Amiga software

Amiga software covers a wide range of software for the Amiga computer, both productivity and games, both commercial and hobbyist. The Amiga software market was particularly active in the late 1980s and early 1990s but has since the period 1996/1999 dwindled into almost only a hobbyist scene.

During its lifetime Amiga software touched and passed the amount of over 2000 utilities software, even if this fact it is almost unknown, because Amiga was generally used as game machine by common users (the majority of Amiga users), and unfortunately perceived as game machine from outside its community of experienced and professional users.

Creating a complete list of all Amiga software it is almost difficult if not impossible, as various software were diffused only in some nations, but there are very beautiful masterpieces that were really apprecciated or even really loved by their users, such as Deluxe Paint.

Some Amiga programs were ported to other platforms or inspired new programs still used today, such as those aimed at 3D rendering or audio creations. And it is impossible not to mention Lightwave or Blender, or the audio trackers, or even DTP packages such as PageStream. Important to mention are the first all multimedia wordprocessors for Amiga, such as TextCraft, Scribble!, Shakespeare, ProWrite, Pen Pal, Professional Page, which were the first on the market that allow any common user to choice full color printing on-screen WYSIWYG (other platforms still used B&W approach), and to include not only external images (as on other platforms) but also even audio files to be embedded into documents.

Here follows a vaste list of Amiga software, to demonstrate that Amiga had a really impact in all application fields, and have also a big library of software in which the users can choice the programs they prefer.

Many Amiga programs were so well designed for their age that are still in use today, such as ARexx language, TV Paint, Wordworth, Final Writer, some trackers, Image FX, Lightwave, Imagine and the immortal Deluxe Paint.

The adventure of Amiga continues with programs still today realized for both AmigaOS classic and AmigaOS 4.0, and its children OS, MorphOS and AROS.

Productivity software

The Amiga was originally supported by such prestigious software titles as WordPerfect, Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint, and Lattice C. Newtek's Video Toaster, one of the first all-in-one graphics and video editing packages, began on the Amiga. The Video Toaster was one of the few accessories for the "big box" Amigas (2000, 3000 and 4000) that used the video slot, and enabled users to turn their Amiga into the heart of an entire TV Production suite. The later addition of the Video Flyer by Newtek made possible the first non-linear video editing program for the Amiga. The Amiga made 3D raytracing graphics available for the masses with Sculpt 3D (before the Amiga, raytracing was only available for dedicated graphic workstations). Other raytracing software also included TurboSilver. The Amiga was well known for its 3D rendering capability, with many titles being added to the mix as the years went by. Some titles were later ported to Microsoft Windows and continue to thrive there, such as the rendering software Cinema 4D from Maxon, and LightWave from Newtek, which was originally part of the Video Toaster. The Video Toaster itself has even been ported to the Windows platform. Even Microsoft produced software for use on the Amiga. AmigaBASIC, an advanced BASIC software development environment, complete with an Interactive Development Environment (IDE), was written by Microsoft under contract. Most budget CGI relied on LightWave during the early 1990s, Babylon 5 being a notable TV-series rendered using LightWave.

Graphics, video and design software

There exists a tremendous amount of graphic manipulation software for the Amiga. Some include; Graphicraft, DeLuxe paint, Photon Paint, Newtek TV Paint, Brilliance! a program made upon the suggests by the artist Jim Sachs, Aegis Image, ArtEffects Personal Paint from Cloanto, Photogenics, Express Paint, Digi Paint, Perfect Paint, etcetera.

Similarly there exists a wide range of animation and video authoring software; Aegis Animator, DeLuxe Video, Disney Animation Studio, versions later than 3 of DeLuxe Paint, The Director basic like language oriented to animation, Scala, Amiga Vision from Commodore itself, VisualFX from ClassX, Adorage Multi Effect program from Pro DAD, Millennium from Nova Design. ImageFX, and Art Department Pro. 3D rendering and animation software includes Sculpt 3D, TurboSilver, Alladin, Videoscape 3D, Calligari, Maxon Cinema4D, Imagine, LightWave from Newtek, Vista Pro and World Construction Set 3D terrain rendering programs.

There were also CAD programs available for Amiga, such as DynaCaDD, MaxonCAD, IntroCAD, and ElektroCAD.

There were videoediting programs with both linear and non linear editing with 4.2.2 capabilities as the ones from Newtek available with Video Flyer external module for Video Toaster and just called NLE! (Non Linear Editing), Amiga MainActor, Broadcaster Elite, MovieShop for the expansion Amiga cards PAR, VLab Motion, and VLab Pro.

Actual graphic programs

The attitude of classic Amiga in graphics continues on new machines. Hollywood it is a a multimedia and presentation program available for all Amigas (AmigaOS classic, AmigaOS 4.0, MorphOS, AROS). It is capable to load ancient Scala projects and Microsoft Powerpoint ".PPT" files. Its module Hollywood Designer it is a modern multimedia authoring software which creates complete Amiga programs thru a Visual approach at programming design, and saves executables in various formats for AmigaOS classic upto version 3.9 for 68000 and 68xxx machines, WarpUP for AmigaOS classic equipped with PPC expansion cards, AmigaOS4.0 and MorphOS ELF for PPC processors, and also Intel X86 code for AROS. TV Paint it is still a valid program and continues being used despite of its age. Programs like Candy Factory for AOS 4.0 are designed to create special effects on images, bruushes and fonts to create gorgeous internet objects and buttons used in designing web pages. Pixel image editor, formerly Pixel32 it is available for MorphOS. Blender 3D it is one of the best Open Source cross platform software. It is available also for MorphOS, and a first pre-release it is running on AmigaOS 4.0 (available for AOS 4.0 developers only). Also a first pre-release of GIMP it is available on AmigaOS 4.0 thru X11 graphic engine.

Word Processing

While desktop video proved to be a major market for the Amiga; a surge of word processing, page layout and graphic software filled out the professional needs. Notable word processing programs included world famous WordPerfect upto version 4.1, Shakespeare, Excellence, Final Writer, Scribble!, ProWrite, Wordworth and the little Personal Write by Cloanto. The page layout software included Page Setter and Professional Page from Gold Disk, and PageStream by Soft-Logik, known today as Grasshopper LLC). Only PageStream was ported to other platforms and continues to be developed and supported by the developers. Graphic software included vector drawing applications like Art Expression from Soft-Logik, ProVector by Taliesin, and Professional Draw from Gold Disk. Pen Pal was an Office hybrid. It was a wordprocessor integrated with a database and a form editor. Noteworthy to mention is the page layout language LaTex, available in two portings: AmigaTeX, that is no longer available (the first LaTeX which can be edited with a front end program), and PasTEX, available on Aminet repository. Nowadays AbiWord is available on AmigaOS4.0 thru X11 graphical engine, and Papyrus Office pre-release is available for MorphOS.

Database and Spreadsheets

In the first age of Amiga (1986-1989) there were cross-platform spreadsheet available for it, like MaxiPlan, which was available also for MS-DOS and Macintosh. Microfiche Filer Plus was a database which gave the user the experience of exploring data as using microfilms. SuperBase was one of the finest programs available for C64. It was then ported on Atari, Amiga, and later on PC. But it was on Amiga that become a standard reference. Available in two versions Superbase Personal and SuperBase Professional It had [SQL]] query internal language like basic. It was capable to handle masks on records and was capable of handling multimedia files into its records years before than Microsoft Access. Softwood File II was another simple multimedia database which then evolved into Final Data good database available for Amiga from Softwood Inc. From the same firm there was Final Calc spreadshhet which evolved from TurboCalc that Softwood bought from another software manufacturer. ProChart was a tool to draw flow charts and diagrams. In the recent times MUIBase was born and mainly cross-platform MySQL database language becomes a reference on Amiga also.

Science, entertainment and special use programs

Maple V it is one of the best general purpose mathematic software (a.k.a. Mathematic-CAD) that were ever made. It was available for Amiga also, and apprecciated by many scientists using Amiga at its age. Distant Suns, Galileo, Digital Almanac and Digital Universe were stellar sky exploring program and astronomic calculators. During the age of CDTV were available historic, science, and art CDs like Timetable of Science, Innovation, Timetable of Business, Politics, Grolier's Encyclopedia, Guinness Disk of Records, Insight: Technology, Video Creator, American Heritage Dictionary, Illustrated Holy Bible, Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, etc., etc. One of the best fractal experience programs ever made on any platform is the incredible ZoneXplorer from Elena Novaretti. In 1989 were created the X-Specs 3D Glasses from Haitex Resources, one of the first interactive 3D solutions for home computers. On Amiga were created the multimedia interactive TV non immersive VRML exploring software Mandala from Vivid Group Inc.^[1], and the Virtuality System Virtuality 1000 CS 3D VRML all-immersive simulator from W-Industries (then Virtuality Inc.)^[2], for game entertainment in big arcade installations and theme parks, that was based on A3000.

Richmond Sound Design (RSD) created both show control and theatre sound design software which was used extensively in the theatre, theme park, display, exhibit, show and themed entertainment industries in the 1980s and 1990s and at one point in the mid 90s, there were many high profile shows at major theme parks around the world being controlled by Amigas. There were dozens at Walt Disney World alone and more at all other Disney, Universal Studios, Six Flags and Madame Tussauds properties as well as in many venues in Las Vegas including The Mirage hotel Volcano and Siegfried and Roy show, the MGM Grand EFX show, Broadway theatre, London's West End, the Royal Shakespeare Company's many venues, most of Branson, Missouri's theatres, and scores of theatres on cruise ships, amongst hundreds of others. RSD purchased used Amigas on the web and reconditioned them to provide enough systems for all the shows that specified them and only stopped providing new Amiga installations in 2000. There are still an unknown number of shows on cruise ships and in themed venues being run by Amigas.

Backup and Recovery Tools

Ami-Back Tools, Ami-Filesafe Pro, Quarterback Tools, Amiga Tools DeLuxe, Diavolo Backup, the suite for recovering SFS: SFS Recover Tool, SFSDoctor, SFSCheck 2,SFSResize 1.0

1. ^ Here is a link to its site
2. ^ Info on Virtuality at Amiga Hardware site

Music

[Section to be developed]

DeLuxe Music, MusicX, Bars and Pipes (which was bought from Microsoft. its internal structure then inspired to create audio streaming data passing of DirectX libraries), Pro Sound Designer, AEGIS Sonix, Audio Sculpture, Audition 4 from SunRize Industries. Amiga was worldwide famous for its .MOD files, that are for years a standard of reference for the computer music. These files started at 8bit audio quality, and are nowadays available also at 16bit audio quality. Recent releases can deal with unlimited audio tracks. The programs that creates these files are called Trackers. We remember some: Ultimate Soundtracker, Noisetracker, ProTracker Octamed, Oktalyzer, Startrekker, AHX, Digibooster Pro and in the recent times Hively Tracker that is available for all Amiga platforms.

Mod music file format

Starting from 1987 with the release of a new generation of music programs like Soundtracker, Noisetracker, ProTracker and others such as Octamed and Oktalizer Amiga was enhanced with the creation of mod (module) audio file standard. The Mod audio standard is considered the audio format that started it all in the world of computer music.

In those times (and mainly in the period from 1987/88 to 1994/95) when Amiga audio was far superior than any other platform, PC compatible systems begun to be equipped with 8 bit audio cards inserted into 16 bit ISA bus slots. Soundtracker Module files were used in any PC computer and considered the only serious 8bit audio standard for creating music. The worldwide usage of these programs led to creation of the so-called MOD-scene which was considered part of the Demoscene. Later the PC world eventually evolved to 16 bit audio cards, and Mod files were slowly abandoned. Various Amiga and PC games such as Worms supported Mod as their internal standard for generating music and audio effects.

Speech synthesis

The original Amiga was launched with speech synthesis software, developed by Softvoice, Inc. [1] This could be broken into three main components: narrator.device, which could enunciate phonemes expressed as Arpabet, translator.library which could translate English text to American English phonemes, and the SPEAK: handler, which command-line users could redirect output to, to have it spoken.

In the original 1.x AmigaOS releases, a Say program demo was included with AmigaBASIC programming examples. From the 2.05 release on, narrator.device and translator.library were no longer present in the operating system but could still be used if copied over from older disks.

The speak handler was not just a curiosity, or a gorgeous demonstration of capabilities of Amiga. Infacts Wordprocessor ProWrite since its version 3.2 was capable to read an entire document using the speech synthetizer for the benefit of blind users.

Programming

[Section to be developed]

Amiga Basic from Microsoft, Kick-Pascal, ABasic, AC Basic Compiler, GFA Basic, ASM-One Macro Assembler, High Speed Pascal, JForth, Amiga Logo, Aztec C, Amiga Pascal AMOS (derived from STOS), Blitz Basic, Devpac Assembler, VBCC, Sas/C, Lattice C, Perl, Ruby, Amiga E, FALSE, Python, Rebol, ARexx, Amiga GNU C++, Amiga Installer standard program is a LISP interpreter, Free Pascal, etc.

AmigaBasic (not to be confused with ABasic, that it was a 3rd party basic for the Amiga) was the only programming language (and the only tool) made by Microsoft for the Amiga computer. Its best feature was the lack of numbering lines of code, which was the first attempt in 1985/1986 to create a new kind of approach in programming. Microsoft then added this feature to all its development language tools. Amiga basic was released for free with any Amiga, it has its own disk, a complete manual, and a vaste number of example demos. As being released for free with any Amiga it was the most common used language on Amiga, and legions of developers learnt to program with AmigaBasic. Due to the fact that Commodore want to save money, there was never made an AmigaBasic update, and due to AmigaBasic vaste number of known bugs and limitations (it could handle only NTSC resolution screens and not PAL screens common in Europe TV standard), for the fact it couldn't be used with profit on VGA resolution screens, and finally due to the fact it was generally bad written and caused many machine hang-ups, it was immediately discarded by professional Amiga developers in favour of other programming languages such as GFA BASIC, Aztec C, Lattice C, and then AMOS.

CanDO was one the first application building tools, capable of create programs for Amiga that were totally indipendent (compiled or full binary). It is based on a visual interface, after the style of modern VISUAL approach to programming which became famous with Visual C and Visual Basic from Microsoft. Although CanDO has nothing in common with Visual C and Visual Basic, than except it is a program mouse driven with an icon approach and its internal programming it is really like an interactive flow chart of functions, just as like VISUAL programming tools from Microsoft.

Like CanDO on Amiga, there is Amiga Vision. It is a VISUAL "application building" tool made by Commodore itself in the times of the launch of Amiga A3000, and it was released for free to all those who bought an Amiga A3000. The Vision it is more than a language aimed at multimedia, all icon driven, and the flow chart of the functions was realized all graphically, on a page in which the user could arrange visually all the icons each one representing a program function. Vision saved files (projects) could not be used as pure binaries. From this point of view, the Amiga Vision "application building" tool was an interpreted language.

The AmigaBasic created by Microsoft, CanDO, and then Amiga Vision inspired Microsoft itself to an approach to Visual programming with their line of Visual programming languages, such as Visual Basic and others.

Devpac Assembler was a professional assembler program that became the de facto standard for assembly programming. It was also able to be used to program for any other Motorola 68k-based device, such as the Atari ST. It was common for programs to be jointly written for the Amiga and Atari using Devpac on the Amiga. However, since the Atari ST was closest to the 'lowest common denominator' of the two machines, programs would be tested on and built primarily for the ST.

Multimedia

[Section to be developed]

Movie Players: Amiga Frogger Player, MooVID player, mPlayer, MysticView.

Internet Radio: AmiAMP same as WinAMP, Ami NetRadio.

Music: Kaya Player, Hippo Player, CD Player, PlayOGG, HivelyPlay

Image viewers: Multiview, Showgirls, SView5, ImageMagick Open Source set of image utilities, SWFTools Open Source set of flash .swf files utilities, MiniShowPicture, PicShow, SimpleView

Encoding video: Amiga FFMpeg, Mpeg2Enc Mpeg2vidcodec, Mencoder

Encoding audio: Amiga Lame

PowerPoint .PPT files: PointRider

Adobe .PDF files: APDF

Digital cameras: Canon toolbox for Canon photocameras, PtpDigCam, SimpleCam, AmiCaMedia

TV cards players: Amithlon TV, Visionary

CD Filesystem

AsimCDFS, AmiCDROM, CDVDFS

CD and DVD Burning Programs

BurnIt!, Frying Pan, MakeCD

MakeCD is the first Amiga program to support DAO, (Disk At Once). Frying Pan is the first Amiga program capable to create DVDs. Now both FryingPAN and BurnIt! are capable to handle DVD.

Internet and communications

[Section to be developed]

Modem, Direct Connect, BBS managing, Fidonet, Radio

Termite, X-Term, A-Term, Amiga Amateur Radio Group, Baud Bandit II, C-NET II program for BBS management

Direct parallel and serial cable connect: ParNET, SerNET

Networking

Amiga Client for Novell Netware, Amiga Samba, Amiga SMBFS,

World Wide Web

Almot all these programs are recent and available mainly for new Amiga platforms.

Amiga TCP/IP: AmiTCP, Genesis, Miami and Miami DeLuxe, MOSNet, RoadShow

Browsers: Amiga Mosaic, Amiga Lynx, IBrowse, Voyager, EMACS-W3 WWW client in GNU Emacs, AWeb, Sputnik Browser for MorphOS and AmigaOS, Amaya thru X11 graphic engine, FireFox for Amiga X11 (in development)

E-mail: Thor, YAM, Simplemail, Anubis

Internet Radio: AmiAMP same as WinAMP, Ami NetRadio.

Proxy server: PProxy, Privoxy

PPP: AmiPPP, Multilink

Telnet: AmTelnet

Podcasting: AmiPodder

Amiga RSS Feed: AmRSS

Distributed net: DNetC

Amiga Instant Messaging and Chat: AmIRC, Amiga Jabberwocky, MomosIRC, AmiGG, [GadAmi]], WookieChat, mICQ

FTP: ATC (Amiga Trading Centre), Amiga wget, AmiFTP, GUI-FTP, Amiga RC-FTPd, HTTPResume, Charon, CManager, FTPMount (mounts remote FTP as standard Amiga devices).

Wheater casting news: Amiga WET

Web development & HTTP Server: Apache for Amiga, Apache PHP, Thttpd, Thttpd PHP, WebMaker HTML editor, Ami.HTML Webscape

Peer2Peer: Amiga Mule, Transmission, enqueueTorrent BitTorrent, Bourriquet, BeeHive, CTorrent, AmiGift, EDonkey, mlDonkey

VCast, YouTube, Online VCR: TubeXX, otrMUI for MorphOS

Flash player: Amiga SWFPlayer

Monitoring webpages: Seventhsense

Remote Desktop: TwinVNC, VNCServer, MorphVNC

SSL, SSH: AmiSSL, Amiga OpenSSL, Amiga OpenSSH, SSHCON

Other: Sniffy, OpenURL, Net Tools (net ping, resolve, traceroute, etc.), Gallerius (generator of HTML galleries)

Communication Protocols

Skypix, which many consider the first modern interactive online graphics-and-sound protocol, was introduced in 1987 as part of the Skyline (Atredes) BBS System. Years before the World Wide Web, Skypix for the first time allowed rich interactive graphics and sound, as well as mouse control, to be a part of the online experience, until then limited to text and ANSI graphics. Thanks to the thoughtful inclusion of the ability to write graphical programs and link them into the system, as well as the first "authoring program", Skypaint, Skypix created a large worldwide group of enthusiastic game and online application writers years before the World Wide Web made such features a common part of the online experience.

Various Utilities

Directory Opus was a file utility program. When this software was released, the popular Amiga magazines proclaimed that it was the most important software ever released for the Amiga and "should be built into the operating system". Directory Opus went on to create a "replacement OS" for Workbench which overlayed itself upon the system.

Much shareware and free software was written for the Amiga and could be obtained via the Fred Fish disk series or from the Aminet software archive.

Because the custom chipset shares RAM (and therefore the memory bus) with the CPU, the CPU's throughput increases measurably if the display is disabled. Some processor-intensive software, such as 3D renderers, would disable the display during calculation in order to gain speed.

Emulation

During the years, Amiga was capable to emulate, or to run directly a vaste range of other Operating Systems than AmigaOS. We remember:

Medusa (AtariST emulator), Fusion (Macintosh Emulator), AMax and AMax II, (Macintosh), GO64 (Commodore C64 emulator), Transformer and PCTask (Intel 8088 emulators all software based, capable to emulate an Intel PC XT ranging from 4,7 to 7 MHz), A64 Package (C64), Amiga BBCEmulator Acorn BBC emulator, Atari ST Emulator (AtariST), Basilisk II (Macintosh) classic.

Games

Main article: Amiga games

Games were an obvious application for the Amiga hardware, and thousands of games were produced. It was common for games to be produced for multiple formats in the days of the Amiga. For example, a game might be produced simultaneously for Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and so on. Since the Amiga hardware was the most advanced of all, the games were usually developed on an Amiga, and the Amiga version would be the 'gold standard' of the bunch.

Demos

Main article: Amiga demos

The Amiga was a focal point for the "demo scene". The Amiga thrived on public domain, freeware and other not-for-profit development. The demo scene spearheaded development in multimedia programming techniques for the Amiga, such that it was de rigeur for the latest visual tricks, soundtrackers and 3D algorithms from the demo scene to end up being used in computer game development.

Piracy

Because the Amiga was one of the first game-oriented computers to feature a built-in floppy disk drive, which allowed for easy copying, it was also the scene of much software piracy. Many of the arguments pertaining to software piracy, intellectual property rights in software, the open-source movement, and so on, were well-developed in the Amiga scene by the early 1990s. It was not unusual for a demo group to be openly involved in software piracy.

Several anti-piracy measures were introduced during the Amiga's reign. One was the practise of distributing software on disks that contained secret "keys" on high-numbered tracks, which were officially unused. The Amiga disk drive officially only read tracks 0-79 from a double-density disk, but in reality it could easily read tracks 80 through 82. Official disk-imaging software would ignore these tracks, so that a duplicate of a boxed disk would not contain the key and the software would not work. A similar technique involved writing to sectors of the disk that would not normally be used. However, special copy software called "nibble" copiers appeared, which could exactly reproduce any disk an Amiga could read.

Publishers therefore turned to other methods. Hardware dongles were occasionally used for high-end software. Some software manufacturers would force a user to type a word from a particular page number and line number of the manual, meaning that successfully pirating software included photocopying a large quantity of text. Sometimes the text from which the key was chosen was designed so that photocopiers would produce illegible copies, meaning that pirates had to retype or handwrite the text, or else give up.

These and other schemes lead to pirates "cracking" software by altering a copy of the code bypassing the copy protection completely. There was not a protection scheme that was not eventually broken. One almost exception was the scheme on the Amiga version of Dragon's Lair which became the holy grail of crackers Worldwide. Eventually it was released in a modified format that circumvented the copy protection.

Piracy has been cited as a reason for the death of the Amiga, however, piracy was just as prolific on other platforms, at the time there was a vast amount of software available in the marketplace and Commodore's mis-marketing of the Amiga is well documented as the reason for its own demise.

"Decrunching"

A single frame of a typical decrunching screen.

The Amiga's floppy disk drive allowed 880 kilobytes on a single disk, which was comparable to the memory of most Amigas (usually 512 kilobytes, often 1 megabyte). In order to increase the yield, the Amiga was one of the first computers to feature the widespread use of compression/decompression techniques. Also, the disk drive had a slow transfer rate, such that using processor-based decompression could actually lead to faster loading times than loading uncompressed data from disk. Early implementations of decompression code would write rapidly varying values to a video display register, causing the screen's scanlines to break into multiple segments of colourful noise, which would become finer as the decrunching neared the end. This effect was psychedelic, very easy to implement, and impossible for any other computer's hardware, so it stuck. The use of "decrunching" became so ubiquitous that the effect was a standard, expected prelude to the start of almost any game or demo.

External links

• List of websites where Amiga game software can be downloaded legally and free of charge