Amiga Flame - News - AmigaOne Software Line-Up

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AmigaOne Software Line-Up
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Last week Amiga Flame provided what I described as Your Guide to AmigaOne, which outlined the gains of becoming an AmigaOne user. In this feature I described how it was unfortunate that most of the media attention has focused on AmigaOne and AmigaOS 4 rather than on the efforts of developers exploiting the capabilities of the machine and the operating system. It would seem that many readers agreed as I received an amazing response from readers who were impressed by some of the AmigaOne titles covered such as Realsoft 3D Version 4. There was also a clear demand from both gamers and serious users for Amiga Flame to cover more titles and so in response I present a line-up of some AmigaOne software.

Hyperion Entertainment is without a doubt the most active development team in the Amiga market. Since the creation of Hyperion back in 1999 they have released over three games and are currently working on Amiga OS 4.0. Hyperion are expected to be well-prepared for the launch of AmigaOne, for example, it is believed that SIN, a 3D Shooter will probably be one of the first games to debut on the new platform. The conversion of SIN was completed sometime ago but it was felt that due to the high spec required that it would be better to hold back the release until AmigaOne was ready. It has also been suggested that Hyperion might re-master for AmigaOne a number of their past conversions, namely games like Freespace: The Great War, Shogo, and Heretic II. Hyperion are also likely to re-start the conversion of games such as Soldier of Fortune, a covert-operative themed shooter and Worms: Armageddon.


Melina Softworks in collaboration with developers Theory of the Dark Side Crew have been working on an adventure strategy game inspired by great games such as Starcraft, Settlers, and Age Of Empire. Voodoo Wars allows gamers to take control of one of the four races - the Humans, Orcs, Chibas, and Krakhen. It is your goal to then lead your race to success. You can make use of the 120 different units and 60 available buildings with each unit having more than a hundred frames of animation. There will also be TCP/IP support for network games.


Echelon: The Storm is a futuristic flight combat game developed by Madia in association with Buka Entertainment. According to the PR material, “This first-person action game puts the player in tension filled white-knuckle combat over lush alien landscapes and towering cities as a member of an elite fighting force”. It is up to you as a member of the team to progress through the missions in order to fly other aircraft and command other units. There is a strategy element to the game as you may at some stage reach a rank that will allow you to have an input as to the tactics the men should adopt and what equipped is required to achieve success in a mission.

ID Software released just before the end of 2001 the source code of Quake II, a 3D shooter, which was a highly successful game and still remains very popular to this day. A number of programmers involved in the conversion of games by Hyperion decided to take up the challenge of converting Quake II. It is widely speculated that the conversion is virtually complete and will be ready for release once the AmigaOne is launched.

Ibrowse is the most widely used web browser for the Amiga and has proved to be a highly capable browser. The developers have been quite active providing updates, which have allowed Amiga users to access some of the most modern web sites. In March it was revealed by Amiga Inc that a special PowerPC version of Ibrowse 2.3 is in the works. One of the first pieces of software you might want to purchase for AmigaOne should certainly be Ibrowse 2.3.

Open Office is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites'. Sophisticated and flexible, Open Office also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office. The development of Open Office for the Amiga is in the early stages with the team currently looking for more people to help in what is huge task before them.

HD-Rec is a powerful MIDI/audio sequencer for the Amiga computer. It takes full advantage of the AHI system for audio and the CAMD system for MIDI input and output. So you can be sure that your hardware is supported if there is a driver for those systems. Features include 16 bit / 11.025-96.0 kHz audio recording and processing not limited by RAM, audio real-time effects, Bars & Pipes style notator for MIDI elements, Audiomaster style editor for audio elements, powerful plug-in system for MIDI/audio applications like softsynths or patch editors, and it supports AIFF, WAV, MAUD, RAW, CDDA, 8SVX, MP3 and MIDI files.


In less than two weeks Amiga Inc will have some idea as to the level of interest Amiga users have in AmigaOne/ AmigaOS 4. So far interest is growing bit by bit as users learn more not only about AmigaOne, the machine and the new operating system but also the software that developers have been working on over the past few years. I hope this feature will help convince you that by the time AmigaOne is launched, there will be a wide range of software; games of all genres and serious software to suit your every need, whether it be browsing the internet or for creativity purposes. If you're convinced then go to the Amiga Anywhere Shop and purchase a $50 coupon, which will entitle you to $50 off the price of AmigaOne/ AmigaOS 4.0 and at the same time indicate to developers that a viable market will exist.

Philip Cosby, Coupon holder

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