What are you doing today?

[intric8]

I'm working on a new Amiga art project by closely studying the coloration and dithering patterns used by the late great Rick Parks.

I'm working in 16 colors, 320x200 on an Amiga 1000 in Deluxe Paint III.

[Zippy Zapp]

Well unfortunately I have to move. So I am packing boxes and cursing under my breath. haha. Its a long overdue move, though but I dislike it all the same.

That being said I will be going through my over crowded collection of assorted systems, consoles, games, and other stuff I have collected over the past 35 years and slimming it down.

Amiga stuff too. I mean who needs 3 A500s, 2 A2000s, and 2 A1200s? Time to let some of them go to new homes.

[intric8]

I'm going to put the finishing touches on my Deluxe Paint piece I'm making for this year's Amiga Art Contest later tonight and, I think, call it done.

Up next, though: Something I've wanted to do over the years is learn a 3D package on the Amiga. And honestly Lightwave is probably more than I need to do here. But I also don't want to learn something so archaic it requires a computer science degree to use.

I've collected 3 contenders on original disks I want to explore soon:

• Eric Graham's Byte by Byte classic Scuplt 3D
• Imagine
• Cinema4D

Launched in 1990, Cinema 4D is the only one still in production - the first 3 versions being exclusive to Amiga. That being said, I'm kind of intrigued to explore the minimal floppy disk days of Sculpt 3D and Imagine before delving into the CD-world of Cinema4D.

Finding original hard copies of this software took me a very long time, and never with original boxes. My copies look like this (not sure about what versions they are yet):

A crown jewel in my 3D software collection, this comes with the modelling software (1 disk) and animation software (2 disk) with 2 excellent spiral-bound manuals. I will start here.

Imagine, by Impulse, was first offered on Amiga (only) in 1990. It was later ported to MS-DOS and Windows. I don't have original manuals for this, nor a box.

CAD-Technologies continued the distribution of the Amiga version.[6] Starting with version 5.1, new updates were available for free for current customers as part of the Amiga Constant Upgrade Program (ACUP) up until presumed Imagine 6.0 release.

Pretty interesting history. I look forward to discovering which version(s) I have here. I've no idea if this is 2 separate versions, or disk 1/disk 2, or what.

And finally Cinema 4D, and one of the last versions ever made for Amiga. I think the final-final was version 4.2, so pretty close to this one here. This software will get installed to my Amiga 3000 not the 1000. I'm not crazy, ya know. Also don't have the physical manual for this one, either. Would love to get my hands on even just a tutorial book to work through, but I think most of them may have been published in Germany back in the day. So I may be outta luck there.

Anyway, that's a future evening of installing and pondering what to do. I also want to try my hand at a DP III landscape image. Sending 2 images to the art contest might be fun. But the one I'm finishing now has taken me so long to do, we shall see...



Update
In the meantime, I found this fantastic tutorial video on Imagine made back in the early 90s that does a walkthrough of the software (on OS 1.3 no less) that someone transferred from VHS to digital. I've watched the first 15 minutes and overall I'm quite encouraged by the presentation of its interface.

[fxgogo]

I am doing magazine work and started the process of packing for a move at the end of October. I just put together a new workstation and need to get all my emulation set up again. Those Imagine discs look like they are for version 1. They might be a floating point and an integer version. I did do a bad scan of that manual. If I still have it, I will send you a link.

[intric8]

I did do a bad scan of that manual. If I still have it, I will send you a link.

That would be very cool - thanks!

[Appee]

Managed to Tetris my computer collection into a closet for what I thought was short term storage. If I could go back, I would have warned myself to keep my Amiga 500+ out. Not there's furniture blocking the door and my office has become a room :'(

[fxgogo]

I did do a bad scan of that manual. If I still have it, I will send you a link.

That would be very cool - thanks!

It took me a little while to find this in the chaos of a move from Google to Microsoft at work, but I found it.

[expired link]

[intric8]

Downloaded - thank you!

[Warty]

I started a port of my C128 + B128 + Foenix F256K rogue like, Lair of the Lich King, to Amiga. I'm targeting 1.3, because of course. Started at Thanksgiving, pretty happy with progress. Most things work now (game play, save, restore, inventory system, etc. ) but I have yet to replace the text-based map (look away, fellow Roguelikers, nothing to see here) with a 8x8 colored tile system. Not to mention adding music/sound.

I've also been looking through some old Amiga eZines from the 1.3 era. Mostly the news articles and things are fascinating (but also a little depressing, know what is to come...).

[intric8]

@Warty, we've never met.

But I you.