News nybble: Quake updated

You receive 25 health! Following R-Comp‘s release of a new version of Quake just before this year’s Southwest Show, further work has been carried out on the source code, and there is now a new version available from !Store. The updated version benefits from hardware-accelerated floating point capabilities of modern CPUs, which provides a significant performance boost, with profiles included to offer either smooth 60 frames per second gameplay, or higher resolutions, or aspect-correct widescreen, and so on. The game can now be played on the Raspberry Pi 3, and…

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News nybble: 3D squash game released

And called TENiS. Obviously. Patrick M has released yet another simple game, which he says is “based on tennis but it’s a bit different, so I’ve spelled it TENiS” – well, quite. It’s actually a one player squash game. Squash is indeed a bit like tennis, but you hit the ball against the far wall – exactly like you do in Patrick’s TENiS game. Odd naming aside, the objective of this simple but fun game is to keep the ball in play, bouncing it against the far walls, as well…

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News nybble: Quake Ressurection… erm… resurrected

Oh well – looks like I won’t be getting any real work done for a while! A new version of Quake Resurrection has been released by R-Comp Interactive. First launched by the company for the StrongARM RiscPC, the 2018 edition has been updated for modern hardware, such as the ARMX6 and Titanium, but it also supports both real and Virtual RiscPC systems, as well as the Iyonix, Pi, and so on. The game includes the original levels for the classic first person shooter, along with the Malice ‘total conversion’ (which…

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News nybble: R-Comp releases NetFetch 5.03

Existing users of R-Comp‘s NetFetch 5 package can now update their software to version 5.03, by downloading the new version from !Store – it should be in the “My Software” section. The main improvement in version 5.03 is to do with how the software deals with multiple SMTP servers. Support for this is relatively new, necessitated by the increasing use of Sender Policy Framework (SPF) as an anti-spam measure, and the new version sees some user interface improvements as a result of user feedback. For new users, NetFetch 5.03 can…

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News nybble: OS and software updates from R-Comp

R-Comp Interactive will have a selection of OS and software updates for ARMSX ARMX6 and TiMachine computers, which they’ll be demonstrating at this weekend’s Southwest Show. OS update 11 for the ARMX6 brings with it a number of new features and improvements, in areas such as 16, 4K, and 64K colour modes, MODE 7, support for a 3840×1600 screen resolution, a new version of BASIC optimised for hardware-floating point, improved memory performance, and more. For the TiMachine, there is v4 of the high resolution graphics/multi-head driver, adding support for 256…

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Miner Willy’s original outing updated

It’s just another Manic Miner (woah-ooh-woah) Thanks to the efforts of Rob Sprowson, there is a new version of classic game Manic Miner available, benefiting from fixes that allow it to be run on both 26-bit and 32-bit RISC OS computers, up to and including the ARMv8 Raspberry Pi1. Dating back to the early 1980s, Manic Miner is a platform game featuring twenty increasingly difficult levels, and was responsible for plenty of wasted time (and in my case, missed games lessons at school – although it wasn’t the only game…

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News nybble: Chris Hall launching family tree app at Southwest 2018

Having been developing and showing off his SatNav application and RISC OS GPS device at recent shows, Chris Hall will be taking visitors off in a new direction at this year’s Southwest Show. The event takes place just four weeks from today, and as well as the GPS device Chris will be launching a new genealogy application, FamTree, which will be available to purchase for £15.00. As its name suggests, the application builds and displays a family tree. However, rather than working from data previously entered into a rigidly structured…

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