Amiga Information Online has interviewed one of the early AmigaDE developer pioneers, Zeoneo. Two of Zeoneo`s PDA targetting titles, namely “Convex” and “Planet Zed” are already selling at Amiga`s online shop. Also GetBoinged recently interviewed Pagan Games. Their first PDA targetted gravity game “Blobula” is already selling and it is the first among the currently available AmigaDE PDA titles to include a music soundtrack. John Harris (orginal Frogger designer) of Pulsar Interactive will hold a class and seminar on AmigaDE Programming at the AmigaExpo which will be held on the 29th till 31st of March in the US. For an earlier look at the hardware-agnostic Amiga Digital Environment and the new PPC based AmigaOS 4.0, be sure to attend the upcoming Alt-WoA 2002 show which will be held on the 23rd of February in the UK.
Interviews With AmigaDE Software Developers
14 Comments
2002-01-21 5:59 am
2002-01-21 8:13 am
2002-01-21 8:18 am
2002-01-21 4:19 pm
2002-01-21 6:02 pm
2002-01-21 11:08 pm
Anonymous
Yup it’ll be great for All OS. Its just needs to take off a lot faster than Java. Thanx to the Amiga name i think it can do this.
Not to mention a lot fo Amiga Games Companies that are jumping on the bandwagon!! 
Its only going to get better cant wait when i get to say “Told you so”
2002-01-22 7:37 pm
2002-01-23 4:03 pm
I should add that the recently released demonstration videos and desktop AmigaDE players are currently mainly intended as “proof of concept” for software and hardware developers. Of course “ordinary” people interested in Amiga technology should feel free to check it out as well.
But one must understand that the current range of games are targetted at PDAs and that desktop targetted software is not (yet) available.
However the AmigaDE software currently under development is in my opinion amazing. Also AmigaDE PDA/Cellphone targetted games will in my opinion beat the current range of Gameboy Advance titles in terms of visual eyecandy and diversity.
Also the games you purshase now for evaluation with AmigaDE desktop players will soon work on target devices without modifications when the neccessay AmigaDE players are released.
Okay I have heard about this from web sites but never and explination of what it is.
Is it a KDE or Gnome kinda window manager desktop enviroment?
Does it emulate the Amiga so you can run old software?
I’m confused…….
Toooo Infinity and beyond……………
It’s designed from the ground up to run Amiga DE-programmed games. It’s sort of like a Java runtime environment or even a flash player in that it’s an engine that can run interactive content on mulitple platforms.
However…I’ve heard that the current plans from the Amiga folks are to have binary compatability between DE and Amiga OS 5.0, and who know when that will happen. If it’s running old amiga programs that you want try UAE.
Think Java optimised for multimedia, with the ability to store the translated byte-code to a hard disk cache if it exists (so you only have to translate once, not every time you execute the byte-code binary). Unlike Java, you can use C (which is the recommended language) so its great for us old-farts who are too lazy to learn Java. And if AmigaInc actually get off their butts and fulfil their promises, Amiga OS5 will be written in DE, which means that you’ll get a real OS which can run on any CPU hosted device on the planet. At least thats the theory…
There are several components to this equation:
-Elate (the OS from Tao-Group)
-Intent (the C based API from Tao-Group, with basic multimedia)
-AmigaDE (the SDK) – advanced multimedia API’s
and eventually:
-Amiga OS5 – 1st major hardware indifferent OS.
<ignore references to AmigaOne and BPlan – they are stop gap for diehards – think of LaserDisks just before DVD’s came out>
Still, there is one factor to this whole equation which makes me unhappy – simple benchmarks of native compiled code vs AmigaDE portable bytecodes show that Amiga code is 10-15% slower. The Amiga spirit was “press pedal to metal”, which is what we dont get this time around. On the other hand, we’re no longer locked to a specific CPU manufacturer or architecture, so all our apps would work seemlessly when migrating from x86 to SledgeHammer to G5 to Itanium to whatever. Just pick a shinny case (ie. an iMac).
Sadly, nothing to get religious about…
Well, the explanation of AmigaDE is not accurate so far here. AmigaDE = mainly Tao’s Intent platform. It is based upon Tao’s VP (virtual processor) technology. While you can use C, you will be suggested to use VP language, – some kind of more advanced assembly, near to C hybrid 🙂
Tao Intent can be used non-hosted. In that case what is needed are two layers, abstracting the target CPU and hw. I think that Eugenia did a great job interviewing Tao rep. here, so you can search for it in OSNews archive ….
AmigaDE is not backwards compatible with any version of AmigaOS – it is supposed to be (not yet available) just some collection of additions to Intent, suited for PDA, mobile market.
-pekr-
Okay I have heard about this from web sites but never and explination of what it is.
It is a very low memory footprint platform independent realtime operating environment which has the ability to run either as a standalone operating system or on top of other operating systems. It offers a faster and more memory efficient platform independent environment than was ever available before. Even with a <a href=”http://tao-group.com/2/tao/sunset.html“>JVM running on top of this environment (entirely in VPcode written) it scores very well in terms of Java performance (among the ranks of the fastest JIT JVMs out there), but it is significant smaller than any similar JIT JVM solution out there and having the benefit of being a 100% identical implementation across different platforms. Running hosted on top of other operating systems it even has the ability to run as an ordinary application or it can hide the underlying host OS completely from its user.
It isn`t solely designed for games either but everything a programmer would like (AmigaDE graphic applications like Photogenices and Taifun have already been demonstrated publicly at Amiga shows). The operating environment is written in a http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-amiga3/?dwzone=linu… . Applications can be written in C, C++, VPcode or whatever language developed on top of this environment. (i.e. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=169“>SHEEP home” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.stormloader.com/amiga/BAS/27.htm”>home server platform which communicates with AmigaDE enabled devices. (PDAs, Cellphones, Digital Cameras, STBs, Digital TVs and other household appliances are among such devices.) The performance penalty is minimal and does not outweigh the huge advantage of being able to write one application to run simultaniously on i.e. Linux powered PDAs as well as PocketPC powered PDAs without modifications. For example most modern applications are currently written in C or C++ instead of highly optimised assembler code also because of advantages with regard to the portability. With the AmigaDE there is no need for even re-compiling your software.
As I will be away for a couple of days I recommend reading these Amigactive articles for a better understanding of the involved technologies: http://www.amigactive.com/pdf/AA09_16-19_DevBox.pdf“ http://www.amigactive.com/pdf/AA06_14-21_EternalTao.pdf“>