Jason Compton's Surf's Up



Welcome, Amiga fans! Despite this column's synonymity with a column in CU of the same name, we're going to work to make this section of the web site an exclusive resource for CU Online readers to highlight the best, most interesting, and most influential Web destinations for Amiga users.

The Italian Software Renaissance:


Italy is credited with the birth of a cultural and intellectual Renaissance that brought unparalleled discoveries and works of art to the world. Now it seems that Italy may be at the center of a new rebirth--a new age of high-class Amiga applications.


Take Cloanto, who have reinvented the standard for Amiga paint programs. Personal Paint 7 offers features none of its predecessors, the likes of Deluxe Paint and Brilliance, could ever hope to, like the ability to create GIF animations. Cloanto was also instrumental in the creation of the PNG graphical standard, the royalty-free alternative to GIF.


Or click over to the home of Eyelight's Tornado3D where a 3D modeling and animation program that may even challenge the mighty Lightwave for supremacy is being born. Eyelight pushes all the right buttons to get the attention of even the most hardened Imagine, Cinema4D, or even Lightwave 5 fan.



Perhaps part of the reason these and others, such as Maurizio Ciccione and his AudioLab 16 (you can mail Maurizio for more information at maurizio@ivg.it) are so successful is the existence of IPISA, the annual Amiga and alternative computing developer's convention. If you're up for a little Italian, you can visit them at their web site (an English version will be ready shortly.)

Emulation Mania


Speaking of renaissances, there's been a bit of a rebirth of Amiga emulator development, too. The first three and a half months have already seen several completely new platform emulators developed or ported over to the Amiga. You can always plunge blindly through Aminet's misc/emu directory (ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/misc/emu) but you might prefer a more verbose guide.

Martin Chantler maintains a more or less up to date list of available emulators for the Amiga at http://www.pncl.co.uk/~martinc/emulators/index.html where you can peruse what has and hasn't been developed yet.

A more specific resource is a home for homepage-less game console and arcade emulators, housed at http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~bw-evans/amiga.html.

Finally, if you're a Shapeshifter fan, you'd do well to stop by Colin Thompson's resource page.

Jason Compton - Editor in Cheif of Amiga Report.