Amiga software
Amiga software is computer software engineered to run on the Amiga personal computer. Amiga software covers many applications, including productivity, digital art, games, commercial, freeware and hobbyist products. The market was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s but then dwindled. Most Amiga products were originally created directly for the Amiga computer, and were not ported from other platforms.
During its lifetime, thousands of applications were produced with over 10,000 utilities. However, it was perceived as a games machine from outside its community of experienced and professional users. More than 12,000 games were available. New applications for the three existing Amiga-like operating systems are generally ported from the open source software base.
Many Amiga software products or noteworthy programs during the timeline were ported to other platforms or inspired new programs, such as those aimed at 3D rendering or audio creations, e.g. LightWave 3D, Cinema 4D, and Blender. The first multimedia word processors for Amiga, such as TextCraft, Scribble!, Rashumon, and Wordworth, were the first on the market to implement full color WYSIWYG and allowing the embedding of audio files.
History and characteristics
From the origins to 1988
1985
Amiga software started its history with the 1985 Amiga 1000. Commodore International released the programming specifications and development computers to various software houses, prominently Electronic Arts, a software house that then offered Deluxe Paint, Deluxe Music and others. Electronic Arts also developed the Interchange File Format file container, to store project files realized by Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Music. IFF became the de facto standard in AmigaOS. The first to be shown were digitizer software ProPaint. Both were used by Andy Warhol to produce a black-and-white photo of Debbie Harry at the Launch Gala at Lincoln Center, New York City in July 1985. In 1985 Commodore licensed the software called Transformer from Simile Research and put it on the market in January 1986, bundled with an external A1020 5.25-inch floppy drive. It emulated 8086 Intel-based PC-XT hardware. It could run MS-DOS and MS-DOS software such as Lotus 123 or WordStar. This provided early access to many applications, while waiting for native Amiga software to be developed. In 1985, Deluxe Paint emerged with graphic features that had been available only on dedicated graphic computers. It was dubbed the first Amiga "Killer application".1986
In 1986 Amiga software products contributed to the Amiga's success as a game and multimedia machine. AmigaBasic from Microsoft, VizaWrite, TextCraft, Pagesetter, Analyze!, Superbase Personal, MovieCraft, Deluxe paint II, Deluxe Music, Instant Music from Electronic Arts, and GraphiCraft again from Commodore were released. GraphiCraft was used by computer artist Jim Sachs to produce Amiga software such as Defender of the Crown and from Cinemaware and the Amiga porting of Saucer Attack. Graphicraft was a predecessor of Aegis Images and AEGIS Animator, one of the first programs worldwide capable of creating animation videos and cartoons complete with audio stereo, featuring a cel animation working paradigm interface and outputting files based on delta-frame difference compression method which then were the lead for creating the ANIM file type standard. Byte-by-Byte Software Inc. released Sculpt-3D. It was the first rendering tool available for the first time to a vast audience of public, and in October of the same year, Impulse released TurboSilver.1987
In 1987 the Amiga 500 was released. The Amiga software market moved in favor of entertainment over professional software.ProWrite, Maxiplan 500, and Aegis Sonix, a music program similar to Instant Music, were produced..
In July, Wordperfect created an "Amiga/Atari Division" and started selling a version of its word processor for the Commodore platform for US$400. It could load and save Wordperfect files created on any platform, such as IBM, Macintosh and Apple II. Wordperfect 4.1 for the Amiga was the first word processor in the world capable of opening an unlimited number of documents, each in a separate window.
In 1987, Andrew Tanenbaum released Minix, a free version of Unix with complete source code.
At COMDEX NewTek showed for the first time a prototype of Video Toaster and Impulse released TurboSilver 2.0.
1988
In 1988, Photon Paint was released. It allowed digital painting using HAM graphics mode and the full 4096-color palette of Amiga on a single screen. Maxiplan 500 become Maxiplan 1.x, Electronic Arts showed DeLuxe Photo Lab, Newtek demonstrated DigiView 3.0 hardware and software image digitizing suite, and WordPerfect released the WordPerfect Library for the Amiga. At the summer Consumer Electronics Show, the Pro Draw graphic tablet with mouse emulation software was also announced, as well as Flash-Back and Quarterback hard drive backup software. Superbase Personal became Superbase Professional, Micro Illusions started shipping Music-X audio software for the Amiga, and Lattice released its C++ preprocessor for the Amiga. Cygnus Editor ubiquitous text editor, one of the most versatile text editors and best seller on Amiga since then, was also released this year. It was one of the first Amiga programs featuring an AREXX port. Gold Disk released ComicSetter and MovieSetter. In November, at the World of Commodore Show, ReadySoft demonstrated its Amax Macintosh emulator for the Amiga.1989–1994
In 1989, Rashumon was first launched. In 1990, AmigaDOS 2.0 was released. The interface of the Workbench GUI was changed to a fake 3D aspect using gray shades. For the first time, Commodore introduced a style guide for developers on AmigaOS; because of this, the majority of Amiga software developed for AmigaDOS 2.0 had a standardized GUI that improved usability. Programs such as Imagine 3D, Lightwave, ImageFX, and Scala continued using non-standard GUIs. AmigaVision was released and bundled free with any model of Amiga 3000. Directory Master, Directory Opus, TurboCalc, Photogenics, ImageFX, PC Task, Photogenics, Caligari, Final Calc, and Cinema 4D all belong to this period.1994 to today
After 1994, Commodore's demise left Amiga to an uncertain future. Windows-based PCs became the standard in the home and the office. Many software houses either left the Amiga market or ran into financial troubles. In 1996, Aminet was created. Aminet was the first centralized Internet repository of all Amiga public domain software and documents. It was the first Internet experiment of a centralized software repository created and maintained by one community for the community itself. Amiga's browsers like AWeb, IBrowse and Voyager were enhanced. Voyager was the first browser to adopt tabbed browsing. Mailers like YAM are still used. In productivity software, programs like Candy Factory for image processing were still being developed, for vfx and animation programs like Wildfire by Andreas Maschke. other prominent graphic software include fxPAINT by IOSpirit, fxSCAN for OCR and scanning by IOSpirit, and SketchBlock painting program by Andy Broad for AmigaOS 4.x. Last but not least Tornado3D raytracing program by the Italian company Eyelight.Usability
Amiga software presents a complete graphical interface, following Amiga WYSIWYG "desktop paradigm" and native AmigaOS interface guidelines; that is to say, the software is mouse-driven and presents also pull-down "menus" and "dialogue windows". AmigaOS maintained a text-based shell allowing software to present a text-based GUI, or a "command line".Cataloging
The main software categories are- Productivity software ;
- Support and maintenance utilities for formatting hard disks, recover or backup data, etc.;
- Multimedia software ;
- Communication software ;
- Programming tools for developing products and applications;
- other utilities that enhance the ease of use in any Operating System ; Accessibility; Games; Emulation software that allows a computer to run software written for another architecture.
Productivity software
Support and maintenance utilities
Amiga created utilities for hard disk partitioning; diagnostic tools; VGA promoting tools for ancient Amiga software with TV resolution graphic screens; game loaders for storing and auto-loading from hard disks, auto-starting non-standard floppy disks; disk copiers; backup and recovery tools, archive and compression utilities; command line interfaces and text-based shells; graphical GUI interfaces with WIMP paradigm; advanced graphics systems; PostScript; fonts; font design; audio system; native, external, widely common used, and third-party filesystems; MultiView; MIME types; USB stacks; Firewire stacks ; printer drivers; video digitizers; graphic tablets; scanner drivers; genlocks, chroma-key, signal video inverters; infrared devices and remote controls; WiFi and Bluetooth devices; and special devices.Music
Music software includes sound design; audio synthesis; music; audio digitizing and sampling; hard disk recording; speech synthesis; audio trackers; MOD music module filetype.Communications software
Solutions include modem software, Direct Connect, BBS managing, Fidonet, Packet Radio; Prestel, Videotel, Videotex, Minitel; Teletext, Televideo, Viewdata; FAX, answering machine and voice mail; ISDN; networking and Ethernet protocols; World Wide Web ; communication protocols.Modem, Direct Connect, BBS managing, Fidonet, packet radio
- Termite, X-Term, A-Term, Baud Bandit I and II, OnLine!
- Direct parallel and serial cable connect: ParNET, SerNET
- Fidonet Mail: Amiga version of GNU AWK, AmyBW, Q-Blue QWK and Blue Wave mail readers
- BBS management: C-NET II, Zeus BBS, Hydra BBS, DLG Pro, Amiexpress, Infinity, Tempest
- Packet Radio: AmiCom, AmigaTNC, and Amipac
- Amateur radio: Amiga Amateur Radio Group, AMIGA-FAX/SSTV, METEO/FAX/SSTV, PakRatt, Multicom, AmTOR, AmigaCALL.
Prestel, Videotel, Videotex, and Minitel
Teletext, Televideo, and Viewdata
Teletext is an information retrieval service system based on transmitting data with normal TV broadcast signals without interfering with TV programs. Standalone programs for teletext included Amiga Teletext and the Videotex datatype.FAX, answering machine and voice mail
- AFax, Amiga-FAX, GPFax, FaxQuik, STFax, TrapFax, AVM, MultiAnswer, Zyxel Voice Mail.
ISDN
Networking and Ethernet protocols
Amiga supported SANA-II and MNI drivers, Envoy protocols from IAM, AS225, AS225r2 TCP-IP from Commodore, DECnet, Novell NetWare through Amiga Client for Novell NetWare, Quicknet fast proprietary peer to peer procol, Appletalk through emulators. Other network protocols available were AmigaUUCP, DNET, Link-It and Enlan-DFS. Amiga also supports Samba and SMBFS.SANA-II drivers
MNI drivers
Internet
Programs to access the Web are mostly available for newer Amiga platforms.- Amiga TCP/IP: AmiTCP, EasyNet, Genesis, Miami and Miami Deluxe, Roadshow for AmigaOS, MosNet and NetStack for MorphOS.
- Amiga AMP: Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python solution stack .
- Browsers:
- * Old browsers or "text only" based ones:
- * Amiga Mosaic, Amiga Lynx, Emacs/W3 WWW client in GNU Emacs
- * Modern browsers up to HTML 3.2 without CSS:
- ** IBrowse, Voyager, AWeb, and also Amaya through the X11 Amiga compatibility graphic engine library Cygnix
- Browsers with HTML 5 and CSS:
- * OWB for AmigaOS and MorphOS
- * NetSurf for AmigaOS and MorphOS
- * Timberwolf web browser for AmigaOS 4 based on Mozilla Firefox 4
- E-mail: Thor YAM, Simplemail, Anubis
- Newsreaders: NewsRog, MicroDot II, NewsCoaster
- Internet Radio: AmiAMP,
- Gopher: Gopherexx
- Proxy server PProxy, Privoxy
- PPP: AmiPPP, Multilink PPP
- Telnet: AmTelnet
- Podcasting: AmiPodder
- Amiga RSS feed: AmRSS
- Distributed net: DNetC
- GPS : WxWatch
- Google services:
- * GoogleMaps: Supported through OWB Browser
- * Google Earth: Supported through OWB Browser
- * GoogleMail: Supported only in 'basic HTML' mode.
- * Google Picasa: Supported through OWB Browser on all Amiga systems or directly through WAManager dedicated software.
- * GoogleBar Toolbar: Not supported by Amiga browsers
- Amiga Instant Messaging and chat: AmTalk, ACUSeeMe, AmIRC, Amiga multi-standard Instant Messaging based on Jabber Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, Epistula Instant Messaging, SabreMSN, MomosIRC, AmiGG, GadAmi based on popular Gadu gadu and Tlen polish instant messaging services, WookieChat, climm, Bitlbee
- Twitter: AmiTwitter for AmigaOS Classic, AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS.
- Telephony
- * Messenger voice chat: Not supported
- * Skype VoIP: Not supported
- * H.323 VoIP protocol: Not supported
- * Amiga voice calls: It has been reported of AmTalk supporting voice calls between two Amiga running that program, but this feature it is unconfirmed.
- FTP: ATC, Amiga wget, AmFTP, AmiFTP, GUI-FTP, HTTPResume, Charon, CManager, FTPMount, Pete's FTP.
- FTP server: Amiga RC-FTPd, AmiFTPd
- Weather casting net Amiga WET, Weather Experience, Wetter.
- Live webcam supporting: AmiWebView, WebVision, WebCam
- * Amiga USB webcam driver: Personal Webcam, Amiga Sonix webcam driver for various models of USB webcams
- Clock synchronization: FACTS
- SMS Short Messages: TaskiSMS
- Web development and 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, Online VCR: otrMUI for MorphOS by Thomas Igracki
- YouTube: On AmigaOS and MorphOS there are various clients or downloaders for YouTube all based upon scripts made by the ARexx language. These scripts spare some functions from existing Amiga programs like wget and MPlayer and join them in a big meta-application utility able to handle YouTube animations: YouTube downloader.rexx, ib youtube.rexx loading YouTube movies into Amiga browser IBrowse, getvideo.rexx, and YouTube client TubeXX, Flayer ARexx script.
- Flash player: Amiga SWFPlayer
- Monitoring webpages: Seventhsense
- Remote desktop: TwinVNC, VNCServer, MorphVNC.
- Pretty Good Privacy: 2.6.3i.
- SSL, SSH: AmiSSL, Amiga OpenSSL, Amiga OpenSSH, SSHCON
- Web album photo sharing services: WAManager handles Google Picasa web album service.
- Other:, Net Tools, Gallerius
Communication protocols
Programming
Despite the variety of programming languages and compilers, most development was done using C and C++, 680x0 assembler and various Basic dialects.Multimedia
Drivers for multimedia devices and special input functions
- Multimedia keyboards: MMKeyboard
- Hand-writing recognition: Meridian is a program that performs handwriting recognition input functions using a stylus like those equipping any tablet PC, emulating the stylus by mouse.
- Graphics tablets: FormAldiHyd, GTDriver, and SlateCtrl are shareware/freeware drivers for several serial-port graphics tablets. "mousev1b" is a driver to use an Apple Newton as a graphics tablet.
Accessibility software
- Jakeboard input software and hardware emulation keyboard and mouse was used by persons with physical limitations and/or problems of movements. Software and hardware schemes are downloadable at BlackBeltSystems Amiga Software page.
- Talkboard similar to jakeboard, is a downloadable speech-generation system for persons.
Optical media
BurnIt!, Frying Pan, MakeCD, AmiDVD, DVDRecord, DVDAuthor could burn CDs, DVDs and/or Blu-ray media.
MakeCD was the first Amiga program to support Disk At Once. Frying Pan was the first Amiga program capable to create DVDs. Frying Pan and BurnIt! are capable to handle DVD.
BlueHD from German programmer Carsten Siegner is a MorphOS program capable of authoring and burning HD-DVDs in these formats:
- Normal Video-DVD
- HD-Video-DVD HDTV
- HD-Video-DVD HDTV
Disk images and ISO files management
- ISO-o-Matic software is a CD image converting software and supports b5i, bin, CD-i, img, mdf, nrg, pdi and uif.
- ISOMount mounts CD ISOs, PC floppy disk images and Amiga disk images. It supports: Amiga 880 KB either OFS and FFS, MS-DOS from 360 KB up to 2.88 MB, Atari ST 800 KB, MAC GS 800 KB, CD – every size, including floppy-specific.
- MountVirtual and DiskImage programs for AmigaOS and MorphOS that mount CD ISO images as standard Amiga devices. Supports CD ISO images and disk images such as ADF, DMS, IFS. MountVirtual requires DiskImage.
- VirtualCD uses ISOs and CD images as virtual drives.
- mkisofs and Amkisofs are ports of MaKeISOFileSystem.
Utilities
Directory Opus was a file utility program. When this software was released, 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 overlaid itself upon the system. It started as a file manager, and then became a complete desktop replacement and an alternative to the official Workbench. The utility was later ported to Windows and remains widely used.
HyperCache was the first commercial disk caching software. Significant in that the base operating system lacked this ability, the addition of caching significantly improved the performance of both floppy and hard discs.
SysSpeed was a shareware benchmarking program for Amigas equipped with Motorola 68k and PowerPC CPUs.
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 with the CPU, throughput increases measurably if the display is disabled. Some processor-intensive software, such as 3D renderers, disable the display during calculation to gain speed.
Emulation
Notable emulators included:Commercial
, Fusion, AMax and AMax II,, GO64, Transformer and PCTask, A64 Package, Amiga BBC EmulatorFreeware
, Hatari, Basilisk II classic, Frodo, PSXE, Hu-Go!, FunnyMu, AmiArcadia.VICE emulator is modular and emulates all 8-bit machines made by Commodore: C64, C128, PET including CBM II version, Plus4 and VIC-20.
Games
Thousands of games were produced. At the time it was common for games to be produced for multiple formats. Since the Amiga hardware was the most advanced, games were usually developed on an Amiga, and the Amiga version would be the "gold standard" of the bunch.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 rigueur for the latest visual tricks, soundtrackers and 3D algorithms from the demo scene to end up being used in computer game development.Piracy
Because Amiga was one of the first game-oriented computers to feature a built-in floppy disk drive, it simplified software piracy. Many of the arguments pertaining to software copying, intellectual property rights in software, the open-source movement by the early 1990s. It was not unusual for demo groups to be openly involved in software piracy.Anti-piracy measures included the practice of distributing software on disks that contained secret "keys" on high-numbered tracks that were officially unused. The Amiga disk drive officially supported tracks 0–79 from a double-density disk, but could actually read tracks 80 through 82. Standard disk-imaging software ignored 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 normally-unused sectors of the disk. Copy software called "nibble" copiers appeared that could exactly reproduce such disks.
Publishers turned to other methods. Hardware dongles were occasionally used for high-end software. AmigaHASP protected Rashumon and was sold by HarmonySoft to Aladdin Systems. Some software manufacturers asked users to type a word from a particular page number and line number of the manual, meaning that successfully copying software included photocopying a large quantity of text. Sometimes the text was designed so that photocopiers would produce illegible copies, meaning that pirates had to manually add the text.
Pirates responded with "cracking" software that altered the code to bypass copy protection completely. Every protection scheme was eventually broken. One near exception was the scheme on Dragon's Lair, which became the "holy grail" of crackers worldwide, but it was also broken.