Amiga Racer Game Update for X1000

Back in November 2015 I took a look at the work in progress Amiga Racer 1.6b running on AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on my AmigaOne X1000.

Since then a lot more features have been added and work is still very much in progress with multiple weekly updates! Let's take a look at the changes now we are up to version 2.6c!

For those not familiar, Amiga Racer is a racing game recreating the style of the original Lotus trilogy of games for the Classic Amiga. You can download the game from os4depot.net here. For all version downloads you can get them from here.

Updates are frequently released, and downloadable and applied automatically from the Live Update function within the game.

There is now a game manual included in the Amiga Racer drawer:

The manual is very helpful and explains the controls and the now functional ARCS = Amiga Racer Construction Set.

The updated keyboard controls (Joystick also supported) are shown in the manual:

System Requirements are also listed for the game:

It is worth mentioning that in addition to AmigaOS 4.1 here is also a version of Amiga Racer for MorphOS too. There are also now versions for Windows and Linux. My focus here though is on the AmigaOS 4.1 version!

The game intro has been updated and looks great!

The main menu has also been updated, including the new features such as the ARCS, AmigaTec Cloud for loading/saving tracks created with ARCS, and of course more cars and tracks to choose from!

There are also more cars available in the new version - now 10 cars to choose from!

Taking a closer look at the new ARCS, which works in a similar way to how it worked in Lotus on the Classic Amiga, with some additions.

You can adjust the scenario the track will be run on, which there are now 6 scenarios to choose from. You can then adjust the length of the track, the frequency of curves and their sharpness, how many hills are on the track, the frequency of scenery trackside and obstacles:

Once you select Build track, the resulting track is shown in summary on the screen, with the option to save the track to play again later, or just play the track without saving.

As it says in the screen shot above, if you go back to the main menu and select Amigatec cloud, you can select the tracks you have saved, and it shows the location the scenario is based in:

Launching into the game you can see one of the new scenario's, the city scenario, which looks amazing:

 

Approaching a checkpoint, another new addition - this shot also shows the hills parameter of ARCS at work:

Trying another scenario now, this is the recently added Russia Scenario:

A Spain scenario has also been added too:

I went back to the ARCS and worked on another track, based on the snow scenario:

There have been improvements in the wheel movement, shadows and car control too which make the car control much nicer and realistic - it also makes the game harder!

There have also been optimisations to improve the performance of the game on slower AmigaOS 4.1 systems like the Sam 460 and Sam 440 - previously it was intended for running on the AmigaOne X1000.

I haven't tried it on the sam460 as my sam 460 has been swapped out for the AmigaOne A1222 for betatesting duties, and will be like that for a while.

This game is shaping up as a great Amiga game for 2016!

If you donate towards the game then you will receive a key that unlocks ARCS and additional functionality like AmigaTec Cloud and all the latest updates and build works information is shared too.

By donating you also get the opportunity to request new features directly to the programmer - the Holden HSV commodore in the game was the result of my personal request so we had an Australian built performance car in the game!

As a result of requests we also now have the option to change the music while playing the game itself.

I am definitely enjoying seeing the evolution of Amiga Racer, with plenty more new features to come - including multiplayer over the internet and more! Can't wait!

It is truly fantastic to have new games for the NG Amiga systems in 2016!

Debian Linux on AmigaOne A1222

I am pleased to say that after a week with the new AmigaOne A1222, I have now got Debian 8 Linux installed and booting from the hard disk, along with an AmigaOS theme and other goodies!

As you would imagine as a betatester, things are very much in active development right now, and so I have been busy relaying my experiences to the development team and other beta testers on things I have found while working on the A1222 to get Linux up and running.

I have the installation guide A-EON provided to get me started.

I have also received plenty of helpful tips and tricks in response to my initial questions. It is very interesting!

Along the way I have become a bit more familiar with the u-Boot firmware in the A1222 this week.

Initially I loaded the Debian 8 image onto a bootable 16GB USB stick using Windows 10 to boot the A1222 system from it:

 Thanks to the hard work of the developers, this usb image booted and worked out of the box as expected.

One of the more interesting things I found out this week is how to load the image files needed to boot A1222 into Linux into the u-Boot firmware MicroSD card.

The command line can be run from the A1222 directly or via the serial port to another computer - in this case my Windows 10 computer running Putty:

Previously these boot files needed to be located on a separate FAT partition, for example on a CF card on the X1000, SD Card on the Sam460 (firmware not located there), or a dedicated small FAT partition on the hard disk to be used by the system.

With the A1222 though, it is possible to now load these files directly into the firmware MicroSD card to boot the system into Linux. (As shown in part in the screenshot above)

Being able to "reflash" the firmware on the A1222 by extracting the firmware image onto a second MicroSD card makes upgrades a breeze and changing back very straight forward indeed. I believe this is a great feature!

Once booted via USB stick, I then used the Linux command "dd" to copy the original Linux image file to the 1TB hard disk. I then ran GParted to resize the resulting small hard disk partition to a larger size (250GB).

I want to leave space on the disk for loading other systems later on so this will do for now. After this I could then boot up the A1222 using the hard disk:

Here are some screenshots of the booted Debian 8 environment on the A1222, running Iceweasel web browser and Audicious media player (you can click to expand any pictures):

The interesting thing here is that the sound support works through the HDMI connector on the Radeon HD PCI-e card I have installed! I tested this hdmi output (video and sound) and it works well!

This function would make the A1222 easy to hook up directly to a big screen TV for example.

The A1222 also still has on board sound support too, so both options are available.

Video card, sound, USB and Network support worked straight away, and there are already many applications running under Linux to play with!

Some screenshots of Super Tux Kart running on the A1222:

I certainly enjoyed using Audacious media player again (used previously on AmiCygnix under AmigaOS 4 on the X1000). It can play back C64 SID tunes too:

While on the subject of the C64, I have also been working on my C64 with Ultimate 1541 II recently for the upcoming Adelaide Amiga meeting on Jan 25, which this time round has a retro theme with other old systems (not only Amiga) being featured.

I plan to show the C64 running videos (!), cool REU expansion demos and games, among other things! I have also been working on my presentation for AmigaOS 4.1 at the show.

Should be a great meeting, so if you can make it to the meeting I hope you can. More information is on the official website here.

Getting back to the A1222, I was keen to experiment with the AmigaOS GTK themes that are available for Debian, which make Linux look a bit more Amiga-like.

Mine is a mix of a couple of different themes. If you are curious, I got them from here and here.

I think it looks much nicer now:

I will be the first to admit that I am not a Linux expert, although I have had previous experience installing and supporting Linux and Unix for various companies in the past. I am learning all the time!

In the System Monitor you can see the Dual Core processors are active, and the 4GB memory I have on my A1222:

Firing up LibreOffice Writer next and having not used it before I was surprised how nice it is, especially when chilling out to some nice tunes (MP3 and M4A work perfectly out of the box:

I did hit a small issue with the Amiga emulation, which runs fine but has decided it wants to run completely upside down - I had to laugh!

I'll cover more on the Amiga emulation side once I work out how to turn it the right way up...and yes, I have already heard the jokes about it being upside down because it was written for the northern hemisphere and not for us down under! :-)

I reconfigured the timezone to Adelaide time as the Linux image had it set to UK time:

I also stumbled across a rather nice AmigaOne A1222 presentation created in LibreOffice Impress (a Microsoft PowerPoint software equivalent):

 It has been very enjoyable, and I am impressed with the professionalism and helpfulness of the other developers and betatesters. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their ongoing help.

The work continues on the betatesting for the AmigaOne A1222 so there will of course be much more to come. However, I wanted to share some of my experiences so far.

My A1222 has arrived!

Happy New Year to everyone - I hope you all had a great Xmas and New Year!

For my first blog post in 2016 I bring you a special treat - a look at the new AmigaOne A1222 system announced at AmiWest 2015 by A-EON Technology, and recently delivered to me as a newly appointed Betatester in early January 2016.

Let's take a closer look at the A1222 board. The specifications of the AmigaOne A1222 (Tabor) are:

PowerPC CPU: Freescale QorIQ P1022, 1.2GHz, 32-bit, e500V2, dual-core
• 1x CPU fan + heatsink
• 2x fan ports

DDR3 SODIMM
• 64 bit interface
• 400Mhz
• Support up to 8GB RAM

RS232 Serial
• 1x RS232 including flow control
• Level shifting from TTL UART serial levels to RS232 levels
• Maximum baud rate of 230,400

SATA
• 2x SATA 2.6 compliant controllers

USB
• 2x External & 2x Internal USB port

Ethernet
• 2x RGMII ethernet PHYs each providing Gbit ethernet

PCIe
• x4 PCIe gen 1 link allows data rates of 2.5Gb/s per lane
• x16 PCIe connector to support RadeonHD graphics cards

Audio
• Audio CODEC generating stereo audio out from I2S digital audio

HDMI LCD Interface
• 24 bit colour depth
• Support for resolution up to 1280x1024
• HDMI 1.3 support

GPIO
• Support for user GPIOs
• GPIO JTAG

Micro SD
• Micro SD card for ROM - later possibility of running the whole system from the microSD card

WCU Prog

LED ports for Power, CPU, HDD

Enough specs, let's take a closer look at the board with some close up photos:

Here you can see the onboard Serial port, DVI connector, sound input/output ports, two network port and 2 USB ports.

Close up of the CPU with included cooling fan:

Unlike the X1000, the A1222 uses a U-Boot firmware, which is loaded onto a micro-sd card on the board. This makes upgrades considerably easier:

Flipping the board over you can see the signatures on the back:

I love the Space invaders thing on the back - very cool:

The A1222 board is small - very small. MiniITX in fact. To give you an idea of size, here is a comparison of the Sam460CR board and A1222 side by side:

Another look at the ports on the A1222:

In these next shots you can see the 2 onboard SATA ports, two GPIO ports an additional header for connecting two additional USB ports on the front of your case:

This is Revision 1.1 of the board, labelled as Topaz to fit the B-52 song name tradition for Amiga system boards:

I then got to work installing the A1222 into my Sam460CR case:

View of the ports from the back of the case:

I also connected the Radeon HD card from my Sam460CR to use higher screen resolutions.

After powering on I get the animated boot screen for the A1222:

The early boot menu uses the traditional Classic Amiga fonts and colour scheme, which feels very familiar indeed:

Under System Info... option I can see the details about my A1222 system:

The command line option brings a A1222> prompt:

The help command explains the functions within the U-Boot firmware:

It is exciting to see another new NG Amiga system being made and released, and one which will hopefully be at a price point that will appeal to people who want to run AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition but are unable to afford purchasing an AmigaOne X5000 or second hand AmigaOne X1000.

AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition is to be the operating system for this A1222 system, which I will be helping with beta testing in due course. Due to an NDA, I won't be able to discuss/show anything about the AmigaOS 4.1 betatesting work I will be doing on this blog or elsewhere.

At the moment it is possible to run a couple of different Linux distributions on the A1222, with Classic Amiga running under E-UAE emulation, which is fine to talk about.

I will start work on setting up Linux on the system when I have some more free time and share some more details of it on this blog.  I saw some teaser shots of it running previously and I am keen to get it up and running on my A1222. More to come!

For now I wanted to show the AmigaOne A1222 system as it is very exciting!