NoRecess - The state of the Amstrad CPC community in 2011

[NewsBot]

The state of the Amstrad CPC community in 2011
13 February 2011, 9:09 pm

While I was personally writing to my friends Octoate, arnoldemu and Optimus, I actually realized I did not know nothing about the state of the Amstrad CPC community in their respective countries. So I asked them to write few words about it and they kindly accepted ! On top of that, I also wrote few words about the CPC community in France and Canada... you can discover the big picture here. Please note that if your country is not listed in the article (Spain, Australia...) I would love receiving your input and complete the article. You can personally contact me here.



Source: NoRecess {the website} - Blog

[Xyphoe]

Very interesting article and good read indeed!


Oh and thank you arnoldemu for the shout out and mention there 

[norecess]

Thank you !
I really look forward for people from Spain, Australia, .. to complete this article. We need a good overview of the whole CPC community ! 

[Metr]

Maybe try contacting with Lex Sparrow for the Spanish part.
It seems he's preparing at the moment the Retro Encounter Fair in Madrid as part of the Spanish Amstrad User Group so I'm sure he'll know well about the state of the community here !

[ervin]

Thank you !
I really look forward for people from Spain, Australia, .. to complete this article. We need a good overview of the whole CPC community ! 

Hi there.

I'm from Australia (South Australia, to be precise).
I check in here at cpcwiki daily to see what is going on, and I am also developing a cpc game called "Chunky Pixel Collision".
http://cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php/topic,1711.0.html

And I'd like to get back into work on the ACU Type-ins pages, when time permits!

[AMSDOS]

I'm not really part of the scene either!    Unless Emulators are included - My CPC6128 remains on an old Study Desk with the Dust Covers over it, I'm very concerned what might happen if I turn it on (given I once had an electric fan blowup in front of me when I was a kid), but then I'm keeping the Dust out which I guess is the main thing.

I think there's only a few regulars in Australia who have an interest in the machine!    There were groups in Sydney & Adelaide some 10 years ago perhaps which had an interest in the CPC, not sure if their still around!   

Personally I occassionally plug along writing Programs out of Turbo Pascal and a little bit of Assembly/Firmware, guess that's about as much pleasure I've had in terms of contributing something for the community. 

[Ghost]

I think French demoscene is not realistic. I'm not on PnP but it seems to be a very bad site and not an attractive one. The real CPCdemo scene is on CPCrulez i think.

[norecess]

@ervin : please can you PM me a status report about Australian CPC community ? that would be a nice addition to the article    even if it's about a small group of people (like in Canada !).


@cpmuser

I'm not really part of the scene either!

[/size]My article is not targeting the "scene" (as "demoscene") - but everyone having interest in CPC (users, retro-stuff, web user on forums.. as also demomakers of course). That's why I used the term "community" instead of "scene".

[/size]@ghost
[/size]

I think French demoscene is not realistic. I'm not on PnP but it seems to be a very bad site and not an attractive one. The real CPCdemo scene is on CPCrulez i think.

[/size]Yeah it was the hard part of the article. I tried to be neutral, in few lines. Otherwise the real french CPCdemoscene is cpcrulez AND push'n'pop.

[Bryce]

Hey, I got mentioned in the German section Anyway, I've nothing to add about the Irish scene as I don't know any CPCers in Ireland.

Btw, On the Norecess page you call Kevin - "Kevin Tracker", his name is actually "Kevin Thacker" as far as I know.

Bryce.

[norecess]

Kevin Tracker
[/size]Ahah! Just did the correction.

[TFM]

... and finally there is at least one use in the Switzerland, Flynn, creator of WinCPC and MacCPC, he still works on his emulators. But... married, with children ;-)

[Metr]

As a fellow user of Amstrad forums, from the Spanish side I would add:
Artaburu: http://espsoft.amstrad.es/
It's a programming blog about the use of the CCZ80 and the CPCRSlib. He's updating step by step. People like the Mojon Twins are making good use of it to create their games.


Also MiguelSky is distributing the CPCGamesCD: http://cpcgamescd.amstrad.es/
Using the CPC Loader as base (created by Troels K, I think he's from Denmark as CholoCPC that is also doing nice Amstrad vids there, so maybe a raid to known the state of the community in that country could be nice), and as the cpcwiki points out, it's a CD-Rom containing a navigable database with all the games of the Amstrad/Schneider CPC, similar to MameUI, including screenshots of the games and information about publisher, year and type of game.


Litos is in charge of the Amstradesp web and forum, usually updating it with news.
The web is more based in the spanish history of the cpc, with contains nice articles and reviews, companies, magazines from the time, and cards for both National and International games with direct downloads for the roms, description, screenshots, all the publicity, maps & reviews found in magazins, and videos.
In the forums reside a nice community of people interested in the Amstrad, there you can find what's going on, retro-encounters, news, discussion about the games, programming on the cpc, trivias of games and music, market..
There's a lot of users that daily passes by the forums, so I wouldn't know even from where to start, and as I don't want to name 3-4 and leave a lot behind, I'll leave it as that.
Litos recently attended a round table about 'The future of the past' with well known people from spanish videogames for the cpc like Victor Ruiz and Azpiri rather interesting and there are some retro-fairs coming as the one Lex Sparrow pointed out in the cpcwiki forum. I don't know so much about the Spanish GUA (Amstrad User Group), but I think it would be great to contact him and get an update about it, I'm sure he'll know a lot about the spanish community.
You can also catch the news and updates of the cards and suggestions to play in the Amstradesp facebook page and even in tweeter:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amstrad-ESP/72227918057
Dadman gave the other Amstradesp links.




I would like to point that I also like to have a look at:
Nicholas Campbell from North Ireland and his - http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/ :There you can find lots of reviews and databases of the games with direct downloads. Usually updated with reviews of new and old games by different people of Europe it seems.

[Amstari]

I'm in South Australia. I've got my 6128 (with ParaDOS and 3.5 drive) set up permanently. I've also got a couple of 464s and a green screen that I don't use. I haven't stayed in contact with any other CPC users since going to school a long, long time ago. My parents sold my 464 in the early 90s and we got an Amstrad PC1512. I got a 464 from eBay about 7 years ago and got the 6128 last year.

Last year I wrote my first Basic program in 20 years. It's a CPC version of Flood-It. It is extremely slow but it works. I've got a couple of books about machine code so one day I will improve it with some machine code routines and release it.

[norecess]

@amstari and @metr : thank you for your comments, it's a very valuable info. I will add them to the article soon. As a personal note, I would add discovering CPC users in South Australia is just ** AWESOME **.

[Xyphoe]

... and finally there is at least one use in the Switzerland, Flynn, creator of WinCPC and MacCPC, he still works on his emulators. But... married, with children ;-)

He also did the brilliant and under-appreciated H.E.R.O. conversion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZKrJSCCpU0

[TFM]

He also did the brilliant and under-appreciated H.E.R.O. conversion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZKrJSCCpU0

Right, it also runs under FutureOS :-)

[Bryce]

Mr Lou is in Denmark, maybe he can add some comments on the Danish scene (if any exists other than Mr Lou) ?

Bryce.

[AMSDOS]

Ooops! 

472 Posts! 

[redbox]

I enjoyed reading this, thank you.  Interesting to read about each country, but I do feel the whole scene is very healthy.

Congratulations regarding the news of your daughter, the first year eats into your time (as you know from the first!) but you'll have more CPC time after that 

[Ygdrazil]

I am from Denmark so is CPCLER and ZilogMonkey. I don't think there is a real scene here in DK? But i might be wrong.

Mostly contributing to the WIKI and doing our sparetime and neverending project - CPC-XEO3. But havent been doing much progress lately, because of busy RL!

/Ygdrazil

Ooops! 

472 Posts! 

[Gryzor]

But I *am* from Greece

[norecess]

@Bryce : I just contacted Mr Lou. Thank you for your suggestion !

[mr_lou]

I am from Denmark so is CPCLER and ZilogMonkey. I don't think there is a real scene here in DK? But i might be wrong.

Wow, I didn't know we were that many. Cholo is also from Denmark. So we're 5.

I don't know anything about a danish cpc scene either. I only remember we had N.W.C. and JLCS back in the days, but my skills only included a little BASIC at that time.