Smooth moves for the movies. FFplay, the simple media player closely associated with FFmpeg, has been updated. The version number remains at 1.23, and Christopher Martin, who has been working on both, describes the update as a minor one. A minor update which increases the player’s speed by up to 10%, with particular benefit to full-screen mode. “Movies that would mostly play, but with some jittering should now play quite smoothly” explains Christopher – who also jokingly clarifies that the “up to 10%” increase is “not an exact figure”
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OpenVector and DrawPlus gain new feature
A genuine “Nothing to see here, move along please” response to a click. Christopher Martin has released another update to OpenVector and DrawPlus, bringing them up to version 3.41.2, introducing a new feature to both, while OpenGridPro remains at version 3.41. That new feature presents itself when clicking with the Alt key held down; when you do this, both OpenVector and DrawPlus will act as though there is no object beneath the pointer. This means that, for example, if you have a complicated drawing with one or more objects selected,…
Read MoreDRenderer 0.56 beta 8
Another bug squashed, poor little mite. With the release of Chris Gransden’s ports of Hheretic and Hhexen, a problem was found with the then latest version of the DRenderer module – 0.56 beta 6. Christopher Martin, who has been updating the module lately, was hot on the case and released beta 7, which he thought addressed the problem. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case. However, Christopher has looked at the module yet again, and has now issued version 0.56 beta 8, fixing another bug that surfaced with…
Read MoreDrawPrint 1.39 in hot pursuit of 1.38
Murphy’s law alive and well in the world of RISC OS software. A new version of DrawPrint is available from Sine Nomine Software, released to deal with a problem discovered in the previous version very soon after its release. DrawPrint is an application that provides more control when printing Drawfiles, sprites or JPEGs, allowing them to be printed over multiple pages, allowing the user to select a scale, margins, overlaps, and so on. It also allows individual pages to be exported as Drawfiles for use in other applications. Version 1.39…
Read MoreArtWorks 2.X2 arrives
Straight up! Or curved a bit, with a variable width and graduated fill! For what may have been a first, this year’s Wakefield Show saw Martin Wuerthner demonstrating a new version of ArtWorks that wasn’t actually ready for sale – though he expected it to become available soon after. After only a very short time, ‘soon after’ has arrived, and Martin has announced the availability of that new version. ArtWorks 2.X2 introduces a major new feature, in the form of ‘Artistic Lines’, which presents the user with many new creative…
Read MoreMore puzzles in Wrangler and SuperDoku
Even more ways to avoid being productive. Hot on the heels of Wakefield, Sine Nomine Software have announced new versions of their popular puzzle games, Wrangler and SuperDoku, adding new puzzle types to both. SuperDoku is an advanced Sudoku generating and solving application, which can handle more than just standard Sudoku puzzles – it can cope with puzzles of different sizes and shapes, jigsaw blocks, extra blocks, and much more. This update brings it up to version 1.27, which adds Diamond puzzles; Sudoku puzzles with extra blocks, forming an overall…
Read MoreOpenVector, OpenGridPro and DrawPlus: Three apps, three updates
You’re once, twice, three times an upgrade. Christopher Martin has been busy of late. Not content with updates to FFmpeg, FFplay, amongst others, he has also released three updates to OpenVector, OpenGridPro and DrawPlus. These three are open source enhancements to Draw, with OpenVector and OpenGridPro themselves originally being developed by Jonathan Marten from DrawPlus, and released as commercial applications by 4Mation (as Vector, which featured layering and object library capabilities, and GridPro, which was customised for drawing grids and other regular layouts). They were subsequently made open source, and…
Read MoreImpulse module updated after 10 years
Apps can’t help acting on impulse. The Impulse module was originally released by Computer Concepts (now Xara), and was in part the result of the company’s plans to develop a replacement for Arthur, the operating system used on the Archimedes computers before Acorn brought out RISC OS 2. The module provides a mechanism for inter-application communications, command execution and data transfer, and is used by databases such as Impact and Powerbase in conjunction with Impression, ImpEmail and Ovation Pro to perform mail-merges and produce reports. Until now, the most recent…
Read MoreDRenderer module updated
That is not the DRenderer you are looking for. The DigitalRenderer (DRenderer) module, which is usually supplied along with the SharedUnixLibrary, is used to provide sound support for applications and games ported to RISC OS which make use of that library. However, the version supplied with SharedUnixLibrary on riscos.info can play back audio at the wrong speed and contains some bugs which could theoretically crash a RISC OS computer if they are triggered, although it’s considered unlikely to happen. Christopher Martin has been updating the module, and provisionally hosting it…
Read MoreHheretic and Hhexen ports
Hheaps of hhectic gameplay for the price of a download or two. Chris Gransden is continuing to keep himself busy porting things to RISC OS, with Hheretic and Hhexen having been announced just a couple of days before this year’s Wakefield show. These two games are ports of Hheretic and Hhexen, which are Linux ports of Heretic and HeXen – with the extra ‘H’ in each name standing for ‘Hacked’ – originally developed by Raven Software and published by id Software.
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