Alchimie 3
by glames

Alchimie is an amiga show managed by Triple A, a french association, since 2001. This dynamic group, also "Boing Attack" magazine editor, organized, the 8, 9 and 10 November at Tain-L'Hermitage (south of Lyon) the third opus of this event, each year more popular. The first edition attracted indeed about 90 people and the second one more than 160. This year, still more fans came to Rochegude area, certainly interested in the event of the weekend: AmigaOS 4.0 on Amiga One presentation.

A Large Attendance

Alchimie 3 attracted indeed more than 200 people during the weekend: 150 participants and more than 50 visitors. We could see a few Amiga companies like Eyetech (Alan Redhouse, the AmigaOne creator), APS (Amiga and Pegasos reseller), Amont Informatique (AmigaOne and CommodoreOne reseller) and Relec (Pegasos and AmigaOne reseller). Several others firms, like Iospirit, Amiga or Hyperion, were virtually present thanks to sponsoring. Ben Hermans (Hyperion) and Fleecy Moss (Amiga Inc), who initially should come, couldn't finally attend the show. Many associations, groups or clubs came too. For example Amigazette 83, Amiga Power, the 4A, Obligement, the ASUM, Amiga Impact, Gurumed or Boing Attitude :). We could also meet Amiga key figures like Bigfoot, the famous Danish coder or Ben Yoris, the Dream On Studio boss who just released "Mr Nutz" game on Gameboy, a new version fully rewritten with some new levels. Lots of nationalities were represented: French people of course but also Swiss, Spanish, Danish, English and Belgian people.

Most of participants came with theirs "classic" Amiga: Amiga 1200, Amiga 4000 and CD-32 were indeed present. New computers like AmigaOne or Pegasos were there too. We could also see others alternative microcomputers like AtariST, Falcon, Mac, Spectrum or less alternative ones like PC, game consoles (Gamecube) and even a Vectrex console for nostalgics. Lots of operating systems were therefore represented: AmigaOS 3.9, AmigaOS 4.0, MorphOS, Linux, MacOS X, Windows, etc. Everybody could settle in with one or more computers without any problem. Moreover, a network was used to allow communication/exchange between all participants. People could even vote at the time of competitions.

An Efficient organization

Triple A association did a really good job: manage more than 200 people isn't an easy thing. First of all, we could easily identify all team members because they were wearing a wonderful orange T-shirt with "Orga" printed on it: difficult to miss them! During weekend, they served more than 1000 varied and plentiful meals (paella, lasagna, salads, cheese, etc.). Drinks and liquors were unlimited: local wines were besides much appreciated. Several rooms were reserved for those who decided to sleep. They also set up a stand where everybody could learn a bit more about the association or "Boing Attack" magazine, buy a few souvenirs like T-shirts, shots and even banderoles :-). A big "thank you" to all team!

Many winners

There were many competitions during this show: drawing, music, demo, gaming, etc. Each winner was rewarded with numerous prizes like game consoles (Dreamcast, Nintendo64, etc.), Amiga software (FxPaint, FxScan, etc), computer equipment (CD box, screen cover, etc.), sweets or more surprising prizes like many old French music records (Hervé Villard, Les Forbans, etc.). The prizes ceremony, directed by Cicile and David "Lapin" Boisset, was really very funny. Each competition winner was elected by people who were present on Monday. Wilfried and T-tine were respectively first and second of drawing competition. Ace was the best musician of Alchimie 3 and Pure Lamers won demo and wild compo competitions.

MorphOS

Contrary to last edition, Genesi was not present at Alchimie 3. Rumour said that Bill Buck didn't come because this show was not big enough to interest him. Everybody will make his opinion. Some people were very disappointed because they hoped to see the Pegasos 2, at least a prototype but there was nothing new concerning it during the show. We could just learn that production had just begun for a "big client" and a few developers.

However, a few MOS team members were there, like Bigfoot ou Nowee to present MorphOS 1.4 which was released in August (showed at NASS 2003). To sum-up, stability was improved, Turboprint is now integrated for printing management, and JIT emulation was improved. There was also a private MorphOS 1.5 presentation but I couldn't attend it: that's why I can say nothing about it.

Work in progress

Achimie 3 was a great place to discuss with many French developers: most of them are dynamic and there are still a lot of projects on Amiga platform. Several French developers created a coding group called "guru meditation" (http://www.guru-meditation.net/) a few months ago. It is organized efficiently by Mathias "Corto" Parnaudeau who really want to make coding easier on Amiga: you will find on website things like French articles translations, commented samples, FAQs, etc.

During weekend, we could also see some games in progress or recently finished, by attending conferences or simply discussing. First of all, let's talk about David Cadenas, the author of famous "Zip-zap" game (http://david.cadenas.free.fr/), a reflection game on which you will spend many hours, already available on web as a freeware game. Whereas SX-Rally, a wipeout 3D game, is still suspended, his main coder, Olivier "StAn" Fabre has created a reflection game called Shou-kun, a "Tic tac toe" game, but in 3D. Brainstorming, it's for sure! He also foresaw to improve another 100% Amiga reflection game, Squares. Let's talk now about Megalo spirit, a very nice 2D game still in development with fabulous graphics drawn by "Lord". "Hybrid" develops also a good 2D game for the GP32 console, even if he just began coding. Let's finish with a very ambitious project called "Shadow of the Beast" whose aim is to port this famous game to many platforms (including PC, Mac, Amiga, etc.) in a "classic" release, with original graphics, music and sounds, and a "deluxe" one with fully reworked graphics, music and sounds. On coding side, OpenGL and SDL are extensively used to make ports easier. Let's thanks Jerome Davoine, Jean-Yves Auger, Nicolas Gressard and Eric Cubizolle for this great work!

AmigaDE

During Alchimie, I publicly present Word Me Up, a reflection/action/memorization game for AmigaDE, which is now finished for a few weeks. For history, Word Me Up creation has begun during first edition of Alchimie. I therefore did a public presentation that last about half an hour, just after AmigaOS 4.0 one! Not too easy to follow it. Lots of questions were asked after presentation on Word Me Up and more generally on AmigaDE. Word Me Up was demonstrated on a PocketPC pda and on a laptop. Word Me Up will be distributed by Amiga, Inc. but I still can't promise a release date. I Guess you should wait until "when it's done" :-). But Word Me Up life doesn't stop on AmigaDE because an AmigaOS 4.0 port is planned and I hope to have a beta version for Alchimie 4. Visitors could also see Ami2D demos or John Harris applications like Gobbler, Word Search or Solitaire.

AmigaOS 4.0 on AmigaOne Presentation

Since Pianeta Amiga, people knew that AmigaOS 4.0 was booting and working on AmigaOne. Lots of participants were therefore waiting impatiently for OS4.0 conference. The demonstration, which last more than one hour, was really interesting. Stephan Guillard, one of AmigaOS 4.0 coders (notably the IDE driver developer), was indeed very convincing. A few words about U-Boot, about AmigaOne boot (he used a TFTP server) and he carried on an exhaustive and complete presentation of his own system. We had the opportunity of seeing AmigaOS 4.0 working for more than one hour on an AmigaOne without any reset.

Numerous improvements were made in comparison with the first official demonstration that took place in Italy (Pianeta Amiga) a few weeks ago, notably concerning system speed: this one seemed to be more than reasonable for an alpha version. Substantial speed improvements are still of course foreseeable because graphics.library is still interpreted (approximately 20% of work is done). Petunia, the JIT emulator, was working, even if it was not integrated to system yet. It seemed that its performances were not yet optimal, even if a few days later, Stephan discovered that L2 cache was not enabled :-). According to him, by enabling this cache, everything worked at least twice quicker. Concerning graphic card, Voodoo 3 (AGP and PCI) and Radeon were working. Snap PPC port (graphical layer to use lots of graphic cards) was still in progress and OS 4.0 team hoped to have it integrated by the end of year. IDE driver, developed by Stephan, was not finished because for example, CD-ROM and DMA management was missing. The coder explained besides that according to him, there was no hardware bug in Articia S but simply a bad management of it by Linux kernel and confirmed that there wouldn't be any problem on AmigaOS 4.0 and this, from the beginning. Concerning sound, Ahi PPC was integrated to system and Sound Blaster was working correctly, even if I don't remember me hearing any sound coming from AmigaOne during meeting.

Stephan Guillard showed almost all OS 4.0 preferences, tools and utilities: it was the opportunity to confirm that non-critical components like for example clock, will stay in 68K code, that is to say that they will be interpreted, at least at the beginning. Roadshow (TCP/IP, Internet) was integrated and was working without any problem, even if, during demonstration, no web connection was available. Concerning third-party software, we didn't see a lot of things: Audio Evolution, a music tracker, was however showed but I think it was the only one.

AmigaOS 4.0 on AmigaOne Test

First of all, I want to add that there was no OS 4.0 A4000PPC: so it is really difficult for me to know what was remaining before release. However, we can think that once graphics.library will be 100% PPC, OS 4.0 will be almost available but "when it's done" is still the best guess :-).

But let's come back to our new official Amiga machine, the AmigaOne: two units were available for testing. I guess I spent more than one hour to use AmigaOS 4.0 on these two microcomputers. On the first one (placed in front of Amont Informatique stand), there was not too much to test but system was installed on it and it was not so bad, when you count how many years we should have been waiting for that ;-) : I therefore played with this machine and result was convincing. By reading several comments rather negatives on some websites concerning general speed, I was fortunately surprised to discover a reactive and usable system: a few clicks, a few windows resizing/moving, a few color updates, etc. AmigaOS design is really very nice: it has evolved while retaining visual aspect of the Amiga, anti-aliasing bringing a really good supply. Due to his alpha state, OS stability was not satisfying yet and I should reset it several times. It was the chance to see crashes monitoring: very impressive.

I then tested the second unit because it had lots of third-party content: AROS demos, AmiIRC, Voyager, AWeb, Dopus, Notepad were some, among others, applications which were working without any problem. Some others like for example Wordworth (an issue with polices) crashed. But this second unit belongs to a beta-tester (Elwood to be accurate), it is therefore possible that these crashes were due to bad configuration. I should reset several times this unit too.

General feelings were finally very good and these first using minutes were very "exciting" :o). Of course, there is still some work to do but the fact that we can now use gcc on OS 4.0 (the end of the cross-compilation) should make developments and ports easier.

See you at Alchimie 4

This long weekend (3 days) was assuredly very positive: a large attendance, a better organization, more Amiga companies (reselling was allowed), a superb atmosphere, well only pure moments of happiness! Concerning the AmigaOS 4.0/MorphOS dual, Hyperion/Eyetech/Amiga team seemed to score several goals during this 3rd edition contrary to the last year. I just wanted to finish this extensive report by thanking warmly Kokinou, Mr Belett, Farfadet and others staff members for this marvelous weekend. I can't wait for Alchimie 4!
Glames. Boing Attitude :)

Many thanks to Arnaud Schwetta, Jean-Yves Auger, Olivier Fabre, Nicolas Gressard and Alex Dillenseger (AFLE) for providing me shots.