World of Amiga SouthEast - Show report

The WoAse2002 show took place in possibly the most expensive and posh place...oops, err, took place in the semi-peaceful village of Shenfield, Brentwood (just east of London), in the UK. Little did they expect the onslaught of visitors, although maybe they did - which would explain the prices.

Anyway, the show was a great opportunity to meet people and see new Amiga stuff. Or not, in the latter case. After meeting up with a few people who had only previously met through the internet

(L-R: Niclas, Bal, Martin, Peter, Fredrik, Mike, Robert, Carl, some from http://www.snarl-up.com) outside the great looking venue (Poplars Hall, Hutton)

we went inside thinking we had arrived quite early. Giving our tickets to the guys on the front desk (poor Bruce Steers was stuck there for three and a half hours - at least he got to meet everyone at the show ;) we went into the maini hall to find it was packed. Completely. It did not make for easy navigation of the exhibitors, especially for Cartmanesque people like me (not fat, just big-boned ;). The crowd lightened up towards the end of the show, which made it look pretty empty, especially compared to the sea of bodies which were there at the start.

Working round the hall from the door and going clockwise you had these tables:

Hyperion Games Area (http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com). There were two machines, presumably networked, which I think were supposed to be running Shogo. Or at least, one of them was (a nice A3000 which rebooted with a MorphOS logo?!?! - honest, it locked up on me, I didn't crash it). The other just sat showing the Workbench for most of the show. There didn't appear to be anyone running the table which wasn't very useful - trying to play Shogo with no instructions or idea of what's happening is not the easiest thing in the world. It was compounded by the fact I was crap at it :) However, it was a very impressive piece of software, extremely smooth in 800x600.

Next round the wall was Kicksoft (http://www.kicksoft.co.uk), the commercial spin-off from Kickstart which sells serious Amiga applications and utilities. They must have done fairly well, as their table was busy right until the end of the show. Software was on sale, as well as a couple of Amigas running demos of the software, PageStream (I think) was proving a popular demo with some neat effects and tricks being shown.

Beside Kicksoft were Pagan Games (http://www.pagan-games.com), an Amiga, AmigaDE and Mac game company. Their stand was quite empty ic 3 but they were selling Earth2140 and Blobula, their first AmigaDE game. Demos of both games were playing on a PPC equipped Amiga and a laptop (using the DE Player) respectively. They eventually brought over a very cool looking PDA to play Blobula on too. Earth2140 was a very nice game - a real time strategy, in the same style as Dune2 or any of it's sequels (that's the first time I'd seen it). Blobula was OK, but the controls were very awkward on the laptop and not much better on the PDA. They were also advertising for their next AmigaDE game, Quingle (which wasn't explain since it was top secret or something). Thomas Wurgler, who was floating between stands, also very kindly showed me a demo of the Mac version of Dafel: Blooodline, which has been in development almost as long as Amiga hasn't been owned by Commodore. It's impressive stuff, and the Amiga version is in a similar state. Still a fair bit off, but progressing - hopefully Pagan will get the reward they deserve for sticking with it for such a long time. The picture shows one of the Pagan team (sorry, I forgot your name :), part of the advert for Quingle, Bloodline running on the smart Mac, and Blobula on the laptop with DE player.

The next table contained the Huddersfield and Blackpool user groups. They were sneaking out adverts for the next big UK show - Son of Alt-WOA 2002 (http://www.alt-woa.org) - and loitering around for general Amiga chit-chat. Sounds like it will be another good show, and if they're lucky, they might have AmigaOne and OS4. The Blackpool representative warned me that they were already practising for the SOAW2002 Sensi tournament - but personally I think they should be banned, since they are organising it ;)

The two tables to the side of HAUG/BP were empty. Some PC/Amiga dealer and Elbox never turned up. People seemed plenty willing to buy some Elbox gear, especially Mediator related, thanks to the free advertising they were getting (as you'll see later).

After the two empty tables was the Amiga (http://www.amiga.com) stand. Present were Matthew Killie, developer with Zeoneo (http://www.zeoneo.com), and Fleecy Moss

There were a couple of laptops running the DE Player, demoing the early AmigaDE games. One was Blobula (see the Pagan info) and the other was Planet Zed

a very Xenon2 inspired game, which is no bad thing. The graphics were good and the gameplay very smooth. Unfortunately I tried playing it one handed due to all the stuff I was carrying which made it a bit more difficult :) Mattew Killie confirmed what I had asked Pagan about developing AmigaDE games - that there are still a fair few parts missing. Both companies have had to write their own graphics drawing routines for example. On hearing a possible black mark against the DE, Fleecy chirped in that there would be a new version of the Amiga DE soon (preferring not to give any date). Fleecy also said that Amiga were co-operating with Elbox and Matay so that OS4 (possibly not 4.0 though) would run on their PCI PPC cards. The reason was because 4.0 still requires the Amiga custom chips and it would be more effort than it would be worth to get the PCI PPC cards to access back across to the Amiga. However, it was not ruled out completely, Fleecy saying that Elbox and Matay were free to write the required hardware drivers if they wanted. OS4.2, which is supposed to be fully re-targetable (and will not require the custom chips) was recommended as the first version of OS4 to appear for those cards.

Cloanto (http://www.cloanto.com) were also at the show, in the form of Michael Battallina (the boss). Amiga Forever 4 was on sale at a real knock down price. Mr Battallina gave a presentation

later in the afternoon showing the upcoming Amiga Forever 5. The main improvements seemed to be newer versions of the emulations, which were a lot faster. Using PPaint as the test (loading/remapping/resizing a large JPG image) the new emulation was about 70 times faster. Nice.

Eyetech (http://www.eyetech.co.uk) had the large stand in the middle of the floor. They were selling most stuff they have, but not everything. Still, most people at the show had one of the yellow Eyetech bags, which were pretty funky by themselves ;) On show, but not in an official kind of way with explanations and such, were the non-working AmigaOne boards. One was a fully populated board and the other was in a tower with a few connectors in place, showing how the A1200 connected to it. Quite a neat layout, but of course we don't want to see non working boards.

In the middle of the left side of the hall were Weird Science (http://www.weirdscience.co.uk) and Stellar Dreams (http://www.stellardreams.co.uk). Both were selling vast quantities of Amiga CD software. Stellar Dreams (someone had a sleepless night after some beer? ;) also had large stacks of older Amiga stuff - various magazines, Amiga 500's and even had a CD32 (that's also the first time I've seen one of them) showing some Star Trek video on CD.

The next stand round the wall from Eyetech were Forematt (http://www.forematt.co.uk) and 100% Amiga (http://www.100PercentAmiga.org). Forematt had a very wide selection of Amiga titles, old and new. There was a demo of Aqua (http://www.telusplanet.net/public/samel) running on an Amiga on their stand, which is similar in style to Myst. 100% Amiga were selling subscriptions to their CD based magazine, made unique by the fact that all articles are presented like news items from TV, with full video and audio. Sadly, you need to run it through the custom chips as it uses CanDo and Scala.

The final four tables were the tables of the user groups who had organised the show. SEAL (http://www.seal-amiga.co.uk) were selling subscriptions to Clubbed at some ridiculously low price. They should have done a roaring trade with that, and for the fact the magazine is rather excellent. ANT were running some video presentations about their user group, and were using some cool flat LCD monitors. The Kickstart tables were empty, apart from some of the members hanging around near it and ASA were selling second hand Amiga hardware. However, a big thanks must go out to all the groups and people involved in organising the show - it was excellent.

I'm not sure what the next table was part of, it may have been ASA, but the chap running it was Steve Evans. On display was a big box Amiga running a couple of copies of dynAMIte (http://amisource.de/dynamite) for people to blow each other up with. It would have been running on a network but for some ethernet problems with the PC. Typical ;) The other two computers there were a PC showing the Online version of the Crypt magazine (http://www.thecryptmag.com), and an A1200 showing the Amiga version of the Crypt in it's complete glory. The picture shows how much work Steve Evans done all day! Actually he was quite busy for the entire show, blagging people to read the Crypt and play dynAMIte, and of course all the people who just dropped by for a chat.

First stand in the middle set of tables of the right half of the hall was Virtual Programming and Amiga Active (http://www.amigactive.com). Virtual Programming were selling and demoing AmigaOSXL and Payback by Apex-Designs (http://www.apex-designs.net). Or they were once James Daniels went home and picked up the CDs he forgot - doh! In the picture you can see James (dark blue shirt) after mangling the poor guy in the Skid Row t-shirt in a Payback rampage.

They were also being very secretive about what they were doing, apart from saying they were porting WO2097 and Payback to the Mac, and "there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes".

AA were selling nearly every issue they had, as well as calming people's rage about the change to digital. For those who still don't know, it's going to concentrate on non-Amiga specific stuff due to lack of any new Amiga gear. This also means that Amiga stuff has been dropped from the mag, but if a good enough new product is released, it would still get reviewed. The style of the mag will be the same as the current middle section (the NextGen section). Digital will be entering a new market by itself, no other current magazine focuses on the same content they will be covering - it will not just be another technology magazine which reviews the latest mp3 player or mobile phone. Apart from that, details weren't too specific. Guess we'll just need to wait for the first issue to hit the shelves in a few weeks time. Sharing the AA stand was Bill Hoggett, running a demo machine with Amithlon (http://www.amithlon.net) on it.

He was allowing people to install software for test purposes, but it turned out most people were happy with just chatting to him about it. Fortunately I had come prepared >) and had some software to test. Here's Scalos (http://www.scalos.com) running on Amithlon

Seems I broke some files at home before copying it onto CD :(

Next round the table was the Mediator support (http://www.amiga-mediator.co.uk) guys (and gals) giving Elbox some great free advertising. There was a couple of machines with Mediators (one was actually from the Gloucestershire Amiga Group) filled with TV cards, sound cards, graphics cards, etc. Sam Thomas was playing DVDs through the TV card and the soundcard outputs were going to the mother of all amps. The GAG Amiga was playing Worms on another Amiga through the TV card. Both were drawing plenty of oohs and ahhs from the crowd, but obviously not for the neatness of the tower contents

Early on in the day I had signed up for the Sensi Soccer tournament, being played through a big- screen projector. Not sure how much of a coincidence it was, but it was right next to the bar. Hmmmm. After a couple of other games had been played, I got my chance to sink or swim - Aberdeen (me) versus the Arsenal. Nerve jangling wasn't the word, because it's two. End to end play, although most of the play centred around the Aberdeen defense showing it's usual ability to give the ball away and not get it back any time soon. Still, I had a few decent breaks and scored from a corner midway through the second half. I managed to hold on until the end of the game - 1-0 to the Arsenal it wasn't. Would have been more if I didn't stupidly pick the zipstick as my weapon of choice ;) You can maybe see the result in all it's glory in the picture, if you strain your eyes and know some Voodoo magic

Anyway, play continued while I wondered around the main hall again. Unfortunately, the PA system was quiet at best, and so I missed the call to my second round game - robbed! It was probably for the best as I'm not much use on my 68k Amiga :)

The presentations took place towards the end of the show, again, handily located right next to the bar. I'm sure there were people who didn't go near the main hall the whole day. First up was Robert Williams (from Clubbed - Seal's quarterly magazine http://www.seal-amiga.co.uk). After doing the usual thanking of people, he explained the changes to Clubbed (provoked by the changes to AmigaActive). From issue 10, it will be called Total Amiga Magazine (personally I prefer Clubbed (seals)) and will be brought out bi-monthly. Having a few of their previous issues I can say that it should be a high quality magazine, every big as good a read as commercially published titles.

Next up was Alan Redhouse, who I don't actually remember saying much, other than they had signed a contract with Amiga Inc and would be continuing the AmigaOne.

Fleecy was on the stage soon after, and explained the current situation of Amiga Inc and the reasons behind the contracts. They were contracting to allow the work on the AmigaOne and OS4 (under Hyperion) to progress more quickly and allow Amiga to focus on their real goal - the DE.

After the presentations, there was a raffle for various bits and pieces people had donated. Fleecy drew the winners and picked more people who had left the show than were still there. Still, quite a few people won stuff, including Mike and Fredrik.

Following the raffle, plenty of people trooped out to the car park to laugh at Paul Quireshi's collection of Steps and Take That mp3s. But he didn't have any, so we just had to settle for an explanation of his Amiga based in-car MP3 player (http://amimpc.world3.net). A genuinely impressive piece of Amiga hardware and software, all made by Paul. The system works really well, and has some neat tricks (PFS3 formatted hard drives :) so that it can continually save the position in a track (without validation probs) for starting where you left off. Contender for the "Most impressive piece of Amiga gear that was actually released this year" award. You can see in the first picture the front panel for the system which actually fits in the radio slot of the dashboard.

The second picture shows the main part of the hardware, sitting in the boot of the car.