4 Years after its launch MODMancer v1 is going to be shut down. The playlist agent has been written in php, running on a winXP machine, streaming data through Winamp + Icecast plugin, and yes, occasionally crashing . I was *always* annoyed whenever I had to go away for a few days, to a place without internet connection, intuitively knowing that as soon as the door slams behind me, the malicious player was going to suck out all remaining RAM, or end up in a dead silent loop of some overseen corrupt mod file.

But the time has come to say farewell to the old MODMancer, and introduce a new, better one, which will aim for 100% up-time, better playlists, frequent updates (this part was especially bothering me – the way MODmancer v1 was constructed, it required some mentionable effort each time you wanted to change or update playlists).

To sum it up: in about 2 weeks, MODMancer will go v2! Here are some of the changes to expect:

• Improved up-time (hopefully 100%)
• New playlists (We are dropping Modern games section, focusing primarily on old school and demo music).. call it – removing illegal content
• Better stream quality due to better network organisation, self written player & icecast client
• .. and a few more

Note:
Currently we are streaming our test channel instead of the previous playlist segments, and we’ll keep doing so until MODMancer v2′s launch in march 2010. However, temporary or not – it’s a good selection, I am sure you will enjoy it!

-Akiko

Must visit! Taken from the A.D.A. webpage:
“On this site, you will find some of the best demos and intros ever released on the fabulous Amiga computer. All the demos listed here, are of high quality.”

I usually hang around A.D.A. and Amiga Lemon Games, spending endless hours reading game reviews, demo reviews, coding technique rants, discussions about go’s and nogo’s. It’s a great way to stay in touch with the scene. And the everlasting Amiga.

- Akiko.

Dear friends, dear listeners, dear bearers of the memories of the old times,

the New Year has begun, bringing us one step away from the past we carry in our hearts all these years, and our sweet burden becomes blurrier, dimmer, more vague as we walk with today. For us 2009 was a relatively poor year, bad in almost every aspect. It has thrown us from places to places, detaching us from our friends and families, putting us under growing pressure and nearly breaking us into pieces of unfulfilled ambitions, hopes, wishes, and words unspoken. MODMancer has had very few updates, very few improvements, and we feel bad. If the reality grows easier on us, if we manage to shape and change it, the situation will change – MODMancer will flourish.

Wish us luck, we are trying hard. But sometimes the tide is against us. We wish you the purest dreams in the forthcoming year.
MODMancers.

Check out this link, guys have done a great job porting legendary Sierra titles online! Playable within your browser, it’s an ideal way to workaround your boring time in the office )

http://www.sarien.net/

there are apparently some titles, that unfortunately never made it to the market, due to lack of interest, which is kinda natural, considering the fact that Amiga has been quite dead for some time. But nevertheless huge respect to the guys for their enthusiasm!

Also, the Modern games list has been extended by additional 3 hours of material.

-sir

MODMancer is a free, 24/7 Internet radio broadcasting Games & Demo scene music.  Most of the time we are focused on Amiga Game Music and Demo Scene Mods, but we also gladly cover PC Game Soundtracks, console games, Remixes and much more!

Stream URL:
main link [http://www.modmancer.com:8000/modmancer.ogg.m3u]

.. and yes! We play NO advertisments whatsoever, we are completely non commercial, self maintained and 100% dedicated

I know it has been quite a while since my last post, and also quite a while since the last playlist update, but things have been just too edgy on the work, so all the hobby plans got postponed, including the new modmancer webpage design and banners and all the other stuff that was planed a while ago. But, today I’ve decided to come back and continue in small steps (Yes it’s saturday, and I am still working.. and yes it will be sunday, and I will still be coding.. and yes the monday is the shittiest day of them all, but what the.. I won’t notice the difference). Small steps, I said, and courtesy of some of my friends on the work another 4-5 hours of music have landed in the modern games area! some of the titles included are Hitman, Hitman 2 Beyond good and evil, Sacrifice, Divine Divinity, Gothic, Mafia .. and still a whole bunch of them incoming!

But why that Perihelion picture in this post, you ask? Well, it’s one of the merrier days in the past few weeks! The reason is – I finally after 2 years of hunting, found Perihelion the Prophecy for Amiga, in the original box, with the original manual! Wonderful – it’s another beautiful trophey on my shelf of legends, beside my A1200.

I wish you a nice evening.. enjoy it with the beautiful flow of the MODMancer radio station.

-sir_commonwelt

Let me put it simple: It’s an over dose of nostalgie injected straight into your childish ’90 dreams. People brought again their c64′s, modded of course, with LCD’s, even harddisks. It was marvelous to see, in my opinion, one of the best console/custom hw demos yesterday on c64 using ide64 (I wonder if the group won – i must check the voting results afterwards.)

Ok, the atmosphere is a must see, must feel. I have grown up with c64/amiga, back in the 90′ i never had a chance to see the great events like party, gathering, assembly etc. live, that is – to be *physically* there. This was the first time for me, and i think one thing is sure – this is *definitely* *NOT* the last time. I got hooked.

A few words about competitions on sunday, the last day of BP2008 -

The streaming competition was OK. 2-3 songs sounded wonderful (Chromag, Xerxes were – as usual – awesome). But all in all there were just a few entries, maybe 10 all together. 96k game compo, sadly, was canceled, due to having submitted only one entry, which was great ), it was shown, but couldn’t get any prize. Custom hardware / Console compo had one already mentioned fantastic c64/ide64 demo. I found it amazing, still can’t believe it was c64. And the second highlight was a demo on a custom hardware, completely assembled and programmed by some freaks – i fortgot the name of the group and the demo, but i will look it up and edit this post later today.

Now we are coming to my personal highlights, the reason i actually went to Bingen – Amiga Demo& PC Demo.

Amiga demo compo – All (6) demos were 68040/68060 AGA. .. amazing!! Music was by far the best of all compos, technologically speaking – they showed a lot of splendid 3d rendering and image processing, but that was not what i liked the most. The thing is they in general had clever direction & moods, nicely supported by, as i said, wonderful music.

ps.. as I am writing this post, I see that my fav amiga demo won! Actually it was a bit of a drama – the second place demo became the first place demo, after the first place demo rejected the prize being firmly convinced that the second place demo is the real first place demo )) that’s a true knightly spirit, so typical for Amiga generation :].

PC demo compo – a lot of entries, if I recall correctly the number was 25. As it started, a demo after demo was presented and I thought.. “WTF?!”. It was simply degenerate production. Crap, nonsense, bad music, bad direction, bad dynamics. All in all – waste of time.
But then.. the tides have changed – a demo by Excess made me fasten my seat belt again! Followed by a set of supernatural demos from groups like Andromeda, SQNY, Brainstorm, AllStars, Farbrausch.. It was a non stop rollercoaster of high-production, polished compositings and soundtracks which simply sounded like tailored to the visuals – my favorite was Andromeda’s Metamorphosis. It was hard to say, after seeing them all, which one was better than the others. But somehow Metamorphosis is a piece of art.

All in all – a wonderful experience. Our best regards to the guys who brought their C64′s, Ataris, Amigas, Epsons and what else not, to the party. And of course – HUGE congrats to the organizing team. Everything worked like a charm.

I’ll go now dream on.

Links of importance for this event:

http://bp.untergrund.net/

http://www.scene.org/

Yours,

sir_commonwelt

Tip of the lifetime: in case you didn’t listen to DUNE soundtrack ‘Spice Opera’ Exxos (Stephane Picq, Virgin records), you should definitely tune in during supreme selection #1, as we occasionally spin Exxos. In the old games playlists we also have the original amiga soundtrack, but as far as i could get there are only about 3 mods not more. The remastered Exxos is a full length masterpiece cd, which unfortunately can’t be obtained from Amazon or any other online shop any longer.. for years now actually.. but the downloads are hidden somewhere on internet

With the 2008 starting i have decided to pump in as much new music as possible! The promised New Years Eve update brought tens of hours of music mostly Old Games and Remixes! And today i’ve added another update of 6 hours to the Mods Mancer! playlist.

Last but not least – we’ve entered the new year with new contributors which will be introduced soon on the webpage. They are pumping gigabytes of new stuff all across the daily program.

yours, sir