I’m really glad to announce that two games of mine, “ThunderHell” and “Virtual GP”, developed for the glorious Commodore Amiga range of computers, are now available as preinstalled games on the A600GS from AmigaKit Ltd!
The “86 Tribute” series for the VGP3 Engine is my heartfelt tribute to an iconic sports car renowned for its exhilarating driving experience; with its lightweight design, rear-wheel drive, low center of gravity, and perfectly balanced chassis, it has captured the hearts of driving enthusiasts around the world.
As a token of appreciation for all the joy and excitement this little japanese sports car has brought into my life, I’ve created this mod to share the experience with fellow enthusiasts.
It is my humble tribute to one of the most fun cars I have ever owned. If you want to have fun driving a “virtual” version of the GT86, you can download (for free) a special version of the VGP3 Engine, containing that series, from here:
https://www.virtualgp.info/index.php?page=download
Yesterday, I had the honor of being one of the speakers at the seminar on Energy Sustainability and Water Extraction from Air, held in the prestigious Ugo Foscolo Hall of the University of Pavia. As part of the sustainable development festival, we discussed the current state of research and applied research on extracting water from air using integrated devices. From green hydrogen to energy improvement in buildings to process optimization, my presentation focused on the development of physical/mathematical simulation software for Air To Water technologies.
I have been studying vehicle dynamics for almost thirty years, since I set out to create my first driving simulator, Impossible Drivin’, for the Amiga platform. Over the years, I have primarily studied the complexity of the interaction between rubber and asphalt, which is responsible for 90% of the quality of the simulation, and I have developed several algorithms to effectively implement the thermomechanics of the polymer.
In this scientific paper, I publish one of the formulas I developed (and effectively used in my AVC simulation library) for the dynamic calculation of heat transfer between rubber and asphalt, a formula that replaces the simple constant Hc normally used in the literature:
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/13/21/11996
The first game I developed for the all-mighty Amiga was “I Tesori” (Treasures), featuring Pippero and Tucchero in their quest for fortune and glory in the Burubullis’ dungeons. The game was a classic platform one, but the gameplay had some interesting features that made it somewhat different from other titles of the same genre. Unfortunately, it was coded using a very bad development system (Microsoft AmigaBASIC), so the final result was quite bad (especially performance-wise); and even if I planned, later in those years, a remake written in C in order to do justice to the original idea, such a remake never was completed.
Well, never… until now! Taking advantage of this period of Covid pandemic, having some time to spare just to experiment with the Godot engine, I developed a modern version of that old game. It’s still a 2d platform and the orginal gameplay is still there, but I added some new features that, really, were intended to be there in the original game but weren’t because of limitations of the development system.
The new browser game, “I Beobi e il Segreto dei Burubulli”, is freely available here: http://www.paolocattani.com/beobisegreto/; it’s free to play, but if you think it deserves a little donation (link in the game) I will donate myself half of the collected money to organizations that are currently working to fight the Covid pandemic!