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[News] Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT!ANN.lu
Posted on 18-May-2004 18:19 GMT by IOSPIRIT24 comments
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It's sunny and warm - it is the time where people are refuelling their energy .. and it's the time where IOSPIRIT is again lowering the prices. Available at heavily reduced prices are fxPAINT, fxSCAN, VHI Studio and the IOSPIRIT Graphics Megabundle (contains the latest full versions of fxPAINT, fxSCAN, VHI Studio).

Opportunity is good ..

More info

Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 1 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Bill on 18-May-2004 16:38 GMT
Any word if there will be native versions of their products for OS4?

Bill "tekmage" Borsari
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 2 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 18-May-2004 17:44 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Bill):
> Any word if there will be native versions of their products for OS4?

Yes, there won't be one, check the web site, news section. Development is on hold until better times.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 3 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 18-May-2004 18:14 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Anonymous):
There is a native WarpOS version and OS4 emulates WarpOS, right? So .. yes .. it can run native I'd say - unless OS4 drops WOS support.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 4 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 18-May-2004 19:06 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Anonymous):
> There is a native WarpOS version and OS4 emulates WarpOS, right? So .. yes .. it can run native

Well, I guess it depends on the definition of "native". It's a PPC version all right, but in my book native OS4 versions, which was asked, are more than that (ie. compiled for the native OS4 API, not for the WarpOS kernel).
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 5 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by StAn on 18-May-2004 20:12 GMT
Not that I really care, but a warpos version should be practivally the same as an OS4 native version... There's no point in asking for a native OS4 version unless the warpos emu doesn't work.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 6 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Peter Gordon on 19-May-2004 06:47 GMT
Well, I just tried to buy it, but the proxy on my work internet connection doesn't allow HTTPS connections on the non-standard port that their shop system uses :(
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 7 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Peter Gordon on 19-May-2004 06:48 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Peter Gordon):
oops... "it" == fxPaint
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 8 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by priest on 19-May-2004 08:28 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Anonymous):
Perhaps AOS4 pre-beta-developer-release is enough of "better times" to recompile those apps to AOS4?

Someone: tell Redhouse to send miniA1 + AOS4SDK to IOSPIRIT for free, ASAP.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 9 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by priest on 19-May-2004 08:29 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (priest):
and that miniA1 as fully set up developer box, ofcourse.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 10 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Felix Schwarz on 19-May-2004 10:15 GMT
Besides that everything should already run PPC-native on OS 4 thanks to the announced WarpUP support and that there shouldn't be any noticable difference performance-wise between running in WarpUP emulation or "directly" under OS 4 and thus this entire discussion is somewhat superfluous .. special OS 4 versions should be really easy to make, based on the already existing MorphOS versions.

All CPU-specific binaries' code already compiles fine with SAS/C, vbcc and gcc and run fine under 68K AOS, PowerUP, WarpUP, Amithlon and MorphOS. Both gcc and vbcc will exist for OS 4 IIRC and thus OS4 binaries in OS4 ELF (rather than WOS EHF) format should be a really easy task to do.

However, there is no OS 4 final and rock-stable version yet and with the continued decline in sales and obvious rise in piracy, there is no argument to buy high-prized, dedicated hardware just to do a port that will never refinance. If enough people make use of the currently obscenely low prices, though, there is a good chance for an OS 4 "port" to happen - if not, the chances are virtually zero. Everybody here has a vote pro or contra. Hesitating further to buy anything is a clear contra - not only for us, but for the entire market.

Best regards,

Felix Schwarz
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 11 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 19-May-2004 11:29 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Felix Schwarz):
> Hesitating further to buy anything is a clear contra - not only for us, but for the entire market.

Well, in the best case, what can developers hope for? AOS4 and MorphOS are tiny, unsustainable niches for software developers. Only Hyperion and Eyetech will make money in the AOS4 niche, the nice sum of about 1000 EUR per user. Everybody else will face a market with the buying power of one hundred users, give or take a few (I assume, for no obvious reason, that of ten users, only one buys commercial software on a regular basis, while the rest abstains, uses freeware or resorts to file sharing). What is really annoying to me is that the parties that profit most, ie Hyperion, Eyetech, Genesi, are the same that make it so hard for other developers to make a living: If they could get over their stupid disagreements, we would have OS4 and MorphOS running on all PPC platforms, and that would at least approach the resemblance of a market.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 12 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by itix on 19-May-2004 11:51 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Anonymous):
More likely problem is that market is not growing but rather shrinking. Retro Amiga users are not interested in new software and there are only few new "power" users.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 13 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Kjetil on 19-May-2004 15:31 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (itix):
I have tow friends that used to have an Amiga1200 and Amiga4000, for the Amiga4000 owner it simply depends on if I can present AmigaOne/OS40 as an replacement, for the Amiga1200 owner it more a question of usage, I think, if it can't replace Windows and if you can play games etc, so it's an where complicated puzzle,

Now we are in time, where we do not know what software that is going to run, we do not know, what PD programs it's going to run, and most of the 68k programs works better on UAE anyway, then on the new Amiga/Pegasus, developers most quickly stop supporting 68k AHI+P96, so we can get a argument on way thay shoud invest in the new Amiga and OS, most folks I know never used UAE to develop software, paint or make music, they used it play classic games.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 14 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Kjetil on 19-May-2004 15:34 GMT
We are in an time, where software houses most be willing to make the market, or else they don't get a market, supporting Retro users whit pirated AmigaForever, will not make the community/costumers grow.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 15 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 19-May-2004 15:55 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Kjetil):
> and most of the 68k programs works better on UAE anyway, then on the new Amiga/Pegasus

Not really, my Pegasos G3/600 executes 68k programs much better (ie much faster) than my PC with 1.4 GHz. I don't think that a UAE PC on this side of 3 GHz can outperform a Pegasos. The native PPC OS and the absence of a costly chipset emulation make a big difference. Software that depends on Amiga chips obviously can not be executed on a Pegasos, so if you want to run such software, nothing beats UAE.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 16 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by StAn on 19-May-2004 23:11 GMT
I'd buy fxPaint if I knew it could replace PerfectPaint, because PerfectPaint is very useful to me but its UI kind of sucks, especially when dealing with PNG files. It's also a bit annoying to have to switch between ArtEffect 4 and PerfectPaint according to the things I need to do...

However, I have tried to try the demo of fxPaint and couldn't get anything done. The "demo effect" certainly doesn't help... but the GUI seems to be a problem too. I think that everyone with whom I've ever talked about fxPaint told me they didn't understand how to use it. Some of them had bought the full version.

I spent some time again re-reading everything about fxPaint on iospirit.de and it looks great, but then I tried the demo again and it started to hit like mad when I saved the settings :-(. (warpos version I think) In fact, it's still hitting... time to reboot.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 17 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by StAn on 20-May-2004 01:23 GMT
Ok, I tried it further (didn't go into the settings so it didn't hit). I loaded a PNG with Alpha with the idea of fixing something. First, the picture wasn't with the correct colors (white background instead of purple)... I'm guessing that fxPaint is applying the transparency (alpha) layer and assuming a white background, and that's why it doesn't show the real colors of the picture. That's annoying, as far as I'm concerned. Then pressing the "Active" button displayed the correct colors... that's the opposite effect from what I had expected... At least it's not intuitive to me.
Anyway, I looked at every tooltip, every menu, but I couldn't find a way to view or change the alpha channel.

Maybe a few tutorials on the web site or in the demo archive would help people understand how to use fxPaint. Personnaly I need to be able to manipulate alpha layers of PNG pictures. View them, draw into them. (That might be achieved like in PerfectPaint with a "copy picture to alpha" method).

I've just had a look in fxPaint's directory and found the html doc... I read the "layers" page but I don't see the point of this system. It seems a bit complicated and targetted are very specific operations, at first sight. I'm not sure if I understand everything (probably not).
The Alpha channel description doesn't sound like the alpha channel I'm used to (ie a transparency layer consisting generaly of 256 possible values per pixel). I *really* think some tutorials would help. Maybe even some "replay" feature in the program to see the mouse pointer move and do stuff by itself, with a small window where the user can control the replay and see some textual comments.

Some other things I noticed:

- After applying the "wave" effect (I had no need for it but just tried a few things since I couldn't find how to do what I wanted), I couldn't undo it. It also seems that it erased the alpha layer but pressing the "Active" button didn't seem to change the colors of the picture like before. I couldn't undo the wave effect either.
- I didn't find a way to crop a picture or enlarge its "canvas" (without scaling the image)
- I could use a "fit window to picture" button or menu entry, like there is in PerfectPaint and ArtEffect.
- It's also a bit annoying that the "bubble" help only appears when the window which contains the button is selected. Maybe autoselecting the window under the mouse pointer would help. (even though it's probably not "style guide compliant", I think it's ok for a paint program as long as no keyboard interraction is dependant on the window being selected)

I'm not trying to put fxPaint down; I really hope what I wrote can help. I just think it still needs some work.

I don't think that piracy has much to do with any declining sales. I wouldn't even know where to look to find pirated Amiga software, and most people still using Amiga or compatible systems nowadays know that piracy is not an option if they want their platform of choice to stay alive. At least, my friends do, and several of them buy software that they don't really need to support the developpers. (That's not an option for me though.) IMHO, the Amiga market can't make any developper a living - not now.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 18 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by StAn on 20-May-2004 01:32 GMT
Sorry for the few typos/weird text in my last post.

Before someone jumps on me for posting bugs and suggestions on a public forum instead of the author's mailbox, I'll try to mail this to Felix if he doesn't reply here. Not sure if he cares though since he wrote he stopped development for the time being, IIRC..

I can also log the enforcer hits if I can make them appear again, of course.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 19 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Kolbjørn Barmen on 20-May-2004 07:59 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Felix Schwarz):
"obvious rise in piracy"

What? You make it sound like the number of users are rising, I find that hard to believe.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 20 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 20-May-2004 16:19 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (Kolbjørn Barmen):
> What? You make it sound like the number of users are rising, I find that hard to believe

Rise in piracy could be a reference to the increased copying over the internet courtesy of ADSL and file sharing? That seems to be a pressing issue even for Amiga users, the file sharing threads draw a lot of comments, even polls. But I'm shure those are all legitimate users just looking forward to share recipes ;) People like Felix have web sites that can be used to monitor piracy. I once had a web site with log-in and my experience was that rougly 30% of the log-in attempts were piracy attempts (using a leaked password). That was not so long ago, so Amiga users are just as stupid as ever and "supporting developers" is just talk for most.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 21 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Travis on 23-May-2004 13:37 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Anonymous):
StAn,

fxPaint may not be what you're looking for. I've been using it since v2.0 was released 18 months ago and really like it. My purposes are more for compositing, color balancing, and batch conversions.

I really wish I knew more Arexx, because I could think of even more to do with it.

As much as I like fxPaint, I still have ImageFX open, too, and move files back and forth because each has its strengths.

I do wish for more tutorials because I think there's a lot of untapped potential in fxPaint.

Travis
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 22 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by StAn on 24-May-2004 13:57 GMT
In reply to Comment 21 (Travis):
I guess you're right.
... I'll probably have to learn how to use TVPaint, then.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 23 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by Don Cox on 25-May-2004 15:23 GMT
In reply to Comment 22 (StAn):
PDFs of the TVPaint manual are here:

http://www.amigau.com/c-graphics/tvpaint.htm

It isn't hard to learn - basically a 24-bit DPaint with a simple layers system.
Sunny prices at IOSPIRIT! : Comment 24 of 24ANN.lu
Posted by StAn on 26-May-2004 07:19 GMT
In reply to Comment 23 (Don Cox):
thanks ;)
(I hate pdf though, so I'll use them only under death threat)
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