Third release of CHIPNSFX tracker+player suite by CNGSoft : new command line options -P (cursor follows playback), -k1, -k2 and -k STR (set QWERTZ, AZERTY or custom keyboard map), following a suggestion from Beb..

Released in April 2016, iMPdraw v1.2 is the last version of this Amstrad CPC painting program by AsT. A new version will be available this year.

Other painting program exists : GOS (CPC+ only) and Claudia (CPC and CPC+).

Also, on his site, he is announcing the 1st June that he is working on a one screen demo, without a release date (soon he hopes).

Nogalious is an upcoming game by LUEGOLU3GO STUDIOS for Amstrad CPC but also for ZX Spectrum, C64, MSX and PC. It's a game between Abu Simbel and The Maze of Galious.

You can already see :

• the loading screen of the game Nogalious
• the cover of the physical box of Nogalious
• the first images of Nogalious on Reto Maniac (but nbot of the Amstrad CPC version it seems)

Seen on MO5, an Amstrad CPC game never released, it's a conversion of a ZX Spectrum (due to the screen size) : Terrorballs by Steven Monks (written in 1987). He is also the author of another game edited by Bug-Byte : Dogsbody (reflexion game) in 1985.

Nostalgia Nerd did a video on the Amstrad CPC Story, but as I wanted to listen to Burnin' Rubber music, I found a test of the Amstrad GX4000 console (October 2015) by him.

Habi Soft also wrote an emulation of the Chip-8 (wiki) on Amstrad PCW.

Habi Soft worked on an interface for a Amstrad PCW motherboard to add a PS2 keyboard and video (PAL/NSTC), joystick and mouse. He is also the author of an Amstrad PCW emulator : CP/M Box.

And now he is working on an enhanced abbey of the crime version for Amstrad PCW.

You can listen to the ingame music by McKlain of El Linaje Real by ESP Soft on Soundcloud.

Second release of CHIPNSFX tracker+player suite by CNGSoft : new command line options -F (48000 Hz) and -L (linear amplitude). A blue bar makes the active items stand out. Minor changes in the documentation file.

This Next-Generation Speech Synthesizer for the Amstrad CPC 464 by Michael Wessel started with a breadboard and now a PCB. For the moment, they are 4 videos of the interface card on Youtube :

• Amstrad / Schneider CPC 464 Breadboard Connector
• CPC 464 Breadboard Adapter Demo - 7-Segment Display for CPC :-)
• A Next Generation Speech Synthesizer for the Amstrad / Schneider CPC 464
• Next-Generation Speech Synthesizer for the Amstrad / Schneider CPC 464 - First PCB Version

It uses an Emic 2, the other components in the design are : Atmega 328 for implementing a parallel (CPC) to serial interface, to bride from the CPC to the Emic 2; a 74LS373 flip flop, 2 G16v8 PLD's for address decoding and generation of the chip select signal, and some other gates. The hardware extension is at address &F9E1. The speech synthesizer requires almost no driver, since the microcontroller and the Emic 2 are implementing an intelligent interface. The Basic program shown in the videos is implementing a simple protocol, but basically, to talk to the speech synthesizer, one only needs to write bytes to port address &F9E1 (e.g., using OUT in BASIC). Interestingly, the interface from the CPC's parallel data bus to the Atmel was tricky to implement.

It isnt compatible at the momeent with the other Amstrad CPC synthesizers : Dktronics and SSA-1. Emic 2 requires Start- (S) and End-Token (CR) - whereas Dktronics and SSA-1 simply send the allophones. Emic 2 works buffered, asynchronously, Dk'tronics and SSA-1 work synchronously. To make it compatible with SSA-1 and Dk'tronics, it would a) need to translate between allophone bytes and Emic 2 "equivalents", and b) figure out start- and end-token and shuffle them into the data stream (maybe based on a speech pause timing criterion). Not so obvious. Speech won't be synchronous, but maybe doable.