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CodeCraft #4 voting open

Posted by Jeffrey Lee on 19:00, 7/10/2021 | , , ,
 
The submission period for the CodeCraft #4 demo coding competition has now closed, which means now comes the part that every one can get involved with: Voting!
 
9 entries were received in total, but because voting is on a per-category basis, only 7 of the entries are eligible for voting (the other two are in categories that only received one entry). There are five entries in the 256 byte intro category, and two entries in the 1KB intro category.
 
Download links and YouTube videos of all the applicable demos are available here on pouët.net, and information about the voting process (and an all-in-one download archive for the submissions) is available here. At the time of writing, there is an issue which is preventing the CodeCraft website from being updated with this information.
 
The deadline for voting is Sunday the 17th of October.
 
Comment in the forums

CodeCraft returns

Posted by Jeffrey Lee on 16:30, 3/5/2021 | , , ,
 
After a 20 year hiatus, the CodeCraft RISC OS demo coding competition is back, with CodeCraft #4. Like the previous instalments, the competition focuses on small programs, fitting into one of the following categories:
  • 256 byte intro or game
  • 1KB intro or game
  • 2KB tool
  • 4KB intro or game
The deadline for submissions is October 3rd, so there's plenty of time to get in your entry (or entries). Questions and submissions should be sent to Kuemmel via the email found in the "A Call to the ARMs" intro ReadMe.
 
If you're new to CodeCraft, make sure to check out the CodeCraft #3, #2 and #1 websites to see the entries from the previous instalments.
 
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Acorn port of Acorn imminent

Posted by Trevor Johnson on 23:10, 31/3/2014 | ,
 
RISC OS 5 users seeking alternatives to Paint may be wondering how the enhancements to GraphicsV will affect them.
 
In May 2013 Acorn v.4 for the Mac was released (this one slipped under the radar last year). This popular package supports alpha masking and has been "available for all" since August 2013.
 
We've recently been contacted by a long-time user who is "on the verge" of releasing a port of the bitmap Acorn application to the former-Acorn platform. The user says that outstanding matters are now purely administrative, and that an announcement can be made at the forthcoming Wakefield Acorn & RISC OS Show 2014.
 
We are witnessing exciting times in the RISC OS marketplace, although it is not clear whether the Acorn port of Acorn will benefit from quite the same level of developer attention as another well-established vector graphics package.
 
Some of those loose ends which are being tidied up:
  1. Sprites11
  2. PlingStore integration (demo version)
  3. SDFS compatibility testing
  4. Filing system improvements (step 2)
  5. Filing system improvements (various)
So, what will you do with your Acorn?
 
1 comment in the forums

Newsround

Posted by Sion on 19:00, 25/3/2012 | , , , , , , , , ,
 

RISC OS 5.18 released

RISC OS Open have announced the release of their latest stable release of RISC OS, version 5.18 to be precise. This update features no less than 340 improvements since the last official release and has been officially vetted by CastleInfo Technology for the Iyonix PC and R-CompInfo Interactive for their ARMini.
 
The new ROM image should be able to upgrade all versions of RISC OS from version 5.07 or later and is provided with a flash programming tool (for Iyonix users), which also takes a backup of the previous version just incase you wish to go back.
 
The OMAP3 (i.e. ARMini) version of the operating system now supports hardware CMOS memory fitted on a carrier board plugged into one of the headers on the motherboard. This permits saving of common configuration settings which will be retained when the power is off. CMOS memory carrier boards are available now from the ROOL store and are suitable for use on the original Beagleboard, Beagleboard-xM, and Pandaboard.
 
As the ROMs now several new modules, some of the module location numbers have changed. Because the *UNPLUG settings only remember the module location numbers you may need to review any unplugged modules after the upgrade to ensure the desired ones are unplugged, and that crucial modules are not left unplugged by mistake.
 
For the full release notes and download/installation instructions, please see the ROOL press release.

Raspberry Pi released

The Raspberry Pi Foundation have launched their much anticipated, and dirt cheap computer, the Raspberry Pi. The machine is currently being sold through a number of electronic retailers, namely Farnell, RS Components, and Allied Electronics. However overwhelming demand for the device means that it may take a month or two for production to ramp-up and all backorders to be filled.
 
The Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The foundation plans to release two versions, priced at £16 and £22. The Raspberry Pi is intended to stimulate the teaching of basic computer science in schools and has been designed for use with the Linux operating system, although a port of RISC OS to the machine is already underway.
 
The design is based around a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC, which includes a 700MHz ARM1176JZF-S processor, VideoCore IV GPU, and 256 Megabytes of RAM. The design does not include a built-in hard disk or solid-state drive, instead relying on an SD card for booting and long-term storage.

MPlayer ported to RISC OS

Chris Gransden has ported the popular cross-platform media player and encoder MPlayer to RISC OS, this significant advancement means that RISC OS can now fully play MP4 and other mainstream video formats.
 
Chris’ port is a direct build of the Linux sources and does not feature much RISC OS integration as of yet. It makes a good attempt at playing most MPEG, VOB, AVI and WMV formats, plus many others. You can expect reasonable frame rates up to 480p resolution on recent RISC OS hardware which currently includes Beagleboard and Pandaboard based machines.
 
Bundled along with the MPlayer download is MEncoder, which is a simple movie encoder, designed to encode MPlayer-playable movies.
 
You can download this latest version of MPlayer from the riscos.info website here.

Updates galore

Version 3.38 of OpenVector, OpenGridPro and DrawPlus has been released. These applications are all open-source enhancements to Draw, providing enhanced layering and object library capabilities as well as the ability to draw advanced grids and other object layouts. This release features improved compatibility with Cortex-A8 hardware such as the ARMini and BeagleBoard. Compressed drawfiles and libraries can now be loaded when alignment exceptions are enabled. Consistency of layered merging has also improved.
 
Version 1.71 of PlayIt, a disc-based engine for playing sound samples, has been released. It is used as a resource by several audio players including DigitalCD. This new update contains no new functionality but several significant bugfixes, increased 26/32bit neutrality, and changes for ARMv7 compatability.
 
BarFree from Bernard Veasey has been updated to work on RISC OS 5.18, BarFree copies revised ‘Messages’ and ‘Templates’ files to your ’PreDesk’ directory within its own directory called ‘Free’ to enable different style Free Space windows.
 
Charm has been updated to version 2.5.3 to add support for 'new' and 'delete' keywords for allocating and releasing storage for records. Charm is a high level programming language with a compiler than generates efficient code with a small memory footprint.
 

3 comments in the forums

Wakefield Show 2009

Posted by Andrew Duffell on 08:01, 25/4/2009 | , , , , , ,
 
Wakefield RISC OS ShowThe 2009 Wakefield Show takes place today.
  • Stuart Tyrrell Developments' have unveiled their VPod graphics accelerator. For £149, the podule card for the Risc PC range of computers features hardware acceleration and high resolutions such as 1680x1050 in 16 million colours.
  • NetSurf 2.0 has been released and is available for download on the NetSurf website.
  • RISC OS Open has been demonstrated running on a A7000 computer.
Link: Wakefield Show news (via Twitter)

 
29 comments in the forums

An arbitrary number of possibly influential RISC OS things

Posted by Phil Mellor on 15:00, 23/3/2007 | , , , , , , , ,
 
In this article we look at some of the programs and projects - some obvious, others less so - that influenced the history of the RISC OS platform and its users. These are our suggestions, not a top ten and certainly not in any particular order. What other applications would you add to the list?
 
Continue reading "An arbitrary number of possibly influential RISC OS things" | 32 comments in the forums

Helvetica: the movie

Posted by Phil Mellor on 14:00, 15/3/2007 | ,
 
Helvetica movieI've been excited about the Helvetica movie ever since I read about it on NoiseToSignal last August. According to the blurb, "Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives."
 
It finally premiered on the 13th at SXSW and, judging from the reviews, it seems it's everything I hoped for...
Thanks to Hustwit's clean lines of narrative and intellectually playful style, we get a great look at the universality of Helvetica as a typeface and how, after it was unveiled in 1957 and hailed as a miracle of modernism, it became the unofficial font of official activities. Hustwit's camera noses through a variety of urban landscapes and shows you just how omnipresent Helvetica is -- traffic signs, logos, official notices, storefronts.
 
At its best, Helvetica makes us actually look at the world around us, and actually think about how the medium is the message, how much art is in the things our eyes gloss over every day.
 
One of the most intellectually exciting, stimulating, warm-hearted and best-made independent documentaries I've seen in a long time, Helvetica turns 26 letters into a whole new perspective on the world.
 
Cinematical
This is not really a movie about a typeface. Helvetica is just a character in this wonderfully-made film, which just might be the best history of graphic design we've ever seen ... Designer or not, you will never, ever see the world the same again.
 
MediaBistro
Hopefully the UK screenings will be announced soon. I need to see this film.
 
1 comment in the forums

What you can do with Draw

Posted by Phil Mellor on 11:00, 3/1/2007 | , , ,
 
In my opinion, the Draw module is one of the most significant and useful components of RISC OS. For the uninitiated, it provides a set of routines for calculating, transforming and rendering lines, polygons, bezier curves, sprites, and text. The Draw application has been bundled with every version of RISC OS and the draw file format is a defacto standard for almost every RISC OS application that incorporates graphics in some way.
 
Aside from the obvious applications such as word processing, desktop publishing, and so on, many other programs use Draw files in quite unique ways. As an example, the sound editing program Sonor can export sound waves in Draw format.
 
In this article I hope to demonstrate some of the flexibility that Draw and the RISC OS desktop can provide.
 
Continue reading "What you can do with Draw" | 13 comments in the forums

Early August Update

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World cup fever hits Artworks

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Wakefield 2006 show report

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Wakey Wakey, it's show time again!

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NetSurf 1.0 and GTK+ port

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GView 1.50 displays PDF files

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