During the progress of  Amiwest 2000 at Sacramento, California, I had the honor and pleasure of meeting one of those assets that Amiga community is blessed with, Ben Hermans from Hyperion Entertainment..

Ben, with his usual friendly smile, agreed to answer some questions that I had in mind for him, and of course after pestering him for couple of hours. :-)

Myamiga.com: Hi Ben, It's good to see you in this humble show, and to see that someone actually bothered to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to attend this show.

Hyperion: Thank you.
 

Myamiga.com: We heard that your firm is working with Amiga on some projects, can you expand a little bit on this?

Hyperion: Well, basically we are doing the OpenGL implementation for the SDK and the next OS, and we also will provide the required APIs for the developers to write the drivers for graphic cards and chipsets.
As we also have Mesa implementation already up and running.

Myamiga.com: OK, initial support is for Matrox chipsets and cards?

Hyperion: Yes.
 

Myamiga.com: And anything in the works, or are there any plans for other cards/chips?

Hyperion: It's a question of how much time you're planning to put in there, I think logically that the strategic alliance between Amiga and Matrox will encourage users to buy Matrox cards, but on the other hand, if you're running an OS in hosted environment, or on top of another OS, you already have the drivers for that OS, and don't forget the issue of obtaining technical documentation and specifications for all these cards and chips out there will not be as easy as the ones that you already have a deal with their manufacturers, for example take a look at nVidia,  they made a close source implementation for their chipsets for Linux, and you cannot get those specification from them, even Amiga tried to get those specs, they don't want to give that out to anybody, Be also doesn't have them.

Fleecy Moss, told me once that they don't want to make the same mistake that Be did, in which by trying to support all the hardware out there, and then you start losing focus on your core OS, hire people not to develop the OS but sitting there doing nothing but writing drivers.
So basically what they are doing is defining a hardware reference that works natively with the OS, and the rest is up to you, the developer and up to the hardware manufacturer.

And you still see on the current Amigas, that there are known hardware manufacturers like Yamaha or Iomega that still mention the Amiga in their compatibility lists.
There will always will be smart companies that will support your design or at least hand you over their specs so that you can support them.

But don't expect us to write all these drivers for all the cards out there, we will simply provide the reference and support 2 or 3 chipsets there at most, since the graphics chips today are so complex, they are almost a computer in itself, most of the modern chipsets have a CPU core in them, like a mixed core, so advanced and the feature set is so complex that if you want to support all the features in every card out there, it will be a massive work, and these cards are coming out every 6 months or so, so if you want to support all of them, you will become a company dedicated to writing drivers and nothing else.

We will support something beyond Matrox, but don't expect us to support every card out there, maybe 3Dfx, and The Radeon line from ATI looks very nice to me, and we really want to support the nVidia chips, but if they are insisting on not giving out the specs, it's simply not gonna happen.
 

Myamiga.com: My concern is, for example, since you're doing the implementation of OpenGL and Mesa for the OS, will you be putting up a developer package that makes it easy for the developers to support the hardware that they want?

Hyperion: Yes, that will be included in the SDK and the next OS, OpenGL is very well specified and documented set of API, and Mesa is open source, and there is nothing proprietary about that, it's GPL, and we will include the source.

Myamiga.com: My other question on this is,  let's say a programmer out there sees a nice card, and wants to write the proper driver for it, where does he go? Amiga? Or Hyperion?

Hyperion: He has to contact Amiga for that, we don't even have a contract with Amiga or anything of that sort, we didn't ask for any payments to our work, and we cannot support all the people out there.
We have our resources and skilled programmers that are doing this job, which I think that no other company in the Amiga platform has such talents, or resources to do it.

The guys are working on the OpenGL for the next OS, are the same guys who did the Warp3D for the current classic Amigas, and their talent is shown in the stable code and the performance that gave a Permedia equipped Amigas better performance when compared to the same setup on a Pentium II PC on the exact same resolutions, we're getting around 20% - 25% performance gain over the Windows setup, so I think that they will be doing a good job in this new challenge too.
 

Myamiga.com:  Let's switch a bit to the current projects that you have and the upcoming releases, can you give us a brief of what is going inside Hyperion?

Hyperion: Basically everything that we have released and will release for the classic OS, will be most likely available in native code for the next OS, because what we are seeing now is a very sad situation, most users are in the " hold and see" situation, too many new hardware and the software have been promised and it's never delivered, meanwhile people have to make a living, and move the market, and we continued our commitment and support for the platform, and it's like the chicken and egg thing, you have to make something for the market to keep it alive and you can still stay alive in it.

Also we are considering offering cross platform upgrades, discounts for the existing users that are willing to upgrade to the native OS versions of our products, when the next OS ships, even though most likely they will be able to run  their existing software through the emulation provided.
 

Myamiga.com:  I have to say here that the word emulation is what scares most people away when trying to run their favorite software on another platform, expecting horrible performance, especially with games.

Hyperion: Some games are really not so CPU intensive, some RTS games, for example Alien Nation, which some kind of Settlers clone, doesn't need a 1 GHz Athlon, or 500 Mhz G4 to run in acceptable speed.

Myamiga.com: I see, so in the light of what you already said earlier, and what Amiga is trying to do, upon shipping the AmigaOne, or even if there was something released before that as a hosted environment, we should definitely see something on the shelves, and not a box with no software, from several companies and your firm will be one of those?

Hyperion: Certainly, we are basically trying to be there from day one, and we will provide full line of games, which many of them are not disclosed yet, since we are still in the negotiations/licensing stage, but we will NOT going to abandon the classic market no matter what happens, since we see a lot of loyal users out there, these users spent a lot of money on their hardware especially in Europe, for example DCE shipped 1000 CVPPC cards within few weeks, that certainly indicates that there are users out there who are willing to buy software that runs decently on their expensive hardware, and these people will knock our doors saying "Hey guys, I just purchased this card, can I buy something that runs on it?", we will not going to sit there and watch this, nor the users will just sit there and wait for something new, assuming that their hardware will be outdated in few months.

Myamiga.com:  Your hardware is always outdated, that's how the computer industry works, but when it comes to the Amiga platform, it is famous for having long life span, despite being left behind, since the platform has all these talents as developers and users.

Hyperion: That is true, and every time you wait, there will be something new, and then you'll wait again, and there is always something better coming, and you'll end up in buying nothing.

Myamiga.com: Now which games are currently coming from you?

Hyperion: We've got Freespace which is space combat simulation, and Shogo, a 3D shooter, which is using the the Lithtech 3D engine , which is a complete and efficient 3D engine, and I think that it is the best 3D engine in the world, it is coded by a company called Monolith , but they are not as famous as the other companies in the same field, they were very busy lately, licensing their engine to lots of companies.

We are very excited to have that technology in our hands, it is a very solid product.
Comparing that to other engines, using this engine will make lots of games based on it, easier to port to the Amiga platform since lots of companies are now licensing their engine, I mean with Quake's 3d Engine that we are using for Heretic II, Sin, and Soldier Of Fortune, using Quake II engine, these require more work and are very expensive to license, the games based on Lithtech's 3D Engine could be ported in as little as 2 Weeks to the Amiga, while with Quake based games, we probably spend 2 or 3 months to port that game to the Amiga, due to the short comings of the engine, since it is not as finished as they claim, Lithtech is more complete, and as a matter of fact, it is a Gaming OS, once you got that running, you can put any graphics an sound on top of it, and ship a complete game, that could be ported within 2-3 weeks to the Amiga.

But that should not make users think that the work is easy in doing that, don't forget the talent and the experience required for such a task.

Lots of projects, deals are coming to the Amiga, of course it all depends on teh availability of resources.

Myamiga.com: To tell you the truth, I was away from the Amiga gaming scene, and got the impression that Amiga 3D games are falling far behind the competition on the x86 and Mac gaming market in performance, but I must admit that when I saw Heretic II in your booth, I was impressed, and was actually blown away with the performance and the smoothness, detailed graphics and playability, and to be honest I was expecting a jerky 8 frames/sec low resolution game.

Hyperion: It runs nicely, and it is not different from the PC version, and still that is with current bottlenecks of the existing hardware, if you get a better graphics card, which we will hopefully soon, since there is a PCI backplane for the Amigas in the works, it will be even better. Imagine running such games with standard PCI cards that you can purchase from your local dealer, like 3Dfx Voodoo and other cards, it will bring the Amiga gaming to a serious level in the gaming world, with the rest of the computing industry, if given the chance, and on comparable configurations.
 
 

Myamiga.com: Some people are accusing you of abandoning or not supporting the 68K.

Hyperion: These people have to understand that some of the code out there simply will not work on the 68K CPUs, we triedm after lots of optimizing, running some of the ported code on an overclocked 060, the results were not something that you can ship to the end users, yet we still didn't forget the 68K users, and we are not stupid to leave that portion out, we still have some of our projects working on 68K Amigas, like Worms Armageddon and others.
 

Myamiga.com: Are you involved in writing software drivers for the new PCI backplane for the PC cards? Or not yet?

Hyperion: Yes, we are.
Basically we promised Elbox since day one, when we met them in Germany in June, that we will support their project, and the 3D part onlyt is our responsibility, since the 2D is already done by someone else.

Myamiga.com: That's exciting news for this market, since we have 3 type of people in our platform, the skeptic people who always will say no it won't work, and the "sit and wait" type users, and the users that work with their existing sources and improve their setups, buy the required hardware and software, and move on.

Hyperion: Of course, people have spent lots of money on their machines, because the Amiga hardware was always more expensive, so these people will not throw away their hardware or simply install a new OS, it's either Amiga or nothing for most of them, some people don't even realize that we have world class software on the Amiga, from such small companies.
People fall for the hype on the PC side, and get sucked up in the rush for hardware and software that they continuously upgrade within couple of months and they end up in buying a whole new computer to run the newest games at decent speeds.
 

Myamiga.com: That brings up another question, on the Mac an PC everything got better because people realized the need for unified reference in both software and hardware, look at what DirectX , despite all the flaws in it, has done to the PC gaming market, and what Apple did in their APIs too, to the point that both platforms are moving towards implementing ports same APIs as a reference making the task of the developer much easier, our Amiga is also moving in that direction with the noticeable lack of many APIs to be implemented on the Amiga, one of them which as a user, I consider being essential in these days of digital imaging, that is the implementation of TWAIN, which is now an industry standard for data acquisition, mostly for image acquisition, and most of the related equipment ship today with TWAI drivers for Windows and Mac OS, are there any efforts from your firm to pioneer porting this to the Amiga platform, or defining a similar reference?

Hyperion: No, not from us, but I would assume that Amiga is already working on something among these lines, we are basically limiting ourselves to what we are good at, and focusing on bringing world class products to the Amiga users, which mostly are 3D graphics software and games, and don't forget that, today, a computer is about 3D graphics, and we are already looking into porting some good packages from Windows platform to the Amiga, talking to the companies that make them into licensing their products to us, so that we can port their software to the Amiga, and we are doing that with certain applications. Initially we started with 3D graphics and then expanded to some level which is related (more or less) to graphics, but you won't see us porting a word processor for example, there are lots of other people out there already doing a good job in that, Haage & partner and others.

Myamiga.com: That is agreed on, it is better to focus on what you can do, and do it right, finish the job, rather than trying to do everything and end up in a mess.

Hyperion: Correct, and don't forget most of this work is currently done just to show our support and commitment to the platform, most of our work on the Amiga is not paid for, we get our money from our Mac and Linux products, since these packages are very expensive to license, and require a considerable amount of resources and manpower to port to the Amiga, 80% of the work we do is for ourselves, and showing our commitment to the platform.
 

Myamiga.com: That is a good strategy, since you already have developed some good user base in the Amiga market and in other platforms.

Hyperion: What we are also trying to do is to make the user upgrade is current hardware, work on what he has, instead of waiting, some people are already telling us, look I don't have the all the latest out there but I can already play Heretic II, and that basically increases (hopefully) the sales of the PPC card and the graphics boards, and moves the market into a healthier position, and when something better comes out, we can all upgrade when we want to.

Myamiga.com: Before I forget, that also brings up a question, as an end user, someone who spent all that money to upgrade his hardware and purchased all these games from your firm, and in the future will purchase the other software that you will port too, is there some kind of post-sales support for all these loyal customers?

Hyperion: Absolutely, it's our publisher, Titan who handles most of that, but users are always welcome to visit our support pages, and since we have some limited resources in this, we have compiled extensive FAQs to answer most of the inquiries.

Try getting any support on some products on other platforms, sure just wait in line, and maybe you'll get something that resembles support, if ever.
People probably forget that most Amiga developers are emotionally attached to their work, for example I once, had a problem with Master ISO and sent the developer a support inquiry through email, I got a reply within couple of hours, that shows the commitment of our Amiga developers to their work.

Myamiga.com: That's actually the beauty of this community, they don't call it community for nothing, I can send you an email saying" Hey Ben, this is not working on my machine, any suggestions?" and get a personalized support on my question (with few exception), that will not happen on other platforms, and that is what kept the Amiga alive.

Hyperion: Most of the support inquiries we get, are replied with few days, if not hours.
 

Myamiga.com: Personally, I would like to thank you for your commitment and support, and keeping the Amiga software market alive in these rough times with your phenomenal spirit.

Hyperion: Don't forget that we got programming talents that worked with us for almost a year for nothing, no revenue, doing a marvelous job, but now they will be rewarded for their hard work.

We have a good solid business plan, multi-platform market, and we succeeded where others failed, it's good to see that we have top notch programmers on our team, these people got respect and recognition from companies that we worked with, for example couple of companies during the licensing negotiations asked us to complete the Windows and Linux part for them, and with our guys, they had to do that in a 6 Month time frame, and without seeing any version of the games that they worked on, the developers were impressed with quality and efficiency of the finished work, and we got lots of referrals to other big names in the market like Real Networks, and others, who contacted this "small" Amiga developer, who maintained Monolith's business name and met the deadline with Real Networks.

Also don't forget that these technologies are not cheap to license, for example Monolith charges $250,000 per license (title) for their engine( which still cheap compare to $750, 000 that Id Software charges per title that you use their engine in), and the list of people that they work with is impressive, yet still, they chose this small company to do a critical job that they were trying to finish with Real Networks, and our guys did it in a way that impressed all people involved.
 

Myamiga.com: That is certainly nice to hear, and that makes us all proud of having such talents on the Amiga platform.

One last question, since you mentioned Real Networks, now that you guys came across them, and did busieness directly or indirectly with them, are there any plans or work in progress now to port their codecs to the Amiga classic or Next generation OS?

Hyperion: Again, not by us, but I'm sure that Amiga is approaching lots of companies out there to port their technologies to the new opertating system.
And don't forget that Real Networks no longer ignores you, since they are almost the same as in Netscape's position, they are looking to generate additional revenue, and will listen to anyone approaching them, if done properly.

While most of the developers in this industry would like to stay in the Windows platform, since that has the most of the market, but almost all of them would like to have additional revenue in markets not yet have that furious competition that Windows has.

And that is where the Amiga has its potential now.

Myamiga.com: Once again I would like to thank you personally and on behalf of our loyal Amiga users, for your commitment and spirit that you have constantly shown in supporting our great platform, and for your professional approach and courtesy towards the platform, and personally I consider your firm as one of the assets that our community is blessed with.

Hyperion: Thank you, we are maintaining our plans which puts our commitment to the Amiga platform as our core strategy, and will hopefully continue to support this great platform.
 
 
 

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Amiga logo, used with special permission.

Aram Iskenderian, myamiga.com, 08-10-2000.

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