From Antoine Vignau’s post at comp.sys.apple2 on August 17:

Graffidisk is a new kind of software for the Apple II. Its limit is your imagination: enter text or draw a GR picture on your Apple II and let Graffidisk tag your 5.25″ floppy disks. See the results of your piece of art with John Morris’ Applesauce. Share with your friends!

You can check it out here.

KansasFest 2017, the 29^th annual Apple II convention, is now open for registration.  Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini, the French Brutal Deluxe Software programming team known for countless original Apple II programs and archiving efforts, will join us in Kansas City, Missouri from July 18 – 23 with a keynote presentation to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the Apple II. Space is limited to 100 people, so register soon to reserve your spot.

Attendees are encouraged to share their knowledge by presenting their own hardware and software sessions related to the Apple II. All KansasFest sessions are presented by the attendees, who are known for unscheduled events and debuts, too. Whether it’s a behind-the-scenes look at new software, preorder opportunities for new hardware, a hands-on workshop, a podcast recording session, The Tinies game tournaments, or an athletic round of Bite the Bag, there are experiences to be had and memories to be made at KansasFest that aren’t possible except in the company of surprising, brilliant, diehard Apple II fans.

Register by May 31 to guarantee a price of $385 for a double room or $455 for a single, which includes admission to all sessions as well as most meals. After that, prices rise. Official KansasFest shirts are extra and optional and must be ordered by June 18; registration for staying on-site closes July 1. To register, please visit the official registration form.

KansasFest invites any and all Apple II users, fans, and friends to attend the longest running annual Apple II conference. For photos, videos, schedules, and presentations from past year’s events or to sign up for the email list and for inquiries, please visit the event’s Web site.

KansasFest 2017, the 29^th annual Apple II convention, is scheduled for July 18 – 23 in Kansas City, Missouri. Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini, the French Brutal Deluxe Software programming team known for countless original Apple II programs and archiving efforts, will join us with a keynote presentation to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the Apple II.

Vignau and Zardini founded Brutal Deluxe Software in 1992 focusing on 16-bit software. The team created programs, such as the Convert 3200 graphics tool, and adapted games like Bille Art, The Tinies, Cogito, Blockade, and LemminGS. The team remains active and has since released numerous titles, including Cadius (disk image utility), Merlin 32 (cross-assembler), You, DustHead! (disk head cleaning utility), i’m fEDD up (disk archiving), MountIt (disk image tool), and Fishhead (file copier). They also created comprehensive archives of cassette tapes, French cracking and underground groups, machine serial numbers, and unique documentation.  This year, Brutal Deluxe published demonstrations and tools for playing quadraphonic and octaphonic sound on the Apple IIgs. A quarter-century of continuing Apple II innovations and personal perspectives on the European computing scene are sure to delight and inform KansasFest attendees.

KansasFest is an annual convention offering Apple II users and retrocomputing enthusiasts the opportunity to engage in beginner and technical sessions, programming contests, exhibition halls, and camaraderie. KansasFest was originally hosted by Resource Central and has been brought to you by the KFest committee since 1995. Any and all Apple II users, fans, and friends are invited to attend this year’s event. Registration details will be announced on the KansasFest Web site, and registration will open on March 31. For photos, videos, and presentations from past KansasFests, please visit the event’s official Web site.

(Warning: Picture from 1994. Products shown may vary from actual products.)

Brutal Deluxe Software announces the maintenance release of i’m fEDD up, their copy/preservation utility program. Now at version 2.2, the program can export 5.25″ disk bitstreams in a .FDI file. If you own an Apple IIgs, the copy process runs in a single pass. A faster copy means more chance to reliably preserve track sync’ed titles. For easier convenience, the prefix command displays all files and is able to delete unlocked binary files to make room on your destination volume.

Download the latest version at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2/imfEDDup/

Antoine Vignau & Olivier Zardini

Brutal Deluxe Software

http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/

Brutal Deluxe Software, in partnership with Jean-Louis Le Breton (CEO of Froggy Software) and Richard Soberka (programmer, author of Zephyr), is happy to announce the release of the arcade game Pleins gaz for the Apple II.

This color HGR arcade game was released by Froggy Software in late 1986. As the company shut its doors shortly after, the game was barely distributed.

Version 1.2 presented here runs under ProDOS and is hard disk drive installable. The game runs on all Apple II with 128KB of RAM.

Together, in 2016, we have decided to release the game as software were distributed during the golden years of the Apple II: zip lock bag, manual, and floppy disk with label.

We auction the first three issues, one after the other. Those are signed by Jean-Louis Le Breton and Richard Soberka.

Paris, March 3rd, 2013 – Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to announce Mr Sprite, a command-line tool to manage sprites and to simplify the integration of sprites into Apple IIgs games.

Discover Mr Sprite at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/crossdevtools/mrsprite/

Mr Sprite is part of the Brutal Deluxe’s Cross Developpement Tools Project, a full set of utilities available on Windows (and other) platforms to enable the creation of new Apple IIgs software : 65c816 Assembler, 65c816 Disassembler, 65c816 Simulator, Graphic File Converter, Resource Catcher…

Antoine Vignau & Olivier Zardini
Brutal Deluxe Software
http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/

BD has also posted “Mr. Sprite Tech“, an in-depth look at the technical magic behind the program.

*Paris, Nov. 19, 2012*

Brutal Deluxe Software releases WindowCapture. It is a utility focused on screen capture. It has been designed to help in Graphic Resources catching (backgrounds, sprites, animations, palettes…) from games running under emulators.

Unlike Windows native Screenshot functionality (PrintScreen key), WindowCapture captures only the content of a window (not the whole screen) and save the results as image files on disk (file name is auto incremented). No need to enter a graphic program anymore to paste and save.

WindowCapture can grab only a small area of the window (remove unwanted borders). Based on the number of colors available in the picture, it will save the image as GIF (256 or less) or BMP (True Colors).

WindowCapture can take One Shot or Record the screen and take pictures on a regular timing (up to 100 pictures / second). This latest feature is useful to get all the sprites used for an character animation.

WindowCapture is part of the Brutal Deluxe’s Cross Developpement Tools Project, a full set of utilities available on Windows (and other) platforms to enable the creation of new Apple IIgs software: 65c816 Assembler, 65c816 Disassembler, 65c816 Simulator, Graphic File Converter, Resource Catcher…

WindowCapture is Windows only and can be found at http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/crossdevtools/windowcapture/

Antoine Vignau & Olivier Zardini
Brutal Deluxe Software
http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/

October 1st, 2012 – Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini, founders of Brutal Deluxe Software, are proud to introduce their newest software to the Apple II community.  “I’m fEDD up” is Brutal Deluxe’s second answer to nowadays preservation of 5.25" diskettes on the Apple II. Its main features are:

Essential Data Duplicator compatible

If Utilico Microware’s EDD or compatible card is installed in your system, it will use the card’s powerful features to read track data.

Nibble and timing preservation

It saves raw nibbles and their associated time cycles in separate files.

ProDOS compatible

That may sound weird but that is important. SST is no longer needed ;-) The requirement of two drives is no longer needed.

Get it here!

Apple IIGS French programming super-group announced that their DeluxeWare CD-ROM has been reclassified as freeware.  The text of their press release follows.

Paris, September 11st, 2012 – Brutal Deluxe’s DeluxeWare CD-ROM now available 

Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini are proud to announce that DeluxeWare, their CD-ROM released in 1996 in partnership with La Pomme Illustrée, is now available for free download.

It contains 650 MB of public domain software for the Apple IIgs. It can be download from http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/products/apple2gs/deluxeware/ and is available as a .dmg image which can be directly used on a modern Apple computer and may be translated to .iso for other platforms.

Stay tuned for more and best regards,

Antoine Vignau & Olivier Zardini
Brutal Deluxe Software
http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/

Further details from the original release:

DeluxeWare is the first French cd-rom dedicated to the Apple IIgs. The disk was entirely created by Olivier and was sold in January 1996. It was priced FRF 200 or EUR 30. It contains 650 MB of public domain software:

• Apple programs
• Documentations
• Creative visual
• Hypermedia
• Games
• Music
• System
• Utilities

The required configuration is:

• Apple IIgs ROM 01 or 3, cd-rom 1x or 2x speed with the associated extensions. Some software require the use of System 6.0.1.
• The disc is in HFS and can be played on a IIgs or a Macintosh computer.
• The shareware on this disc must be paid to their respective authors.

On the 20th birthday of the French IIGS programming group, Open Apple podcast co-host Ken Gagne sits down with Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini to chat about the group’s history, what the Apple II and BBS scenes were like in France in the 1980s, how they acquired the rights and assets to popular licenses and ported them to the Apple II, their open source philosophy, and news from other French developers.

You can listen at the Open Apple Web site, or download the episode from iTunes.