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Additions to Scene World #27 (NTSC News, credits, game tutorial source code + data in PC form)

Released on April, 26th, Scene World #27 - our NTSC and PAL diskmag for the C64 was highly anticipated - however unfortunately some quirks slipped through. More about this in this blog post.

We are all humans, and so unfortunately, a few things slipped through:

• The NTSC news went missing and was identical with the BBS News article. Therefore, please find the NTSC news at the end of this post.
• The Last Ninja Watery remix was done by Merman (not Richard)
• Find additional  game tutorial source code + data in PC form by Richard in the .torrent download links on the Scene World#27 page

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These NTSC News were done by Alterus, and contain the news up to February 2017 (That was our text deadline for Scene World #27)

 

NTSC Scene News by alterus

I've been thinking about what is the concept of "scene" in the context of the C64 and NTSC and PAL lands. When I think of the "scene" I usually think about art, music, demos, and of course cracking and the awesome intros. The PAL scene seems to be thriving, and often when people look at the NTSC scene they might get the impression that its dead or dieing. But that assessment isn't fair, because the NTSC is very different than the PAL scene. Looking at the releases lately, they are dominated by tools and telecommunications software, with some games, demos, music and art sprinkled in. And to be fair, there are a number of NTSC sceners who actively contribute to the amazing demos coming out of the PAL scene, but I'm going to focus on NTSC specific stuff here.

One area where the NTSC scene shines is the BBS scene, with around 90% of the Commodore BBSes located in North America. Check them out and you'll see lots of great art and technical innovation going on. There are also many musicians who compose music using the C64, incorporating it into their concerts and albums, but which is never released through "scene" sites, such as csdb.dk.

There are also several Commodore focused events in Canada and the USA throughout the year, with new ones starting up. In fact, a new event called the Pacific Commodore Expo, will be held in Seattle, USA from June 10-11, 2017 and there will be a compo for NTSC demos, games, art and music. This event, along with established events like CommVex, ECCC, and World of Commodore bring members of the Commodore community together several times a year, while also providing venues to release new software. The time is ripe for the NTSC scene to take off! Lets make it happen!

Now for a run down of the news:

Games:

- There was a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a new RPG titled "Unknown Realm: The Siege Perilous". Stirring Dragon Games was able to raise $126,343 US towards the development of their epic title! The game will be released on a massive 16MB custom C64 cartridge, but will also have a PC and Mac version available. The planned release date is December 2017, but this is shaping up to be a modern classic in the making!

- Riq released "Uni Games", the first and only "Unicycle Games" games for the Commodore 64! You'll need a UniJoystiCle to enjoy this at its fullest, but a regular joystick will also do.

- Binary Legends released "The Pirates of the Dark Waters V2", a new text adventure game with nice looking interface.

Demos:

- "CU @ Reflections" was released by Demonix, Laxity, Longshot and Onslaught as a tribute to the Reflections BBS.

- StatusZero and crew made a new Halloween demo for the October Vic64 meetup. It is included in the MIST 2016 Halloween art pack release.

- "Pumpkin Joyness" is a little Halloween demo by Didi, released with both NTSC and PAL versions.

- "Alfredo's Crushing Curiosity" released by Binary Legends is a port of the classic Apple ][ basic demo. Very entertaining!

- CRT released a beautiful spinning globe REU demo, aptly named "Globe 2016", for World of Commodore 2016. This was inspired by the original spinning globe REU demo by Commodore for World of Commodore 1985.

 

Tools:

- The source code for "CCGMS" was released, and Alwyz took that and went wild! The result is "CCGMS 2017". You can grab the latest version off Afterlife BBS.

- "tcpser" has had some major work done on it by FozzTexx. Hes added in parity detection and some other fixes.

- King Durin has been very busy lately! He ported tcpser to C#, creating "tcpserSharp". You can run this as a Windows service.

- "World Bank BBS" software was also released by King Durin. It's a PETSCII and ANSI BBS which runs on a Windows PC and is very fast.

- "PETSCII converter 1.1.0" is another release by King Durin. It converts ASCII to PETSCII.

- "vchar64" is a cross platform C64 character set editor by Riq. Its now up to v0.20.

- Going in a whole other direction, Riq also released "Commodore Home V0.1", a new home automation software for the C64. A C64 can finally control my house!

- "SwinSID Ultimate config" is a new tool from Schema to configure the SwinSID, obviously :)

- The polyphonic synth program "cynthcart" was updated to v2.0 by Paul Slocum. This is a staple for live chiptune musicians, and this update includes a ton of new features.

- "D64 Editor" was updated to v0.035 by Almightyc64.

- The extremely useful "DirMaster" was updated by Style to v3.1.1. Thanks!

Chiptune:

- Alwyz released a new tune on csdb titled "Snow Nose".

- Computeher released a new album, "Bliptastic". It is dominated by C64 SID goodness, with other 8 bitters thrown in the mix.

- Dya released a super funky tune titled "Mother Funk Signal". Find it on csdb.

- Fastboom showcased some new, unreleased C64 tunes at VRGE 2016 and Overflow, both in Vancouver, Canada.

- Shifty released "Hallelujah" at SynchroNY 2017 and nabbed first place in the Music compo.

Hardware:

- The new Wimodem, a WiFi userport modem, was developed by Jim Drew and available at cbmstuff.com. There was a major increase in BBS traffic soon after the Wimodem was released, so obviously a lot of people picked one up!

Events:

- Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo was held in New Westminster, Canada on May 28th 2016, and it was a huge success! Both Vic64 from Victoria and the Hackery from Vancouver had Commodore equipment setup. Vic64 had 3 C64s, 1 SX-64 and a VIC-20. The Hackery had a PET, C64 and some Amigas. There was also a large market, and a concert with free gaming throughout.

- The Commodore Vegas Expo (CommVEx) was held in Las Vagas, USA on July 30-31, 2016.

- Emergency Chicagoland Commodore Convention (ECCC), co-located for the 7th year with the Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 11 (VCCF), was held on Sept 10-11, 2016 in Chicago USA.

- Overflow 000f was a chiptune concert held in Vancouver, Canada on Sept 21st, 2016. Fastboom treated us to some live SID tunes, and alterus (thats me) used dual c64s and a video switcher to show visuals on the projector. This was the first event for the new Vancouver Chipmusic Society.

- World of Commodore was held in Toronto, Canada on December 3-4, 2016.

 

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