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






Amspirit, a new Amstrad CPC emulator by Dmanu78, an interesting genesis

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I saw this new windows emulator on theSystem.CFG months ago but I forgot to write about it... Dmanu78 did document all the genesis of his emulator, a very interesting reading in french that I invite you to read.

The thread on CPCWiki is here.





A new version of Martine by Impact is available (v0.35)

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Martine v0.35.0 is an utility written by the Impact group :

  • converting JPG and PNG images to Overscan screen or window for Amstrad CPC (and Plus series)
  • new tile map mode, which allow to analyze an image of a level game, and produce .imp and .til readable by tile tool from Impact

This version was released the 20th April 2022. It is available for Windows, MacOS, ARM64 and linux.




RASM v1.7 by Roudoudou, a multi platform assembler for Amstrad CPC

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The last version of RASM is v1.7 (11th April 2022).

Rasm is now available on Github (documentation included).

This multi platform assembler (linux, windows, but not only like MorphOS on Amiga) let you program for Amstrad CPC.




Swingin', an Amstrad CPC demo by Bug Powell and AST (Revision 2022)

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Swingin' is an Amstrad CPC demo by Bug Powell (code) and AST (graphics), musical player by Madram and music by Dark Angel (Atari ST conversion).

It got the 11th spot in the demo contest at the Revision 2022. You can see the demo on youtube.




PunyInform v3.6 by Fredrik Ramsberg and Johan Berntsson to write text adventure games

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PunyInform v3.6 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.