AmiModRadio / 2015-06-18 18:37:10

1 Did you know that, as of today (2015/06/02), there are more than 20,000 packages in the mods directory on Aminet? Yes! That's more than 20,000 modules to play and enjoy! So, why not have a program that could automatically download one module at-a-time, extract it, and play it? This is the purpose of AmiModRadio...

 

Essentials

AmiModRadio is composed essentially of four parts:

  • A small FTP client to access Aminet and download archives containing modules;
  • A XAD client to unarchive the downloaded archives;
  • A ARexx command-and-control system to gently ask players to play the module;
  • A MUI interface to control the various parts of AmiModRadio, in particular to permanently saved desired modules as well as pause/play and skip modules.

 

Command Line Usage

A typical session through the command line is as follows:

Initialising connection with player
Initialising connection with Aminet

AmiModRadio looks for the ARexx ports of one of its known players and a FTP connection to Aminet
Exploring mods
Exploring mods/funet
Downloading TechnoHymn.lha
..............................................
(Of length 148046)
Saving TechnoHymn.lha in T:
Extracting TechnoHymn.lha
Playing module(s)
Could not find any module to play:		 AmiModRadio explores the (randomly chosen) folder mods/funet and downloads and extracts the (randomly chosen) file TechnoHymn.lha but it cannot recognise any module among the extracted files (It contains only a MED file!)
Going up and up
Exploring mods
Exploring mods/blasa
Could not find a LHA file after 10 retries:		 AmiModRadio goes up and now explores the folder mods/blasa, but it cannot find a random LHA file after ten attempts (It contains only LZX files!)
Going up and up
Exploring mods
Exploring mods/przk
Downloading f-nofear.lha
..............................................
...............
(Of length 216658)
Saving f-nofear.lha in T:
Extracting f-nofear.lha
Playing module(s)		 So, AmiModRadio goes up again and explores mods/przk and downloads and extracts the file f-nofear.lha in which it finds modules to ask the player to play
Fetch another module? (Y/N) Now, AmiModRadio waits for the user to either choose to play another module (and interrupt the current playing) or quit

 

 

Timeline

2015/06/14: Fixed several small bugs, added a simplistic CLI-based user-interaction, added support for HippoPlayer, improved the speed of the download.

2015/06/11: All the pieces are working together! Only MultiPlayer is supported, no CLI, no GUI.

2015/06/10: The ARexx client is working and can interact with AmigaAMP as test.

2015/06/07: The XAD client is working and can extract LHA (and any others!) archives.

2015/05/29: The FTP client is working and random archives can be downloaded automatically.

2015/05/20: Start of the project using the great Cubic IDE and vbcc.

 

Downloads

AmiModRadio is open source. Its source code and binaries are available at SourceForge !

 

Links

About FTP:

 

1 Icon by Rob under CC BY v3.0, thanks!