T H E G A M E S M A S T E R S Y S T E M VERSION 1.0 21 MAY 1998 Hi there, and welcome to the first official version of GMS! This is what many of you have been waiting for and the wait has been well worth it. When I posted a message to c.s.a.programmer two years ago about a new "games.library" there was a huge response, and ever since then there has been a lot of continued support. It is because of the support and positive attitudes that GMS finally gets released today. Thanks to the people that write to me and those that have supported the project throughout the design process. Everyone who has supported GMS is mentioned on our web page, and I hope you all continue to help with this project. If you are new to GMS, then I welcome you as a new developer. If you have ideas for the project then send in a mail, or if you need assistance then join the new mailing list and ask questions. Make sure that you read all of the text on licensing issues, and get programming :-) The next version will be due out in 2 months, see you then! - Paul Manias Author of the Amiga Games Master System WWW: http://gms.ethos.co.nz/gms/ N E W S Discussion List --------------- There is a discussion list available for talking about all things that are GMS related. This is about the only place that you can talk to other GMS developers, so it is worth joining. There is also a lot of inside information about future development, and things not mentioned here or on the web site. To join, write to majordomo@lists.ethos.co.nz with "SUBSCRIBE GMS" in the message body. You will receive a message that welcomes you to the list. To write a message to everyone, send mail to gms@lists.ethos.co.nz. If you want to find out who is on the list, send a "WHO GMS" to majordomo. Licensing --------- All of the licensing details have been sorted out and are specified in the LICENSE.TXT file. Before you can distribute a game written in GMS you will need to pay a license fee, which goes to the continuation of the project. Make sure that you read the entire licensing file before you even begin programming in GMS! Also, when distributing your program, make sure you include the file GMSDev:Extras/GMS_README.TXT, which tells users where to get the GMS files from. Announcement List ----------------- If you just want to receive announcements of new GMS releases, please send an e-mail to paul@ethos.co.nz with "SUBSCRIBE GMS-ANNOUNCE" in the header. Announcements are posted around every 3-4 months when a new version appears. System code to be released -------------------------- All of the C and assembler code that makes GMS work will be released, except for the dpkernel.library. This will allow new hardware drivers to be written and enhancements/bug fixes to be made. This will start with the joyports module, so look out for it on Aminet and our web page. PC Conversion ------------- Yes, GMS is being converted to the PC as part of the multiple-platform development programme. This will make it possible for you to compile your programs on both the Amiga and the PC, and therefore earn more money :-). If you want to help with the conversion, write to paul@ethos.co.nz asking to help. Anyone want to write an editor? ------------------------------- Someone other than myself needs to write the object editor for GMS. It will have a GUI front end and lots of boxes and windows for the user to enter data for all currently available structures. It also needs to be able to write out data as tag lists, in a file formatted to Amiga file hunks. Look at Data Objects in the autodoc for detailed information. [NB: You do get a free GMS license for as long as you work on this.] Translation of autodocs ----------------------- If you're interested in converting the docs to your own language, then write to me and I will give you my support. Currently there are people working on French and Swedish translations, but I would like to have some people help them with these conversions as well. The usual free GMS license applies. Note: To anyone that would like the French documentation, go to Aminet and download dev/misc/gms_french.lha. This is the FULL documentation, with autodocs and all of the general docs. Better Chunky 2 Planar ---------------------- In this archive you will find the source to the C2P module (Asm/Chunky/ 000.CPU1.s). If anyone wants to implement a faster routine such as the one by Peter McGavin, go ahead. C H A N G E S In order to upgrade your source code from V0.9 to V1.0, you need to make a couple of adjustments. Most of these are fairly minor, e.g. Screen attributes like DBLBUFFER have been changed to SCR_DBLBUFFER. The Display() action has also been renamed to Show(). These changes are very easy to pick up from the existing source codes. There is one major change, which is in the Picture support. It no longer loads pictures into video ram, so you need to use a new Copy() action if you want to display your picture inside a screen. Here is an example from a V0.9 source and the change to make it V1.0: if (background = Load(&BackFile, ID_PICTURE)) { if (screen = Get(ID_SCREEN)) { CopyStructure(background, screen); screen->MemPtr1 = background->Bitmap->Data; /* Illegal */ screen->Attrib = DBLBUFFER; if (Init(screen,NULL)) { CopyBuffer(screen,BUFFER1,BUFFER2); Change to: if (background = Load(&BackFile, ID_PICTURE)) { if (screen = Get(ID_SCREEN)) { CopyStructure(background, screen); screen->Attrib = SCR_DBLBUFFER; if (Init(screen,NULL)) { if (Copy(background->Bitmap,screen->Bitmap) IS ERR_OK) { CopyBuffer(screen,BUFFER2,BUFFER1); Other changes in GMS are: * Line drawing now supports masking patterns in register d6. * Picture remapping is automatic, so if you load a picture into a bitmap that has a different set of colours, your machine will slow down... Make sure that the Picture matches the destination that you are loading it to - this is especially important for BOBS. * You can make screen captures in PCX format by using the following: SaveToFile(Screen->Bitmap,&FileName,NULL);