Tell us a little about yourself (name, age, occupation, interests)
My name is Emanuele Cesaroni. I am 24, I was born in 1977 in Pisa, here in Italy, where I live and study Informatics. My studies are going a bit slowly because I spend too much time in videogame coding, which I hope one day will become my occupation.
How long have you had Amigas?
I have been using Amiga for a lot of years now. I bought one in 1989, it was an A500. Then I had an A1200, an A4000T of Amiga Technology (now sold) and now an A4000 desktop.
Do you use any other type of computer?
I use also a PC, an AMD 1000 which I really use very little with Windows 2000 Professional and really much with Amithlon.
Why did you write PuzzleBOBS, especially when the Amiga seems to be less supported now?
I remember I was really fascinated seeing videogames running on my A500. For a lot of years I remained here to see. One day I kept an assembler course and I learn to lowlevel program the Amiga. After some time I began to work on PuzzleBOBS which is now published (I have to thank Olaf Kobnik and Sebastian Brylka for that).
When starting I had no hopes to see PuzzleBOBS one day published and moreover it was already clear I would never sell millions of copies of it. I started it on Amiga and I finished it on and for the Amiga. This is the only reason, united to my love for this computer and it's great OS.
Do you program for other platforms?
Actually I am working on a portable project. Its name is "PDAang" a pang clone for PDAs. The main work is done on AmigaOS because that is the best coding environment I had ever seen. The rest (the porting) will be done on the destination OS.
How was PuzzleBOBS created and with what?
I began to learn the Amiga hardware on my A1200 using ASM-ONE and writing small programs which used each one of unique Amiga's hardware pieces for the time (copper, blitter). So I started PuzzleBOBS after I experienced a lot on Amiga asm programming. I don't remember from what I started, probably the first thing I did was a system to draw bobs and detect their collisions.
How long did it take to complete?
I spent about 2 years on PuzzleBOBS. I bought an A4000T to do the work faster (the 68040 has really more speed in compiling than the 68020) a PicassoIV to test the graphic board support and a lot of books about the 680x0 asm and the Amiga hardware and OS.
What is/was your favourite game and utility for the Amiga? Why?
I play really few... sometimes ADOOM. I use always AmigaAMP to listen MP3s, Yam, IBrowse and Miami for Internet, Ced to write programs, StormC, ASM-ONE, ASM-PRO and Devpac to compile them. On my WB there are always MCP, Amidock and Magic Menu running.
Have you written any other games/utilities? Are there any plans to release others?
No, I had never written utilities for the Amiga and my first serious project is PuzzleBOBS. Actually I am working on PDAng. It runs on Amiga now, but is meant for PDAs. Probably one day will work on AmigaDe, WindowsCE or PocketPC. Actually I don't know where, however will, I hope work everywhere. If you want know more about it, there is a section on my site at: http://www.genie.it/utenti/nexusdev/PDAng/pdang_index.htm
Your views on Amiga Inc , and Amiga One?
I hope my next computer will be a really fast PowerPC machine running a great AmigaOS 4 PPC. With or without Amiga Inc I hope I will be able in using for coding an environment such as the one I am using now on Amiga, the best I have ever seen.
I think Amiga Inc has a lot of merits because they progressed things when they bought the Amiga. The AmigaDe seems to be a good product and I will be happy porting PDAng on it.
Is there any message you would like to convey to other Amiga users?
Yes, only to continue to do things in the same way we are doing now, in the way we learned using our Amigas. I will contradict Jim Morrison, but I am sure that this is not "the end".
