The New Amiga Diskmag is born.
Part II
"It's done!"
Written by kas1e
(Read part I in Hugi #32)
While the whole Amiga world drives into madness with the situation around the new hardware, with strange legal and illegal polemics between Hyperion (creators of Amiga OS 4.0) and Amiga Inc, with Morphos (which is still on stage 1.4.5 and it looks like version 2.0 can see the light of the day in a very far future), with as it always happened polemics like 'scene dead, we all dead, no future', we've done the first issue of our warp3d based diskmag for Amiga!
It was not so easy to get support from you, old-lazy Amigans. :) Only few have energy and do something that can be called 'art for satisfaction'. Of course, almost everyone wants to see some feedback on his works, be it some music, or graphics, or code. Amiga today, sad to say, does not have so many users who could say: yes, it was great. But ask yourself, what do you do your art for first? For someone else, who can only talk on IRC, drink beer and does not have any energy, or for your satisfaction itself and for a very few amount of ppls who in reality can understand for what, and which kind of motivation drives you? I have an answer on this question for myself. Do you have one, too?
Of course we all have our opinions, and as I said before we must desire it. Or not; this is the case too. But if we are honest, the motivation kind of "I want to catch some 'wow/great'", is not what must be your motivation at first. I can be wrong, of course, but if you want to make something, you just do it. And for you, in 98% of the cases, the opinions of the whole world do not matter. You just do it, because you want to do it, and this process gives you satisfaction. You try to do it as well as you can. Of course, if your work (does not matter work of which kind) will be interesting to someone, it's good. Not? Good too. You already satisfied yourself. It's enough already. But of course, making pieces of crap and saying "Yeah, I do it, and get all fuckup!" is not what I mean. You need to catch the idea I talk about. And of course, if we are honest, if someone enjoys your work it's always pleasant, but it must not be your main motivation.
In the first part of this text, which was published in HUGI 32, I said that the diskmag will be released very soon, and it's taken a bit more time than planned. This happened because of different factors. You know what it mean, I think :)
The main factor for the last motivation to release the first issue was an Amiga-related party called Pianeta Amiga 2007, which happened in Italy/Empoli:
Official site: http://www.pianetaamiga.it/
Video report: http://video.google.it/...
Our main GFXer (Bojan Milovic from Serbia) said that his work would be presented at this party (it's hand drawing icons for aos4, you can check it here: http://www.lorraine-design.com) by his friend from the team who made os4-related software
(http://os4games.it), and it's time to release the diskmag also, which can be shown at the party so we can get some more support for the next issues. Bojan did
some promo image works, and the diskmag was shown at the party on 23 September and brought us tons of success from Amigans, which of course, after all, was pleasant for us.
On the next day we released it for the whole world, and we received tons of positive feedback. Personally, I am actually a little surprised, because too many good words were said about this mag in the end. I put some cut phrases from different sites, maybe someone will get motivation from it to support us at last :)
---from amigaimpact.org (French Amiga related site):
J'ai mate vite fait The Vague et c'est tres bien foutu ! Un vrai bonheur pour les yeux, les cages a miel et le cerveau. Du tout bon.
---from amiga-news.de (German Amiga news site)
Mad_Dog (24-Sep-2007, 22:14)
Wow! Eine oldschool-Idee in neuem, zeitgemäßen Gewand! Das lass ich mir gefallen! Weiter so!
-----
OS4 (24-Sep-2007, 16:21)
Cooooooooles Mag, weiter so. :)
-----
etc...
---from amigaworld.net:
Great mag , cool text and pix. Thanks!!! Work nice on my A4000/Voodoo3.
-----
So, now I have read (most of) it under OS4 and it was a great looking magazine! I had a little text corruptions here and there... But I really liked the design! Keep it up! Looking forward to the next issue!
-----
etc...
---from amiga.org:
Rules, thanks.
----
Awesome, on my A4000/Voodoo3 everything work perfect, truly great.
-----
etc...
So, most Amigans really enjoy it and want to see the second issue. We also received some very good feedback on email, and it looks like we have some support after all of this boring! Of course we also have some feedback about the AGA version. But guys (and girls?), you know, without any support from you, it's pretty hard to make a good looking and interesting-to-read diskmag over warp3d, aga, html and dunno for what else more (catch a bit irony here? :)). Also there were some comments kind of 'trolling'. Like 'scene dead, for what do you do it'. Well..well.. I just will not answer this, because if someone has a question of this kind, he will not understand the answer. There was also a little misunderstanding concerning 2 articles which had been published in the Polish Amiga diskmag Taboo by Slayer and had been given to the SevenDays diskmag for translating them to the English and for publication in SevenDays mag. Since we cooperate with SevenDays we used these articles, and it was a bit strange when someone spoke about 'plagiat'. Strange. We wrote who was the author, we wrote where we got those articles from, we wrote that these articles were only translated from Polish to English with the permission of the authors, and, after all, some trolling about it has taken place. Sadly... but of course, it was expected.
Well, let's talk about the diskmag itself. What do we have in the end and at last? :) We have a diskmag with these features:
- True color 24bit graphics
- AHI mixing (but Paula mode can be choosen as well)
- System friendly
- Runs well on a mere a1200 with 040/25mhz
- Amiga scene and coding related articles
- MorphOS, AOS3, AOS4, WinUAE support
Here's some screenshots:
The first issue was kind of a 'test'. There is not too much animation or tons of 3d effects, but, here is 2d animation, scrolling, flipping, fades, mixing music with sound, and so on. Plans for second issue are big. But your support is badly needed. We also make a lite version of the mag for classic users with AGA amigas. (8bit graphics, no pixel scrolling, and some different effects, but it's AGA, so, don't expect something very modern from it.) So, if you are a freak, the diskmag will work for you too. Also we have plans to create an AROS version of the second issue as well as warp3d, aga/rtg and html versions.
Well, what more can I say? I think all who already want, knows what he can do. But if not, I'll try to say it once more, maybe it will have an effect. :)
Your support can be of any kind. I know, skilled GFXers need a few days for creating a very good looking skin for the diskmag, or some logos. I am not talking about pixel work (but it's preferable of course), I just said that you can use any software, any computer, the only requirement - it should be good looking stuff in the end. I ask you, PC/MAC/whatever-else users. Maybe some of you have a little interest in it? Maybe some days ago you had an Amiga and want to catch some old spirit while you will work with us? Then, it's time for you to do some art work.
Musicians? Who is still working with a tracker and wants to release something with our project? Maybe you have some good looking MP3, then it will be ok too! We will improve mp3 support! It's pretty easy to implement it if it will be needed.
Text writers? Well... it's old and the same dancing. But maybe some of you will want to write one or two articles about, and for, Amiga?
So. In the end I want to say that the second issue will see the light after a year of work. Maybe earlier, maybe later. I think (I hope) for this year we will add the AGA version, more interesting articles and the diskmag will be more good-looking and interesting to read with some new-age effects and things!
At this moment, that's all... Thanks to Adok and Co. for the little promotion of our project, and one more time our email: kas1e@yandex.ru. If you send a mail, and do not get any reply, then, try to contact with me by icq, because it means the spam bot has killed your message or something bad has happened. ICQ: 159451423.
So, see you in the next The Vague issue and with new articles in the HUGI! Our official site:
http://vague.lorraine-design.com/
kas1e