That’s the way the cookie crumbles. From Tuesday, 1st May, 2012, the policy for user comments on RISCOSitory.com is changing, and Google adverts will be disappearing. Previously, any user who wished to comment on an article needed to sign in to post their comment – which, obviously, meant they first needed to register with the site if they hadn’t done so already. In addition to that, there was a very simple moderation policy, though it wasn’t stated anywhere: Any comments including links needed approval, and any individual user’s very first…
Read MoreDrag ‘n Drop drops onto your doormats
Well, it does if the hard drive you download it onto is named ‘doormat’. Just ahead of the 2012 Wakefield Show, which takes place on Saturday, 28th April, Paul Stewart has published the latest issue of his PDF-based RISC OS magazine, Drag ‘n Drop. Features in this bumper 53 page issue include an in-depth, personal retrospective of the 8-bit games scene, along with reviews of two new games from Retro Software, the next parts in the two programming series “All Sorted” and “RISC OS Programming in BASIC”, along with the…
Read MoreFFmpeg, FFplay, DRenderer updated
Updates that are a bit like buses. Except more frequent. So not like buses at all, then. New versions of FFmpeg and FFplay have been made available by Christopher Martin, bringing them up to version 1.22, along with another update to the Digital Renderer (DRenderer) module, bringing it to version 0.56 (beta release 6). FFmpeg is a versatile, open-source, multi-platform video and audio converter, described on its home site as “the leading multimedia framework, able to decode, encode, transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans…
Read MoreWelcome to the R-Comp Apothecary…
…where your prescription is one tablet per… well, just one, and that’s all you’ll need, actually. It’s unlikely that anybody in RISC OS land has failed to notice the rise in popularity of tablet computing. Tablet and touchscreen devices have been around for a while, but (mobile phones aside) had failed to impact on the computing world in any noticeable way until Apple launched their iPad, and other devices started appearing based on Google’s Android operating system. In most cases, these tablet computers run on one of a number of…
Read MorePlayIt 1.73 plays more
PlayIt is a tool for playing sound samples, which is used by a number of RISC OS applications, including DigitalCD. Originally written by Rick Hudson, recent updates have been made available by Christopher Martin, who has just released version 1.73. This version is able to recognise more Replay/ARMovie files that contain audio formats that it supports, in addition to which it also includes a RISC OS 4 fast service handler, along with a slight improvement in its overall performance. Christopher recommends that all users upgrade to this version. Offering thanks…
Read MoreRiscLua: An alternative programming language for RISC OS systems
Gavin Wraith has been in touch with a little information about RiscLua, a version of the Lua programming language adapted for RISC OS computer systems, and further developed over the last ten years. It seems that RiscLua was updated to version 5.40 in November 2011, a piece of news that was overlooked on this site. Gavin explains further:
Read MoreFFmpeg and FFmplay performance improvements
New versions of FFmpeg and FFplay have been made available by Christopher Martin, bringing them up to version 1.21, along with another update to the Digital Renderer (DRenderer) module, bringing it to version 0.55. FFmpeg is a versatile, open-source, multi-platform video and audio converter, described on its home site as “the leading multimedia framework, able to decode, encode, transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans and machines have created.” FFmpeg makes it possible to process a large number of movie formats for which there are…
Read MoreDRenderer audio playback module – provisional update
Christopher Martin has contacted me to let me know that version 0.52-1 of the DRenderer module, which is the version currently found in the package on riscos.info, is obsolete and has a number of problems. He has been working on the module, and has contributed new sources and a build system to the GCCSDK team, so the next GCCSDK release should include version 0.54 (or later) of the module.
Read MoreMore emulation than you can shake a joystick at
Today, it seems, emulators on RISC OS are like buses: You wait for ages for one to come along, then three turn up all at once. Earlier today, Chris Gransden announced a port of Mednafen, a multi game system emulator – and he’s followed that up with two more: Snes9x and MAME.
Read MoreMednafen – multi game system emulator comes to RISC OS
Following the release of his port of Fuse, the Spectrum emulator, Chris Gransden has busied himself with porting another emulator to RISC OS. This time, it’s a port from the Unix version of Mednafen, a command line driven multiple system emulator that provides support for OpenGL and SDL graphics, network play, re-mappable input configuration, joystick and keyboard support, save states, game rewinding, GSF playback, and screenshots.
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