Hyperion Entertainment announced it has finalised an initial AmigaDE version of its ‘Warp3D’ technology. At only 56 KB it is well suited for low-end devices like PDA’s, web-tablets and 3G phones. Apex Designs is the first to announce the porting of a popular 3D Amiga game Payback to the AmigaDE. The initial AmigaDE version will not use Warp3D technology however. Have a look at these these screenshots for some of the PDA/cellphone targetted AmigaDE software currently available from the AmigaDE shop. More information and screenshots inside.
The Amiga Digital Environment is a small footprint platform independent multimedia layer/OS, which can host itself on top of many different operating systems including Embedded Linux, PocketPC, EPOC, Palm, Neutrino and many other operating systems. Currently there are only AmigaDE players available for Linux and Windows desktop platforms, upon which Amiga software runs binary identical. There are now 19 PDA/cellphone targetted Amiga software titles available, but many more are soon to come, like for instance a Casino game by some great computer graphics and animation talents. The first market being targetted by Amiga Inc is the PDA/cellphone market, although for instance Tao`s real time 64-bit operating system will also be powering Settop boxes like Infomedia‘s TVision and a huge varierty of other devices.
Also coming back on my previous article at OSNews, I have to inform you that the first to be held Amiga.org-organised AmigaDE demo competition had to be cancelled due to hackers penetrating and destroying important parts of Amiga.org, restoring Amiga.org had priority. Although it was heart warming to see, how Amigans donated over one thousand dollars together to the non-profit Amiga.org website crew as a sign of support in a matter of days. Such facts distinguishes the Amiga community from others and is among the most important reasons why the Amiga community is still alive today. Regardless the first 4K AmigaDE demo has been released at a Demo party, read this interview with Tomas Jacobsen for more information. This demo and many other open source programs can de found at the AmigaDev.net website.
About the Author:
Mike Bouma is a long time Amiga user and developer, well known member of the Amiga community, member of the ‘Phoenix Developer Consortium’, and owner of the ‘AmigaRing’. He can be reached via email on [email protected].
well that’s nice to see. something fresh and not from the 500 pound Gorilla (Microsoft) and also refreshing that it’s also not Linux, although i’d rather Linux than MS of course.
i just hope there’s still people out there that are willing to run with new comers like this and not take the easy way out and go with embedded MS in all its hype.
cheers
peter
Can AmigaDE not handle large apps on a desktop?
See for yourself at http://www.amiga.com (DE will be a part of AmigaOne)
There wouldn’t be any limit to small apps in AmigaDE but the market is probably waiting for the hardware to hit the shelves.
Yes DE can handle big apps, but at the moment the main market is PDA’s.
The main problem with big apps is that the API’s are not really there at the moment
unless you’re under NDA so you have to use either the elate API, which are pretty poorly documented, or use JAVA.
Dave
I’ve recently published an interview on Amiga.org, which i had with Ben, Managing Partner of Hyperion.
Answeres some question, or maybe, atleast confirms what we already know.
Theres also some AmigaOS4 stuff thats a little bit interesting.
Check it out.
http://www.amiga.org/article.php?sid=885&mode=&order=0&thold=0
The Intent/AmigaDE version of Payback will not use Warp3D. Warp3D was used on the classic Amiga version to do the hardware rendering but not for the software rendering as it would have been slower because Warp3D’s routines are unavoidably much more generic. The same is true for the Intent/AmigaDE version.
Hello James,
I`m sorry this article has given people the wrong impressions that the initial AmigaDE/Intent version of Payback would be using Warp3D technology. I had some in depth conversations with the Hyperion team at the Amiga 2001 show in Germany, which was held some weeks ago. As they specificly named Payback as one of the games, which would be very well suited for the Warp3D technology, I presumed you would use it as well, especially since 3D hardware accelerated PDAs will arrive.
Sincerely, Mike Bouma.
Hello Mike,
After what I know, Warp3D will be a thirdparty library in AmigaDE as in AmigaOS.
Built-in libraries will be Mesa, Ami3D and Ami2D. Mesa will be very much alike OpenGL.
The answer to why there’s no 3d-games for AmigaDE yet is because the 3d-libraries are still in development. Just recently a few developers has recieved them.
I hope that I’m right on these things…