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[ Atariscne.org - News ] Updated SDL ports: OpenTyrian, HHeretic and HHexen

Back in 2010, when I released my HHeretic/HHexen for the first time (!), I had a dream: to be able to play those two games (and others: Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, ...) while listening to their great MIDI soundtracks. I knew next to nothing how MIDI works, how MIDI synthesis works, I only knew there is something called Timidity and that it is slow.

So for all those years I'd wished that somebody would create "something" to move this further.   A few years ago I purchased the great mt32-pi (which ended its development in a rather sad way...) for listening to ScummVM games' music (which I wholeheartedly recommend!) but it took me another couple of years to connect the dots: many of those SDL ports still had support for MIDI and even better, they often did it in an uniform way, via SDL_mixer! So that was only a "small" step to actually implement a native Atari MIDI driver there, link everything together and voila. HHeretic and HHexen got their music (same as did PMDoom, PMHeretic and PMHexen, btw).   OpenTyrian, that was another story: just a quick port, never heard of that game in 2010, almost a "./configure && make" job, done. Over time there were newer ports by insane/.tSCc. and medmed on AF but always from the stale sdl1 branch (2020; EDIT: In the meantime my pull request has been accepted!). So I didn't feel the need to update my own port (unlike HHeretic/HHexen which got updated in 2024).   Until now - I managed to backport all non-SDL2 commits from master back to the sdl1 branch so we've got all the cool improvements and bugfixes. I even optimised audio playback a bit, so the OPL emulation is almost usable on 68060@66 MHz (FireBee should shine). And yes, I do know about NokturnFM project, everything at the right time. :)   Those who know me are aware that I don't care very much about making quick SDL ports just for the sake of releasing something. I can promise you that these three projects have been extensively tested and thanks to them SDL contains tens of bugfixes and improvements.   So enjoy, play test and feel free to report any bugs. Currently I'm not aware of any SDL issues, the executables should fully work in GEM (window/fullscreen) and XBIOS (fullscreen), on all Atari machines with >= 8bpp output.

Open Tyrian in action in a GEM window running FreeMiNT

💾 https://github.com/mikrosk/opentyrian/releases/latest 💾 https://github.com/mikrosk/hheretic/releases/latest 💾 https://github.com/mikrosk/hhexen/releases/latest  

[ SceneSat upcoming shows & events ] Deadline

2 Oct – 4 Oct 2026

Live stream of the whole event. Showing a tropical paradise that is definitely not a banana republic.

Listen or watch on SceneSat · Full schedule

[ Echtzeit – Digitale Kultur ] Report: Graffathon 2026 – Coding becomes Art

The 2026 Bern Graffathon took place in a special atmosphere, namely in the premises of an art studio where primarily visual art is produced. «Coding goes Art» was the motto of this edition, which was very fitting for the location. The idea of bringing coding and art together in a new edition of the Bern Graffathon came up about a year ago and was enthusiastically supported by Echtzeit.

Once a good part of the 14 participants had arrived, we spent the day clarifying needs and offering technical solutions or support as they arose.

Tools available included a RaspberryPi, modern Linux laptops, a MIDI keyboard, and a graphics tablet. A curated library of books on topics such as generative art, graphics, mathematics, coding, street art, 8-bit retro culture, and more was available for all to use.

We invited people for a tour of the studio and showed the first floor and the artists who were working there in their small and larger studios, as well as their work to the interested Graffers. On the top floor, in the middle of the small urban garden, Moovie was able to set up his analogue camera to take a fun group photo.

The sunny terrace then provided a cosy spot for a relaxing lunch break. Refreshed and inspired by conversations, most people went back to their keyboards in the afternoon to continue working creatively.

In the afternoon, it was time to take a look at the exciting Xenium demoparty in Łódź, Poland, while working. A deadline was set for 7 p.m., but we were distracted from the final sprint by the welcome and delicious pizzas.

After all the demos were completed, there was a short review round and the audience favourites were determined by voting. Among them was an artist from the studio who looked at our demos from her perspective and was able to ask some unexpected questions to the hackers.

Unfortunately, the voting was not spared from glitches. Nevertheless, here are the final winners who were able to claim a sponsored prize:

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[ Echtzeit – Digitale Kultur ] GRADE in Paris: An event co-organised by Echtzeit, the Cookie Collective and DOC Paris

Research meets Art meets Free Knowledge meets Activism meets Institutions

Too often our different groups work in silos, follow completely different ways of working and still all have the same goal: make space for digital art and culture, generate visibility, respect, acceptance and resources. We could achieve so much more, if we would exchange more and invite each other into our words.

Given that, we’ve been excited about the request by the COST-Action GRADE (Grassroots of Digital Europe) whether we would like to organise one of their network meetings in 2026 with a strong community focus. After having had the pleasure of taking part in their network and several conferences, we found a lack of francophone exposure (honestly, similar to Echtzeit itself). And after our previous great experience working with the Cookie Collective, we knew exactly who our dream partner for this event would be!

Thanks to Baya’s (Azertype) contacts to the cultural centres and artist scene of Paris and his experience in event tech, we were able to provide a unique programme of frontal presentations, artistic installations, workshops and exchange opportunities between our different worlds.

The presentations included anything from the work of GRADE, Open Science, -Software and -Knowledge topics, Community organising until background information on current artistic projects by the Cookie Collective, for example different live coding platforms, XR (Extended Reality) and Hard- and Software Hacking.

Additionally visitors had tons of fun with the Incontrolab installations by Emilie Breslavetz and Leon Denise ( https://playful-machines.com/), Crashboard 2000 and Orbital, as well as a live act in the evening by Azertype with his amazing body-extension for live coding!

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[ Echtzeit – Digitale Kultur ] Report: Demoshow at chaos.jetzt #14 in Bern, August 8th, Chaostreff Bern

chaos.jetzt is the community platform for young hackers between 18 and 25 – so it was rather exciting to be invited to talk a little about the demoscene!

But... How would one go about presenting the demoscene to a younger audience without being either detached or cringe? It may come as a surprise to some of our Assembler-luminaries: evermore impressive high-end effects for evermore powerful PC-graphics cards tend to receive respectful nods instead of loud cheering these days.

In the shadow of Big Tech and accessible tutorials and communities, the past years have seen a resurgence of playing grounds like Neocities, cyberdecks and low-level programming languages particularly amongst young people.

To start of, a brilliant (and amusing) ressource to start building the talk was the archive of Atlantis Prophecy. This formed a bit of an excursion and illustration into the times when teenagers first made computing technologies their own, leading to a journey through the different platforms and technolgies arising thereafter, cummulating (for now) in the higher focus on creative style and self-restriction through sizecoding on the PC.

We showed demos that should not only present different platforms, but are also some fantastic inspiration for own experimentation, strive for perfection or also simply joy when exploring a platform:

• Area 5150 by CRTC + Hornet (2022) - https://demozoo.org/productions/311767/
• Eon by The Black Lotus (2019) - https://demozoo.org/productions/202831/
• A Statement on The Platform Wars by Moonbase Allstars (2019) - https://demozoo.org/productions/342318/
• Razor1911 by Razor 1911 (2026) - https://demozoo.org/productions/390060/

The presentation slides (in German) are available on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2026-08_Demoszene-Intro-chaosjetzt.pdf

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