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Interview with Dreamworlds Development

Editor: Anton Preinsack, translated by M. Suchowski


Hello Thomas, would you please introduce yourself ?

I certainly will, I´m Thomas Schulze, student of electric and electronic sciences in final stage and last man (developer) standing at Dreamworlds Development.

Whats your current Amiga setup ?

WinUAE )

Our original A4000 is left for testing purposes only, time made it an unstable development system. WinUAE is a lot faster and more comfortable for coding anyway. The A4000 has a PPC Board/180MHz/040/25 MHz, a CybervisionPPC, some harddrives a CDROM drive and writer. Hidden deeply there are 128MB of unused RAM.

What do you like about the Amiga and why do you still like to develope for it ?

Hmm...good question, its surely not about the support, as about the hardware neither.

The OS is outdated, which makes it easier to understand.

Furthermore I dont like the way Windows patronizes the user.

I´d like to see an OS which is easy to use and understandable because of inner logic and consequence and NOT because of 100s of assistants guiding your way through. Another point is the "nearly no competition" situation on the Amiga market. Better beeing appreciated by thousands of Amiga users than ignored by millions of Windows users.

How was Dreamworlds founded and whats the idea behind it ?

A veeery long time ago 3 friends sat together in school, sharing their computer hobby, a GDR homecomputer system with 48k of RAM and 2 MHz.
Those 3 were me , my twin Stephan and Dirk. We all took the next step to the Amiga and started by writing small demos and games.
Crossfire 1 , our first public release, was published under another name, but our future plans made us change our name to "Dreamworlds Development".
Anything less would have been an understatement )
We still wish to create dreamworlds and now we have a better feeling for what is possible and what is not.


Lets talk about your most recent game - Crossfire 2. How did you get the idea and how long took the realization ?

We started out with buying StormC V3 at the Cologne Ex in 1997.
The change from AMOS to C/C++ gave us a boost of possibilities.
We quickly thought about rewriting CF1 after some of the usual graphic demos.
We started in the middle of 1998 and basic functions were implemented quickly.
In 1999 we released a preview of CF2, giving us a surprisingly amount of positive feedback.
With contracts of different publishers coming in, we decided to do it commercially.
Which threw up some problems.
Until now it was a multiplayer game only, with basic single player routines.
And they wanted a complete storymode.

Who was involved in developing CF2 and how long took it to finish it ?

It all began in the middle of 1998, only Dirk as graphician and Stephan and me as programmers.
The beginning of 1999 made Simon join us, an enthusiastic CF1 player we took under contract as another artworker.
At the same time Audun from Norway offered to do some music for us, the cooperation was as short as uneffective.
Finally Jan made it from dozens of applicants as musician, because he could do some very good classic tunes, which cheered our techno and mod music overfed hearts.
In the meantime Sven joined us as third graphics artist.
The project then went into standby slowly, with Stefan having a job as programmer and beeing unmotiviated to do the very same thing in his spare time, and me turning to other projects.
Progress was low, if there was any.
But 3 months before the Exhibition in Aachen I decided to finish the game and I´m still grateful for having the Dreamworld folks helping me doing so.
We all had some sleepless nights and it was still tight, which caused some heavy bugs on the first master CD. But the new one is already in production, new customers wont have any troubles.

The first update is out already, anything more to come ? CF3 perhaps?

There are more updates yet to come, including some multiplayer arenas and options which were already finished but disabled for stability.
But CF3....dont think so. The genre of 2d shooters is a little overused by now, so I´ll try other styles.

First update made some modifications for MOS, only for making it work at all or even features not included in the PPC version ?

The updates makes CF2 work with MOS , nothing more or less.

Are you satisfied with the feedback and sales figures of CF2 ?

We had a lot of feedback because of bugs and installation issues.
But sales are a joke, even for the Amiga market.
I hope the now available demo and the already released update will change this.
I will tell you in a couple of months....

Are you going to support Classic Amiga in the future ?

Nope.

Are you going to support MOS in the future ?

Propably.
Our next games are going to be multi-platform anyway, so MOS shouldn´t be a problem.
Classic Amiga is going to be replaced by MAC, Linux or other niché products.

Are you going to support AmigaOS 4.0 ?

Yes, same thing here as for MOS, our hardware independent layer makes it possible.

Is AmigaDE interesting for you ?

No.

Do you plan for a Pegasos or an AmigaONE ?

First of all i gotta pay my rent )
Finishing CF2 took some of my jobs and from my studying....so the lack of money became an existencial problem.
So I have to get some "normal" work, and its going to be some time until I can do something for the hobby "Amiga" again and get new hardware.


Who will survive: AOne/AOS4.0 or Pegasos/MOS?

Neither of both, but I hope I´m not right.

Which of these systems contains more of the so called "Amiga-Spirit" ?

The "Amiga-Spirit" seems quarrels and nearly religious fanatism to me, so I hope both keep away from it.

What do you think about the general (Amiga)-situation and the plans related to it (AMIGA Inc. , Eyetech, Hyperion...)

With Eyetech having the hardware (even if I´d prefer the Pegasos) and Hyperion owning the software we have everything for a new start.
Amiga Inc seems to be a collection of hot air, but I can´t judge exactly from the distance.
We will see if AmigaOS 4.0 will be a success despite or because of Amiga Inc.

What about the sudden death of Amithlon ?

Its sad to see projects ending up in such a mess because of small minded controversies.
I can´t tell who is guilty, who is not, or if you can speak of guilt at all.
Amithlon wasn´t important to me, but I know that it was to a lot of other people.
Very sad

Which games do you plan for the near future ?

If I should start coding big time again it will become a RPG.
But Stephan hits me for talking about things undone, what makes me telling nothing more here.
But I hope to have some screenshots of this "nothing" soon.....on my homepage.

Which are your favourite Amiga games ?

I haven´t played for a long time, not an the Amiga.
Payback was the last one and absolutely fantastic. Enemy-Tempest of Violence was very good too, but ignored by press.
I ´ve completed Heretic 2 and Shogo, which weren´t really enjoyable, even on my Amiga.
Right now I´m present in the Tales of Talmar universe, but not very consequently.
I like our own games , but they start to get a little dull after such a long time.
The AB3D series was very good, the editor gave it an extra boost and made us spending a lot of time with it.
Some shareware & freeware : YAGG, BattleXII-WB, Deluxe Galaga, Deluxe Pacman, Hangar18.
There is a lot of very good software on Aminet, but most of it is very old.


Are there any other hobbies of yours?

Music, I had a training in singing and play the guitar and piano in a band.
A little chess now and then, but thats it, many friends and living in a community keep me busy )

Thank you very much and all best wishes for you.





You can by the game by APC&TCP, Postfach 83, 83234 Übersee, http://www.apc-tcp.de, info@apc-tcp.de or at yout local amiga-dealer...