Top News im August 2015

More News im August 2015

Tiniconv.ldg (22.08.2015 - 10:25 Uhr)

Pierre Tonthat has ported Tiniconv to the ST. Tiniconv is a library for converting character sets and is based on the GNU libiconv. It has been simplified enough to run on computers with limited memory. Different character set tables have plagued the computer world for decades. Only the printable characters of the ASCII code are standardized, country and operating system specific extensions store additional characters in different places. Only with Unicode was a standard created that offered enough space for all characters.

The ST version of Tiniconv was extended with the ATARIST and Unicode UTF16 character sets from the original iconv library. Tiniconv is available as an LDG file, so it is a dynamic library that can be used by programs as needed. Application examples exist so far for the C language and GFA-Basic. Tiniconv.ldg is not the first system extension for character set conversion: Thomas Much's KEYTAB also allowed this, but supported fewer character sets.

http://ptonthat.fr/

(mj)

Anarchic driving on the ST (12.08.2015 - 10:25 Uhr)

Issue 08/15 featured Laserball, a re-release of an old PD game from 1991, but like any programmer, Thomas Ilg still has various unreleased projects and prototypes on old ST disks, and he has now unearthed one: A racing game with pseudo-3D graphics, completely developed in GFA-Basic. Pure GFA-Basic is of course not the best language for fast racing games, so an ST with at least 16 MHz is recommended.

Compared to classic racing games, the rules of this game, which is distantly reminiscent of Atari's Road Blasters, are reversed: All obstacles can be run over, your own car is indestructible. Although no further development was supposedly planned, the first updates for "Anarcho Ride" are already in development. Thus, there is music from xFalcon, several languages and animated menus. The programmer has also found a graphic designer to contribute cars and other graphics to the game.

It is not yet certain whether the "Anarcho Simulator" will be further developed into a real game.

(mj)