Atari Scene Newsround!

As we were leaning to some extent on the past glories of the Maggie concept, (leaning rather heavily, as it turns out), I felt the time was also right for a revival of a Maggie staple, namely the 'Scene News' section, with a round-up of the many diverse happenings and rumours that attach themselves to the Atari scene.

Amazingly, in this year of 2012, there is still a creditable level of activity taking place, and some exciting rumours too. There is even a little bit of stuff that I've been told to keep quiet about, so I can only provide vague but tantalising clues about it.

So as 2012 draws to a close, it's time to write down some newsy words one more time. - CiH - November/December 2012.

Falcon still beating its wings at twenty!

It's the 20th anniversary of the Atari Falcon, Has it really been all that long since 1992? Some people aren't just content to let this milestone pass passively by. Some people may be doing things to commemorate this suitably. More of which is discussed below.

Not so silly and rather adventurous!

The follow-up to the astoundingly successful Sillyventure 2011 party is taking place at the same location this year. Sillyventure 2012 will have probably finished by the time these words are in sight of the reading public.

SillyVenture 2k12 takes place on the 7th to the 9th December 2012, at the same location as last year, the primary school no. 65 on Sluza Street 6 in Gdansk, Poland. Have you booked yet? I certainly have! The half-sized hard classroom chairs in the school gym are calling, calling me!

News, comments and rumours of several new productions have been linked to this party, and here is what I've been able to dig up so far.

I've heard from a hairy Finnish person Visy. He is going to be at SV2k12 and is hard at work with ilmarque and oasiz on a big VCS 2600 demo for the comp's there.

We are expecting a follow-up to last year's sublime 'StreetArt' high colour demo for the ST. BlaBla has been working on improvements to his routines and it is suggested this year's demo could be full screen and Atari STE enhanced (or exclusively for STE?)

Even the very public arena that is Facebook is not safe from letting slip new demo rumours. LSL of Checkpoint showed off some code on his Facebook page which was described as part of an SV2012 exclusive!

It is unlikely that this is the only Checkpoint release, as the revived for 2012 Mr Coke will almost certainly have something for this party too! Probably in 4k!

Whilst still on the subject of giving the game away on Facebook, Nils Feske, aka '505' has publicly appealed for a graphician to assist with an Atari production for Sillyventure! This is almost certainly for an Atari Falcon demo as truecolour support has been mentioned. (He has since managed to find someone.) It is not yet clear if this is for a Checkpoint release, or via the old 'Escape' crew name?

In conversation with different people, Just about ALL classes of Atari hardware are expected to be supported with entries at the Sillyventure 2012, even an Atari TT demo has been mentioned!

Ex-Pixel Twin back in a most singular fashion!

The most welcome surprise revival for 2012 has been the reappearance of ace coder and all-round cool guy, Doug Little. He is very well and enjoying family life, along with a lot of Atarians of that generational cohort. He is finding time to reawaken some old suspended projects, and maybe look at a few new ones too?

I can publicly disclose that major new work is being carried out on the Photochrome 'Graphic card emulator' (ST Format description) which has been left in suspended animation since the early nineties. Currently at version 4, a version 5 with a lot of 'under the hood' improvements for processing colour enhanced pictures for a stock ST is under heavy development.

In addition, he is also resurrecting a playable demo of the Titan Designs /Black Scorpion Jaguar game 'Livewire' for the E-Jagfest later in November.

There is something else he is working on in relation to the STE series, but this is still at a promising early proof of concept stage and he has asked me to be very 'crypto' about this for now.

Almost incidentally, he has now obtained a CT60 card, which could be used for advanced 3D and other areas of interest, such as realtime rendering which he is interested in. He has mentioned making his old software work on this system, and he is interested in creating a demo, among other things.

He was Avena a good time before!

Whilst we are on the subject of welcome returns from old time scene people. We give a loud cheer to the return of 'Mr Coke', formerly of Avena, now of Checkpoint, who has returned to Atari activity in a most convincing fashion. He released 4ktro's for the ST at the Nordlicht 2012 and Outline 2012 parties, and almost certainly has more to come!

Look out for something at a demo party in Poland, right now!

Eeeh ba Gum! Ejagfest is not in Yorkshire, lad!

Described by our North of England correspondent as the Atari Jaguar Europe Festival or "Ejagfest 2012 - lots of new stuff to see, play and own :-)" This will take place on the 24th November 2012 at Dulsburg, Germany. This caters for all Atari hardware, but primarily the consoles and the Jaguar Console in particular.

Attractions include the new MD Games Jaguar game 'Impulse X', the latest version of "Rebooteroids', the Jaguar conversion of the ST 'Star Raiders', a mystery game from Groovybee 'exclusive to Ejagfest', the Kobayashi Maru Final CD and much more! Mr Coke will also be attending to represent the Atari computer/demo scene side of things.

Orion not feeling Nebular!

Orion has had a constructively busy year. His major release for 2012, was the beautifully crafted graphical adventure game, 'Elansar'. This was initially released on the Atari Falcon and the Firebee. The classic point and click interface has been combined with a beautiful game world more than a little bit reminiscent of the classic oldie 'Myst'. This is available on CD-ROM and marks a successful venture as a semi-commercial release. This has now received a review in this issue of Mag!

Other versions for other more mainstream hardware have also been released. A Jaguar version is also expected.

He is down to attend the Sillyventure 2012 party, and hopefully a new STE demo will be coming with him! A preview of an Atari Jaguar cartridge version of the Elansar game will definitely be shown there!

GroovyBee buzzes around the galaxy!

A bored Atari 7800 botherer finds himself porting the Atari ST game Star Raiders to the Atari Jaguar! There is another 'mystery game' by him waiting for Ejagfest to be released. Meanwhile, over on the Reboot site, Cyrano Jones writes a very nice article how to do convert ST stuff to the Jaguar. At some stage, according to my imperfect memory. an example game of ST Bubble Bobble was used?!

The head reporter for this news column also had the pleasure of playing the Chuckie Egg tribute, 'Duckie Egg', coded for the Jaguar, at the Play Expo 2012 in Manchester. All new graphics as well as a retro mode, what more can you say?

La Tortue slowly makes his way back to the Atariscene!

La Tortue of the French grow 'Punkfloyd', also going under the Facebook handle of 'Patpatmininni' announced his intention to return to the Atari demo scene with a new production for next year. He was interested 'back in the day' but did not quite spark enough then. However, in the last two years, he has been active with Punkfloyd, who have released some new demos, on the PC Engine! Let's hope his enthusiasm and expertise translates to something really nice for the Atari.

Psycho Hacking Force in lyrical foursome!

Grazey of the PHF is proud to present the latest update to the SNDH archive, version 4.0 to be precise. It features a brand new format, a number of 'Quartet' digi-tunes added to the archive. There is also optimised replay code built in, that uses the superior sound hardware for the STE and even a 50 KHz replay specially for the Falcon 030!

If that was not enough, he co-wrote and released a converter for Quartet tunes with gwEm as well. Excuse me, I'm off to listen to the Roggie tunes from the Inner Circle Decade Demo!

We're turning Japanese, we're turning Sharp X68000, I really think so!

From a completely unexpected direction. The art of program porting from 'foreign' systems takes a new twist. Anima has managed proof of concept ports of at least two Sharp X68000 games to the Falcon! We have seen both 'Pacmania' and the never seen before on Atari 'Galaga 88' running on the Falcon! (With some minor things missing currently.) Both ports look nearasdammit arcade quality.

There is some slowdown on a base Falcon 030, but optimisation work is underway to make them decently playable. Also owners of bus-clocking type accelerators will definitely benefit from having these. (This includes CT2 without fastRAM, I tested the Pacmania preview with NO slowdown at all on there!) Anima is looking for suggestions for other games to port. He may even be looking at other 68000-based systems and the name 'Sega' has been muttered.

Pacmania STE a go-go, Zamuel doesn't need a manual!

Another ongoing project to improve existing games for enhanced Atari hardware is progressing nicely. The existing Atari ST version of 'Pacmania' is being improved for the STE hardware by Zamuel in a number of areas. Hardware scrolling has been added and the screen is displaying 'borderless' for top and bottom parts. This gives a more arcade-like experience as well as a vastly expanded playing window. Currently, the graphics are under consideration for reworking.

Beetle-Juices up a new planet!

Fellow high end Atari enthusiast, Beetle, has been looking afresh at the vexed issue of the 'Planet Hively' multi format music disk. This SDL port has managed to make its way to an unprecedented number of platforms. One of these includes Atari Mint. The Atari Mint version could be charitably described as 'untested' previously as it was not completely working.

However, with the aid of a new SDL version, Beetle has managed to get this demo to work fully under Atari Mint. It needs a fast machine, and even then, plods along fairly sedately. But it does also display straight to a CTPCI screen, which no other demos currently do. The music, the important part, plays perfectly, which suggests the Hively Tracker could be ported to the Falcon without too much fuss.

Bod is wrapping a deluxe prezzie for Xmas!

Another ongoing game project, 'R-Type Deluxe' being re-made for the Atari STE, is getting closer to completion. Bod of Stax is getting a beta released for Xmas. This is all ready to go, he's just holding back to be seasonally adjusted!

Phenix Power rises up!

There have been rumours for a while of a new version of the CT60 board. Rodolphe Czuba proposing an integrated CT6xx with the CTPCI on a single board.

In the last few days, the story has now exploded with three proposals, The one which appears to be definitely going ahead is called the 'CTX60'. This is the integrated CT60 and CTPCI, with some nice extras, such as USB and Ethernet chips built in too. There is a list of potential customers, with at least 25 people who are ready to order this.

Potentially following on from that is the 'PX60' which is a self-sustaining system not needing an ageing Falcon 030 host. The work being done for the CTX60 is considered to be a necessary preliminary, if the PX60 concept is ever to be produced.

Finally, Rodolphe is even considering interfacing the CTX60 to the Mega ST series expansion port. If Didier Mequignon can be talked into patching for TOS 2.06!

Jookie too busy "liking" things to write code now?

A screenshot of that most unlikely of combinations has appeared. Jookie is back with a Facebook client for the Atari ST! This may well have been written as a joke in his spare time, but it can display actual Facebook pages, offline currently, and does a reasonable job of converting them down to the ST's graphical limitations. The implication is, that adding network or online support is the only thing left to do.

Now is this just a joke or does it get a life of its own?

A final snippet?

Don't want to speculate too much, but thought this might be worth mentioning.

Things are currently quiet in Sweden, certain people are not "dead" but are "resting" at the minute. It has been mentioned though that a light might be illuminating the high end Falcon demo world at some point, and it is very bright indeed!

Still, as and when, no pressure from our side :-)

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Okay, this has been a fun-packed and exciting Scene News. Certainly proof that the Atari scene is NOT dead and there is plenty happening.

If you feel you really have something you want to contribute, feel free to jump right in!

CiH, for Mag! - Nov/Dec 2012,,

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