Thank you Francis for your post. It's great to hear about the success and progress of intent, since our own success as AmigaDE developers depends so highly on it.
Like Ohno has already mentioned, I love to program for intent and VP. I'm having more fun than I've had in a long time in this industry, despite continued waiting for any financial success.
To those still wondering why this platform is special, I can offer the following:
Platform independence with no recompiling. Yes, Java already does this, but only if you program in Java. Intent provides a solution without the language restriction, and with higher performance. And I actually like most of the API. Contrary to most platforms I've worked with where one of the first steps is to write a low-level 2D library, the one in intent is already suitable for gaming with hierarchical object lists, layers, alpha blending, minimal rectangle updates, etc.
Granted, at this moment in time the benefits are hard to see because of the lack of hardware products supporting intent. The "potential" to run everywhere is only meaningful if real-world devices actually run intent products. We don't have much of that yet, but Francis' list of partners is very encouraging.
Personally, I think Amiga's game card approach to getting intent products into devices that don't have native support for it is very cleaver. Let's face it -- while theoretically possible to run content via a "player", no one in significant numbers is going to buy products this way. Amiga's game cards hide the player concept within the card, so that from the user's perspective, all they need to know is that they plug it in and it works. No separate pieces to worry about. This gives developers a viable market for the products right now, while we wait for native intent platforms to be available. (And there's no reason we can't continue to sell cards to non-intent devices).
It's all moving slower than we wanted or expected. I blame the crash of the whole tech industry for that, and almost everyone has had trouble coping with it. What I find most disturbing, is that people's frustrations are being vented and directed as personal attacks on Amiga. These guys have hung in there through all the adversity because they continue to believe in what they're doing. That, more than all the other rumors and attacks flying around tells me that they are working on something very special, that it is worth making sacrafices for, and that I feel even more compassion for what they're going through.
- John
