Interview with Massimiliano Scarano(Developer)

Joel: Massi, please tell me a little about yourself and how you started with Amiga?

Massi:
Hello Joel and thanks for this interview. Greetings also to all readers.

My name is Massimiliano Scarano, I turned 43, I live with my wife and daughter along the coast north of Rome,
as you can see here [ 3 ].
I am an "old school" programmer, I have a university level education.
My main interests are:
- AmigaOS 4.x
- Commodore Amiga computers
- Retrocomputing

I switched from C64 to A500 in 1990, back then the Amiga was the mainstream home computer in Italy.
I was driven by a strong interest in both programming and technology, so after a while I was able to
program small things in C language and that is how everything got started ;)
Over the years I upgraded my setup to superior models.

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Joel: What kind of games did you play at that time?

Massi:
One of my best games was Pinball Dreams, I was (and still I am) totally amazed by
the ball handling and the realistic physics simulation in 2D graphics.
The Swedes behind the game were my heroes :) Greetings to Andreas Axelsson.

I also enjoyed very much Twintris, Another World, Hollywood Poker Pro (eh eh eh), Super Stardust,
just to name a few.

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Joel: Have you tried any new games from EntwicklerX like for example M.A.C.E.? [ 4 ]

Massi:
Yes I have, the demo version of MACE for AmigaOS4.
I like the genre and it is certainly a cool game, congrats to the developers.

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Joel: When did you decide to start to develop for AmigaOS, and why?

Massi:
I have been hacking Amiga computers since 1990.
At that time the Amiga was capable of incredible graphics and audio and its operating system was superior to
anything else resulting in the competitors being far behind.
I wanted to be a game programmer but unfortunately I never managed to get into the games industry
as it was not well developed here.

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Joel: What kind of Amiga hardware are you using?

Massi:
Nowadays my main system is based on a SAM440EP-FLEX @ 733 Mhz board and AmigaOS 4.1 of course.
From time to time I boot into Amiga Forever emulation package.
Moreover I still own a Commodore Amiga 4000 and an Amiga CD32 both working,
I can state that Commodore computers were very well manufactured!

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Joel: What do you think about the hardware from A-EON and ACube?

Massi:
AmigaOne 500 and AmigaOne X1000 are very interesting hardware and it would be nice to have "killer applications"
for these systems.

The Minimig is also a cool system and I await its successor the Minimig Plus (end of 2014?).

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Joel: Would you like to see an AmigaOS laptop?

Massi:
Yes of course, anyway I don' t see this as a critical priority.

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Joel: What is your opinion about the hardware situation?

Massi:
I believe we have decent hardware available but still too expensive.

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Joel: Some people want to leave PPC and go X86 instead. Do you think that is possible?

Massi:
I would stay PPC as long as this is sustainable.

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Joel: Would you consider to develop something big for AmigaOS if you got an AmigaOne X1000 in return?

Massi:
You bet! ;)

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Joel: I have tried Netspeedometer and BigSister and they are very useful. Can you tell me a little bit about them?

Massi:
Thanks, always nice to be appreciated.
I basically developed them to make some practice with the ReAction GUI engine.

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Joel: Do you prefer ReAction instead of MUI?

Massi:
Yes I do.
ReAction is considered to be the standard Amiga GUI framework.
Well I am not really into MUI, anyway it seems to me that overall ReAction
not only is rendered faster but also it is more responsive.

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Joel: Any new project on its way you can tell us about?

Massi:
For retrogaming lovers, I planned the AmigaOS4 version of a Nintendo game from the Game & Watch serie with HD graphics.
Greetings to my friend Domenico Lattanzi who is in charge of the graphics.

An image viewer for AmigaOS4 is also planned as well as support for the software already released, where needed.
Greetings to Frank Ruthe and Bal Xavier, who made the graphics for some of my projects.

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Joel: Can you tell us more about the image viewer? What kind of features will it have? Will it be better than WarpView or FastView? Will it be free?

Massi:
;) ... when it is done ... ;)

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Joel: How can we make more people interested in AmigaOS? What software do we lack?

Massi:
Difficult question and speculation. Surely AmigaOS is different and not for all people.

At the same time some applications for everyday productivity are missing and this is frustrating.

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Joel: What coding languages do you have knowledge in?

Massi:
My favourite programming languages are since ever C and M68K Assembly.
I enjoy both application and kernel development very much.

After so many years of Amiga, I would like to develop something that
becames part of the official distribution of AmigaOS4.

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Joel: Do you read AmigaFuture and what do you think about it?

Massi:
No I don't.
I only occasionally spend some time on Amiga community portals,
more often I am active on those resources for developers.

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Joel: Do you get a lot of donations for your hard work?

Massi:
Unfortunately no, I don' t even cover the costs of my Amiga activities.
I remind everyone that all my projects (see here [ 1 ] and [ 2 ]) are native and especially designed for Amiga,
no (quick and dirty) ports.
So please if you like them, don' t forget to show your gratitude with a PayPal donation to mscarano @ libero . it

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Joel: Why don' t you make it as a DonationShareware just like eGame? [ 5 ] In that way users can buy a keyfile if they want the program?

Massi:
Yes possible solution.

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Joel: Why not use AMIStore [ 6 ] to sell your programs?

Massi:
I will have a look at it.

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Joel: One last important question. Who is your daddy when it comes to donations? :D

Massi:
Your very last donation was a very long time ago anyway :)

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Joel: Last but not least?

Massi:
I conclude by saying that I am looking for an occupation, perhaps it may be of interest to someone.

Bye everyone and ...

Only Amiga makes it possible! ;)




WWW ===================================================================================================================
[ 1 ] Projects for AmigaOS 4.x
http://os4depot.net/index.php?functio ... tter=Massimiliano+Scarano
[ 2 ] Projects for AmigaOS 3.x
http://aminet.net/search?readme=scarano&sort=date&ord=DESC
[ 3 ] Google Map of Amiga owners
http://map.amiga-archive.net/index.ph ... 0ab9aa953017286b20&zoom=7
[ 4 ] M.A.C.E from EntwicklerX
http://www.entwickler-x.de/
[ 5 ] eGame by Chris Handley
http://www.os4depot.net/index.php?fun ... le=utility/misc/egame.lha
[ 6 ] AMIStore
http://www.amistore.net/

You can also find the interview on AmigaOS G+

nice read

@Joeled

very nice interview, joel. i always enjoy interviews with our devs. i don't suppose you'd be interested in this being mirrored over on intuitionbase.com, would you?

-- eliyahu

Wow 153 views and two people commented.

@eliyahu

I have no problems with that. Go for it.

@Joeled
"Wow 153 views and two people commented."

2 comments, not bad Joel in Amiga world, well done !

More seriously, thank you for the interview. Nice to put a visage on an internet Amigans.

@Massi,
You made NetSpeedometer and BigSister and me, NetDock and LittleBrother.
And now, you will make a picture viewer...
Hopefully that I made FastView before your future program, otherwise you will think that I am an infamous copier

Courage and good luck for your "occupation search"

@zzd10h

I have this viewer in mind since a long time ago, far before you developed your FastView ... ;)

Thanks for your words for work.

Ciao

thanks for the interview, it was a nice read !

although I dont think I tried Netspeedometer nor BigSister (no use for me) I wish you find a job and continue with the amiga !