Anyone singing the praises of vapour, yes.
So, product on the shelves at one of the biggest computer retail stores worldwide is considered vapour by you? I do hope you realize that the Amiga Game Paks are the first instance, in over 10 years, that anyone involved in the Amiga Market have reached the masses in any shape or form.
The point is that nothing of what you say is verifiable. In order to veryfy it, one has to sign and NDA and SDA, and if they find out you were telling porkies the NDA prevents them from revealing it.
You haven't considered the option of actually contacting the producers directly (Amiga Inc.) if you are interested/curious about the products? Blaming other people for your lack of communication skills is one way of solving it, I guess.
Aren't those game cards about two years old? What proof do they contain of Amiga Inc's contribution?
The version of Intent used on the cards wasnt available 2 years ago(let alone one year ago) the same goes for the package system, the various API´s and so on. Also some of the games included on the games have been seriously updated since their initial release, the others where released first on these cards. Amiga´s contribution would be the various API´s developed by Amiga(ami2d, amidb, Datatype System(and Datatypes), prism, dianne, packager and the storage system) is used quite extensivly off the top of my head) and the distribution itself. As for proof well heck all you need to do for that is to either go to a CompUSA store or
click this link or
click this link. If that isnt proof of a product I dont realy know what to tell you.
I think the lack of any product for the last two years says a lot more than those gamecards do.
There have been releases of standalone players, separate game cards, game pak´s and a varietly of APIs and tools.
You're not thinking straight. If the software is of any quality, Amiga Inc will assume they can make money out of it and will not release distribution rights back to the author. The only way for this to change would be if there was so much software being developed, that Amiga Inc. would only cream off the best 5% of titles and reject the rest, therefore leaving lots of other software of quality for alternative distribution. But it takes quite a leap of imagination to see that happening any time in the forseable future.
Now here is a novelty idea for you.. if we (Amiga) treats our partners in a professional manner, they will be quite happy to work out any issues we have about most things. If one of our partners wants to release his/her content for free, there are ways to possibly accomodate that.
Yes, they were. So quickly that I believe they were ported before the SDA was even introduced.
And ported again, after people have made all kinds of additions like scaling, rotation, sound, stylus control and so on.
So, which parts of Amiga Inc's proprietary contribution do the Doom and Quake ports make use of, and how do they get around including proprietary code into a GPL release?
Simply by following this passage of the GPL licence agreement:
" However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable."If you want to read more about the specifics of the case in question
click here.
Yes, you said so before. In fact that was the only thing you could come up with when I asked what made AmigaDE so special. That and the way TAO implemented something, which has nothing to do with Amiga Inc's contribution at all. Well, programmers having fun is very nice, but it's hardly enough to make a platform successful.
Successful against what benchmark: Windows?, Linux? PS2? Be? OS2? AmigaOS??
intent is in part what makes it special. Second would be Amiga Inc´s APIs, making it easier for developers to do their content. Finally, third would be a working distribution agreement that works for small developers.
Neither Linux nor Mozilla had to put up with the restrictions and secrecy surrounding AmigaDE. It's not the technology that sucks, it's the approach.
Linux or Mozilla aren´t commercial products either, and neither need commercial distribution to get to market. If you think comercial distribution sucks in general, I suggest you go use
Debian. Otherwise, you might have some understanding of the restrictions. However, you seems to be under the impression that those restrictions will be in effect for the forseable future. This is simply a false assumption as we are actively working with Tao and other partners to update and include our gear in a new SDK; an SDK that should be available in the coming months (to quote one of those partners: "when its ready.")
So? Both rapidly acquired veritable armies of developers, and it still took them ages. Where will AmigaDE get with the few people prepared to put up with Amiga Inc's demands? Not to mention that for every Linux or Mozilla there are twenty other projects that vanished without a trace.
Again both are open-source and are not valid as examples. Instead, take commercial Linux game development as an example. I dont know what demands you have seen from Amiga Inc. as I've not seen any guns to anyone´s head to sign anything. Also any problems any developer had with the NDA/SDA, we have been able to work out either by changing the agreements, explaining the terms or simply working on a individual basis to come to mutual agreement.
While we aren't happy about the pace of how things have progressed so far we cant do much more than hunker down and continue working away and try to correct problems as we get to them (such as updated SDK´s, honoring party packs and coupons and so on).
What is it that makes AmigaDE special? Why will it attract people from alternative solutions? What makes it superior? What have Amiga Inc's added to intent to make it worth signing their draconian SDA agreement?
What makes DE special? Well.. for starters, what Amiga inc. have added is quite lengthy, both in terms of us working with Tao and by us going at it alone. But, in short terms (unless I have forgotten something):
Amiga Component Model
Ami2d
AmiAudio
AmiDB
Bones Interface toolkit
Dianne Embedded device interface
Datatype system
Prism gui script language
Packager
Storage System
Utilitiy classes en mass
In addition to the above we have done quite a bit of custom work for clients, applications, host integration and host optimization.
Isn't anyone capable of coming up with concrete factual and verifiable answers rather than just bombarding us with fluff?
Well where would you verify the replies if you dont contact us (Amiga Inc.) about our products?? :-)
