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News Headlines from other RISC OS Portals
Drobe
Wakefield 2008 show photos
Images taken from weekend's event
Wakefield 2008 show live news
Latest gossip from the hall floor
Animation and typing applications really released
Former Iota software taken over by R-Comp
- quickies
R-Comp sorry for being too busy for DialUp and DataPower updates
Andrew Rawnsley explains delays in development
ROL still planning Select for Iyonix in 2008
Subscribers told to expect "some" features this year
Accounts software CashBook updated
Version 1.10 also to be demonstrated at Wakefield 2008
Network login system ported to RISC OS
Graham Shaw releases Kerberos-like open source software
Image print tool updated
DrawPrint bug-fixed to version 1.12
IconBar
Building the Dream 2 - The RISC OS Sound System
A bit later than I was hoping, but nevertheless it's now time for Building the Dream 2.
Happy Birthday from Acorn Arcade!
Merry Christmas from The Icon Bar!
Well it's that time of year again. It hardly seems like a full year since we last wished all our readers a very Merry Christmas.
Review: Nokia N770 Internet Tablet
A guilty secret: limited though they were, I used to love working with early Palm and Psion PDAs. Neal Stephonson wrote in his novel Cryptonomicon...
Freeware instant messaging client released
Parmesan is a new client for the popular MSN Messenger network, developed by Christian Ludlam. Released as freeware, the software brings new features to instant messaging on RISC OS. Chief among these are display pictures and nudges.
RISC OS Open
Problem with some Wakefield CDs
It has come to our attention that the ISO file one one of the machines being used to burn our CDs at the Wakefield Show became corrupted at some point during the day.If you have any problems with a CD bought from us at Wakefield, please send us an email describing what your problems are, the names of the file(s) that are causing you trouble and your postal address.We will send out a replacement CD free of charge. Please accept our apologies on this matter.
Batch Four source code released

Wakefield, 26th April 2008

One year on from the first shared source code release, Castle Technology Ltd (Castle) and RISC OS Open Ltd (ROOL) were pleased to release Batch Four of the RISC OS source code on CD at the Wakefield RISC OS show. Batch 4 includes long-awaited low level components such as the RISC OS kernel, hardware abstraction layer and the Shared C Library. Batch 4 will be released on the RISC OS Open Limited web site soon.
Batch Three source code released

Cambridge, 22nd February 2008

Castle Technology Ltd (Castle) and RISC OS Open Ltd (ROOL) are pleased to announce the release of Batch Three of the RISC OS source code, following on from the first release in May and second release in October.
New tool to aid RISCOS Ltd and Castle RISC OS development
As a part of the joint co-operation between RISC OS Open and RISCOS Ltd, we are please to announce the availability of a tool which we hope will help to make life a little bit easier for developers. It is aimed at gathering some specific statistics from a wide range of RISC OS users in order for us to better identify where the main problem areas lie with respect to the differences between the RISCOS Ltd RISC OS branch and the Castle Technology RISC OS branch.
ROOL wins Drobe Award
The guys at RISC OS Open are very humble and happy to find that we have received a coverted Drobe award (our second one). This year’s award is in the category of “Best show of initiative”.It’s been hard work for us all to find any time over the Christmas period but we’re all looking forward to getting started on the next batch of RISC OS sources to release sometime soon.The full awards news article can be found on the Drobe.web site.
MyRISCOS
Select4i4 (RISC OS 6.10) to be released at Wakefield
In a press release earlier today, RISCOS Ltd have today announced that the very latest version of RISC OS will be launched at this Saturday's Wakefield show. Full press release follows:
Wakefield Show Theatre
The Wakefield Show next Weekend (Saturday, 26th April) has the welcome return by popular demand of the show theatre, this will be on the ground floor of the Cedar Court Hotel in the Garden Suite.
Wakefield Charity Stall
Once again WROCC will be supporting the Wakefield Hospice by running a charity stall at this years show next weekend on Saturday 26th April.
Wakefield Show reminder
Chris Hughes, Show organiser has sent us the following press release about the Wakefield show...
Professor Steve Furber at RONWUG May 21st 2008
Professor Steve Furber, one of the pricipal designers of the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor, as used in native RISC OS kit, will be visiting the RISC OS North West User Group on Wednesday 21st May 2008 and giving a talk about that development.
Acorn Gamez
Hive and Popcorn
Rik Griffin has updated his space-invaders games Hive to the 32-Bit platform and has updated his game authoring library, Popcorn. His announcement explains both releases:

"
I'm please to announce new release of a RISC OS game, and a new version of
the game development library, Popcorn.
The game is Hive - which is actually an enhanced version of the original,
now with 32 bit graphics and hardware acceleration on the Iyonix platform.
Not only is Hive a full game in its own right, as source code is provided,
it also serves as a detailed demonstration of how to use the Popcorn
library.
Hive can be downloaded from http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rik.griffin/
(Hive requires a couple of third party modules, see notes at the bottom of
this post).
Popcorn is a game development library to aid in writing RISC OS games in C
(or other APCS compatible languages). It provides several useful features
including:
- A resource manager, for easy loading of data (graphics, sounds etc).
- A fast sprite plotter, for 8 or 32 bpp screen modes, with clipping,
  and alpha blending.
- Table based handling of game objects, with automatic collision detection,
  and "callbacks" to the application for objects that need attention.
- Hardware independent high resolution timer.
- Hardware acceleration on the Iyonix platform.
- Various other functions, like key handling and logging.
Full source code is provided. Also there's a tutorial explaining how to
write a very simple game ("Pong"). There's a StrongHelp format manual too,
which supports keyword lookup.
Popcorn is available from http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rik.griffin/
Popcorn and Hive were originally written by Matthew Bloch and described in
a series of articles in Acorn User several years ago.
Both Hive and Popcorn are still "works in progress", if you have any
problems or comments please contact me. I'd suggest followups to this post
concerning development go to csa.programmer and those concerning the game
itself go to csa.games.
If anyone actually wants to write a game using Popcorn, please get in touch
via email or newsgroups if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy
to offer help and advice.
Notes - modules required:
Hive needs the THSound module to play sounds. This is available from
  http://www.snowstone.org.uk/riscos/realh/index.html
However I just discovered that the module on that page is not 32 bit
compatible. The source code is there so you can recomplile it if you have
the facilities. I've contacted the owner of that page and hopefully a 32
bit binary will be available soon.
Hive also needs the HAL26 module to run on 26 bit hardware (ie RiscPCs,
A7000s). HAL26 is available from
  http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~theom/riscos/othersoft.html
Popcorn also uses several modules for hardware acceleration on the Iyonix
platform, these are "AppAcc" and "IntelDMA", these modules are bundled with
Hive as their licences allow this. Popcorn also uses the "HALTimer" module
which too is bundled with Hive. "


Starfighter 3000: Next Generation
An updated version of the 1994 game Starfighter 3000 has been released on the RISCWorld magazine CD-ROM under the name Starfighter 3000: Next Generation.

What's new?
SF:NG has new graphics, new music, new textures and lots more! Starfighter, which is arguably the best game on the RISC OS Operating System is now truly in the 21st Century.

Originally developed in 1994, Star Fighter 3000 was created by Fednet Software, which also produced other Acorn gaming greats including Stunt Racer 2000 and Chocks Away. Like Stunt Racer 2000, SF3K pits players against each other in a fierce, futuristic and televised world controlled by the media. In its latest form, dubbed Star Fighter 3000: The Next Generation, the game is 450MB in size.

It's understood efforts to tidy up the game have been on-going for the past five years, and Chris Bazley has been behind various updates and enhancements. The new title screen was drawn using Composition and Top Model, we're informed.

• The sparkling new version of Star Fighter 3000 is bundled with the latest issue of RISCWorld, a bi-monthly subscription magazine that comes on a CD, along with an article on how it all came together. See the link below for more details and prices. The magazine is published by APDL, which also sells copies of SF3K under the iSV brand.

Starfighter 3000: Next Generation:

[image][image][image][image][image][image]

Original Starfighter 3000:

[image]
[image]
Pinball is back...
...and this time, it's 32-bit!

Alan Buckley has converted the 90's DOS pinball game called PC Spiel Pinball to the RISC OS platform in the form of PC Play Pinball 1.0. This game may not be Gottleb Classics but the 2D flat graphics and dodgy physics are still highly addictive!

Alan Buckley would like to thank Ansgar Scherp and Joachim Gelhaus, the original authors of the Turbo Pascal game which is now available with non-restrictive copyright on the source code. This version is coded in the C programming language with the help of the ever faithfull SDL library.

System Requirements

The Shared Unix Library available from here. This is provided in an archive which contains a !System application which needs to be merged with your !System.

202Mhz computer running RISC OS 4 or higher. (32-bit compatible)


Other downloads


So, what are you waiting for? Grab your free copy from the RISC OS PC Play Pinball website now!
Follow the development of a game!
Thanks to Gareth Lock you can follow the development of a small Space Invaders game written in BBC BASIC on his website, perfect for beginners wanting to start coding games! Follow the game's development here![image]
Christmas Delights!
Game updates and a new online software and games directory!

Before I get to the news I wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year to everyone in the RISC OS community and beyond!


Now for the news:

Alan Buckley has launched a new RISC OS friendly website that automatically shows the latest versions of several RISC OS ports of programs and games. The Autobuilder takes the source code from open source packages originally written for Unix-like platforms, and compiles them into RISC OS applications, ready for download by punters.

Thanks to the Autobuilder, a new version of a maths game for youngsters TuxMath can be downloaded for free from the webiste along with new versions of the MS-DOS emulator for the Iyonix, DOSBox and Battle for Wesnoth, a fantastic turn-based fantasy game very much like Heroes of Might and Magic 2.
The Autobuilder also produces libraries including a new version of the libSDL package for all the coders out there.

[image]

Got something games related to discuss? Talk about it with the Acorn Gamez community on our forum!

Acorn Gamez are looking for contributers! If you have any news, reviews or anything related to RISC OS games then don't be afraid to contact us!
And maybe of interest....
The Register
Apple to issue refunds for sparky, prematurely dying products

Canadian iPods and US power adapters get what's coming

Apple has agreed to give US and Canadian customers two separate settlement offers to make charges of faulty and misrepresented products go away.…
Microsoft appeals record European Commission fine

Once more unto the bench

Microsoft is appealing a record European Commission fine for not complying with a milestone European Commission anti-trust ruling.…
Dell squeezes cloud into a shipping container

Also: Meet a 8 chip, 2U, 12 drive search darling

Exclusive Sun Microsystems endured a lot of ribbing when it first popped out a data center in a shipping container. Now, however, it looks like all the majors are heading in that direction, including Dell, which The Register has learned has a containerized data center in development.…
Dell promises replacement keyboards for wonky laptops

Sorry for shaifting your PC

Dell has apologised to customers after shipping a batch of its Vostro laptops with the wrong keyboard layout.…
Live Mesh: Hailstorm take 2?

Give it a fair crack

Keep an open mind, says Spolsky, in a rant about both unwanted mega-architectures, and the way big companies snaffle up all the best coders.…
Gizmodo Latest Gadgets
RevolutionEyes Your Summer
Summer appears to be upon us, so it's time to hit the high street to try and buy a pair of sunglasses that don't make you look like a reject from a Wacaday audition. A pair of Oakley's might be nice, and if you've found it all but impossible to combine gadgets with style...
Toshiba Mounts Late Charge In Fuel Cell Production
If you've been keeping an eye on the development of fuel cells (who hasn't) you might remember Toshiba's announcement back in 2005 of commercial availability by 2007. Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that convert chemical energy from substances such as methanol into electrical energy....
Facebook To Protect The Kiddies
Facebook has agreed to add up to 40 new safeguards to protect children using its site from bullies and 'sexual predators'. The news, coming out of the US, is in response to the growing unease that social networking sites are not doing enough to ensure the safety of kids using the service. Just a...
Gear4 Offers iPod Speaker With A Twist
Gear4, wanton producer of accessories and all things iPod, today launched the DUO, a 2.1 home stereo system with a detachable portable speaker. Phew - we're glad there's something unique about it since iPod speakers are barely worth announcing these days there's so many of them....
Shhh….Quieter Xbox 360 Coming In August
As you may well know, the Xbox 360 is not a discreet console. If it was human, it'd be Janet Street Porter going at it hammer and tongs with Gordon Ramsay in the corner of your room. I know, because I have all the consoles side by side and the 360 shouts down the...
Stuff.tv Latest Gadgets
Sony Ericsson's "Paris" slider phone pics
Want a sneak peek at the "Paris" phone? Bien sûr you do
New Stuff.tv vidcast - the viewers take over
The viewers take us on at our own game as we round up some of our favourite contenders in the Show Us Your Stuff competition
Virgin to regain Sky shows?
Could Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch be about to kiss and make up?
Gadget of the Day: R/C Drinks Cooler
Sun making you feel lazy? Can't even be bothered to go to the fridge for a beer? You need the slacker's best friend - a remote control beer cooler
Takeaway web from BT Total Broadband Anywhere
Get speedy interweb at home and away with BT's Total Broadband Anywhere. You never need miss a Facebook poke again
(external news feeds last updated at 11:01pm and took 6 seconds)

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