State of the Amstrad CPC community in 2011
The aim of this article is to give a clear vision of the Amstrad CPC community in 2011. Amstrad CPCs got impacts in many different countries, including France, Germany, Greece, United Kingdom, Spain... as also South Australia and Denmark ! As a consequence, I asked some key people living in those respective countries to write few words about it.
Listed countries to this day : Germany, UK, Greece, Denmark, Spain, South Australia, France and Canada. If your country is not listed, please write me few words and I will be glad to complete this article ! Thanks a million to Octoate, Kevin Thacker, Optimus, mr_lou, Cholo, CPCLER, Dadman, Metr, Amstari and Ervin for contributing !
Listed countries to this day : Germany, UK, Greece, Denmark, Spain, South Australia, France and Canada. If your country is not listed, please write me few words and I will be glad to complete this article ! Thanks a million to Octoate, Kevin Thacker, Optimus, mr_lou, Cholo, CPCLER, Dadman, Metr, Amstari and Ervin for contributing !
News from Germany (by Octoate)
NoRecess> I know Kangaroo - which seems to be a great person! Do you know other active people around ?
Hmm, at least TFM is active, even he is now working on his Giana Sisters clone. Nilquader is very active and mostly working on small hardware gadgets or small utilities (like the RAM test or the Senso game). During the XzentriX meeting we were able to program a replacement for the ACID chip in the Plus cartridge. Bryce is very active (at least he is living in germany, but from ireland :)). If you need music - just ask Kangaroo. He is very fast in composing, but he is still using his Soundtrakker. And if you have questions about how to program with the normal CPC firmware, Mr. AMS is the one to ask :). Dr.Zed is currently inactive, but organised the Mittwinter-Meeting. Oh and I nearly forgot Devilmarkus who is working on his CPC emulator and other utilities. And I try to be active, at least with writing news and hopefully we will see a new hardware device this year, but there is a lot of work to do for that.
NoRecess> I'm also interested in knowing how much CPC users (not creators) are still around..
Hmm, there are a lot of other users who are still using at least an emulator to watch the latest demos / games. E.g. Odiesoft, Elmsoft, Brainblaster, Villain, Nurgle and CPC-Mike. Well, unfortunatly I have to count Prodatron as inactive, too, because he currently lost the interest in the CPC, but at least Prodatrons motivation comes back in waves. He was a bit demotivated, because the CPC users aren't writing applications for his SymbOS. Sometimes I see Face Hugger, who lives in the same town like me, but I think he isn't using his CPC anymore. There are also a lot of other users in the german CPC forum (cpc-forum.de), which I don't know personally and so I can't tell you if they are active or not.
NoRecess> Is there still people doing meetings there ?
Yep, Dr.Zed organised the Mittwinter-Meeting in Kirchen last month and normally Brainblaster organises the Bergmeeting / CPC-Reunion meetings which are held one week after Pentecost in Erlangen. And last but not least we have the XzentriX meeting, which is organised by Mr. AMS and a friend, every september in Seeshaupt. This are the meetings which are visited by most of the CPC users. And sometimes we meet on other retro parties, too.
Hmm, at least TFM is active, even he is now working on his Giana Sisters clone. Nilquader is very active and mostly working on small hardware gadgets or small utilities (like the RAM test or the Senso game). During the XzentriX meeting we were able to program a replacement for the ACID chip in the Plus cartridge. Bryce is very active (at least he is living in germany, but from ireland :)). If you need music - just ask Kangaroo. He is very fast in composing, but he is still using his Soundtrakker. And if you have questions about how to program with the normal CPC firmware, Mr. AMS is the one to ask :). Dr.Zed is currently inactive, but organised the Mittwinter-Meeting. Oh and I nearly forgot Devilmarkus who is working on his CPC emulator and other utilities. And I try to be active, at least with writing news and hopefully we will see a new hardware device this year, but there is a lot of work to do for that.
NoRecess> I'm also interested in knowing how much CPC users (not creators) are still around..
Hmm, there are a lot of other users who are still using at least an emulator to watch the latest demos / games. E.g. Odiesoft, Elmsoft, Brainblaster, Villain, Nurgle and CPC-Mike. Well, unfortunatly I have to count Prodatron as inactive, too, because he currently lost the interest in the CPC, but at least Prodatrons motivation comes back in waves. He was a bit demotivated, because the CPC users aren't writing applications for his SymbOS. Sometimes I see Face Hugger, who lives in the same town like me, but I think he isn't using his CPC anymore. There are also a lot of other users in the german CPC forum (cpc-forum.de), which I don't know personally and so I can't tell you if they are active or not.
NoRecess> Is there still people doing meetings there ?
Yep, Dr.Zed organised the Mittwinter-Meeting in Kirchen last month and normally Brainblaster organises the Bergmeeting / CPC-Reunion meetings which are held one week after Pentecost in Erlangen. And last but not least we have the XzentriX meeting, which is organised by Mr. AMS and a friend, every september in Seeshaupt. This are the meetings which are visited by most of the CPC users. And sometimes we meet on other retro parties, too.
News from UK (by Kevin Thacker, a.k.a. arnoldemu)
Firstly, I've never really been in the CPC scene and that continues to be true. I don't even class myself as being in the scene, however I have been and continue to be an active contributor to the CPC world.
I am actively updating Arnold emulator with a view to release a new version this year. I am also developing a game and a demo both of which will be released soon. I plan to continue to develop games for the cpc.
From my perspective a lot of old sceners are inactive. This includes Charleytronic, Ratz, Trebmint and others. Executioner used to be classed as part of the UK scene moved to Australia a few years back. From what I can see, he is less active at this time. I believe he has a game in development.
For me the UK scene centres around the cpcwiki forum. Here there are people from the UK who are actively creating demos, games and contributing to the CPC world. This includes redbox, Xyphoe and sigh. redbox produces mostly demos for cpc+, but he is looking at making a game. Xyphoe contributes by making game playthroughs. sigh is working on graphics for a beat em up which I plan to code.
Either these guys are new to the scene, or now they have decided to produce something. So it seems the UK scene is very small from my view.
I am actively updating Arnold emulator with a view to release a new version this year. I am also developing a game and a demo both of which will be released soon. I plan to continue to develop games for the cpc.
From my perspective a lot of old sceners are inactive. This includes Charleytronic, Ratz, Trebmint and others. Executioner used to be classed as part of the UK scene moved to Australia a few years back. From what I can see, he is less active at this time. I believe he has a game in development.
For me the UK scene centres around the cpcwiki forum. Here there are people from the UK who are actively creating demos, games and contributing to the CPC world. This includes redbox, Xyphoe and sigh. redbox produces mostly demos for cpc+, but he is looking at making a game. Xyphoe contributes by making game playthroughs. sigh is working on graphics for a beat em up which I plan to code.
Either these guys are new to the scene, or now they have decided to produce something. So it seems the UK scene is very small from my view.
News from Greece (by Optimus)
NoRecess> Who are the CPC active users (pseudo..) , the past/current projects...
I think only me (Optimus), Voxfreax and Rex are active today. I have been active as a coder on the CPC since 2000, released some demos (A step Beyond, X-kore, Chunky Chan and other minor 1k intros) and sometimes painted few graphics for my demos. Voxfreax is a very enthousiastic man who has also contributed graphics work for some French projects too. Currently he is my most active contact where we can talk about CPC and be crazy about the whole thing. Rex is here too, probably the oldest greek CPC scener and best greek CPC graphician, sometimes still contributing graphics on CPC competitions, hopefully for our projects too (although it's my fault I forget to communicate more often with Rex). Now, there is Antitec which is a friend I see very very frequently but we rarely talk about doing something on the CPC anymore. Well, I may talk to him about what I am doing but maybe this talk is uninteresting to him. He consciously has decided he can't spare his time anymore for something so old. Though, rarely he gets sparks of motivation for releasing Ovation 6. It's amazing! But of course this fades away fast enough. He will still make you a CPC Booster though if you order one.
NoRecess> Who are the CPC active "followers" (you know, people on forum that are not specially creative by participate to the CPC life in forums, etc)
etc.
First of all, what happened to the older sceners? I know Catloc, JFMC, FG Brain and Sotsoft. Catloc as you may well know has left this world since a long time ago. I don't know what JFMC is doing but he likes taking holiday cards from Sotsoft :). Sotsoft is a crazy feelow who sends me absurd SMS in my phone that I am too lazy to reply to, well he did some kind of basic demos with his Hellas-Laser group (search on Pouet maybe) but that's it. People ask me why I keep corresponding with Sotsoft and I don't know what to say but I keep doing it. FG Brain is the only "sane" person there left. I find him hanging around retromaniax.gr which is a crazy greek community about everything retro (when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. From retro clothes and foods to retro computers and tv and magazines! :) and there is a little section about CPC games, demos, programming, hardware, etc. He takes part in the conversations but I don't think he ever posed any recent interest to start coding again for the CPC. There might be more old CPC sceners that are missing, nobody knows where they are even today. Oh, I once met Kod for a while at a greek PC demoparty in 2002 but then I lost contact.
The retromaniax site could be a nice place to find any possible CPC enthousiasts who would like to be involved in any way. I recently had one contact who asked me how to start coding for CPC. Still I doubt if we could find enough people to start a new greek scene. A lot of retro freaks are gathering there. I meet this people sometimes in my city. Most are just collectors of retro hardware and play games. Some know and respect demos. I think fewer people might even enjoy demos there. How about participate. It's a bit too hard to be motivated in 2011 to start learning coding for a machine that died in 1993. CPC is tricky. I think it's easier and more fun to start learning coding on C64 and the community is bigger there. Maybe someone would love pixeling then. CPC pixeling is more fun, you have full 16 colours out of 27 arranged as you want without tile restrictions like other 8bits and Art Studio is good enough for your work. Tracking can be fun too if you get used. But coders, I wish new enthousiastic coders would start on this machine in my place (maybe clones of me :), the problem is that I don't have a person near my place to discuss about CPC specific coding, I have coder friends with whom I discuss about you know C++, OpenGL, algorithms, etc but noone who could stand my boring and uninteresting CPC coding thoughts. It's nice to have graphicians like Voxfreax or Rex around, but what about another coder in the greek vicinity?
You also asked me about greek CPC websites :
Dirty Minds site - http://dirtyminds.dxm.gr/
Chaos site - http://chaoscpc.webs.com/
Amstrad section at retromaniax - http://www.retromaniax.gr/vb/forumdisplay.php?75-Amstrad
A CPCscene page I long abandoned but there are still some good stuff left there like demo reviews - http://codeverse.gr/cpcscene/
I think only me (Optimus), Voxfreax and Rex are active today. I have been active as a coder on the CPC since 2000, released some demos (A step Beyond, X-kore, Chunky Chan and other minor 1k intros) and sometimes painted few graphics for my demos. Voxfreax is a very enthousiastic man who has also contributed graphics work for some French projects too. Currently he is my most active contact where we can talk about CPC and be crazy about the whole thing. Rex is here too, probably the oldest greek CPC scener and best greek CPC graphician, sometimes still contributing graphics on CPC competitions, hopefully for our projects too (although it's my fault I forget to communicate more often with Rex). Now, there is Antitec which is a friend I see very very frequently but we rarely talk about doing something on the CPC anymore. Well, I may talk to him about what I am doing but maybe this talk is uninteresting to him. He consciously has decided he can't spare his time anymore for something so old. Though, rarely he gets sparks of motivation for releasing Ovation 6. It's amazing! But of course this fades away fast enough. He will still make you a CPC Booster though if you order one.
NoRecess> Who are the CPC active "followers" (you know, people on forum that are not specially creative by participate to the CPC life in forums, etc)
etc.
First of all, what happened to the older sceners? I know Catloc, JFMC, FG Brain and Sotsoft. Catloc as you may well know has left this world since a long time ago. I don't know what JFMC is doing but he likes taking holiday cards from Sotsoft :). Sotsoft is a crazy feelow who sends me absurd SMS in my phone that I am too lazy to reply to, well he did some kind of basic demos with his Hellas-Laser group (search on Pouet maybe) but that's it. People ask me why I keep corresponding with Sotsoft and I don't know what to say but I keep doing it. FG Brain is the only "sane" person there left. I find him hanging around retromaniax.gr which is a crazy greek community about everything retro (when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. From retro clothes and foods to retro computers and tv and magazines! :) and there is a little section about CPC games, demos, programming, hardware, etc. He takes part in the conversations but I don't think he ever posed any recent interest to start coding again for the CPC. There might be more old CPC sceners that are missing, nobody knows where they are even today. Oh, I once met Kod for a while at a greek PC demoparty in 2002 but then I lost contact.
The retromaniax site could be a nice place to find any possible CPC enthousiasts who would like to be involved in any way. I recently had one contact who asked me how to start coding for CPC. Still I doubt if we could find enough people to start a new greek scene. A lot of retro freaks are gathering there. I meet this people sometimes in my city. Most are just collectors of retro hardware and play games. Some know and respect demos. I think fewer people might even enjoy demos there. How about participate. It's a bit too hard to be motivated in 2011 to start learning coding for a machine that died in 1993. CPC is tricky. I think it's easier and more fun to start learning coding on C64 and the community is bigger there. Maybe someone would love pixeling then. CPC pixeling is more fun, you have full 16 colours out of 27 arranged as you want without tile restrictions like other 8bits and Art Studio is good enough for your work. Tracking can be fun too if you get used. But coders, I wish new enthousiastic coders would start on this machine in my place (maybe clones of me :), the problem is that I don't have a person near my place to discuss about CPC specific coding, I have coder friends with whom I discuss about you know C++, OpenGL, algorithms, etc but noone who could stand my boring and uninteresting CPC coding thoughts. It's nice to have graphicians like Voxfreax or Rex around, but what about another coder in the greek vicinity?
You also asked me about greek CPC websites :
Dirty Minds site - http://dirtyminds.dxm.gr/
Chaos site - http://chaoscpc.webs.com/
Amstrad section at retromaniax - http://www.retromaniax.gr/vb/forumdisplay.php?75-Amstrad
A CPCscene page I long abandoned but there are still some good stuff left there like demo reviews - http://codeverse.gr/cpcscene/
News from Denmark (by mr_lou, Cholo and CPCLER)
mr_lou : The only danish sceners I heard of, was New Way Cracking (N.W.C.) and JLCS. I remember they didn't like each other very much. I was never part of the scene myself as such back then, except N.W.C. used some of my music in a demo he created in 1996 called Unique (I think). I was quite active on the CPC, doing amateurish BASIC stuff, but that's hardly something we can put in the 'scene' category. I'm a bit active today though. I have my CPC464 with 128k RAM, a 3" and 3.5" diskdrive and Digiblaster, connected to a TV and Creative speakers. I use my CPC464 for creating music in STarKos, which is sometimes used in CPC games. I also have a CPC6128, but since I grew up with the CPC464, that's what I prefer using today. For me it's mostly about nostalgia. Anyway, I've been in contact with N.W.C. every now and then, for brief messages. I know his CPC is packed down somewhere, because he's too busy with work. I also know he once created a game that was never released, and I've tried encouraging him to release it to the scene today. He might do that if he ever gets the time and interest again.
Cholo : Quite small country and it probably shows. The amstrad was always a bit of an "underdog" item here even in the 80'ies so didnt know many people back then that had one. Did know JLCS pretty well as i lived quite near him back then. JL also released a really nice book on amstrad machine code early in 85 and it took me years to comprehend it all as it was pretty "heavy" for a kid. Alas havent been in contact since then. Did use to have some major Demo/scene parties aka "The Party" was really huge here, but today retro gaming is pretty much non-existing. Only danish amstrad user i know of who is active at this time is mr_Lou. Current setup im using is a 464 with dk'tronic 256kb memory and a DDI & HxC 3.5" drive emulator combo. On the creative side ive never been much of a programmer so instead ive released a couple of guides to the wiki at cpcwiki.eu about using hardware intended for the normal amstrad user like myself. Current projects ive got going is to save as many tape games/software as possible to cdt format. From time to time i also release longplay/gaming videos on youtube. Just got my hands on a Kryoflux usb floppy controller so if all goes well ill soon be dumping 3" floppies as well.
CPCLER : When the CPC 464 was back in 1984 in DK, it was an immediate success. Very fast the Amstrad range of computers established itself as the number one competitor of the most common homecomputer in DK : the Commodore 64. In the 80's the scene was pretty healthy and names like Deltatronic, 007, Dr. Watson, LFS, NWC, Mr. Malonie, JCP, JLCS and many others I forgot were common names among CPC users in Denmark. Especially NWC was known for his demos and JLCS for his copying tools. During this period the CPC had its own commercial user magazine (Amstradbladet), and even Danish fanzines existed. HACK being the most known but others I can't remember the names of existed.
I somehow lost touch with the scene in the early 90's the only Danish production In the 90's I am aware of is the Unique Demo by NWC.
In the past decade the only CPC users I know of personally is Hans Hansen who worked on a Amstrad version of the Contiki OS, using the SDCC compiler, even though he was not successful in making the Contiki work in he did write an article about using SDCC on the CPC (it's on the wiki). Have not had any contact with him for some years now, so I am not sure if he is still active. I once visited him, at that time he was working on a new utilities ROM, don't know if ever finished it.
The only other CPC users I have regular contact with is Ygdrazil and ZilogMonkey.
ZilogMonkey; Has done some programming on SymbOS, which he constantly rambles about being the best OS ever. He has done some eyecandy and a small basic interpreter for SymbOS (don't know if he has released it!)
Ygdrazil is mostly experimenting with assembler stuff etc.
We are in the process of making a horizontal shooter CPC-XEO3 (if that will be the name if it ever is going to be finished) and been that for the past two years now. Most of the code is completed. The project is not dead but increasingly busy RL makes the task difficult but also we lack the talents in sound and graphics!
I sometimes find the time and try to share as much knowledge of the CPC on the wiki as possible!
Other danes active on the CPC is Cholo making videos of CPC games, Mr. Lou music making, Troels K. emulator stuff. But I have noticed other Danes on forums related to the CPC! If that constitutes a scene I don't know!!?? :-)
Cholo : Quite small country and it probably shows. The amstrad was always a bit of an "underdog" item here even in the 80'ies so didnt know many people back then that had one. Did know JLCS pretty well as i lived quite near him back then. JL also released a really nice book on amstrad machine code early in 85 and it took me years to comprehend it all as it was pretty "heavy" for a kid. Alas havent been in contact since then. Did use to have some major Demo/scene parties aka "The Party" was really huge here, but today retro gaming is pretty much non-existing. Only danish amstrad user i know of who is active at this time is mr_Lou. Current setup im using is a 464 with dk'tronic 256kb memory and a DDI & HxC 3.5" drive emulator combo. On the creative side ive never been much of a programmer so instead ive released a couple of guides to the wiki at cpcwiki.eu about using hardware intended for the normal amstrad user like myself. Current projects ive got going is to save as many tape games/software as possible to cdt format. From time to time i also release longplay/gaming videos on youtube. Just got my hands on a Kryoflux usb floppy controller so if all goes well ill soon be dumping 3" floppies as well.
CPCLER : When the CPC 464 was back in 1984 in DK, it was an immediate success. Very fast the Amstrad range of computers established itself as the number one competitor of the most common homecomputer in DK : the Commodore 64. In the 80's the scene was pretty healthy and names like Deltatronic, 007, Dr. Watson, LFS, NWC, Mr. Malonie, JCP, JLCS and many others I forgot were common names among CPC users in Denmark. Especially NWC was known for his demos and JLCS for his copying tools. During this period the CPC had its own commercial user magazine (Amstradbladet), and even Danish fanzines existed. HACK being the most known but others I can't remember the names of existed.
I somehow lost touch with the scene in the early 90's the only Danish production In the 90's I am aware of is the Unique Demo by NWC.
In the past decade the only CPC users I know of personally is Hans Hansen who worked on a Amstrad version of the Contiki OS, using the SDCC compiler, even though he was not successful in making the Contiki work in he did write an article about using SDCC on the CPC (it's on the wiki). Have not had any contact with him for some years now, so I am not sure if he is still active. I once visited him, at that time he was working on a new utilities ROM, don't know if ever finished it.
The only other CPC users I have regular contact with is Ygdrazil and ZilogMonkey.
ZilogMonkey; Has done some programming on SymbOS, which he constantly rambles about being the best OS ever. He has done some eyecandy and a small basic interpreter for SymbOS (don't know if he has released it!)
Ygdrazil is mostly experimenting with assembler stuff etc.
We are in the process of making a horizontal shooter CPC-XEO3 (if that will be the name if it ever is going to be finished) and been that for the past two years now. Most of the code is completed. The project is not dead but increasingly busy RL makes the task difficult but also we lack the talents in sound and graphics!
I sometimes find the time and try to share as much knowledge of the CPC on the wiki as possible!
Other danes active on the CPC is Cholo making videos of CPC games, Mr. Lou music making, Troels K. emulator stuff. But I have noticed other Danes on forums related to the CPC! If that constitutes a scene I don't know!!?? :-)
News from Spain (by Dadman and Metr)
Syx and me Dadman are very active with games making (like UWOL) and new hardware (VDRIVE aka USB drive... some videos on youtube) or like Rhino and me (again) with demomaking...
My blog too (ladrillopixeles.blogspot.com). Spanish sites: www.amstrad.es, amstradcpc.mforos.com...
CPCMANIACO and DEEPFB aporting a lot of original material (games, programs, books, preservation work)...
Mochilote, autor of CPCDISKXP and CPCTAPEXP to transfer disk and tapes to/from Amstrad CPC...
César, CPCE emulator autor.
MojonTwins (http://www.mojontwins.com) are releasing a lot of Amstrad CPC games too last year...
Artaburu: http://espsoft.amstrad.es/ : it's a programming blog about the use of the CCZ80 and the CPCRSlib. He's updating step by step. People like the Mojon Twins are making good use of it to create their games.
Also MiguelSky is distributing the CPCGamesCD: http://cpcgamescd.amstrad.es/
Using the CPC Loader as base, and as the cpcwiki points out, it's a CD-Rom containing a navigable database with all the games of the Amstrad/Schneider CPC, similar to MameUI, including screenshots of the games and information about publisher, year and type of game.
Litos is in charge of the Amstradesp web and forum, usually updating it with news. The web is more based in the spanish history of the cpc, with contains nice articles and reviews, companies, magazines from the time, and cards for both National and International games with direct downloads for the roms, description, screenshots, all the publicity, maps & reviews found in magazins, and videos. In the forums reside a nice community of people interested in the Amstrad, there you can find what's going on, retro-encounters, news, discussion about the games, programming on the cpc, trivias of games and music, market.. There's a lot of users that daily passes by the forums, so I wouldn't know even from where to start, and as I don't want to name 3-4 and leave a lot behind, I'll leave it as that.
Litos recently attended a round table about 'The future of the past' with well known people from spanish videogames for the cpc like Victor Ruiz and Azpiri rather interesting and there are some retro-fairs coming as the one Lex Sparrow pointed out in the cpcwiki forum. I don't know so much about the Spanish GUA (Amstrad User Group), but I think it would be great to contact him and get an update about it, I'm sure he'll know a lot about the spanish community.
You can also catch the news and updates of the cards and suggestions to play in the Amstradesp facebook page and even in tweeter.
My blog too (ladrillopixeles.blogspot.com). Spanish sites: www.amstrad.es, amstradcpc.mforos.com...
CPCMANIACO and DEEPFB aporting a lot of original material (games, programs, books, preservation work)...
Mochilote, autor of CPCDISKXP and CPCTAPEXP to transfer disk and tapes to/from Amstrad CPC...
César, CPCE emulator autor.
MojonTwins (http://www.mojontwins.com) are releasing a lot of Amstrad CPC games too last year...
Artaburu: http://espsoft.amstrad.es/ : it's a programming blog about the use of the CCZ80 and the CPCRSlib. He's updating step by step. People like the Mojon Twins are making good use of it to create their games.
Also MiguelSky is distributing the CPCGamesCD: http://cpcgamescd.amstrad.es/
Using the CPC Loader as base, and as the cpcwiki points out, it's a CD-Rom containing a navigable database with all the games of the Amstrad/Schneider CPC, similar to MameUI, including screenshots of the games and information about publisher, year and type of game.
Litos is in charge of the Amstradesp web and forum, usually updating it with news. The web is more based in the spanish history of the cpc, with contains nice articles and reviews, companies, magazines from the time, and cards for both National and International games with direct downloads for the roms, description, screenshots, all the publicity, maps & reviews found in magazins, and videos. In the forums reside a nice community of people interested in the Amstrad, there you can find what's going on, retro-encounters, news, discussion about the games, programming on the cpc, trivias of games and music, market.. There's a lot of users that daily passes by the forums, so I wouldn't know even from where to start, and as I don't want to name 3-4 and leave a lot behind, I'll leave it as that.
Litos recently attended a round table about 'The future of the past' with well known people from spanish videogames for the cpc like Victor Ruiz and Azpiri rather interesting and there are some retro-fairs coming as the one Lex Sparrow pointed out in the cpcwiki forum. I don't know so much about the Spanish GUA (Amstrad User Group), but I think it would be great to contact him and get an update about it, I'm sure he'll know a lot about the spanish community.
You can also catch the news and updates of the cards and suggestions to play in the Amstradesp facebook page and even in tweeter.
News from South Australia (by Amstari and Ervin)
Amstari : I'm in South Australia. I've got my 6128 (with ParaDOS and 3.5 drive) set up permanently. I've also got a couple of 464s and a green screen that I don't use. I haven't stayed in contact with any other CPC users since going to school a long, long time ago. My parents sold my 464 in the early 90s and we got an Amstrad PC1512. I got a 464 from eBay about 7 years ago and got the 6128 last year.
Last year I wrote my first Basic program in 20 years. It's a CPC version of Flood-It. It is extremely slow but it works. I've got a couple of books about machine code so one day I will improve it with some machine code routines and release it.
Ervin : I've been learning z80 machine code for close to 2 years now, getting more confident with it all the time. It's been a dream of mine for 25 years to do the sort of things I am now capable of. I went through a period where I bought every cpc z80 book I could find on ebay, but the best info came from the machine code course that was published back in the 80s by Computing with the Amstrad magazine. I use the awesome ccz80 compiler - it really is brilliant. It's like a very low-level C language, kind of halfway between C and assembler in the way you need to approach some things, although it uses C-like syntax. I've read somewhere that it creates faster code than z88dk. I write all the game logic in ccz80 (it's also really good for prototyping ideas), and then I use the compiler to output the compiled code in asm format, which I can then use and optimise further. It's a really nice way to develop cpc code. I don't have a real cpc, so I use winape emulator for testing. At the moment, I'm working on the 3d road effect for my game Chunky Pixel Collision. The game's name was chosen very carefully, as my game has a very chunky display. This was done in order to have a fast full-screen display. You'll notice that the acronym for the game's name is CPC. I'm aiming for one of the most impressive sprite-based 3d games ever seen on the cpc. Wish me luck! :o) Other than that, I have the ACU Type-ins pages on the cpcwiki to look after, which I spent a heck of a lot of time on about a year ago, but it slowed down when we had our 2nd child. I aim to get back into those pages soon.
Last year I wrote my first Basic program in 20 years. It's a CPC version of Flood-It. It is extremely slow but it works. I've got a couple of books about machine code so one day I will improve it with some machine code routines and release it.
Ervin : I've been learning z80 machine code for close to 2 years now, getting more confident with it all the time. It's been a dream of mine for 25 years to do the sort of things I am now capable of. I went through a period where I bought every cpc z80 book I could find on ebay, but the best info came from the machine code course that was published back in the 80s by Computing with the Amstrad magazine. I use the awesome ccz80 compiler - it really is brilliant. It's like a very low-level C language, kind of halfway between C and assembler in the way you need to approach some things, although it uses C-like syntax. I've read somewhere that it creates faster code than z88dk. I write all the game logic in ccz80 (it's also really good for prototyping ideas), and then I use the compiler to output the compiled code in asm format, which I can then use and optimise further. It's a really nice way to develop cpc code. I don't have a real cpc, so I use winape emulator for testing. At the moment, I'm working on the 3d road effect for my game Chunky Pixel Collision. The game's name was chosen very carefully, as my game has a very chunky display. This was done in order to have a fast full-screen display. You'll notice that the acronym for the game's name is CPC. I'm aiming for one of the most impressive sprite-based 3d games ever seen on the cpc. Wish me luck! :o) Other than that, I have the ACU Type-ins pages on the cpcwiki to look after, which I spent a heck of a lot of time on about a year ago, but it slowed down when we had our 2nd child. I aim to get back into those pages soon.
News from France (by me)
Even if I'm living in Canada, I know most of French CPC users so I guess I can write few words about this community. If you feel this article is quite inexact or incomplete, feel free to contact me and I will be glad to make updates!
The community as I see it is clearly split in two distinct parts : the gaming community and the demoscene one.
The gaming community : because retro-gaming is pretty high there, there are tons of users still playing games with their Amstrad CPC. There is also high interest in creating dedicated websites, reviews on Youtube (TontonMayonnaise is just awesome, don't miss his excellent work), and of course there is lots of activities on forums. The most famous one is probably Phenix Informatique website (french only) which gives complete interviews, news, and much more. Its forum is a very active one and it's very common to meet new comers there. CPC-Power is clearly becoming the de-facto download platform for everything about CPC disc images (it even comes with reviews, pictures and more !). Amstrad Today is also an excellent source for generic information about the Amstrad CPC.
The demoscene community in France is still very strong. There are lots of talented people there. Every years, there is at least one major CPC event where users travel long distance to meet themselves. The two major websites dealing with demoscene are CPCRulez and Push'n'Pop. To be short, this community is currently split in both parts - one part being represented by talented people on Push'n'Pop website, which are pretty serious with demomaking, while the other ones (active on CPCRulez as also other websites) tend to be more relax and unorganized. I have a picture in my mind to represent this community : the Asterix and Obelix's village ! Still, to me it's clearly the leading community on CPC in term of productions and activities, released years after years. There are also some other interesting websites to mention : Grimware, Quasar.net, Arkos, Tom&Jerry...
This whole description is quite incomplete but gives you at least a general overview of the situation of the Amstrad CPC in France.
The community as I see it is clearly split in two distinct parts : the gaming community and the demoscene one.
The gaming community : because retro-gaming is pretty high there, there are tons of users still playing games with their Amstrad CPC. There is also high interest in creating dedicated websites, reviews on Youtube (TontonMayonnaise is just awesome, don't miss his excellent work), and of course there is lots of activities on forums. The most famous one is probably Phenix Informatique website (french only) which gives complete interviews, news, and much more. Its forum is a very active one and it's very common to meet new comers there. CPC-Power is clearly becoming the de-facto download platform for everything about CPC disc images (it even comes with reviews, pictures and more !). Amstrad Today is also an excellent source for generic information about the Amstrad CPC.
The demoscene community in France is still very strong. There are lots of talented people there. Every years, there is at least one major CPC event where users travel long distance to meet themselves. The two major websites dealing with demoscene are CPCRulez and Push'n'Pop. To be short, this community is currently split in both parts - one part being represented by talented people on Push'n'Pop website, which are pretty serious with demomaking, while the other ones (active on CPCRulez as also other websites) tend to be more relax and unorganized. I have a picture in my mind to represent this community : the Asterix and Obelix's village ! Still, to me it's clearly the leading community on CPC in term of productions and activities, released years after years. There are also some other interesting websites to mention : Grimware, Quasar.net, Arkos, Tom&Jerry...
This whole description is quite incomplete but gives you at least a general overview of the situation of the Amstrad CPC in France.
News from Canada (by me)
Situation here in Québec (part of Canada) is pretty simple : there is me (NoRecess) and Ramlaid (author of the famous DTC demo). We are both coming from France, and had to import our Amstrad CPC at very high shipping price. Ramlaid is currently inactive, quite busy with his job and not motivated enough to bring a DTC 2 demo on the desk.
Unfortunately, this place is a poor place for retro-computing ; and most of people in contact with a computer in the eighties/nineties were mostly Commodore/PC users. Popular gaming was high on dedicated platforms such as Nintendo, Sega.. so fun computing as we knew it as a kid in Europe did not exist there.
Unfortunately, this place is a poor place for retro-computing ; and most of people in contact with a computer in the eighties/nineties were mostly Commodore/PC users. Popular gaming was high on dedicated platforms such as Nintendo, Sega.. so fun computing as we knew it as a kid in Europe did not exist there.
