NetFetch 5, Doom Trilogy, Titanium !DualHead and beyond 2k - R-Comp at London 2017

R-Comp and RCI have a number of new-release software announcements for the London Show this weekend.

First up, NetFetch 5 was announced and released today. For those unfamiliar, NetFetch is our Internet-front-end-with-mail-and-news-fetching-and-other-stuff software that many RISC OS users load in the !Boot sequences for all things “Internet”. The major change in version 5 is a new release of the integrated “Hermes” mail application which has seen some significant enhancements over the summer.

First up is fully functional SSL-based mail fetching/sending with additional support for STARTTLS-based encryption as well. This is commonly used by many ISP and webmail services, and whilst it was useable in previous versions, there have been significant strides made in the latest version. Indeed, the test copies of Hermes were fetched/sent via SSL-based mail servers during development to ensure all was good :)

Next, there’s support for multiple SMTP send servers. It is now possible to tell the software about your email addresses or domains, and have it auto-filter outgoing messages via the most appropriate SMTP server. This is a really big deal because many email providers now implement something called “SPF checking” which tracks emails back to their originating servers, and ensures that addresses match up. If you don’t send the right messages via the right servers, you’ll be flagged as “spam”. And no-one wants that!

Building on this security/identification functionality, another new feature allows each outgoing server to have a computer host.domain name associated with it. Generally speaking, you set one hostname for your computer when you set up networking (or email software like Messenger). However, some mail servers (eg. Office365 forced on former Demon customers) insist that your computer identity matches your login to their servers. The new feature allows your RISC OS machine to change identity in a flash (think Superman and Clark Kent) so that it can present itself as the occasion requires.

There have also been improvements to RSS fetching, performance, and the UI has been subtly reworked internally. It’s been a major upgrade. There are also some small day-to-day enhancements present relating to the auto-fetch / send capabilities. It is now possible to temporarily disable these automatic processes (eg. when you’re away, or if you want to emergency-stop things). Additionally, the auto-send system has been re-worked to ensure a minimum delay before messages are sent, allowing you time to stop those “Yikes, I didn’t mean to click Send!” messages.

For new users, NetFetch also includes a basic version of Messenger and a selection of browsers to provide a “mini Internet Suite” of software.

Upgrades and full copies are available on !Store right now, or by phone as usual. I’ll try and update the website when I have a moment of spare time!

Next up, released last week, is a new version of our Doom Trilogy product of yore. This new version includes a high quality digital audio soundtrack that’ll work on all modern systems, allowing you to enjoy Doom at its best without the need for MIDI equipment. We can assure you, it rocks! Multiplayer is also supported, as are modern systems like Pi, ARMX6 and Titanium (including BGR/RGB swap). This pack includes all the stuff mentioned on our website, plus we’ve included Doom’s predecessor Wolfenstein 3D in the pack too, for a retro blast. More info can be found on the !Store page for Doom Trilogy.

At the show this weekend we’ll be demonstrating our TiMachine Titanium-based systems running our !DualHead custom software. This has been enhanced recently to support high resolution single-screen setups running beyond the Titanium’s usual 2048px limit. You’ll be able to see a variety of monitors/resolutions including the common 2560×1440 “27 monitor” size (ie. a step up from 1080p 24" displays) through to “nearly-4k”. !DualHead is available free of charge with all TiMachine systems, and as part of our Titanium support scheme. It is supported by various additional custom software (including !MultiMon and our recovery system) to handle high resolutions and recover the system from a wide range of problems (including no picture, if you’re mucking around with different screens and resolutions!). We’d like to say “thanks” to various ROOL forums folks/threads for feedback and suggestions that prompted the development of some of these updates – Rob at Elesar and Andy especially, as well as Mark.

There have also been some smaller updates to software and hardware (eg. machines) over the last six months. Whilst we may have seemed quiet (we’ve had a fair bit going on family-related too, this summer), we’ve still be beavering away on RISC OS projects.

For example, the ARMX6 has a new “rev D” motherboard with new network and power management stuff, which has resulted in some significant OS updates over the summer (plus the first multi-core RISC OS builds too!), whilst we’ve been polishing TiMachine (eg. developing !DualHead) so that it, too, delivers the best experience possible.

Not to mention time spent on RISC OS Developments business! I’m sure I’m forgetting other things too.

Busy, Busy, Busy times!

Hope to see you all at the show this weekend – have loads of fun RISC OS-ing! :)

Regarding Acorn Doom, number one on my wish list is fixing the bug in propagation of sound across linedefs with the blocks-sound bit set. I created a PWAD file to demonstrate this: http://starfighter.acornarcade.com/mysite/doom.htm#acornbug

When I disassembled the executable file it seemed to me that the logic had changed from the original Id Software source code. It should be relatively straightforward to restore it and retest.