There have been quite a few happenings around AROS land lately. Let's start off by mentioning the new AROS Wallpaper Competition. AROS is in need of a Wanderer background to use for the Nightly builds. So a contest has been started to give graphic artists out there a great way to contribute. The rules are posted on AROS-exec here. Paolone has already entered the contest with a spring, summer, autumn and winter version. You can download them here.

Robert Norris is offering his code for a port of John Jordan's Frontier: First Encounters. A replacement executable for the game Frontier: First Encounters. He posted in the forum on AROS-exec.org explaining more about this port. If you are a fan of the game Elite, this is a piece of that series. They were a lot of fun to play and a port to AROS would fit perfectly! With Robert offering a good start on the port, this is an offer someone should take advantage of.

I am still working on porting the newest version of Python into PyAROS. I am a beginner at porting, so it's taking awhile. I have been receiving help from Mazze and Blacky Stardust. They have been my Jedi Porting Masters, while I'm just a young Porting Padawan. I want to thank those two, they have provided me with very good information and they have been very patient. The current PyAROS is based from the 2.2.1 version of Python. I have recently downloaded that version and ran a diff command to compare that version with PyAROS. I took this patch and applied it to the new version of Python, which is 2.5. When doing this, I directed the output into a file. I looked at the file to see how many rejections it had. There were so many, I didn't even count them. My plan now is to gradually go through the rejections one by one and try to manually make the changes. So, needless to say, it will take awhile. I'll keep working on it.

Our friends at DiscreetFX LLC are sponsoring an Amiga Game Creation Contest. They are offering $1000.00 for a three level demo of a platform game starring Hottie. The winner will get a chance to complete the game and release it on Amiga OS 4.0, MorphOS, AROS, and other gaming systems. Check out the announcement at Amiga.org. I think this is really cool of them to sponsor something like this. I hope it turns out well and I definitely want to see it running in AROS. Good luck guys!