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Interview with Paolo Costabel
Description: from Anton Preinsack
Categories: [EN] Eng_Interviews
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[url=https://amigafuture.de/app.php/kb/viewarticle?a=574&sid=1238e83c4cf74dc0052eaa5ca386c8f0]Artikeldatenbank - Interview with Paolo Costabel[/url]
Can you introduce yourself to our readers, please?
My name is Paolo Costabel, and I'm a game programmer. I started my career working on an Amiga game, "Crimetown Depths" that unfortunately never got released. I then worked on several Amiga and PC adventure games for Dynabyte, including "Nippon Safes, Inc", "The Big Red Adventure" and "Tequila & Boom Boom"
When did you came "in touch" with Amiga? What did you like on this system?
I first heard about Amiga from Byte magazine, and I immediately became fascinated with this machine. After seeing an Amiga 1000 in action at an Italian computer show, I bought an Amiga 2000 and started learning the wonders of AmigaOS. As a C64 coder, I was amazed at the power of the OS and the advanced graphics features of the hardware.
When did you start coding for Amiga?
I bought an Amiga 2000 in 1987, and I started playing around with it. It was only a year later, when I was contacted by Massimo Magnasciutti to work on a demo for a game that I started my 'professional' game programming career.
How did you become a professional coder?
Massimo introduced me to his friends who were working on "Crimetown Depths". They were Davide Repetto and Roberto Sagoleo, coders, Alessandro Tento, artist and Roberto Marino, the owner of NewTronic and producer of the game.
Together, we founded E-motion Software and started working on the game. We signed a contract with english publisher MirrorSoft, but after two years the game was canceled due to delays and issues with the game size: three discs was too much at that time for an Amiga game!
Can you give us a list of your Amiga-programms?
Aside from Crimetown, I worked on the video digitizer Videon for NewTronic, then on Nippon Safes Inc. and The Big Red Adventure.
Let´s talk about "The Big Red Adventure" for the Amiga. How did this happen?
After the disappointing experience with Crimetown, Massimo and I tried again to develop a game, this time for a different company, Dynabyte. The game was Nippon Safes, Inc.and was published in 1992. Despite distribution problems that limited the sales of the game, it received pretty good reviews, so we decided to work on a sequel, "Operation Matrioska", that then became "The Big Red Adventure" when Core picked it up for publishing.
Was it difficult to port it from the PC-version?
The primary coder for the Amiga version was Luciano Montanaro, so you should probably ask him!
What are your favorite Amiga-games?
I love adventure games, so any LucasArt game is on top of my list. I also like the Bitmap Brothers stuff, like Xenon 2, Speedball, Chaos Engine. And of course Pygnosys' Shadow of The Beast.
What do you think about the current Amiga-situation (AmigaInc., Hyperion, AmigaOS4, MorphOS)?
I gave up on Amiga in 2000 and switched to a Mac. I kept my Amiga for the longest time, I followed all the events after Commodore went bankrupt, but I finally realized that it wasn't going to come back. AmigaOS was a great OS for its time and I think is still one of the most elegant APIs ever designed, but it was designed for a home computer and never evolved to take advantage of more powerful machines (the dependency on the graphic hardware and the lack of memory protection were two of its biggest flaws).
Is there a chance that you will do a progarmm or game for the AmigaOS (AmigaOS4) again?
I currently work on console games, and I doubt AmigaOS will ever be a viable system again. Maybe if it ends up in a mobile device...
What do you think about current game-development and the new generation of game-consoles (XBox360, Wii, PS3)? What are the main-differences between game-development in the "good old days" and today?
You know, game consoles are actually pretty similar to the Amiga! The closed hardware architecture of Commodore's machine resembles a lot modern consoles. People who learned programming on the Amiga are usually better at coding for consoles than PC programmers. It's a pity that the era of home computers is over, some of the programming skills that you could learn on those machines are hard to find nowadays.
There is still a large fanbase for Amiga-computers and the AmigaOS. What is the reason for this?
The Amiga was more than a computer, it was a philosophy. To programmers, it was about the power of the hardware and the elegance of the OS. For users, it was a computer that was actually fun to use: some of the features like multiple screens are still unequaled today! The Amiga was built by computer fans, not by some big corporation. It was a computer with a heart.
Some final words for the Amiga-fans?
Even if I don't use Amiga anymore, I still consider myself an Amiga fan. The machine might be gone, but the spirit is still there. Anybody who doesn't go with the mainstream but chooses the 'right' way to do things is, at heart, an Amigan. Today more than ever there are new and interesting platforms that will never be mainstream but have a lot to offer to computing enthusiasts: whether it is PSP homebrew software or PS2 Linux, every time people write software not for money but for the fun, the Amiga spirit lives on.