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Interview Computer City

Description: 10.3.2003

Categories: [EN] Eng_Interviews

Link to this article: Select all

[url=https://www.amigafuture.de/app.php/kb/viewarticle?a=297&sid=e9bbb9b65cbfe940ed109e5ef853a54a]Artikeldatenbank - Interview Computer City[/url]

Interview with Computer City

Editor: Anton Preinsack

Hi Ron! First of all, would you introduce yourself and "Computer City" briefly?

Ok, I founded Computer City in 1988, at that time the company's name was "Sultan Systems & Software". The shop was opened in 1990 and was specialized at Amiga hard- & software. Later two more shops were opened, but unfortunately they had to be shut down due to Commodore's demise. Currently, Computer City sells basically everything that has to do with computers, from Amiga's and Pegasos' to high-end as well as low-budget PC systems and game consoles.

Do you own an Amiga-Computer? If yes, which one?

I personally own an Amiga A1000 which still is my original personal Amiga. It has a special place in the shop now, sitting next to an AmigaOne. Most 'Amiga-work' I do on a laptop with Amiga Forever 5.0, however this is more for the practical reasons of the laptop. I have owned several Amiga's through the years though, from 500+ to 4000T models.

Let´s talk about of your new project for "Foto Foto": What is the concept of "Foto Foto"? Who stands behind this game and how long was the developing-time (till now)?

The concept is quite simple, basically it's just "spot the difference". The idea is to find five differences in a set of (almost :-) identical pictures or drawings, within a given amount of time. There are different categories of images, i.e. cars, cartoons, men, women, etc. and new image-sets can be added by users. There will be a central internet where all images are stored and where the highscores are kept.

The idea to do this was mine, however since I have no time to code these days I asked the team of Attention-Software to do most of the work. Development time up until now is about 6 months. The main coder and artist have daytime jobs so they cannot spend all of their time on the game.

What can we expect from "Foto Foto"?

The game will run on AGA as well as RTG displays. The graphics are fully scalable so you can play it on a high-res picasso display as well as on a TV set using the A1200 modulator. Picture quality will vary of course with the actual images. Youcan have photo-realistic images but also 16-color cartoons. Anything is possible.

For sound-effects and music we use AHI.

The music to the game is something special. The in-game music is done by Patrick Henz of Faces of Mars, and the main theme(s) are by Atlantic Popes, a German popband formed by Alphaville-member Bernhard Lloyd.

For which platforms will "Foto Foto" be available?

First release will be for AmigaOS & MorphOS, a MacOS version will follow. An Amiga-Anywhere version is planned but we still need more components for AmigaDE to arrive, before we can finish it. The same goes for the AmigaDE version of Inga, by the way.

When will the game be finished?

The initial Amiga release is planned after the summer. We may make a nice event of it during the Benelux Amiga Show and Benelux Pegasos Show :-)

Can you tell us any news about the AmigaDE-Version of "Inga"? How started this project? When can we expect to buy it?

It's about 90% finished. However, like stated before to complete the last 10% we need access to some AmigaDE stuff. Like sound, that would be handy :-)

The idea for the conversion started with plans for a graphical adventure game that should run on all possible platforms, ideally. The development for this adventure is still planned, and it will be something very different, but that is all I can disclose. Converting Inga to AmigaDE seemed like a good place to start.

If all goes well, a september release should be possible for the AmigaDE version.

What do you think about the current situation an the plans of Amiga Inc. and their partners (Amiga OS 4.0, Amiga DE, Amiga One) in general?

I wish that there would finally be a product to sell. The current situation is that people just don't believe that there will be a new amiga(os) anymore until they see it for real (and I don't mean running Linux with UAE).

What do you think about Pegasos and MorphOS?

It is very nice and, in my opinion, really has that 'Amiga-feeling' over it that Workbench has. And, judging from the visitors to our shop I'm not the only one with that opinion. We have people here every single day that come in thinking MorphOS is just some other OS running on a PPC board, until they actually sit down behind a Pegasos here and try it out. The overall reaction is "wow, this really is just like my Amiga only much faster". Also when they hear about the heritage of Pegasos, i.e. who designed it etc. they are more and more convinced.

Are you happy with the (pre-)orders of AmigaOne and Pegasos until now?

Yes, considering that people have been left in the cold time after time by Amiga company variations, it's not bad. But it's not as though we'll stop selling other hardware soon.

Have you allready recieved AmigaONE-XE-Boards?

Not yet, but they should arrive imminently.

For which "platform" are more orders until now: AmigaOne or Pegasos?

It was AmigaOne but Pegasos has beaten it now. Consider that we have a Pegasos and an AmigaOne working in our shop. The Pegasos runs MorphOS and will happily run most Amiga applications. People can even come to our shop to test their favourite programs and we will help them with that. And the AmigaOne is running Linux with UAE. You can imagine the rest... AmigaOne is loosing ground fast unfortunately.

What do you think about the current plans of Genesi (no more Pegasos I-boards, Pegasos II expected in September)?

I think it is quite positive. Of course, it would be better if there were more Pegasos I to sell but there is a shortage of the Articia S chipset, so there's not much you can do. With the promise of being able to upgrade to PegasosII things are looking good. Besides, third parties licensing the Pegasos design and producing it is a realistic option.

Which games do you play in your sparetime?

In my very rare sparetime I like to play fast-action shoot'em-ups and racing games. Fortunately I'm in the blessed position of havng access to the latest Amiga, Pegasos and PC hardware as well as games consoles in the shop :-) But my sparetime is very rare these days.

What are your next projects and plans for the future?

Ok, this is going to be long...

There will be a slight difference between my plans for the future and Computer City's. Personally, I have started working for Genesi as an external consultant and one of the first things that I will handle is Genesi's Cebit presence.

On the Computer City front there are lots of plans. On the software side we have Audio Evolution 4 for AmigaOS4 coming up, FotoFoto and Inga being developed and then there's MediaPoint, which will have some significant changes and developments during this summer. We are actively planning a comeback for the Amiga in the cable-news and information channel market.

Something completely different is the following. We have sent out printed Amiga catalogs to our customer base (Dutch readers will probably know this :-) and we used to have these printed. Recently however, we acquired a digital A3 120-page-per-minute offset press, so we can do this in-house. We are currently playing with the thought what else we can do with this. One idea is to make a MorphOS-aimed magazine with news, reviews, workshops, etc. in German and English. We would already have an editor who is willing to do all the markup and editiorial stuff, but it would take a lot of contributors (and interested readers, of course). We could name it "Morphine" or something. Anyway, it's just a thought but I'm interested to hear reactions on this...

Furthermore, we are redesigning the complete Computer City Webshop. The new system will be fully available in Dutch, German and English. The reason for this is that we want to broaden our virtual horizons. As an example, we already have a german bankaccount available and a postal address in Germany in the event of RMA's. After the new webshop is operational, the general website will get a complete overhaul to be more 'international'.

Your hobbies?

I used to play Racquetball and race model radio-controlled racing cars up to about a year ago. I should take it up again soon! :-)

Thank you very much for the interview and good luck for the future!

You're very welcome and thanks!