Games section
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Games section
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For this interview I spoke to Thomas Frieden and Steffen Haeuser, programmers at Hyperion Software. Hyperion appears to be one of the busiest game developers,announcing one hit after another. The company specializes in high-end PC ports.
Thomas:
In 1988 I got my first Amiga. It was an A500. Some time later I replaced it with an A2000 and then with an A4000, which I still have.
Steffen:
My first Amiga was the A500, I got it in 1989, when it came on the market. I had planned to buy the A1000, but it was too expensive when it was released, so I waited a bit for the A500 to come.
Thomas:
I was fascinated by the Amiga when I saw it in a warehouse for the first time. It was running a copy program and all the time it played a sample in the background: »Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me!«. I was very fascinated. The Amiga was just the best machine for those times - there were only Hercules graphics cards and the best was CGA or EGA. And if you ever used Windows and had to wait a couple of seconds when moving a window for a reaction. I can understand why people stay with the Amiga for such a long time. Nothing feels quite like it (well, nearly nothing ;)..
Steffen:
I always had an Amiga and I just like the OS. It's just the best. Of course I know that I cannot make money with the Amiga alone (hopefully this will change with Bill McEwen :) ), this is why we from Hyperion also write software on Linux and Mac. (Hyperion supports Amiga, Linux and Mac. In Linux we support Linux-x86 as well as LinuxPPC)
Thomas:
Playing games :) You can't be a games programmer unless you love to play games yourself. I like reading (especially science fiction and fantasy), listening to music or watching Babylon 5 or the Harald-Schmidt-Show (translator's note: an entertainment-show at night, like Late Night with Conan O'Brian).
Steffen:
Well... writing emulators :) (joking aside, I like reading, especially fantasy novels, I like playing computer games, listening to music, I like cinema and also like playing a pen-and-paper role game or MtG... in addition to that: eMailing :) )
Thomas:
Currently I play Baldur's Gate, a role-playing game, and Unreal Tournament (There is nothing better than a good »Headshot« :). I also like playing Shogo, Freespace and Hidden&Dangerous.
Steffen:
Well: Heretic II (honestly!!!), and I like playing PSX games (Fear Effect, Suikoden 2, Final Fantasy VIII), but I never have the time to play Warcraft II, Quake or Warlords 3 against my little brother... I haven't played with him for a LOOONG time... maybe later... :)
Thomas:
In private, I have an Amiga, of course, and also a PC on which I run Windows and Linux. Currently I am working on a project for Monolith, so there's no getting round it...if you can get used to "The system is busy"...
Steffen:
An Amiga 4000 PPC and a PowerMac G3 and a (don't laugh...) Pentium with Linux-x86 and 120 MB of free disk space. In addition to that I use my brother's A3000 quite often for mailing... (Birdland BBS: telnet 62.132.131.18). If you wonder about the Pentium: it is just for the online game "Lords", which runs on the Birdland BBS via telnet, which is not available for the Amiga.
Thomas:
I am one of the "founding members", that means I've been here for more than one year.
Steffen:
Officially or unofficially? Well, if you have a look at the credits of Heretic II, I have been working a bit longer for them... but officially I have not worked for them very long (before that I worked for a PC application software company, Quark...)
At last count, we were 10, but we're growing... First, there is Ben Hermans, the founder of Hyperion and lawyer of the company. He is one of the managing partners with Evert Carlton. Our PR manager is Ben Yoris. The website is managed by Patrick Ceuppens. Our American activities (e.g. presentations for licensees) are made by James Sellman. Tim DeGroote has similar jobs in Europe. Most of our people are programmers of course: Hans-Joerg Frieden, Joe Sera, Steffen Haeuser, Peter Annuss, Stephan Rusdorf, Mathias "Amidog" Roslund, Harry Sintonnen and me (Thomas), of course :) We also have some people working self-employed for us, Axel Deising and Michael Siegel, who are both responsible for Mac versions (and Smacker ports :) .
Thomas:
I am a programmer. Currently I work mostly on a project for Monolith, which is a software renderer (without 3D hardware). Currently I am working with Stephan on this project. When not I am Hyperion's expert for LithTech and in common for 3D programming.
Steffen:
Most of my time is spent working with Peter Annuss on the Amiga and Linux version of the game Sin. I'm also working on a bugfix for Heretic II save games. I am also (but not alone) responsible for helping on installation problems with Heretic II. I'm also supposed to look after contact with Amiga based companies like H&P.
The announced games will be released for sure. After that, time and the market will decide if there will be more Amiga titles in the future. I am quite confident that we will stay with the Amiga. Our current model of parallel porting seems to work, but we are worried about becoming a target for software pirates. Trying to do many versions of a port to other systems is "hard work", and we can't work for nothing. Hyperion is a company, not a coder group, and we have to consider the financial side. The additional costs of an Amiga version have to be paid for by future sales. I really hope they happen....
Shogo is approx. 95% complete. Just the sound and the OpenGL renderer are missing. That last 5% is tricky, its problems make the whole project complicated. Shogo used DirectX, so the step to OpenGL is a bit difficult. Even if both systems offer nearly the same functionality, it's the small differences which make the porting difficult....
SiN was pretty straight forward and is nearly 90% complete, thanks to the Quake2 engine, which was also used with Heretic 2. A first alpha test version for Activision is now complete (but just the Linux version at the moment. The Amiga version will soon be at a similar advanced stage, but both versions still have some unsolved problems). The rest of the projects are still in early stages, so it is hard to guess. Shogo and SiN should be released in the 3rd quarter this year...
Only a miracle can save us. Unfortunately, it is really that bad. The miracle should come in the form of new hardware, which might be G3/G4 and better 3D hardware. The news about the Elbox-PCI-solution could be a small miracle. If there was a new generation of PPC hardware, now, the market could hold for another year. The agreement between M@tabox and H&P is a good sign, but we are unhappy with the estimated release date of the AmiJoe board. It's anyone's guess how development might go after the release of the AmigaOne (at last a real name, no AmigaNG any more)...
But Fleecy and Bill are the people at the head of Amiga, and really care about the Amiga. If you remember those times under Gateway....
Pirate copying ruins the market, whether it's videos, CDs or computer games. Some markets can survive piracy, because they have a sales base, e.g. computer games for the PC. But the prices have to be a bit higher, so a game is sold for 80 DEM (approx. 40.82 Euros), even though it could have sold for 50 DEM (approx. 25.50 Euros), because you need compensation for the loss of sales to pirate copies.
It's not such a big problem if you can get sales of 30,000 up to 1,000,000, even allowing for a big marketing budget. In a small market like the Amiga, however, pirate copying is very harmful. I know cases where several hundred copies of a program were sold in a year, but in the log files of pirate FTP sites you find thousands of downloads. This cannot be. No one can expect a company to put up with this.
So I ask you: Don't use pirate copies on your Amiga. You mightn't pay for a game, but the people who do buy it pay for your copy, either by higher prices for the original or, at worst, by companies no longer supporting the Amiga - though by then all Amiga users, even the pirate users, will be paying the price of piracy.
I think we have proved that it is possible to get top-of-the-list titles for the Amiga. Much more can happen in the future (and it will happen) - if software pirates don't ruin it.
Thomas:
The time I spent with the Amiga was the best of times ever, the computer (and especially me with the computer). I can remember the first Fish disk and the first steps of the Aminet, when it was a lone A3000 in a university (who remembers the host name of that server? I think it was something along the lines of amiga.unizh.*.ch).
Today, they also speak of a Linux "Community", but I think there was a bigger community with the Amiga, especially in the beginning. Unfortunately this got lost, pushed into the background, too many unnecessary conflicts. Even so, the Amiga will keep its philosophy.
Steffen:
Well... buy Amiga software. Support the companies that support you. And have some patience with Amiga, they will get it booting. :)
Fabio Trotta from NRNF:
I wish you and AMIGA success. Just stop and say hello, if you are out this way. I am happy I could talk to two members of the currently best AMIGA developers' house.
And just in case you haven't been there, the Hyperion software websites are at:
http://www.hyperion-software.de
http://www.hyperion-software.com
(Source: No Risc No Fun Website)
