Aminet 45/Aminet 45 (2001)(GTI - Schatztruhe)[!][Oct 2001].iso/Aminet/docs/misc/AmigaArena3.lha/AmigaArenaNews3/Ruediger_EN

Text File | 2001-08-01 | 10.8 KB | 229 lines

Amiga Arena Interview
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with Rüdiger Hanke Developer from Excult,Filters for Pagestream..

(29.07.2001)

Special Thanks to Christian B. for the translation!



*Hello Rüdiger, would you plase introduce yourself to the readers of Amiga Arena

I'm 25 years old and study informatics at the university of Paderborn.
Besides developing for the Amiga I like to be creative, mainly I'm a writer.
The Amiga's creative potential is unique, but attracts much too little attention,
unfortunately even in the plans of Amiga. Amongst other things,
I  write as a "guest editor" for an english e-zine and
am currently producing a "pencil & paper" role play book,
b.t.w. completely on the Amiga (mainly using AmigaWriter and Pagestream,
even the cover will be made using ArtEffect).

Apart from that I love music and go to many concerts.
I rather spend my money for concert journeys across
Germany, Europe, and America than buying a PC.

*How did you get to the Amiga?

I got to like computers relively late.
When friends showed me proudly their C64s and Plus/4s I wasn't absolutely thrilled.
Even my father had a computer before me, an Atari ST.
As that was already there, I wanted to play with it,
but there were hardly any games for monochrome monitors,
so I grabbed the included Basic and wrote my own.
I got my own computer a bit later - when a friend showed me his Amiga.
That was love at first sight.

*Since when have you been an Amiga user?

Since summer 1988.

*Which Amiga do you own?

My main computer is an Amiga 4000 in a tower case with CyberStormPPC,
CyberVision 64/3D, and 146MB RAM.
At the place where I study my trusty old Amiga 2000 is still chugging away,
still in its original state with Kickstart 1.3, 4MB RAM,
and 40MB hard disk. That one won't get upgraded, a bit of nostalgia is necessary,
and UAE doesn't have enough Amiga feeling for that.

*Which OS version are you running?

OS 3.9 on the A4000.

*Which software are you developing?

My software can be roughly divided into two areas.
One is software for word processing/DTP, this includes
for example several filters for SoftLogik's DTP program PageStream,
and taking on the porting of Ghostscript. Ghostscript 7.00 is upcoming,
which will have many Amiga specific improvements (display with antialiasing,
support of the new OS3.5 printer.device, the PPC version now renders about 800-1400%
faster with antialiasing than before without). Furthermore
I am developing a utility that has approximately the function of AmiDiction,
but works offline. There are all sorts of databases imaginable for that,
besides the included dictionary and thesaurus one could also realize language translation lexica.
Alas, german language data are currently missing.

The second area is entertainment, primarily role playing games and adventures.
Probably because a good game story is very important to me.
Instead of porting, I'd rather write my own role playing adventure.
Best of all would be a mixture of the best elements of the Ultima series and Ambermoon,
but where would I get (good) illustrators and musicians?
The problem with visual games is that they get devaluated by mediocre graphics.

*How did you get the idea of developing respectively port Excult?

I am a big fan of role playing games,
but this genre in particular has recently been missing out on the Amiga
I encountered Exult when I was in search of open source role playing projects
that are portable with justifiable effort, fairly playable, and are being advanced actively.

*Please tell us a few particulars of Excult.

Using Exult, Ultima 7, which is generally regarded as the best game of the Ulima series,
can be played on the Amiga. Though Ultima 7 is already 11 years old,
there's more accuracy in its world than in most of today's PC role playing games.
For example there's a cat sitting on the wayside and disappearing behind a fence when you approach;
the people you meet are pursuing their own daily tasks,
and for baking bread you can manually grind flour and get water from the well...

Exult has some improvements compared to Ultima 7,
amongst them an improved save dialog which allows saving more game scores.
Furthermore you can move through the world even if additional
windows (chests, backpack, character statistics) are open.
In the original you first had to close these windows.
Furthermore the computer controlled characers of your own group move a bit more sensibly than in the original.

In order to utilize the better resolution of modern computers,
Exult possesses several scaling engines to be able to double the original resolution in high quality.
The game screen can thus be as large as graphics board and processor performance allow for.
However, Exult doesn't try to be Ultima 7 for modern computers
but a "role playing game engine for Ultima 7 data files".
Using "Exult Studio", which is currently being developed for Linux,
it will be possible to write your own role plays using the Ultima 7 engine.
Whether or not there will be an Amiga version hasn't been decided yet.
I would like to undertake that task, but there are other things with higher priority.
Up to now nobody has inquired if there will be Exult Studio for the Amiga.

*Which software have you used for that?

Exult was developed with StormC 4 and the AmigaSDL port by Gabriele Greco.
As Exult uses many modern C++ features, a port would probably have been
impossible with most other Amiga compilers. Even with StormC it was enough of a pain in the neck.

*Will there be further updates etc.?

I inquired with Jeff Freedman, Exult's project manager,
and he wants to integrate the changes to the Amiga version into the CVS tree.
I tried to make all necessary changes and workarounds as central
as possible rather than spreading them across the source files.
That means as long as there aren't any big changes to Exult,
I just need to get a current CVS snapshot and compile.
Particular to the Amiga version, there first has to be a version
running trouble-free with Picasso96.
After that there will be versions for WarpOS and AmigaOS 4.

*Don't you lose the fun in developing when you see how little
 this is still honoured in the Amiga marketplace?

You rather lose the fun if you read the featherbrained comments
that appear everywhere in various forums and news pages and lack
all sense of reality and competence.

The resonance to freeware ports and developments is ok if you see the Amiga's user base,
I get a couple of "thank you" emails which I'm of course very pelased with.
Some people are thankful if you still do anything for the Amiga.
As soon as you leave the freeware sector, it's looking bleak again.
There it goes to extremes. My AmigaWriter filter for Pagestream was postcardware.
I thought that would create more resonance than shareware.
I believe, for postcard postage the filter is practically a giveaway,
if you compare that to the price of the official document filter for Wordworth.
Here the (postal) resonance has been crushing - but those who made the effort
of writing also sent little presents or didn't use the filter at all and just wanted to support Amiga developers.

*Will you support further Amiga OS versions?

On all accounts! It might even be good that the next ports will only appear
for AmigaOS 4 if necessary. Unfortunately it looks much like that at the moment.
Next I'd like to port a role games again, but this time one of the kind we've
never had on the Amiga. If everything works out, it might be the biggest
freeware game the Amiga has ever seen.

I don't know yet whether or not I will support AmigaDE in private projects.
That will depend on how important the DE will become for the desktop market.
I'm not interested in embedded systems like mobile phones or PDAs.
I'm also not very happy about the "Software Distribution Agreement"
for the DE in its current form. Nonetheless, I own the SDK and did a
couple of small things with that, so at least I'm familiar with it.
If and when DE services are integrated into AmigaOS I will utilize them, though.

*How do you as a developer see the Amiga's future?

The commercial Amiga market is in a conceivably bad state.
This has absolutely got to change if the Amiga is to have a chance.
But I believe we have reached rock bottom.
Maybe things will not change overnight with the AmigaOne and AmigaOS 4,
but software companies developing specialized software for areas like audio
and video would have a chance to offer complete solutions consisting of soft- and (modern) hardware.

Besides, the DE might provide some boost to the AmigaOS.
Amiga partners who want to use the DE will probably have a
potential interest in a wide distribution of the AmigaOS.
It can only benefit those companies if data can be exchanged between PDA and desktop
in the easiest way, and the same applications can be used in transit and at home.

*When did you last use your Amiga?

I'm using my Amigas daily. I don't have a PC or Mac.
When the new Macs were introduced I was on the verge of buying one.
But then it wasn't really my world - that is and will be the Amiga.

*Which was the software you last bought for the Amiga?

I bought Drawstudio and Payback last.
Drawstudio has payed off several times by now,
I don't even know how I got by so long without it...

*Which applications/games software do you still use?

Most frequently I use word processors (Final Writer, Amigawriter),
Pagestream, and of course StormC. I also use ArtEffect quite often.
However, as I have widespread interests and no other computer,
I use a lot of Amiga programs: IBrowse, YAM, NewsRog, GoldED,
MUIBase, SoundFX, ... all registered!

*Which soft/hardware do you still plan to buy?

The most important for me would be the Pagestream table editor and Papyrus.
Both, alas, not yet available.
Concerning hardware, I want to be one of the first to own an AmigaOne with OS 4.
I'm also interested in the PPC system announced by Merlancia and based
on the bPlan board, not least of all because the keyboard layout
is said to correspond to the Amiga keyboard.
After 13 years of constant typing on the Amiga keyboard
I have grave difficulties with all keyboards that have another layout :-).

*Do you believe in a comeback of Amiga?

Let's say it this way: I wish it on Amiga.
It's unusual enough for the business that this computer
is still there, after all it's been through.
However, it probably won't be able to become
again what it once was. But maybe that is a good
thing if you see how corrupt you have to be to become market leader.
After all, there isn't just "dead" or "market leader".
A computer with a philisophy and perspective is enough for me.

Generally I'm a firm believer that sometime there will emerge
something that has the philosophy of an Amiga. Currently,
bloatware is in. In many Windows and Linux programmers
the self-esteem seems to increase with the number of
megabytes of their executables. But sometime there will
be a bang, and then there'll be something simple, slim,
and elegant in demand - sooner or later.

(c) Amiga Arena 2001