A new version is available.

What's new:

• CLR key added to move back to root folder while navigating
• C key added to clear current slot (that was removed since version V3.0 and +)
• ROM version can be launched with |HXC,0 or |HXC,1 to force physical drive 0 or 1
• upgraded from SDCC 4.3 to SDCC 4.4

Download the program here.

One year has passed since my post called Retrospective 2023. I really enjoyed writing it (especially after receiving some positive feedback about it), so why not create a follow-up for 2024!

This article is not intended to provide a close representation of the progress of the Amstrad community. Instead, it's an annual overview of my activities around my favorite hobby: the Amstrad CPC/Plus.

I'm going to start with literature. This topic has been a serious focus for me for a few years now, and I'm giving an increasing interest on books, magazines, and other publications related to my preferred 8-bit machines. I had a lot of fun this summer isolating myself on my patio to immerse in such readings, or simply as a healthy screen-free activity before bedtime.

To begin with, I received some high-quality magazines in my mailbox.

The first is the issue #2 of 64 NOPs (January 2024, French content). To me, that issue represents a great step-forward: varied content, mainly for advanced programmers, complemented by satellite articles (interviews and meeting reports). I admit I haven’t "digested" everything yet, but trust me that’s a good thing -- 64 NOPs is the kind of publication I enjoy revisiting, especially for its fascinating snippets of source code that grabbed my attention but take a few reads to fully understand.

But my favorite discovery of 2024 is CPC FANZ BZH #2 (March 2024, French content). I expected an enjoyable read, but I wasn’t prepared for something so captivating. The presentation is impeccable: breathtaking illustrations paired with flawless printing. The content is exactly what I expect from a magazine -- varied, technical, accessible, informative, cutting-edge, written with an humor that does not alter the professionalism of the authors.

For both 64 NOPs and CPC FANZ BZH, I’m impressed by the print quality. It’s such a leap forward compared to what was produced in the ’80s and ’90s -- I'm truly amazed!

Again, I acquired numerous books, mainly from Micro-Application (French publisher). BTW, if you read this -- I’m actively searching for the book Trucs et Astuces 2 (Volume 17), please contact me if you want to sell me a copy. But back on the topic, I had a great surprise for some of the English-language books, as I was able to purchase few of them shipped directly from the United States at a very cheap price (I live in Canada).

Few unexpected new books of 2024 also caught my interest: Generation Amstrad CPC written by Patrick Hellio and Marion et les crocodiles d'AMSTRAD by David Hecq. Both are amazing reads, I highly recommend them (I'm still not done with Generation Amstrad CPC !).

Last year, I shared photos of my printed reference documents. What I can’t buy (or buy affordably), I print myself. I have taken a step further by purchasing proper binders for better organization. As a result, I now have documentation for all major software on the Amstrad, along with classical fanzines, various articles, and few rare books.

I also keep my other Amstrad computers well-organized (I own every model of CRTC), including my beautiful Amstrad CPC 464, which I occasionally bring out for nostalgia. With such a setup, my wish of having at least one functional machine for my retirement days is secure :)

I had already printed some articles from the venerable Amstrad Cent Pour Cent magazine. But I went much further, printing even more technical articles, all neatly organized in new binders too.

If the Internet was about to collapse, thanks to all those reference materials I would have absolutely no trouble continuing my hobby solo, haha!

Moving on, another highlight has been on the hardware front. I didn’t need anything major for my 8-bit machines (I still have so much to explore with my UniDOS setup!), except for a minor speaker replacement for my Amstrad CPC 464 due to some unpleasant crackling sounds. Thanks again, Rob! :)

On the other hand, I acquired two expansions for my Amiga 600. The first is a simple Gotek drive emulating a second floppy drive (affordable and compact -- how could I resist?). The second, more exciting addition is a SDBox connected to the parallel port. It allows hot-swapping SD cards (no need to reboot) for reading and writing data. This has been a long-time wish of mine because, for the first time (in my house, at least ;-) my Amiga can exchange files with my Amstrad (via Albiero under UniDOS) without requiring a PC as an intermediary. Two fully autonomous machines that can now communicate each other, wohoo!

Finally, I have kept a good pace with my own creativity. I have made a significant progress on the programming of Sonic GX, whose latest preview released earlier this summer seems to have been well received. Since then, the game has continued to advance, and all my efforts for the rest of the year are now focused on the two final levels of the game. I’m optimistic and I now think that a release by the end of 2025 is achievable, with no pressure and at the high level of quality we are aiming for.

Earlier, I mentioned my love for CPC FANZ BZH #2. I reached out to the authors, and after few great discussions, they gave me the opportunity to write two quality articles for CPC FANZ BZH #3. It’s a true privilege for me to be published! The first article covers the best practices for programming with respect to the system (a theme too often ignored, in my opinion), and the second one explores my advanced use of sprites in Sonic GX. Don't blame me: it's all written in French. I can’t wait to see the final result once printed!

And here we are, with another year that comes to an end. The next 12 months looks just as busy, with the completion of Sonic GX and likely an in-person appearance at the next Amstrad meeting organized by Eliot in France (the timing seems perfect for me).

I'm NoRecess, I'm a geek and I'm an Amstrad nerd!!!
See you in 2025, which promises to be truly exciting (the Amstrad CPC 6128 will be 40 years old!!!).

J'ai eu l'occasion de m'entretenir avec Nicolas "Dr JVTek" PERRET pour discuter de mon parcours professionnel dans l'industrie du jeu vidéo. J'ai aussi pu aborder mon hobby qui est la programmation pour les machines Amstrad CPC et GX-4000.

So after all this time, you thought that Sonic GX was vaporware, right ? How wrong you are! :) Many things happened to the game in the last months...

First, we rewrote the title screen, this time it's almost a 1:1 with the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis version. Of course, it's fully animated with all the horizontal scrollers, if you had a doubt.

Actually, now many elements are highly inspired from the 16-bit version of the original game.

Above: the "zone name", the "scoring" and the "game over" messages are now displayed directly into the game viewport...

And below, those are screenshots of the new boss-fights, all of them featuring unique gameplay.

Now each zones have their own unique Bonus Stages...

Sonic now moves faster and features small/long jumps (as a consequence, the camera moves faster, too).

Checkpoints have been added in the middle of the maps to avoid restarting from the beginning when loosing...

Many levels were enhanced with better gameplay. Also, many bugfixes were provided, and all the numerous collision issues we had are now gone.

Those previewed screenshots/video are probably the last ones before the final release of the game. We don't want to spoil anything...

So the eternal question -- when does this game will be available to everyone !?? Well, the answer is simple: this game is a labor of love, we keep adding stuff till we can, and we will continue till we are satisfied enough with the final result. Also, we actually raised the technical bar again and again since we thought that the GX-4000 could handle it (and with reason), meaning more work for us. A tentative release now could be end of 2025, but I don't promise anything now loll. =)

To conclude this post, here is a video showing the various elements of the gameplay... here it's running on emulator (that was more practical to record the various parts of the game) but the game behaves exactly the same on the real hardware.

Thanks for reading! See you in my Xmas post ;-)

Since it's mid-December 2023, I think it's a good time to look back and see what I have done this year.

Now that I have moved into my new home and that I'm fully installed, I decided to invest massively into my hobby (for the long term). I'm really fond of the Amstrad CPC machines, it's not a secret: I grew up with those, as a kid, but also many years later as an adult. And now I want to preserve all of that for the years (decades...) to come.

One of the first thing I did, was to invest into a decent physical setup. I already had the desk, but with some reorganization I was able to properly arrange my Amstrad CPC 6128, the Amstrad Plus, the Amstrad GX-4000 and yes, the humble Amiga 600 from Commodore (I will get back to it later in this post).

This year I was able to acquire my very first Amstrad CPC 464 too! Thank you so much Rabs for the opportunity, I'm so happy with it, it will be kept in good hands!
What a lovely machine. I love the typing on it, my model has a true mechanical keyboard, unlike the membrane-based keyboards of the other Amstrad CPC machines.
I added a mandatory DDI-5 to it (a Gotek-based floppy emulator with 512Kb RAM expansion) plus a FlashGordon (ROMBoard). I tried one tape - the legendary Mission Genocide game that I got at an insane cheap price - it works well but it took more than 5 minutes to load haha (hence the need of a DDI-5).
For years I have been a 6128 user, and I reckon that I had some wrong assumptions towards the machine. Now, I can fully understand why a part of the community (many users in Spain and UK, at least) still prefer the 464s against the 6128s. And it's not only for nostalgic reasons. As I said, the keyboard is awesome and I also find the locations of the joystick + audio ports to be at a much better place than the later models (it's on the back of the keyboard for the 464s).
And while the 464 was originally sold in 1984, the 6128 was a "professionally looking" iteration in 1985 and not a true replacement, and the 464 was still sold for years after its original release date. So yes, now I consider those 2 machines as truly complementary ones, and that's totally new to me :)
Of course, not everything is good with the 464 -- the elevation from the desk is insanely high and the keyboard itself is too large to be really comfortable. But as an Amstrad fan, it's definitively a "must have"!

Another point of focus was doing the repair of my machines. One of my machines had a faulty RAM component. My good old Multiface Two device was broken for years. Another one had a faulty Z80 CPU in it. I also wished to use UniDOS ROM at ROM location 7, and this requires the installation of a physical socket. Since I have absolutely no repair skills (I'm more a destroyer than anything else, loll); I asked a friend of mine if he had time to repair those, and he kindly accepted! A truly sincere, warm "thank you"! (He will recognize himself, and I don't want to point publicly to him).
Those machines are not "simple backups for the future", they all feature a different CRTC (so yes, I have CRTC 0,1,2,3,4 in my possession :). It's great for the testing of advanced graphic algorithms relying on the graphic chip of the Amstrad CPCs.

I also decided to print physically many different software manuals, fanzines and technical articles. All themes in there, going from the 80s to nowadays. I like picking one of those before going to bed, it's a healthy, relaxing activity for the brain hehe.
More than 1000 pages were printed :)

Still on the reading topic, this year the community has been really prolific. I did not buy everything that was available, I had to be selective. I enjoyed both 64 NOPs and CPC-Anachronie (French publications). One is dedicated to programming, and the other one is mostly related to the testing of games (both old and recent ones). I spent a great moment too with the first issue of Amstrad Addict. It wasn't perfect though, but the overall presentation/content felt like a real magazine from the golden age! From the lot, I was really impressed by the quality of the printing of CPC-Anachronie, the authors really learnt from their previous publication, "Fanzine GX Issue 3".
The book from Hicks, "Memory Full", was finally out after years of writing. In all honestly, from a demomaker's point of view, despite my initial fears, no "scene drama" was found in it. It relates the Amstrad demoscene in the early days -- and that was nice to revisit that period. I have some doubts related to the printing itself - the book could have been a little bigger, and it gets hard to read close to the center of the book - but I will always give more value on the actual content over the packaging. So, all good!

Few words about my Amiga 600. I always loved this machine (even in the 90s). Being more powerful than an Amstrad CPC (but twice the price of an Amstrad back in the days...), it's a fantastic machine to use as a reference (my personal opinion is that all the new modern games and demos on the Amstrad CPC machines should try to mimic the Amiga, not the C64!). Plus, in 2023 there is still a vibrant community active for the Amiga OCS/ECS too - and the demoscene continues to impress for sure! (Hi Rhino!)
My Amiga 600 is extended to death :) with few cheap upgrades: 4Gb Flash card used as HDD replacement, 5.5Mb Fast RAM, 2Mb Chip RAM, Kickstart 3.1. That configuration is able to run Workbench 3.1, handles most of the WHDLoad games and demos, and provides massive storage for my own MOD collection.
The only missing thing was the replacement of the aging 3"1/2 floppy drive. The Gotek exists of course and is well supported on the Amiga platforms, but the original model exposes a tiny screen on the right side of the Amiga 600. I hate this suggested workflow so I never bought one through the years.
But this year, I was able to acquire a "GOEX", it's still a Gotek-based device, this time it features a great display with no hardware modifications of the case. Finally a true working solution for the replacement of the floppy drive in the A600, and I love it!

So yes, many things were done this year regarding the physical state of my hobby. I think it's important sometimes to make a pause, observe what we have and see how we can improve, and that's what I have done this year. Now I feel much better regarding my machines, I was able to put some nostalgic vibes at the right place and I know I'm good back again for the years to come. I don't plan acquiring anything "major" from now, I estimate I was able to retrieve everything I wished, and I don't want to start collecting "for the purpose of collecting". The only thing that I will continue to do, is supporting the future editions of magazines and books, because it's a physical proof than the Amstrad is still alive and I really salute the people behind all those efforts.

Of course, I'm a programmer, professionally but also on my spare time hehe.

So in parallel to the above things, my focus this year was on those 3 big topics:

• Sonic GX: I was finally able to present a preview of the Bonus Stage to the community! It seemed to be globally well received, by members of the community of course, but also some other random people coming from nowhere (Youtube, mostly). I still think developing a game for the Amstrad CPC (or here in the context, the GX-4000) is a more rewarding experience than making a traditional demo, but it's a personal feeling. To this day I'm not sure if I will get back to pure demomaking (cf. what I did in the past decades). Injecting demoscene techniques into games now seems to be more interesting/challenging to me! But it's with an intense respect and interest that I continue to follow the demoscene news.
• HxC Manager V4.1: I needed a small break from Sonic GX. Working on a such big project ask lots of focus, and I felt myself progressively interested to put my hands back into the codebase of the HxC Manager (one of my most popular program ever released for the Amstrad CPC). So, I decided to invest some time in it and paused the development of Sonic GX (my brain really asked for it). This summer I revisited completely the program, did some upgrades to the UI for a better workflow, pushed the number of slots to the maximum, made lots of internal cleaning and also fixed some stability issues. And thanks to the new acquired 464 machine, I was also able to make it compatible with it too! :)
• CATRUN V1.2: I still needed a break from Sonic GX :) This was initially a 2-night experiment about improving the traditional CAT->RUN workflow. I enhanced it through few additional weeks, and then I finally added some compatibility with UniDOS (since I had all the hardware to test it). It's done and publicly available to everyone!

Now that I released those 2 side projects, I feel that my motivation is progressively getting back on Sonic GX. I started the implementation of something new in the game and yes, if it gets properly done then once again it will raise the bar a bit higher :)

So that's it. Writing this post on my website was a beneficial experience to me. Initially I thought I wasn't that productive this year, but looking back at this post I realize how wrong I was :)
I'm NoRecess, I'm a geek and I'm an Amstrad nerd !!!
See you in 2024, another very exciting year for sure (the Amstrad CPC 464 will be 40 years old!!!).

A new version of the program is now available.

This is the changelog:

• crash-fix + new keys for the Amstrad CPC 464 users: Shift+LEFT/RIGHT to select slot, COPY key to assign to current slot
• upgraded from SDCC 4.2 to SDCC 4.3 (provides slightly better ASM code for faster FAT32 parsing)
• does not assume anymore that AMSDOS ROM is at ROM 7

Click here for the download link!

In this new version, on top of the existing features of V1.1:

• 464 crash-fix + added Shift+TAB/COPY key usage for 464 users
  
• use A or B key to switch current drive to A: or B:
• use P key to open an ASCII file with with Protext
• use S key for multi-select files. You can combine that with delete operations.
  
  

I had some fun lately with the great UniDOS. If it gets detected:

• current path gets displayed on top of all printed catalogues
• use CLR key to navigate to root folder
• use DEL key to navigate to parent folder
• use RETURN/ENTER/COPY to navigate into a sub-folder
• use N key to create a new folder
• use C key to copy a file to the other logical drive (can also be combined with S key (multi-selection))

There are also some other minor improvements (build date shown in Help, don't assume AmsDOS rom is at ROM 7, etc).

Click here for the download link !

Thanks to Poulette73 & Offset for the preliminary testing!

CATRUN is a simple tool for the Amstrad CPC machines to fasten the process of disc's content discovery / launch a program.

When inserting a new disc into the machine, I bet than 95% of the regular Amstrad CPC users will first type the CAT command to discover its content, then type RUN"FILENAME to launch a targeted program.

With CATRUN, the user can press CTRL+TAB at machine startup (or any other time, of course) to show the list of files stored on the disc, then use the arrow keys to select the targeted file to execute, and finally press RETURN to exit back to BASIC prompt and auto-type the RUN command. Few key presses are saved in the process, while enhancing (a little bit !) the launching experience.

While selecting a file, It's also possible to:

• type ESC key to just get back to BASIC (cf. discard the RUN command)
  
• type TAB key to redo a catalogue discovery (cf. when the user is willing to change disc and rebrowse its content)
  
• unrelated helper: type R key to rename the selected file
  
• unrelated helper: type D or E key to delete the selected file
  

And that's all :)

For more details, please click here to access the dedicated webpage
Download: click here

This program is useful to me. With some luck it will also be useful to you ! :)
Big thanks to TotO, Poulette73 & roudoudou for the testing & discussions. :heart: