This year's Wakefield Show is set to take place this coming Saturday, the 24th of April. With the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic ruling out the possibility of a physical get-together, this is WROCC's first attempt at an all-online version of the show. "Visitors" won't have any show stalls to peruse, but instead there's a full day of virtual theatre presentations planned, with the whole event streamed for free on Facebook, YouTube, and Zoom.
 
Although the schedule is still subject to change, the day is currently planned out as follows:

• 10:30 AM - AMCOG Games will be celebrating the release of their latest game, "Spy Mission: The Ice Caves of Dr. Atom", as well as giving updates on RDSP and the AMCOG Development Kit, and a quick look at their impressive back-catalogue of previous games.
• 11:30 AM - A bumper two-hour slot for RISC OS Developments to discuss the latest OS developments (Iris web browser, new TCP/IP stack, Pinboard 2, and more), and R-Comp/RCI to discuss their latest hardware & software developments, including some surprises & special offers.
• 1:30 PM - Half-hour lunch break
• 2:00 PM - RISC OS Open with updates on OS development and the bounties
• 3:00 PM - Sine Nomine Software will be demonstrating the forthcoming RiscOSM version 2.00, and development updates on their other software
• 3:30 PM - Elesar will be showcasing the recently-resurrected TextEase Studio, as well as showing off some of their hardware products.
• 4:00 PM - CJE Micro's will no doubt be discussing the latest updates to their product line
• 4:30 PM - Soft Rock Software are aiming to release an updated version of Escape from Exeria, the first game that was released under the SRS label
• 5:00 PM - Cloverleaf Project will be discussing their new Kickstarter, their hardware projects, and Paolo Zaino's Desktop Modernisation project.
• 5:30 PM - RISCOSbits will be showing off their range of cases and accessories (including their new Raspberry Pi 4 based "PiAno"), and maybe some previews of in-development products
• 6:00 PM - The afterparty - the Zoom call will be left open to allow the participants to chat informally

Each presentation is planned to include a Q&A section at the end, with questions drawn from the Zoom audience - so if you want to take part in that, or the after-show discussion, make sure to email zoom@wakefieldshow.org.uk to receive an invite to the call.
 

(As if you needed it), a quick reminder that Sophie Wilson (the co-designer of the BBC Micro and original designer of the ARM chip), will be giving a talk for Rougol on monday night about the Future or Microprocessors with a Q & A afterwards and lots of BBC/ RISC OS trivia.
 
The talk starts at 7:45pm and is free. You just need to ask ROUGOL for an invite...
 
Rougol website
 

There is another update for the Iris browser (now version 1.010).
 

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?
 

If you keep an eye on the RISC OS bounties, you will have noticed one for Git. The bounty is now underway and more details are here. In this article we explain all you need to know about Git.
 

Tonight's online talk was by Daryl Dudley, with a starting audience of 45 people.
 
Daryl started off by introducing himself. In real life he is a principal sales engineer, using lots of programming languages. Started with a Master 128 back in the 1980s. A keen Pi user. Long term forum lurker....
 
DARIC is a modern BASIC inspired by BBC BASIC and BlitzBasic. It uses a VM with no real memory limits. Ultimate goal is native compilation.
 
In 2017 inspired to recreate Zarch. BBC BASIC was too slow and not an assembly language fan. So started a C based module with a 3D graphics library. This was shown at London Show 2019.
 
This was still tricky to debug and slow to compile. Also wanted to port code to Master 128 with PiTube. Lots of input and inspiration from Rob Coleman. PiBasic was born. Realised it was getting good performance and in some cases faster than BBC BASIC V as statically types and compiled to byte code. Removed BBC BASIC compatibility requirement and wrote version 2. Now at version 6. Developed on Visual Studio and targeted at RISC OS. HAs moved away from BBC BASIC syntax.
 
Ported lots of Java and Blitz projects.
 
The goals of Daric are to be:-
1. Fun
2. Clean syntax.
3. Cross-platform
4. Interactive mode.
5. "Batteries included"
6. Near Instant run
7. Integrated 2D/3D graphics
8. Hardware acceleration where possible.
9. Sprite model.
10. Entity model
11. Tile Maps
12. Sound support with synthesis, samples and music.
 
The architecture of Daric is:-
1. Antlr4 based parser.
2. 3 pass Compiler.
3. Runtime with stack based VM and a debugger.
 
Based on C++11 and cross-platform.
 
Daryl next showed us to demos of Daric code running on his Pi and some sample source code.Language has built-in debugging on F10 key. Does not do textures yet.
 
The talk ended as usual with the chance to ask lots of questions
 
Next month on 19th April the speaker will be Sophie Wilson.
 
More details of talks are on the ROUGOL site
 

ROOL has released an updated version of the DDE toolset for RISC OS. This is still release 30, but adds some powerful new features.
 

The one man games factory that is also known as Jeroen Vermeulen has released another game on PlingStore called Cavern.