Arch Computers, home of National Amiga, is located in a
leafy, residential looking street, plenty of window space and, for the first
time in a long time, I got to see the word "Amiga" proudly and boldly
displayed for all the world to enjoy.My wife has an ambivalent attitude to computers. She enjoys using them, loves playing games, adores the Amiga and detests the PC but she also doesn't like the amount of time I spend on it, fair enough really, since it is her name on the marriage licence and not some Spanish Senorita. Thus, when I first mooted traveling up to the Open House, as a JMS member (to do this report) and as an ICOA representative, her reaction was similar to the one I get when I get dressed up to go out with her and she glares at me before declaring "You are not going out looking like that!!!"
The above leads into explaining why I arrived at noon instead of 10:00am, having hurtled down route 401 at (ahem) slightly more than the posted speed limit, the result of the first bribe (a trip to Niagara Falls) and the consequent late leaving thereof.
Arch Computers, home of National Amiga, is located in a
leafy, residential looking street, plenty of window space and, for the first
time in a long time, I got to see the word "Amiga" proudly and boldly
displayed for all the world to enjoy.
The shop itself has a main floor of about 40' by 80' with a few small rooms off it, lined with shelves full of the latest in Amiga software, hardware, books, and magazines. I spent the first 30 minutes just browsing, so refreshing was it to be in an Amiga shop. Although never packed to the point of asphyxiation, there were always people to bob around, stop and chat to, talk about the past, the present and the future, and people seemed to be buying up a storm (not bad for a dead market). I don't have any numbers but I reckon that I must have seen well over 150 different people just during the three hours I was there.
My wife had planned to drop me off and take the kids on to Storybook Gardens, a landscaped theme park in London but she had failed to factor in the strength of genetic imprinting. Within five minutes of entering the store, my children had taken over the Auroraworks playability demo, worked out the game rules and mechanics and were wiping out all comers. They are both boys, four and six, have only ever known Amigas and they can beat me at almost every Amiga action game there is - booooooooo!!!!!
are a new Amiga company and one of the reasons that I
will never leave the Amiga scene whilst it has a heart that is still beating.
Just talking to them, becoming infected with their excitement and passion and
enthusiasm left me quite breathless. Their story is one so typical of the
Amiga community, full of hope and promise and potential on the only platform
left that can really make such dreams come true.
Auroraworks is a three man outfit, James Ceraldi, Jim Harrison, and Tim Konkle, (Jim, Jim and Tim), doing day jobs, working over weekends and by night, investing all their savings, every last penny they have into getting their products out into the Amiga Market. Their attitude is that they want to code on Amigas, they love Amigas, they'd like to make a fortune but more importantly, they just want to make enough to pay the bills, have a great time and have some left over to be able to invest in better development tools, allowing them to make their code more advanced so that they can push the envelope that little bit further everytime they release a game. If other platforms want to pick up their games and licence them or port them then they are more than happy to take their money but as long as they can without starving, they intend to work only on their platform of choice, the Amiga.
Their philosophy is that the Amiga is a wonderful machine but that, due to the bankruptcies and lack of development, it has slipped behind the PC, leaving games companies with little option but to code to the last revisions of the OS. As a result, many of the games nowadays are providing the features that were coming out on the PC in 1994. To Auroraworks, that is an unacceptable situation.
Over the last year, they have been embarked upon building up the tools necessary to provide a development base for them that will enable game design and coding to be pushed upto and then way past the levels of the PC and consoles. Personally they have designed, built and then rejected five animation players and three sound systems before settling on the ones that they liked, and which they are now using. They selected assembler and C++ as their languages of choice and are writing towards fully open logical standards, RTG (Retargetable Graphics) in the form of the Cybergfx standard and RTA (Retargetable Audio) in the form of the AHI standard.
Auroraworks wants to push the boundaries back, thrusting the Amiga forwards towards modular, integrated design, free of hardware specific chains that prevent both them and the Amiga from moving forwards. They intend to specialise at the higher end of the market, their first release being for an expanded machine (68030/50 - FPU, gfx board, 8MB) but they will support the lower end IF they can maintain the standards of the higher end game at the lower level. Their philosophy is that the Amiga has to move forwards and if they write great games for expanded machines, then people will expand their machines to be able to use the games and thus better games can be written (the cry of all who have graphics cards).
For the advanced features that they intend, a plain A1200 will just not cut it anymore and they intend to make Cybergfx support the standard for all their releases. It is a brave decision to make but, witnessing the results first hand on their demo machines, it is one that has to be made. They are the first to admit that features alone do not a great game make but take a great game and add the features, something the Amiga games community has always been good at and just wave goodbye to the PC smugboys. The Amiga wins almost every time.
Talking to them I found myself both delighted and depressed, something I am coming to accept as a permanent state of mind for an Amigaphile. Delighted because the Amiga spawns such talent, such passion, such dedication, such innovation as Auroraworks. Depressed because in other markets, these guys would be on 6 figure salaries with all the latest equipment instead of throwing their entire savings into this venture, working out of their own houses and having to put in a full ten hour day in their normal jobs. One day I hope all this will change.
As James Ceraldi told me, all three of them hope to go full time soon, when they have saved up enough money to make it viable; and they estimate that they can survive for about six months before the money runs out. If their games sell well, then obviously they will be able to extend that but they will carry on for as long as they can before they have no choice but to return to more normal work.
They are putting no protection into their games apart from the CD itself having to be present in the drive. Their attitude - complex protection features takes time away from developing the game itself. They firmly believe that they have to form a partnership with the Amiga users out there. Buying an Auroraworks game (as with any other Amiga game) is about the users investing in the games houses so that they can carry on pushing the Amiga forwards. Sure, buying a pirated copy gets you a cheap game but it also hammers another nail in the coffin of the Amiga. Greedy capitalists screwing the poor user? Nothing could be further from the truth. These 3 guys, and I know it is true across most of the Amiga development community, could earn three or four times as much working on the PC or console platforms. But they don't want to, they want to work on the Amiga. Please do not buy pirated games. These guys, and all the others out there do not deserve it.
Their community minded spirit is in evidence everywhere, from the user survey on their website where games players can leave suggestions and request new features (they read every mail) to their idea for putting an advertising website on each CD, allowing fellow companies to advertise their wares and distribute demos for free.
If things go well, they hope to grow to about five, maybe seven permanent employees and contract out work to other amigaphiles for such things as graphics and audio. Indeed, their first games have seen them working with a team of 20 or so volunteers, a real community effortand if they make it, then they want to continue this approach of investing in the community. A win win situation for everyone.
OK, enough of the philosophy, let me at the games.
Their first release, hopefully due in six weeks, is Hover-Bomber (H-Bomb), a 4 player blow up or be blown up feast. It's that simple. Look down on your tank, drive around and take out the others before they do the same to you. Simple? Oh yes. My kids picked it up in 5 minutes. And then the trouble started. I couldn't get them off. They just wanted to play and play and play. Is that all it is? Well let's see.
At the Open House, they had their 2 development machines, an A3000 and an A4000 hooked up to each other and my kids were taking on all comers. Artificial Intelligence? Yes it has it but who wants to annihilate an algorithm when you can grind another human into the dust? Now that Auroraworks has mastered the art of TCP/IP implementation, they intend to make all of their games multi-player - and what fun it is.
Did I mention multitasking? With a few deft keystrokes, James had H-Bomb playing on the A4000 linked to the A3000 and then he called up Shapeshifter and had Duke Nukem playing on it as well as H-Bomber. I can just see NT or the Mac trying to do that - move over guys, the Amiga is King!!!
They have quite a few other games at various stages of development, from storylining to prototyping. Their next game, Four Kings, a four player strategy game is due out before Christmas for AGA and they are working on a Masters Of Orion type space strategy/conquest game called Star Barons which will support upto 8 players over the internet. They hope to have this out for christmas.
Then James got really excited and started talking about one what they have been conceptualising, a game called Betrayed. A 3D action/adventure game. Not a Doom or a Duke Nukem but a fully immersive experience involving 6 degrees of movements, detailed plot line, investigate and understand, actions and consequences. Not just a glorified shooter but a real world in which cause and effect is a fully integrated part of the game. One of the options that James talked about was a two player mode in which one player sets up multiple security systems and measures for defence and surveillance and then the other player tries to find the first player by deactivating the security measures - a real cat and mouse game in real time.
If I was to sum up Auroraworks, I would say that they are 3 great guys with a wonderful, community oriented attitude. They want to see the Amiga thrive, they want to enrich the community and they want to have fun doing it; and if they make some money in the attempt then great. Thanks guys for making my day/week/month.
So what else was going on at the show? Greg and Joe were busy
doing "schools", showing just what the Amiga can do on the Internet and for
Desktop Video. There were demos of New York, a new E-Mail client which looked
pretty sharp and a beta version of the up and coming Finale-Dev Webcruiser
browser which again showed that the Amiga has no trouble keeping up with the
other platforms.
Greg and Joe were as busy as one armed window cleaners, haggling, selling, demoing, taking orders, maintaining an IRC channel and updating the WebCam on their site. For a dead platform, their activities seemed livelier than any PC superstore I have been in. When Joe got a moment he showed me some of the goodies they have around the store, including pride of place, a CDTV 2, a sleek looking Hifi boxed A600 with snap off slots for an IDE HD, floppy, Midi on the back, CD-Rom and a A4000 keyboard socket - an amazing device now, even more so considering it was 4 or 5 years old. Put a 68040 A1200 motherboard, a cybergraphics capable board and 16 meg and you would have a cool machine even now. It made us weep to think of what could have been.
An extra special bonus for me was to find that Dean Brown of DKB has made it up kid free from Detroit (3 hours away). To meet a guy who has been with the Amiga since the very beginning (1984) and who is still there and still such an advocate of the platform was both an honour and a real buzz. As I chatted to him about the past, the present and the future, including his heavy involvement in the Industry Council and Open Amiga initiative, he not only flooded me with ideas and anecdotes but also managed to eat a hotdog and dispense advice to a bevy of buyers bringing items out and asking him if they/how they would work with their own setups. I'm just glad he is on our side.
All in all, even though I was only there three hours, I could have stayed for days, just soaking up the enthusiasm, chatting about the future and enjoying see the enjoyment that the amiga brings to others. My overall impression as I left was one of hope and anger. Hope that with people such as Auroraworks, Dean, Greg, Joe and all the others, this platform really should not, cannot fail, no matter what the owners of the past have done to it. Anger that so many opportunities, so much talent and possibility has been wasted. Now we have a new owner, Gateway and we have the potential of a new chance. Let's hope that this time, they, we, all of us get it right.
All pages on this web site are copyright 1998 Jay Miner Society.