

[Rebel-CD32]

CDXL isn't HAM-only, the videos can be any bit-depth supported by the Amiga, so you can have 256 colour CDXLs on AGA machines, and 32 or 64 colour ones on OCS machines. Just because no one ever did it doesn't mean it can't be done.

[Toni Galvez]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

So, theres a few people making games, utilities, converting ST games, WHDLoad is constantly improving.

But what software do people actually want to see, whether or not that means updating software or something the Amiga simply doesn't have but would be useful TODAY and would be used.

Ideas?

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.

Another programs I would like to see on the Amiga, a good japanese style shoot'n'Ups, plattform, racing games.

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by Rebel-CD32

CDXL isn't HAM-only, the videos can be any bit-depth supported by the Amiga, so you can have 256 colour CDXLs on AGA machines, and 32 or 64 colour ones on OCS machines. Just because no one ever did it doesn't mean it can't be done.

great to hear that, if someone knows how to do it...
I tried to use it but never succeed and like no one used it, i suppose that it's not clear at all. Did you try already to use it ?? Perhaps we need something easy to use, just a player which display pictures from a directory and just music, something we could prepare on a pc in the easier possible way.
Rebel, if you know how to make 32 or 64 colours CDXL, please, tell us.
Do you know if it could be full screen on cd32 ?? Do you know a game which use CDXL 32 colours or 64 colours on cd32 ?? I hope that i'm wrong and perhaps this is easy to make, but one thing is sure, there is a lack of documentation on it, a tutorial, something.
I know it should be harder but if CDXL works with 32 colours or 64 colours why not a good converter from mpg to cdxl ??? or from any other format ?? Should be great to make intro. I have flink with a ham intro (converted from megacd, with avi4hv) but it doesn't work from the cd32 cd-rom (winuae) but it works from hard disk (cd32 winuae + hd). why ?? i really don't know, i'm an amiga big fan but my knowledge is limited, sorry.

[Rebel-CD32]

What we really need on the Amiga is better game making software, because as we all know Backbone doesn't really cut it, and Reality is a bit of a nightmare to use. Of course, this software is already being worked on but I wish we could help encourage speedier development a little.

As for CDXL, I've only ever made a HAM6 and a 256 colour one, back when I had access to a Windows machine and the tutorial on how to make them was still online. Unfortunately I forgot how to do it, so you might have to ask the guy making the anime CDs for CD32, because I believe it was his tutorial that I followed. Remember that a CD32-compatible CDXL file should spool from the CD at no more than 300kb/s, and CDTV 150kb/s (which is the same speed limit as the Sega Mega CD).

[ovale]

I think the Amiga really need some serious cross platform development system.<br />
A c/c++ toolchain plus symbolic debugger that targets a remote machine. Where the remote machine can be real or emulated (winuae).<br />
There is something out there but nothing that is really easy to install.<br />
Ideally something like:<br />
X download the package<br />
X add winuae<br />
X add Roms<br />
X add eclipse<br />
X enjoy<br />
With enjoy I mean, run make and have the code running on the target with the debugger attached.<br />
<br />
This is, I guess, a low hanging fruit for someone with the skills and time but it will help the community immensely.<br />
<br />
Ovale

PS forgot, free and open source

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by Rebel-CD32

Remember that a CD32-compatible CDXL file should spool from the CD at no more than 300kb/s, and CDTV 150kb/s (which is the same speed limit as the Sega Mega CD).

This is exactly what i thought, but you know when you are not specialist, you are always afraid to say wrong things.

[Hewitson]

Since no one else has said it, I'm going to. A decent web browser that doesnt require RTG or absolutely ridiculous amounts of memory.

[Cobe]

and just maybe with these new fpgas around maybe it's time for some low res minitube

[Cobe]

Originally Posted by turrican3

great to hear that, if someone knows how to do it...
I tried to use it but never succeed and like no one used it, i suppose that it's not clear at all. Did you try already to use it ?? Perhaps we need something easy to use, just a player which display pictures from a directory and just music, something we could prepare on a pc in the easier possible way.
Rebel, if you know how to make 32 or 64 colours CDXL, please, tell us.
Do you know if it could be full screen on cd32 ?? Do you know a game which use CDXL 32 colours or 64 colours on cd32 ?? I hope that i'm wrong and perhaps this is easy to make, but one thing is sure, there is a lack of documentation on it, a tutorial, something.
I know it should be harder but if CDXL works with 32 colours or 64 colours why not a good converter from mpg to cdxl ??? or from any other format ?? Should be great to make intro. I have flink with a ham intro (converted from megacd, with avi4hv) but it doesn't work from the cd32 cd-rom (winuae) but it works from hard disk (cd32 winuae + hd). why ?? i really don't know, i'm an amiga big fan but my knowledge is limited, sorry.

You can get full screen if you lower the frame rate significantly but with SDBL CDXL option you can duble vertical pixels and you can get decent full screen in a decent frame rate in ham6 that doesn't look bad.
And why would you use 6 bits per pixel for 64 colors if you can use ham6 and with same bits per pixel you get more colors? CD32 plays it anyway.

When you play your flink intro from CD do you drop dosxl option? cdxlspeed do you set at 150?

When already talking about this I regret that cdxl doesn't have at least some mild compression so we could get decent full screeen vids cause as I now cdxl doesn't use much cpu and there should be room for codec but the bottle neck is 2x cd speed. Mega CD had some cinepack codec running on 68000 and with 1x cd was close to cd32.

[alexh]

A networked virtual keyboard & mouse system.

I usually have my Amiga and PC switched on, both networked, both connected to two monitors.

To avoid having to use two keyboards and two mice I was using a VNC server on the Amiga (with video disabled) and Win2VNC or X2VNC on my PC. But the Amiga server is quite old and clunkey, uses lots of RAM and can crash. Plus cut-n-paste doesn't always work between the two systems.

A port of Synergy or an equivalent to AmigaOS 3.xwould be good.

There is a port to AmigaOS 4

While googling today I discovered a custom app today I never tried. Anyone use this?

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by Cobe

When you play your flink intro from CD do you drop dosxl option? cdxlspeed do you set at 150?

my flink intro was done with avi4hv and this is not compatible with cdxl, there is a special player available for this one. The result is for me better than cdxl but the cd32 cd-rom seems too slow. I tried long time ago SDBL but the result wasn't good enough (for me). If we could have something 300x200 + 8svx perhaps 10 pics/s and if it could run on 68000, it's better, and most important : easier to use with today pics format. Perhaps i'm a lame but i never find a way to do it easily, the only way i found is avi4hv but it didn't work on cd32 (cd-rom). There is a new version of avi4hv but i didn't have the time to test it yet, perhaps it works on 2x cd-rom now ?? I'll see.

[demolition]

A tool similar to apt-get could be very useful, linked up to Aminet. It should make it possible to search for, download and install packages. Obviously it will not be able to install everything fully, but it can at least download and extract the archive to a defined directory.

Or, it could use some other FTP as a source (which should be prepared with an index file). It could then get files from EAB's ftp or some other site. I have a lot of Amiga files on my NAS which would be useful to get access to. It could then automatically find, download and write an adf file to a floppy.

[Cobe]

Originally Posted by turrican3

the only way i found is avi4hv but it didn't work on cd32 (cd-rom). There is a new version of avi4hv but i didn't have the time to test it yet, perhaps it works on 2x cd-rom now ?? I'll see.

I heard of avi4hv, checked it before but didn't test it. Does it have any advantage over cdxl, does it have some compression? I guess if you make video small enough, it could be played from cd but I doubt it would be better from cdxl if it doesn't have some compression.