Apart from the new package artwork (which is being worked on), the only thing that is holding up the release of SkillGrid v1.1 is the new Amiga CD³² NVRAM custom routines: they work under WinUAE, but they don't on all the real machines out there. Or better, that was what used to happen in the past: now I have rewritten the routines once again, and I have no idea of what happens on real machines. Therefore, I have prepared a proper test suite to have the routines tested... by anyone who feels like giving it a go on a real Amiga CD³² ;) Not having one of those machines, the fact that they mount different EEPROMs and the lack of official documentation makes developing this stuff quite difficult. Any feedback will be much appreciated.

Click here to download the suite.
This short video shows what the suite does (the operations will be surely slower on real machines).

While working on the SkillGrid update, backporting to it all the improvements I recently made to my other projects, I realized that those improvements came with a couple of new bugs. THE CURE was affected by them, so here's a new bugfixed version.

https://www.retream.com/THE_CURE

v1.3 (19.08.2021)
* Fixed recently-introduced memory leak in startup code.
* Replaced unreliable CIA-access-based delay code at startup with machine-agnostic code.
* Made a couple of minor internal changes.

@328gts

You're welcome, my friend!


@all

While working on the SkillGrid update, backporting to it all the improvements I recently made to my other projects, I realized that those improvements came with a couple of new bugs. MeMO was affected by them, so here's a new bugfixed version.

https://www.retream.com/MeMO

v3.16 (19.08.2021)
* Built against latest custom framework (which, in the startup code, fixes a recently-introduced memory leak and replaces a piece of unreliable CIA-access-based delay code with machine-agnostic code).

Let there be sounds!

One more update, and this one brings sound effects back! I had removed - or better, omitted - them back in 2003, when I heavily reworked MeMO v1. These days I have rewritten the sound samples routines of my little framework precisely to re-add sound effects to MeMO: now, if you get tired of music, you have an alternative ;)
Additionally, a few other little improvements have been made.

https://www.retream.com/MeMO

v3.15 (14.08.2021)
* Added sound effects.
* Improved further outer antialiasing of characters on cards.
* Made a few little optimizations.
* Built against latest custom framework (which makes startup and cleanup more robust and has a bugfix).
* Changed audio mode toggle key from [M] to [A].
* Updated manual.

Note: I could not test this version on my Amiga 1200 because the monitor died. Last time I had tried it was yesterday, but this morning I made some more changes.

Just released a slightly revised version.

v1.2 (04.08.2021)
* Made startup and cleanup code more robust.
* Made a few tiny optimizations.

https://www.retream.com/THE_CURE

MeMO gets yet another update - and a rather meaty one!
Prominent changes (for more details, check out the changelog below):
* made suitable for Amiga CD³²;
* added numbers to cards;
* improved graphics and audio.

As usual, you can download it for free from https://www.retream.com/MeMO

NEW GAMEPLAY VIDEO

v3.14 (01.08.2021)
* Adapted to Amiga CD³²: added saving through nonvolatile.library when writing to disk fails; allowed pausing, aborting and name entering by means of the joypad; added CD ISO image to distro packages.
* Reworked controls (see manual).
* Added controls information to pause screen.
* Added cards numbers to the back of face down cards (which helps with matching cards).
* Straightened cards corners, to match better the overall sharp look of graphics.
* Fixed bug that caused the EXTRA JOYSTICK option to be highlighted shortly after returning from the "about" screen.
* Made several optimizations.
* Adapted to and built against latest custom framework (which makes startup and cleanup more robust and has a couple of bugfixes).
* Fixed/improved/added outer antialiasing of graphics on all cards (trying to stay faithful to the original design).
* Touched up a few cards.
* Reduced and partly eliminated bass notes clicking.
* Made various other minor changes.
* Improved manual.

Zampo is now free to turbofart around and eat away!

QUOD INIT EXIT IIm has been released 5 years ago for a minimum price of $1.99 (but right after the release, pirate versions started spreading). For a short while, I continued on developing its bigger brother, QIE IIo, but then development came to a halt because I focused on MAH (again for the Commodore 64), Blastaway (for PC) and on a number of Amiga projects (all available from the RETREAM page). Less than 1.5 years ago, I returned briefly to QIE IIo, improved/expanded it a little bit and made a preview available to the owners of QIE IIm. However, I feel guilty for having kept the project frozen for so long and because I'm not going to resume it in the foreseable future due to the fact that I'm busy with Amiga games (but this doesn't mean that I've given up: I'm absolutely determined to finish the game).
A couple of days ago, somehow the idea of making QIE IIm available for free popped into my head: I felt immediately relieved at the thought alone, and it took me a while to figure out why: I guess that it's because doing so soothes the feeling of guilt towards the Commodore 64 community.

In short: if you don't have it already, go get QIE IIm it - it's free! And, by the way, don't forget to download also the preview of QIE IIo: among other things, it includes also the level of QIE IIm, but in a bigger and richer form!

https://www.retream.com/QUOD_INIT_EXIT_IIm

As a closing note, I'd like to thank from the bottom of my heart all those who purchased QIE IIm, especially those who added a tip (some of which have been enourmously generous)!

Also Follix received its little maintenance release

v1.1 (18.07.2021)
* Fixed writes to POTGO: OUTLX and DATLX were set to 1; POTGO is now managed properly by means of potgo.resource.
* Fixed graphical glitches in information screens on unexpanded machines.
* Added controls information to pause screen.
* Replaced raster beam Y reading procedure with faster and interrupt-proof machine code routine.
* Made a tiny optimization.
* Improved manual.

https://www.retream.com/Follix

Just released a new version of ArtPazz - it's "just" a minor maintenance release, but, still, go grab it from https://www.retream.com/ArtPazz ;)

v1.2 (18.07.2021)
* Fixed writes to POTGO: OUTLX and DATLX were set instead of OUTLY and DATLY; POTGO is now managed properly by means of potgo.resource.
* Fixed bug that could cause a graphical glitch in the menus.
* Made a tiny optimization.
* Made minor changes to the directories/files tree.
* Improved manual.

Just released an update aimed at improving the terminology and the documentation.

v1.97 & v2.1 (16.7.2021)
* Renamed "palette segments" as "segments".
* Renamed: ALS_COPY_PALETTE_RANGE[] as ALS_COPY_SEGMENT_FROM_PALETTE_RANGE[]; ALS_EXTRACT_PALETTE_SEGMENT[] as ALS_CREATE_SEGMENT_FROM_PALETTE_RANGE[]; ALS_SET_DISPLAY_COLORS_RANGE_FROM_PALETTE_SEGMENT as ALS_SET_DISPLAY_COLORS_RANGE_FROM_SEGMENT[].
* Updated/revised in-code documentation.
* Updated/revised/fixed manual.

https://www.retream.com/ALS

Follix is out!
Free download: https://www.retream.com/Follix / https://retream.itch.io/follix

And, since I didn't tell it yet, here's the full backstory...

I was 16 when I bought a stock Amiga 1200, in the fall of 1993, finally making the jump from my beloved Commodore 64. Back then, I was isolated in a little town, knew nobody who was into software development, owned no programming books and had no software, apart from a bunch of floppies containing 3 pirated games I got as a bonus from the shop I had bought the Amiga from. However, having heard I was interested in programming, some friends put me in touch with an older guy who had an Amiga 4000 loaded with several original productivity programs - among which AMOS Professional - and sitting on a desk in his shop, doing nothing. The guy (who eventually became a close friend) allowed me to go to his shop and use his Amiga at will (years later, he even let me take it with me to another town!) and provided me with a copy of AMOS (registered in his name).
I started learning AMOS and improving the little programming skills I had built with the Commodore 64 User Manual and some tapes that taught BASIC. I did not consider another language because I was totally unaware of other options and, anyway, AMOS felt like a natural step from Commodore 64's BASIC and gave me the feeling that I could finally satisfy my desire of making a whole, proper game.
Still, my skills and knowledge were limited, my unexpanded Amiga (which was the computer I did most of my programming on anyway) was not exactly a workstation and AMOS had its limits, so most of my ideas were doomed to remain just that - ideas. Yet, I was quite interested in puzzle games, which often have little hardware demands. And so the first game I ever created ended up being a puzzler. It was called Follia NBA¹, and the year was 1994.
The concept was stol... erm... heavily inspired by Thalion's Atomix², which I had seen on an MS-DOS computer of one of the aforementioned friends. It was a bit different from Follix: the tiles of a level were the pieces of a picture depicting the logo of an NBA team³; as a consequence, there was only one correct place for each tile; the player had to guess the area where the reconstucted picture fitted; for every 2 minutes left, the player was awared a bonus that, at his/her command, would automagically put a tile in the correct place.
That first version was really bad: some design choices were completely wrong; most of the graphics were ugly; the code was messy, inefficient and, in places, uselessly complicated; the sound effects were taken from various tracker modules. In all, it mirrored perfectly the fact that the development had been a learning process. Though, it did work (I am somewhat amazed by how the patches to the workarounds to the fixes to the bugs produced, in the end, the correct result); moreover, the puzzles were actually good and the game was indeed fun.
In those days, I could not imagine I was sowing a seed. Through the years, I reworked/remade the game 4 times (plus an additional attempt that brought a prototype to AmigaOS 4 and Windows, as a byproduct of an iOS version which somebody else was supposed to take care of), with Follix being the result of the last effort. The motivation behind it was not only to make the game better, but also to make it technically special through ALS (enhancing Follia NBA using CSS, the ALS predecessor, is something I had been wanting to do for ages), to put ALS to good use and to get rid of the basketball theme (which, at some point, no longer felt appropriate to me and certainly is not everybody's cup of tea). The code and the assets of Follix have been created from scratch, but the puzzles are still the original ones (except for Follix' first 4, which are new and purpose to introduce the player to the mechanics gently, and Follia NBA's last 2, which have been excluded because of their sheer difficulty).

¹ "Follia" is Italian for "madness".

² Follix = Follia NBA + Atomix

³ Such an odd choice is due to the fact that at that time I was a lot into (and played) basketball.
By the way, those logos resulted surprisingly good, despite:
· the wrong technical choices made at the beginning (i.e. HIRES resolution and very saturated palette of just 15 colors - color 0 was not usable for graphics as it was reserved for a background rainbow effect);
· those were my first real pixelling experiences;
· since I had no better tool, I was (painstakingly) pixelling the logos (some of which were downright huge), eyeballing them from a magazine, with the AMOS Object Editor, which was not suited at all for such a proposition.

I had already finalized the distro files, but then an old idea returned to my mind: what if, when the menu screen appears, the logo also moved (while fading in and alpha-cycling)? I couldn't resist...
You can see this final change in this new speedrun video.

The game now has also its own itch.io page and is going to be released tomorrow, right after AmigaBill showed it on his live stream (Sunday July 11th, 2 pm EDT / 6 pm UTC / 7 pm BST / 8 pm CEST)!

Working on Follix inspired me some changes also for its brother ArtPazz. While waiting for Follix to be released, enjoy this updated version of ArtPazz!

v1.1 (09.07.2021)
· Changed keyboard handling so that the system keyboard speed is not altered after quitting the game.
· Improved font handling.
· Recompiled against ALS v2.0.
· Touched up music (in particular, removed the A#3 and B3 notes crackling, and lots of pops).
· Improved icons.
· Revised manual.

Today I played all the levels again for the 1000th time. At the same time, I made some adjustments, and (I think) I have now the final version ready for release. Here's another gameplay video - I know, it shows the same levels again, but you don't want more levels to be spoiled, right?

PREVIEW #6

If all goes well, the game will be released this weekend...

v1.96 and v2.0 released

As announced recently, here is ALS v2, whose main difference with the previous versions is that it's for AGA only and, therefore, can benefit from faster and smaller code (the compiled binary is about 3.5 kB smaller).
Besides the work done for the AGA-only transition, there are also a few more improvements, many of which made it also to a new v1 library (v1 is supposed to be end-of-line, but still I couldn't resist fixing/improving what surfaced along way). The changelogs below detail the changes.

https://www.retream.com/ALS

v2.0 (6.7.2021)
* Removed useless code from ALS_COPY_PALETTE_SEGMENT[].
* Removed OCS/ECS code.
* Removed OCS/ECS palettes support.
* Removed ALS_CHIPSETID, ALS_MAXLAYERCOLORSNUMBER, ALS_MAXPLANESNUMBER, ALS_PALETTECOLORSNUMBER, ALS_ADDRESSABLECOLORSNUMBER.
* Optimized code for AGA.
* Optimized ALS_SET_DISPLAY_COLORS_FROM_PALETTE[], ALS_SET_DISPLAY_COLORS_RANGE_FROM_PALETTE[] and ALS_SET_DISPLAY_COLORS_RANGE_FROM_PALETTE_SEGMENT[] a lot.
* Added ALS_BUILD_DISPLAY_COPPERLIST_HEAD[] and ALS_BUILD_DISPLAY_COPPERLIST_TAIL[].
* Made various other improvements.
* Revised/extended manual.

v1.96 (6.7.2021)
* Removed useless code from ALS_COPY_PALETTE_SEGMENT[].
* Optimized ALS_SET_DISPLAY_COLORS_FROM_PALETTE[] a little bit.
* Added ALS_BUILD_DISPLAY_COPPERLIST_HEAD[] and ALS_BUILD_DISPLAY_COPPERLIST_TAIL[].
* Made various other improvements.
* Revised/extended manual.

I have tested both version extensively through their test/demo programs and by means of ArtPazz and Follix. All tests have been done on a real Amiga 1200 (with and without accelerator board) and in UAE, and ran both from interpreter and as compiled programs. No issues were found, so it looks like the massive work didn't break anything.

@328gts

My pleasure :)


@all

Just released another update.

v1.95 (4.7.2021)
* Optimized ALS_SET_DISPLAY_COLORS_RANGE_FROM_PALETTE[] and ALS_SET_DISPLAY_COLORS_RANGE_FROM_PALETTE_RANGE[] a little bit.
* Removed wrong comment from ALS_SET_DISPLAY_COLORS_RANGE_FROM_PALETTE[].

https://www.retream.com/ALS

This is the last version that supports also OCS and ECS. ALS v2 will be AGA-only. The reason is that supporting all the chipset requires lots of additional code and also slows down execution in many places, while functionality is still very limited on OCS and ECS due to the fact that they offer only 6 bitplanes and 32 color registers. ALS is much more useful on AGA, so it makes sense to have a leaner and faster version for that chipset.

Also, I decided to postpone the release of Follix to after ALS v2 is done, so that the game can benefit from it.

The development of Follix is complete, so now I'm getting ready to release the game.
Here's a new video: PREVIEW #5

Release date: soon!
Price: free!

Working on the icons of Follix (to be released soon), convinced me to add icons also for the floppy disk and the manual of MeMO. This triggered yet another update...

v3.13 (26.06.2021)
* Fixed a (seemingly innocuous) bug (an OR instruction in place of a MOVE instruction) in card matching code.
* Improved card matching policy by considering it a mistake also when the second card flipped had already been flipped before, even if the first card has been flipped just once and/or its twin card has not been flipped yet.
* Made a couple of tiny optimizations.
* Changed design of 'M' and 'N' letters (they were basically lowercase, which was inconsistent, as the only lowercase letter was supposed to be the 'e' in "MeMO").
* Changed alignment of logo in menu screen by 1 pixel right/down.
* Adapted to and recompiled against further improved custom framework.
* Reworked game icon.
* Added floppy disk and manual icons.
* Improved/extended manual.

https://www.retream.com/MeMO

Working on Follix (which uses ALS) inspired a few improvements.

v1.94 (06.06.2021)
* Added ALS_CHECK_LAYER_INDEX[].
* Added ALS_COPY_PALETTE_SEGMENT[].
* Added ALS_CREATE_LAYER_AS_CLONE[].
* Added ALS_SET_LAYER_A_AND_COLORS_FROM LAYER[].
* Made check on layer index in ALS_DESTROY_LAYER[] and ALS_MAKE_LAYER_DESCRIPTOR[] more robust.
* Removed check on layer index from ALS_GET_LAYER_DEPTH[].
* Simplified ALS_OPEN_FILE[].
* Updated manual.

https://www.retream.com/ALS

My pleasure!