News about Amstrad CPC, PCW, Notepad NC100 NC150 NC200, PDA600 and also Amstrad PC






Amspirit v0.845b, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Dmanu78

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A new version of Amspirit, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Dmanu78 is available on the System.CFG forum for windows. There is a 32 and 64bit version. Reading all the thread is a good idea if you didnt read it already as it's a complete genesis of this emulator.

The thread on CPCWiki is here.




Dungeon of the Silver Star, an Amstrad CPC game in basic by VynZ-prog

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DUNGEON of the SILVER STAR par VynZ-prog is an amstrad CPC game written in pure basic (about 30 Kb) and which is a mix of reflexion and adventure in a non linear dungeon of 12 levels. Check also his other Amstrad CPC game Stone Slyng (addapted from Stone Sling on Videopac Odissey).

There are already two videos of the game, one by Xenomorph and the other by Saberman.








WIP Bubble Quest by Praline Software for Amstrad CPC+ and GX4000, gorgeous !

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Bubble Quest is a work in progress game for Amstrad CPC+ and GX4000. Barjack, Roudoudou, e-dredon and Toto are working on it. Last informations on CPCWiki are quite nice, see for your self the screenshots. The game will feature a multi-minute, fully animated intro. Beware the video is one year old.




WIP Sente Mini-Golf by Copper France for Amstrad CPC and CPC+

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Sente Mini-Gold is a work in progress game by Copper France for Amstrad CPC and CPC+. It's a conversion of a 1985 arcade game, with up to 4 players (1 at a time). The Plus version uses hardware sprites and the extended palette.




PunyInform v4.3 by Fredrik Ramsberg and Johan Berntsson to write text adventure games

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PunyInform v4.3 by Fredrik Ramsberg and Johan Berntsson is a library written in Inform 6 to create adventure game (pure text, no graphic support contrary to DAAD) using the Z-machine virtual machine which will run on 8bit computers (or more recent computers too). PunyInform has a parser, knowing of common verbs and a framework to write adventure games.

PunyInform is based on the Inform 6 library written by Graham Nelson. Its goal is to make easily adventure games in Inform 6, with a manual describing the differences between the official library and PunyInform..

Games using PunyInform can be compiled in z3, z5 and z8 format (z3 being the best format for 8bit computers, other formats have more features). Compared to the Inform 6 library, it means that there is no support for the Glulx virtual machine but z3 format is important as Inform 6 doesnt support it.

To compile games written with PunyInform, you should use the Inform 6 compiler maintained by David Kinder. Binaries are available on if-archive. PunyInform needs Inform v6.35 (or more).

They are tutorials to write adventure game with PunyInform (end of the page) and all the documentation including a 8 page cheat sheet (quick reference)..

To try your game after compilation, you can use WinFrotz by David Kinder, to create map easily you can use Trizbort.

And finally, to create an Amstrad CPC and PCW disk image, you will have to use the Puddle BuildTools.



Aljau, the Water Dam, a new adventure game for Amstrad CPC by Antero Martinez

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Aljau the Water Dam is a new graphical adventure game for Amstrad CPC by Antero Martinez in no less than three languages : spanish, french and english.

You have been working on the newly built Aljau dam for two weeks, an unexpected heavy rain has caused power cuts to the complex. The capacity of the reservoir is increasing alarmingly, you must manage to restore electricity to be able to open the 4 locks before it exceeds its maximum capacity, about 7000 hm3. The main objective is to relieve the dammed water, otherwise the dam will collapse causing a catastrophe.






Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium v1.4 by Longshot

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Longshot has released version 1.3 of the Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium (beware, the english version isn't definitive, only the french one is actually) which is a documentation about the CRTC 6845 (and some others circuits). Note that the CRTC is a generic component used in several computers including the IBM PC.

It is possible to check if an emulator is good with the SHAKER tests by Longshot. SHAKER is a program designed to run on CPC machines produced by AMSTRAD in the 80s-90s. The objective of this program is to carry out extensive tests on the video circuits of this machine. These video circuits are the GATE ARRAY and the CRTC 6845. AMSTRAD produced several series of GATE ARRAY and used CRTC models produced by different manufacturers (HITACHI, MOTOROLA, UMC, AMSTRAD). This has been causing compatibility problems on operations that exceed the functional specifications of these circuits. The identified CRTCs are numbered from 0 to 4.



Tenebra by Haplo for Amstrad CPC in December 2022

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Tenebrae by Haplo is a reflexion/puzzle game for Amstrad CPC. You are moving in a roguelike environment with an important twist : you can only do it a lighted zone... It's an interesting game, I recommand to try it. It exists already for ZX Spectrum, Commodore and PC. You can see two video of tests :