July 13, 2001 - 05:00PM MST
Well, if you haven't heard, JoseQ is leaving the emulation scene. He'll be greatly missed by all of us who have benefited from his involvement in all things emulation, and I definitely want to express my appreciation for the web hosting, support, and coverage he has provided to Bliss over the past several months.
This also means that Bliss will be searching for a new home in the coming days. If you are willing to host the Bliss web site, please contact me and let me know. There is a lot of development in progress for Bliss, and there are still many exciting features which will be provided for Bliss users in the future. As such, I would definitely like to find a new host within the next few days, if possible. I will let everyone know here as soon as I have details of the transition to come. Stay tuned! --Kyle
July 2, 2001 - 07:30AM MST
New releases of the Java distributions! It's been nearly six weeks, but v1.60 is finally here. As a result, new versions of BlissJ (Pure Java), BlissJX (Java/DirectX), and BlissJWeb (Web Applet) are all available from the links to the left. The code for all three of these distributions has been integrated together into a single unified Java codebase, and the source for this codebase is also available for download, though if you would like to contribute any code to Bliss, I recommend you access the very latest codebase through SourceForge instead.
The good news is that this release should increase speed and address many of the video problems users have been experiencing. There is also support for a complete dump of World Series Major League Baseball that is finally floating around on the 'net. The only dump of this game that was previously available was missing the Intellivoice speech for the play-by-play announcer. Try the complete dump in Bliss and you'll finally hear all of that missing speech. In addition, there is support for several new variations of the Intellivision test cartridge, including the IMI test cartridge and some other goodies.
The bad news? The Atari 5200 support is being added to the native codebase, not the Java codebase, so this release does not include any Atari 5200 support. Expect a release from that codebase in the fairly near future, though.
Now that this release is out the door, this will probably be one of the last major updates for the Java codebase as I'll be switching my efforts to focus entirely on the native codebase. Lots of very good stuff is in store for the next release from the native codebase, so I hope you'll keep an eye out for it. Until then, enjoy these new Java releases.
--Kyle
