Scene.org Demoscene News Service

New zeST update!

[ Atariscne.org - News ] New zeST update!

Yesterday Zerkman released a new version of the zeST Atari ST FPGA replica machine.

 

Brief list of  zeST 2026-05-18 improvements:

  • Blitter chip support, with help from Thadoss / Dune.  One step closer to STe chipset compatibility!
  • Optimized DMA-chip, the new DMA uses us far less FPGA resources
  • Audio out, you can now get analogue audio out with the help of a I2S-based audio DAC
  • And various Linux-host improvements, such as bugfixed GEMDOS harddrive (fixes some programs that didn't work previously), new kernel (6.12), improved keyboard management, more drivers for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices.

🔗 Check out the complete zeST release notice

💾 Get the latest zeST at the Download directory

 

Buxton Bytes 2026, "Buxton Bytes Back", Party Report

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Buxton Bytes 2026, "Buxton Bytes Back", Party Report

This year’s Buxon Bytes ran from the 8th to the 11th of May, once again from the idyllic surroundings of Thirkelow, a lovely farmhouse tucked away in the hills just outside Buxton, surrounded by fields, sheep, more sheep, and the kind of quintessential English countryside that makes you briefly forget the rest of the world exists, and the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

YM2149 emulation using Amiga's Paula

[ Atariscne.org - News ] YM2149 emulation using Amiga's Paula

Leonard/Oxygene elaborates on his experiences in emulating the YM2149 chip on Amiga in a fresh blog article. Oxygene's AmigAtari demo was showcasing first results at Revision party in 2020.

🔗 Read more on Leonards Block

Thanks to Charon for the hint!

News in Brief - News Snippets.

[ Atariscne.org - News ] News in Brief - News Snippets.

A quick look at a number of things happening close together in a very short time.

Spring and summer seem to be the most intense period for demo parties and the releases that come with them. Plus there are a few stories which we could well miss, if we’re not careful.

Outline 2026 is over

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Outline 2026 is over

The Outline timetable says: "12:00 GTFO or Help cleaning", so while Havoc and friends are swinging the broom, we can sip at our coffee and enjoy some party impressions and results.

A quick Outline overview, photos by Jade

Atari activity has been spotted! 42Bastian was hyperactive in the small size intro competitions with some nice screens: RTB, Fountain and Zini for Jaguar. 

This Atari Jaguar 256 Bytro is utterly beautiful

First place in the oldschool 256 Byte category was taken by F#READY with an Atari 8-Bit entry called Flexus. Further, LX took part with Lynx releases in both the oldschool 128 Bytro and 256 Bytro compo, but no further information on those is available at the moment.

On ST we got three screens by Cortin, nice little contributions and partly looking really interesting.

On the Atari demo side of things we also had "YOFO", as a first release by Scion, a young group made of old people. Be aware that there is more to see than what is shown in the video capture. But this secret is left to reveal for real hardware warriors.

YOFO by Scion - The most orange ST demo so far

Then we got a couple of nice Atari ST graphics. Mysterious #592C63/akaikoshi striked back with a piece of his sticker collection and an additional anti-capitalistic motive. Steffest/Desire won the competition with an impressive and somewhat scary picture.

stickers by Akaikoshi - the new brand on the market

 

a random Amiga scener visualised: "Harbinger" by Steffest

Dma-Sc and Doclands both were present and hold up the Atari chiptunes flag in the music compo, ranking 3rd and 5th place. These entries are not available yet, but will certainly pop up in the sndh archive. I remember some very nice and clean lead sounds in Dma-Sc's track on the stream.

The attendance is reported to have been a bit smaller sized this year, while the number of releases and particularly those of high quality went straight uphill in some categories.

As a small but painful step outside the Atari box:
The new school demos were really remarkable and packed. There was about a handful of entries which seemed to be the clear compo highlight, but the show went on and on. Among others, groups like Guidline or GDA were having their comebacks. And Majestetic released a nice homage to the 2000s PC demoscene spirit.

First place went to "Kablam!" by Trepaan which was a complete detective movie like experience, and entirely atmospheric and beautiful. Haujobb delivered a very uplifting fantasy console demo which also represents this year's Evoke invitation and features the new scene standard of unreadable greetings. The vibrant and funky soundtrack by Jazz was also winning the music competition at Outline.

If I would have to pick a favourite, that would be "Human Kaleidoskope" by Teadrinker. An absolutely gallant demo production, playing with one's imagination, accompanied by a really, really, really good soundtrack :-)

As far as I can judge, I think this has been the most comprehensive newschool demo competition at any Outline so far.

But let's not stretch the Atarians attention span any further with those side roads. Have a look at all the releases on the respective pages, if you like.

Thanks to spkr and Jade for sharing a few of their insights for this article!

🔗 Outline 2026 on Demozoo

🔗 Outline 2026 on Pouet

OpenMPT 1.32.10.00 released

[ OpenMPT - Open ModPlug Tracker ] OpenMPT 1.32.10.00 released

This small update to OpenMPT 1.32 is mostly a bugfix release.

Here's a list of the most notable changes in this version:

  • The Add Silence / Resize dialog now allows to enter fractional milliseconds.
  • Resampling with r8brain could introduce unwanted ringing artifacts at the end of the sample.
  • OpenMPT 1.32.09.00 reported incorrect PPQ positions to VST plugins, resulting in wild position fluctuations in plugins that make use of this information.
  • When using ASIO with hardware timing, it was possible that GUI updates were not synchronized properly with audio.
  • Improved screen reader accessibility in Add Silence / Resize and various Export dialogs.

For a complete list of changes, have a look at the full version history. If you are upgrading from OpenMPT 1.31 or older, read the release notes to get a glimpse of the biggest changes.

JagJam 2026

[ Atariscne.org - News ] JagJam 2026

This sympathic Atari Jaguar development contest is taking place again in 2026. Contributions can be handed in until end of October.

🔗 Jagjam website

Over 7.500 BBStros preserved!

[ Demozoo ] Over 7.500 BBStros preserved!

Over the years, the coverage of BBStros on Demozoo has steadily grown. And with forgotten release archives being discovered all the time, there is no end in sight. Especially in the first half of the 1990s, BBStros were made in quite large numbers for MS-DOS. Those numbers steadily declined towards the end of the decade, when both MS-DOS and bulletin board systems ultimately making way for Windows and the internet.
There are now over 7.500 DOS-BBStros listed at Demozoo. That includes unique BBStros, their variations (listing different affils, unmasked vs. masked telephone numbers etc.), as well as exectutables which list different boards that were affiliated with a specific group.
Besides having added most of these BBStros to Demozoo, Sensenstahl has constantly updated a file archive since 2018, contained all the BBStros. However, after reaching the number of 7.500 entries, it was about time to sort all BBStros alphabetically for those who want to get them all in one convenient ZIP archive (along with a few BBStros for other systems).

Outline 2026 live

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Outline 2026 live

Our esteemed Dutch Atari party is taking place this weekend. A few Atarians have signed up, let's see if they share some impressions from the party later on. Alternatively, the live stream for Outline party is available here:

🔗 https://www.twitch.tv/outlinedemoparty

🔗 Outline website with time table

🔗 Outline 2026 on Demozoo

Crinkler 3.0a released

A small bugfix release. Some highlights:

- Fixed crashes related to small or empty parts.

- New option to specify initial report theme, overriding the browser preference.

- Fixed delayed switch to light theme when loading the report.

- Some fixes related to labels in the report.

- Fixed REUSEGUI window sometimes opening behind other windows.


See the announcement post for more details.

[Submitted by Blueberry]

Evoke 2026 Drone Compo: Here's everything you need to know (so far)

The sky is the limit! Following the success of the Drone Show at Evoke 2025, we are now taking the next steps towards making a Drone Compo happen this year.

As one can imagine, this comes with a set of technical, organizational and legal challenges compared to a traditional compo. Because of that, we want to share an early overview of where things stand, what to expect as a participant and how to set up your workflow for success. A detailed writeup by mop, along with a video tutorial and last year's show file by newemka can be found here

Since we do not know what the future brings, consider this a "once in a lifetime" opportunity to use the sky as your canvas. Remote entries are allowed!

[Submitted by darya]

Gemtos is over and here is a summary!

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Gemtos is over and here is a summary!

GCC for asm Experts (and C/C++ Intermediates) - Part 6

[ Atariscne.org - News ] GCC for asm Experts (and C/C++ Intermediates) - Part 6

← Fixing Post-Increment Addressing

DBRA and the Cost Model Balancing Act

When you write assembly for the m68k, dbra is just there. Put your count in a data register, end your loop with dbra dN,.label. Four bytes, twelve cycles per iteration on 68000, no flag dance, no comparison. Your loops naturally form around the instruction.

C/C++ does not work that way. The natural loop in C is for (i = 0; i < N; i++) or while (cond). Neither says "count down and exit when you wrap", well, while can. But a counted-up loop with an unsigned comparison is what the language naturally models, and that is what GIMPLE mostly produces. Turning that into a dbra is a backend job, and requires carefully written code. And GCC, for reasons we will get to, mostly stopped doing it for m68k.

Confirm your consent for the Art of Coding demoscene UNESCO nomination

[ Wanted! ] Confirm your consent for the Art of Coding demoscene UNESCO nomination

Art of Coding is working to get the demoscene recognized as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage. Norway is leading the multinational nomination, Germany is confirmed, and the nomination deadline is 1 June 2026. You can still sign after that date to show community consent and support. https://forms.gle/FzwVd7ovndev3VrP9 Take 1 minute. Yoghurt

Demoscene UNESCO nomination — Norway leads, sign here

Norway is leading a multinational UNESCO ICH-02 nomination for the demoscene, with Germany confirmed as co-submitting State Party.

As part of the documentation of community participation and free, prior and informed consent, practitioners are invited to complete the consent form below.Deadline: 1 June 2026.

Link: https://forms.gle/FzwVd7ovndev3VrP9

Yoghurt

[Submitted by Yoghurt]

Chipo Django 3 is now available in its final version

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Chipo Django 3 is now available in its final version

Insane writes:

Chipo Django 3 is now available in its final version.

There were reports of a buggy replay, so I took apart the Lance replayer once again and (hopefully) fixed every known issue. This new version now runs the latest version of the ProTracker Replay 2.3f by 8bitbubsy using the Lance Paula emulation. (Both the Acorn and Amiga side also had some different bugs fixed)

The replayer source code is available here.

And special Thanks to evil for recording both the party and final version for youtube!

🔗 Chip Django 3 on Demozoo
🔗 Chip Django 3 on Pouet
🔗 Fixed Protracker 2.3f replayer on Github

Demoscene Report 7 May 2026

Latest news and releases from the active demoscene community, this week in particular a look at the releases from Multimatograf and speccy.pl

Watch on youtube!

[Submitted by psenough]

Black Valley is looking for a few more people to help with crew duties this year!

[ Wanted! ] Black Valley is looking for a few more people to help with crew duties this year!

If you are someone interested in being part of our little organizer family, please do get in touch. We are looking for people both in general and specific areas, so if you have a special skillset that might help us take some of the load off the other orgas, that is as welcome as just a social person for infodesk duties. If interested, please get in touch. Email: contact@blackvalley.party Discord: https://discord.blackvalley.party/ See you all in July! ❤️

Return to Blacktooth finally released!

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Return to Blacktooth finally released!

The second big game release over these past days. This one has been pending for absolutely ages. Return to Blacktooth, aka Head Over Heels 2 has been released by Thalamus Digital Publishing.

I remember writing something about this, over a decade ago. Colin Porch, the programmer, started this when he was still at Ocean Software, but this was not taken up by them. He was showing it around at various computer shows. The new game having over 300 rooms to explore and brand new puzzles in the classic old school isometric format.

Many years later, this has found its way to Thalamus Digital Publishing, with a digital release on the 4th May 2026 and a physical release to follow later.

You can find out more by following this link - https://thalamusdigital.itch.io/return-to-blacktooth-atarist - A purchasable download to enjoy this game should be available from the 4th May 2026.

CiH - Atariscne.org - May 2026.

Miracle Boy in Dragon Land Released!

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Miracle Boy in Dragon Land Released!

Some *big* game news for the Atari ST this weekend, as Miracle Boy in Dragon Land has finally dropped after four years of work.

(From the website) - "Miracle Boy in Dragon Land offers a magical adventure across 25 levels, combining exploration, puzzles, mini-games, and equipment upgrades. The player takes on the role of Paolo, tasked with freeing the kingdom from the clutches of the evil Count Drago in a universe inspired by the classic Wonder Boy in Monster World."

We have Samuel Blanchard and DMA-SC to thank for this marvel.

It is very ambitious in scope, stretching the ST’s boundaries hard. A 1MB ST is your ticket to ride!

You can find out more here - You can purchase a digital copy and there are a decreasing amount of physical copies available.

CiH - Atariscne - 2.5.26

 

Gemtos 2026 releases

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Gemtos 2026 releases

Gemtos releases are coming in, one of them being a nice new multipart 16kb intro by No Extra.

🔗 Gemtos 2026 on Demozoo

A sneak peek at Atariada 2026

[ Atariscne.org - News ] A sneak peek at Atariada 2026

Atarionline.pl reporters are on fire, with a first video summary of Atariada, taking place right now in Olomouc, Czech Republic.

Past Glories - A lost and re-found Sillyventure Report from 2016

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Past Glories - A lost and re-found Sillyventure Report from 2016

SV 2016

It’s another Sillyventure past times report. Another one that remained hidden in the archives until now. This one was mostly made, as it happened.

It was a pretty faithful diary of my alcohol consumption and state of intestinal health during that period. Oh, and quite a few party happenings as well.

I liked my writing from that period, seemed to be livelier back then and less, tired, than more recent efforts.

CiH - April 2025


#This bit is not in realtime!#

Good morning, evening, or dead of night, whenever you are reading this new Maggie issue. This is the official CiH authored realtime party report, with non-realtime later on additions, for the eagerly anticipated Sillyventure 2016 party. (Not to be confused with the realtime article, which is an entirely separate document created by a lot of people, sometimes in co-ordination with their fingers and brains, but often not!)

So is this going to be another party of our dreams, or a never-ending silicon nightmare? Well read on and discover.

nrvpack 3.03 — Atari ST executable compressor

[ Atariscne.org - News ] nrvpack 3.03 — Atari ST executable compressor

exxos has released version 3.03 of nrvpack, a free online executable compression service for Atari ST PRG/APP/TOS/TTP files. Upload a file and get five compressed variants to choose from, each with different size/speed tradeoffs. 

The packer and all 68000 decompression stubs were written from the ground up. Months of development went into the compression engine — including optimal parsing with dynamic programming, lit-cost sweeps, context-width tuning, and extensive testing of preprocessing transforms and encoding strategies to squeeze every last byte out of typical 68k executables. 

On large real-world programs the best format achieves around 2.75:1 compression ratio. A fast-depack option is also available that decompresses in under a second on a stock 8MHz 68000. All formats support colour-cycling raster bars during decompression and run on any ST/STE/TT/Falcon.

The service is free and requires an exxos forum login.

🔗 https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/nrvpack/
🔗 https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8312

Demoscene Report 29 April 2026

All the latest news, links and releases from the active demoscene community of digital artists and event organizers. This week in particular we cover a few remnants from our Revision 2026 coverage and a deep look at the highlights from the creative competitions at The Gathering 2026. Watch on youtube!

[Submitted by psenough]