June Amiga Computer Users of Edmonton 2002 InsideInside Software Tycoon 2 AWEB is Open Source 2 Olaf Barthel Interview 3 Amiga Inc. News 8 fxScan 4.0 8 SoundFX 8 The Beast 8 AmWest 2002 9 E.p.i.c. interactive announces Software Tycoon for MorphOS and Amiga Didn´t you always wanted to found your own games-company? It’s time for a childhood dream to come true... It’s 1982. Small computer games companies are springing up in the bedrooms around the world. A new business beckons, where everything is in your hands. You have total control, from creating the original concept, through hiring staff and packaging design, to the development of massive marketing campaigns. Do you have the skills to create and use new technologies and become a Software Tycoon? Software Tycoon immerses the player through the implementation of different scenarios, tutorials and a truly satirical backround that simulates the software business. But don’t forget your opponents will stop at nothing to ruin your business! FEATURES: * Real-time gameplay. * Two intelligent and unusual computer computer controlled opponents. * Satiric simulation of the software business. * Interact with real living and acting characters. * Multiple missions and tutorial scenarios. * Adventure-like inventory. * Hi-Res graphics in 800x600 dpi. AWEB Open Source * Employ the best staff and implement massive marketing campaigns for your products. Many of you may be aware of this, in the last month AWeb has * Sabotage your ruthless opponents. become open source. There is an OpenSource web site at * Different buildings in horizontal scrolling aweb.sunsite.dk. You can assist in the development of AWeb or just Location. dl the new versions of AWeb 3.4.2 for 020/030/040/060 you will * Easy development of original game concepts. need to install the AWebII SE from OS3.9/3.5 and copy the Business simulation Software Tycoon will require contents of the down loaded archive to the directory. It is a full a PPC based Amiga or the Pegasos and at least version now just called AWeb. The archive contains AWeb program, 32 Mbyte RAM. Software Tycoon will start AWeb Config and AWebJS files. shipping in June 2002. personally would like to thank Amitrix and Craig for keeping us informed about AWeb for these past few years and to William Parker for the scripts and pluggins and AWNPipe etc.. Also to Yvon AMICUE Saturday Coffee SIG Rozijn for the great program. Every Saturday I hope that the open source project will continue to refine and develop this fine program. 1:30-3:30 Haps Hungry House 159 St Stoney Plain Rd. Alberta Amiga is a publication of AMICUE the Amiga Computer Users of Edmonton. Alberta Amiga is published monthly to inform and support the Amiga Community in Northern Alberta. AMICUE meets on the third Thursday of each month at Arch Bishop Jordan High School 2021 Brentwood Blvd.. Sherwood Park. Yearly Membership fees of $20.00 After Meeting Good Food Get Together Good Friends Boston Pizza Good Times Sherwood Park Amiga, Inc. / Partners : Interview with Olaf Barthel Asha’s Sunday Chats Pods sent us this interview with Olaf Barthel. Enjoy. Every Sunday evening (in most places) First of all, this was mainly for my pleasure and getting to know a great man. I asked a few Amigans (and former Amigans questions that I felt where interesting. Oh, there are also some quite odd questions submitted by AO users at the end of the article. This took a week to do, so I hope you enjoy it as much hoping for the best) gather to chat and as I did.Sorry if some of this interview seems a little disjointed. It was done over 1 week, over share information on a wide range of several emails sent back and forth. I tried to gather relevant pockets of information together, topics. Subjects will range from the but some bits may have slipped pass me. If you do indeed see any parts of the interview that Amiga (of course) to books, TV, and seem out of place, just pretend you didn’t see it, or didn’t see it in that particular position. :). Also remember I’m an Australian using an American spell checker so, there might be a movies to whether or not aliens have variance between spelling :). Nice Reading... visited our planet. POds History with the Amiga. What have you done in terms of application development and Come join us on the IRC AmigaOS development? Olaf Software development started out as a hobby for me, and the Amiga turned out to be a The network is ExodusNet very pleasant platform for experimentation. Out of the experiments came lots and lots of small The new servers are: public domain programs which I lost count of years ago. Perhaps the most well-known is the `term’ terminal emulation software. But I’ve also wrote a bunch of commercial applications, irc.superhosts.net, irc.midnightrose.org, such as a computer role playing game (”Legend of Faerghail”) and Photo CD image processing software (”PhotoworX”, “PhotoworX Pro” and several spin-offs). At the same time irc.codemain.com there were several consulting jobs I was involved in, such as technical writing for Village The channel is #team*Amiga Tronic (makers of the “Picasso” graphics cards), driver software development for the same company and ultimately, consulting work for Amiga Technologies GmbH which lead to my The time(s) are each Sunday evening involvement with the Amiga operating system. I was involved in the original research for the OS 3.5 update and ended up drawing up the plans and details on which components would (9:00pmEST-11:00pmEST 2:00am need updating and how. A lot of work went into that project, and later the OS 3.9 update. Monday to 4:00am Monday GMT) Chances are that if you’re using OS 3.5 or 3.9 I was involved in rewriting or updating the software you are using. For example, I rewrote the icon.library from scratch and updated For those who can use Java chat, point workbench.library to its current level of functionality. your browsers at: POds Ok, because of your experience with workbench.library and icon.library, are you now www.reefer.org/chat4.html coding or doing any consultation on those specific parts of AmigaOS4 or will you have or anything to do with them in further releases? http://www.reefer.org/chat.html Olaf I don’t want to touch any of these again. In my opinion we need something much better than the Workbench we have today, and even the icon.library implementation suffers from many unwise choices regarding how data structures were used. I’m rooting for getting a I put my cam up Sundays so that you can Workbench re-implementation off the ground. We can’t stick to this model forever, and even see me as we chat. If you’re using an DirOpus (in spite of its many, many merits) ended up borrowing ideas that weren’t so great to Amiga, get WebVision Aminet, or, if that’s start with. down, email me and I’ll send you the POds Haha, I can understand that. What parts of icon.library do you think could be improved? latest version I’ve got). It can live on the Olaf Could? Probably nothing. We really ought to have something different in the operating same screen (MUI) as AmIRC and is system in place of the icon.library API and its method, as we know them today. easy to use and setup. You can also see POds I’ve just recently rediscovered AmigaOS and one thing a like about it is the icons. If you the cam on the Web (using a browser). had the chance to totally redesign these libraries, how and what features would you The cam address is implement? www.ashafx.com/cam. There’s always a Olaf People are asking for more colours to be supported in icons, for example. The current picture up, but it’s only live on Sunday icon.library architecture, which assumes that the icons will be stored in files, makes it hard to process large icon files (which is just what you get when you move to true colour icons, as are nights. so prominent in, for example, MacOS X). We just about get away with the 2-3K colour icon We also love playing with sounds. You files we have today. While this is in part a file system issue, it could help to extend the can grab all (or some) of the sounds we icon.library API to allow for icon collections or icon databases to be created, which would be are playing by going to: more efficient in storing the data. Or you could create “icon caches” which store the icon data in a more accessible format than the one the individual files are stored now. This is one of the http://enja.org ideas I think are worth exploring for the icon.library. We have a nice group of friendly folks POds What is your opinion on the upgrades going into AmigaOS as we speak? Intuition, sharing information, help and humor as HDtoolbox, etc... Olaf The work that’s being done is necessary to get the operating system code into shape we winde our way through the Great again. It has been gathering dust for so long that even the most modest changes are Amiga Oddessy. welcome. We tried to push ahead with the OS 3.5 and 3.9 updates, but up until now only small changes had been made to the ROM resident code.