Category: Programming
PunyInform, the adventure game programming library by Fredrik Ramsberg has been updated. PunyInform 5.6 allows users to create Z-Machine compatible programs, allowing them to be easily ported to multiple platforms. This latest release of Puny Inform includes a slew of updates, fixes, and new functionality included in the release. Information lated to the latest version includes the following: Repository: johanberntsson/PunyInform · Tag: v5_6 · Commit: 7edfd4a · Released by: fredrikr Important to note when upgrading: Changes in functionality: Optimizations: Bugfixes: The library and full source code is…
From Jesse Blue: New features: Fixes: Download via Marketplace or from here https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dagenbrock.vscode-merlin-assembler
from Fredrik Ramsberg: PunyInform v5.4 is out! https://github.com/johanberntsson/PunyInform/releases So, this is quite minor update to PunyInform. This also means it’s very easy to upgrade, and nothing much can go wrong.
This little two line program from Lee Fastenau is sure to give your Apple II computer a bit of a complex and as he said, an Identity Crisis.
David Schmenk has released a new version of PLASMA. According to the release notes, PLASMA version 2.11 is a minor update to address the relocating loader for EDASM generated modules with 8 bit fixups. All modules up to now have been generated by PLASM and only use 16 bit fixups. Mostly usefull for future modules built with EDASM. You can download the latest version of PLASMA for the Apple-1, Apple II or Apple III computers from the Plasma Github page…
From David Schmenk : A great number of performance and reliability improvements. The big feature update is PLFORTH, a FORTH language module for PLASMA that makes FORTH a first class citizen to the PLASMA environment. Many programming tools for software development or use PLASMA as a command line interface with a full suite of file manipulation tools and program launcher. Included in this release are many bug fixes and new FORTH language support: https://github.com/dschmenk/PLASMA/releases/tag/v2.1
The 2024 rendition of the Basic 10 Liner Programming Contest has begun. This is the 13th Edition of the BASIC 10 Liner Contest, run by Gunnar Kanold. Some of the Legal systems for the contest include Any 8-bit computer systems. This includes the BBC Micro, Acorn, Electron, MSX, Pet, Commodore 64, and the Apple II computers in addition to many others. Choice of the system is up to the individual user. The Authorized BASIC dialects for the contest include the…
The interactive fiction and text adventure game development community have a lot to celebrate with the recent release of PunyInform version 5.1 by Fredrik Ramsberg. PunyInform, a library designed for creating captivating text adventures for the Z-machine virtual machine, has evolved with notable enhancements and features. PunyInform is a full fledged development library, crafted in Inform 6, empowers developers and storytellers to fashion text adventure games and interactive fiction experiences. These games can be relished not only on modern platforms…
From Fredrik Ramsberg: PunyInform v5.0 is out! Some highlights: We try to avoid breaking changes in PunyInform, but every once in a while we feel the benefit makes it worth it. When this happens, we typically increase the major version number, like now. This version does have some breaking changes – be sure to read the notes on upgrading in the release notes! https://github.com/johanberntsson/PunyInform/releases
Fredrik Ramsberg has announced the latest release of his PunyInform library for writing z-machine adventure games for 8-Bit platforms as well as modern platforms. Based originally on the Inform 6 library, PunyInform provides an easy to use method of writing adventure games which can then be compiled into z3, z5 and z8 formats. According to the release notes, PunyInform version 4.7 includes the following changes and updates: If you intend to use the PunyInform Library and compile, you will need…
Steve Heumann announced the immediate release of ORCA/C 2.2.0, a major update to Mike Westerfield’s ORCA/C Compiler for the Apple IIgs. Some of the improvements in the ORCA/C compiler include the following items: According to the readme posted with the update, you can download the ORCA/C manual for free. The readme file and a detailed release notes file can also be downloaded from the ORCA/C Compiler GitHub site. For those users who are running ORCA/C, this update requires a minimum of ORCA/C…
A.P.P.L.E. and The Apple II Software Enthusiasts Group on Facebook are proud to announce the 2023 Take-1 Animated Movie Contest. Inspired by the recent release of Eric Iwasaki’s Space Voyagers 3000 movie, we have decided to have a contest and a film festival. For information about this contest and details of the rules and rewards, check out https://take1.applearchives.com/contest/
Stephen Heumann and Kelvin Sherlock have just released a new version of ORCA/C, the C compiler for the Apple IIGS, which includes several new language and library features. ORCA/C 2.2.0 B7 is now available for download on GitHub. ORCA/C was originally written for the Apple IIgs by Mike Westerfield of Byteworks, Inc.. He has released the original source code and given permission to the Apple II community to update the project. According to Stephen Heumann, one of the community developers…
In a move that has delighted retro computer enthusiasts and programmers alike, Art Green has announced the successful port of LUA to the Apple IIgs platform. Green, a software developer based in Chicago and active member of the Apple II community, has brought an initial version of the powerful programming language, LUA, to the platform, providing a new level of flexibility and potential to users. Lua is an embeddable scripting language that supports various programming paradigms including procedural, object-oriented, functional,…
The annual BASIC 10Liner Programming Contest has begun. This is an annual event which brings together the best 10 line programs on 8-bit platforms from around the globe. The BASIC 10Liner Programming Contest allows users to participate in one of the following categories with their programs: Category “PUR-80”: Program a game in 10 lines (max 80 characters per logical line, abbreviations are allowed).Attention: In this category, only factory built-in BASIC variants are allowed Category “PUR-120”: Program a game…
The Plasma 2.0 Apha 2 Programming Environment has been released. From Dave Schmenk : “Let’s start 2023 off with some critical bug fixes.” 1. Improved entry/exit for 128K Apple IIe //c 2. Improved entry for Apple /// 3. Improved entry and function calls for 16 bit VM 4. Apple3 ReadyToRun compatible images PLASMA is a medium level programming language targeting the 8-bit 6502processor. Historically, there were simple languages developed in the earlyyears of computers that improved on the tedium of…
*trumpet sounds* Howdy folks! Our first programming challenge in a long while is to create a game in Applesoft that allows the player to perform “strange jobs/tasks”. What do I mean by strange? How about a banana peel stacker? Or catching parrots with a net and a jetpack? Hopefully you get the idea! Your game can be any size you wish. The only rules are: It must be your own original creation, written primarily in Applesoft (binary files used for…
Lucas Scharenbroich, author and creator of the Generic Tile Engine for the Apple IIgs, has released a first beta of the engine on the GTE Github page. This release comes post Kansasfest where Lucas released a number of new demos of the GTE Engine. The Generic Tile Engine (GTE) project is a tile engine built to exploit the unique hardware capabilities of the Apple IIgs personal computer. It supports the Apple IIgs super hires graphics mode (320×200, 16/256 colors) and…
The latest update for the ORCA/C Compiler for the Apple IIgs package from Byteworks Inc. has been released. This release includes a bevy of enhancements and bug fixes including: Support for new language features from C99 and C11: Compound literals Hexadecimal floating-point constants Unicode strings and characters in code Type qualifiers or static in the declarations of array parameters Support for new library features, mainly from C99 and C11: Unicode conversion functions Many new <math.h> functions from C99 strftime function for formatting date/time strings va_copy macro…
