Let’s talk to Michael Battilana about his company Cloanto and their product Amiga Forever.
Runtime: 50:12
AI Transcript. Not to be considered 100% accurate.
Shane R. Monroe
Cool, dude. Where are you? Seeing? Yeah. That’s so cool. That would be cool
Michael Battilana
your plans for tonight? Go home? Go home.
Shane R. Monroe
Yeah, soon as the show closes, we’re out. Yeah. Yeah, why can be before we check out your bags or so I make sure I get your name right. So it’s pronounced right there.
Michael Battilana
Michael Battilana Battilana That’s right. That’s
Shane R. Monroe
really bad problems names this
so anyway, um, I mean, I know the product very well. So I don’t have to ask you what you’re selling? Well, I may we may do is talk a little bit about the history of Amiga forever. How you guys acquired the kickstart Yes, and what we went through for that. So these people shut the hell up and thinking that you guys aren’t somehow paying for the product and the rights to use it. Talk a little about the evolution of the product. What do you guys have added exists come a long way, a lot of people who’ve left they’ve looked at like version three or four hasn’t made a lot of progress with that.
Michael Battilana
But you know, we also keep everything we consider all suggestions, for example, that you don’t read, you mentioned something about a search option on the site, he will he was missing one to look for support items, it was promptly added to the site, you will now go to Mega forever.com and find even at the root of the site, a nice search function. So even Okay, as you say, this was not a nice thread, but from all people came interesting suggestions. And I agree that if somebody feels so strongly about some issues, you need to be considered. So we are
Bryan Smith
strongly that the software, give us all the stuff. All the games. All the settings are already pre programmed in there already. Yeah, the menu.
Shane R. Monroe
Funny. Yeah, we’ll talk a little bit about how the licensing thing works and how all that works. What you’re doing, do you have any? Is there anything kind of across interest? That would kind of relate back let me want to plug other than because I know you guys do a lot of different things. Other than just Amiga forever, yes, but they are unrelated. So they are unrelated. Totally could still
Michael Battilana
do very boring things high end currency solutions, like companies like Intel, a TNT Digital River, they all use our software to handle exchange rates and so on. Interesting, and it’s been difficult for mega developers to, you know, 1997 that’s when we decided to really start looking around for something else.
Shane R. Monroe
Well, yeah, I’d still like to talk about that. I mean, even though it’s not like directly related, I think it’d be interesting to people to understand that the only reason that Amiga forever is really around is because you guys still have some sort of subsidy to help you out.
Michael Battilana
So it’s a passionate the, as I said, these are very professional things. And you need something more creative. And this also brings you back in time when I didn’t pay it. It’s fun. It’s you meet old friends and you
Shane R. Monroe
are levels brother, go ahead are good. The Shane R Monroe at the Classic Gaming Expo 2004. I’m here with Michael Battilana. Yes, that’s right. Thanks. From clo anto makers of Amiga forever. We talked about the package a lot. Of course on the show, we reviewed one of the earlier packages, we don’t have six on our possession, so we’ll get a chance to look at that. Michael, tell us a little bit about what Amiga forever is sort of little history about that.
Michael Battilana
Amiga forever, aims to be an all in one Amiga emulation solution, which not only has all Amiga rom on operating system versions included and ready to run, but it also has a nice part of history. For example, you get videos like the launch of Amiga in New York 1985 speeches by Jay minor, the death but visual by Dave Haney Byte magazine gave us permission to reprint the 1985 cover story about the Amiga and all of that we tried to restore clean up, find good quality copies and so on. So you get a nice feeling of not only being able to run the media on your PC or Mac or the system, but also to feel I’d be there in 1985 8694 when things were happening, and even if you had an Amiga this so much interesting material there that oh, it’s very touching for some people. It’s really It’s interesting, it’s emotional. It’s it’s a lot of things.
Shane R. Monroe
So it’s important to recognize because a lot of people say well why should I pay for Amiga forever? When I can go get when you a for free which is the core of the product which is when you a modify of course And of course, they can always go and steal the ROMs. From somewhere, you know, although it’s getting harder and harder to find this. But you know why? What’s the value add? Why should I go through? It’s important to understand that Amiga forever is not just when you a thrown on a disk with a couple of MPEGs. On it, explain explain how it’s different.
Michael Battilana
Well, that’s an issue in our society that would, when you can do something, you can technically do something and it costs zero to do it, it makes you think, why we have so many barriers and limitations and so on. It’s interesting to keep thinking about that. I agree. But also the simulation itself, you know, in 1997, UAE was a problem for the mega companies. And you may remember in those days, they were Sony, and other emulators, which were just shut down by the courts. And there were legal actions being taken and Gateway even said in some news groups are not only gateway, but also personally, some engineers and people working at the former Commodore and the new companies. Something had to be done about this. So Amiga forever was the way that allowed everybody to be happy. So there was a legal coverage for this work in UAE and when you IE, there was a legal way for the wrongs to be offered and make the owners of the intellectual property happy. So basically, what we did is we licensed all Amiga patents, trademarks and copyrights, which also applied to the emulation without ROMs, or at least they claim to be to apply to some degree. And we licensed that for Amiga forever. Everything we do, including the use of the Amiga forever name website, related items with a mega name, we have written permission to do that, and the mega companies get paid by that.
Shane R. Monroe
Oh, go ahead. Actually, it’s
Michael Battilana
different Amiga companies over time.
Shane R. Monroe
Right. Right. So if you you, who did you originally acquire them from? Was it actually Commodore at the time?
Michael Battilana
No, I do us Amiga International and gateway. The contract was approved after a long talks and discussions and changes by both of them. And it was signed and represented by both gateway and Amiga International, a lot
Shane R. Monroe
of people don’t know that gateway actually picked up some of the Amiga patents.
Michael Battilana
And they still own them. As far as I know. They only licensed them.
Bryan Smith
Well, isn’t gateway gateway is like out of business now.
Michael Battilana
Well, that’s, I’m not familiar with that right now.
Bryan Smith
Yeah, they just they’re in the process of going under? Well, they’re still
Michael Battilana
in business. Maybe they have problems? I don’t I don’t know. You know, I don’t know.
Shane R. Monroe
So there was so I had about that
Bryan Smith
as well. Do I think was a debit, but all the inventory?
Michael Battilana
I don’t know, I must admit. So. Whatever. It was even crazy. Even if Dell is going to buy that they will then on the patterns, which gateway only loads and to Megan cooperated, they didn’t transfer them. Girl bought them from the Escom company in Germany, right, which bought them from the bankruptcy of Amiga, internet, UK and common International, so on. And gateway kept patents, they consider them to be a very precious asset. So as you see, it’s not just about the ROM, and Workbench this or whatever.
Shane R. Monroe
Gateway does go away, and they get sold to Dell, let’s say let’s say, Dell buys the controlling interest in them or whatever. Does that mean, you have to read license lease from them?
Michael Battilana
Well, if we are notified of a transfer of license, we’ll see how to deal with this. Sure. As far as the patent ban pod, which is concerned? Well, it has to be taken into account that some of these are expiring. We’re talking 1984 2004. Now 20 years is the those years you have between 17 and 20 years for US Patent so we’re really seeing the patent issue as a whole disappear. It leaves you with copyrights, and trademarks. So but yes, of course, like we already did, when when things changed hands, we talked to all parties. And when also has to say, say that for these companies. It’s a miniscule thing. It’s a very small, short,
Shane R. Monroe
it’s a you know, it’s very difficult sometimes to get in the door. That’s why I called delta Hey, I’d like to come talk to you about these. And
Michael Battilana
that’s why I know on one hand, it’s nothing to them. But that makes it even more difficult because you have to go through a 20 page contract, just because it has to be done because if they didn’t care about the patterns, then it would diminish the value of the entire patent portfolio. I mean, they have entire offices with lawyers who do only that and they cannot ignore that something is being not respected. Otherwise, it’s like not caring about it, meaning sort of losing it. You know, and that’s why they have to consistently as I understand it, do things the proper way, which we have been successful in doing now. For seven eight years
Shane R. Monroe
now Amiga forever actually contains not just kickstart one bad three, and you know, Workbench 1.3 Basically you get it all right go down the list of because a lot of guys people who are least familiar with the mega know that the Amiga went through a lot of changes from 1.1 to 3.1 give them an idea just kind of rattle off all the things they
Michael Battilana
get when you start from 1.0 Actually,
Shane R. Monroe
or one that zero was the floppy based kickstart though right
Michael Battilana
1112113 We’re also floppy based over one guy embedded though right one that also are you mean the Kickstart to start? Yes. They were placed on Rome. As of shum. Well, when the Amiga 500 came out because Amiga 1000 You could use one three on the Amiga 1000 And it was on a floppy disk. Then they added hard disk boot support in one three, and future versions. They all worked both on workbench and hard disk Workbench floppy in and hard disk boot systems. And there was no kickstart any longer the kickstart which was a special pre boot rom which come on, I didn’t have time to place in Rome, when the Mega 1000 was shaping was available, as you said on a separate floppy disk. Why don’t we have all those roms as well including the original boot code which plays the the the small musical tune just to remind you to insert the kickstart desk, it’s only in Amiga forever as
Shane R. Monroe
well. So they get a big MO Yes, they get
Michael Battilana
CDTV especial wrong CD 32 roms all the way to the latest ROMs. And for three, nine, some parts we had to license directly like the latest web browser and so on so that people get more than just the bare bones system. For example. Up to one three, Komodo had the speech synthesis, right, or there were tools like fast phones and other utilities in Workbench which had separate contracts and licenses which expired. So technically, our contract with the mega companies is not enough to give you that we had to find the people doing speech synthesis, you
Shane R. Monroe
think back to the narrator people. That’s right. And I found license That’s right.
Michael Battilana
The same for other files. Even in the old workbench, we have to find people who own rights over like some phones, for example. And all of that if you look at the the legal notes, the root of the city, you will find that boring, long list of credits and contributors and everything’s with the copyrights. And so it’s hundreds of millions, hundreds of names.
Shane R. Monroe
So once again, I gotta stress that you guys are not, you didn’t buy, you know, kickstart 123. So you know, I could make some money by throwing this on a disk with UAE get a couple of videos and throw it on there and selling it. This is really a complete when you’ve done your homework.
Michael Battilana
Yeah, it’s, you know, even if it was, as you say that alone is a lot of work. But it’s not as you will see the quality in detail, I hope, you will see the consistency between the various parts. For example, when you see the Amiga launch in New York, and you’ll see Belle presenting something, some demos, when you see J minor showing something, or when you see the bite cover story, they all show some software, demos, and not only demos, but all of that is cross integrated in a way that you can play with the same tools. You see them in a video, you see them in an article, you can play with them in simulation they have as well. One click ready to run for you. So you can
Shane R. Monroe
see the journal demo video. You can turn right around and running. What it was really like to include it to make it forever six. Yes. Now and now for the people who are like totally freaked out about trying to make an Amiga emulator run because let’s be honest, if you didn’t like live, eat and breathe Amiga, the UAE emulator is less than easy to use. That’s a lot of people who have been interested in a casual sense. say I’d like to play Deluxe Galaga on Amiga, but I looked at UAE and it’s just not gonna happen. And what have you done to circumvent that problem?
Michael Battilana
I see. That’s the feedback we get too. And it looks like it worked because a lot of people who gave up on trying to configure wineo II find the ROMs in some way on the internet or get them from the Amiga. They just found it so much easier to get Amiga forever and run it. It’s there’s absolutely absolutely nothing required. You just if you have a CD version, you insert a CD, a window, a launcher window appears one click, you choose the configuration and it runs. There’s nothing else required from external sources. The same for the downloadable version. You install it and run it this innovation version you can run from CD or install. So you have a choice You can carry it to your schoolwork of his wherever, where you cannot maybe install okay drones from Sydney find it even boats from CD now you don’t need an operating system. And even in that case, no configuration required.
Shane R. Monroe
You can boot from the Amiga forever CD, of course, you’re out having windows or anything running, and it will bring up the Amiga emulator. Yes, that’s
Michael Battilana
an exciting new feature for me forever six,
Shane R. Monroe
man. So I was just talking about that I wanted that like two days ago. Yeah,
Michael Battilana
we have, we took the Knoppix Linux distribution. And we modified it in a way that it fits in 50 to 60 megabytes. So that was a lot of work as well. We took we chose that distribution, because it’s well known for supporting diversity of hardware, for example, look at notebooks and so on. There are other times in doing similar things. And that didn’t work out out so well on a variety of hardware configurations. But our topic space solution, I think, beats them all. It supports really, all hardware I’ve ever seen PC wise, and you just insert the CD, it doesn’t ask you any question and half a minute.
Shane R. Monroe
No, I’m gonna make more mad, some parts,
Michael Battilana
absolutely nothing. It’s also safe, I have to stress that old PC partitions, by default are read only. So you can really use the CD insert in a PC. And, and be feel safe that it’s not going to touch anything on your PC. So technically speaking,
Shane R. Monroe
you could go to say, my, I’m gonna do a little plug here, my Deluxe Galaga website. You can download, say, the LI J version of it, which is the hard drive version of the game. Bring it down to your local hard drive, extract it using WinZip. Yes, you could boot off of that CD. Yes, run the Amiga emulator, open up a local PC drive on your local drive, go to that folder and run the log scale again. And it should figuratively
Michael Battilana
work. Yes, you have to mount the drive. That’s the only
Shane R. Monroe
that’s the one thing that’s not covered by default, by default.
Michael Battilana
It doesn’t mount them in the Amiga workbench. But you can do that. Yes. And if you forget the CD in the drive, that’s funny, he will see the Amiga booting and he won’t understand what’s happening. You know, you can leave the CD in somebody else’s drive as a joke. And they will see the Amiga booting when the switch on the PC. That’s funny. That was fine.
Bryan Smith
I have a question. We had a lot of complaints on the forums. Back when they were alive that could you guys do you were when Shane, were you emailing him? Yeah, he was the one that we just remember all the crap that you’re getting on? That it was even with all the stuff that you do on the CD? I’m pretty sure it was the idiot factor was there, but a lot of people were still having problems. And they said that the the support wasn’t there, or you guys kind of pretty much gave up on some people. Is this Is that true?
Michael Battilana
You always will have a small percentage of people who are not satisfied in which case, we also offer a refund if they wish, that’s always an option. In general, the feeling I get is that people are amazed by fast response times, you know, often within minutes, the frequently asked questions on our site and the troubleshooting section on our site. They tried to have to cover all issues. So when somebody new emerges in technical support, it also goes straight online. It’s true, sometimes they’re both questions about things which are online, and they are questions about things that cannot be solved. Like you cannot read an Amiga floppy disk on a PC. And some people are really angry about this because they had expectations. And and it’s not easy to do much more than what we already do, which is include software to connect an Amiga to a PC or refer them to the categories and so on. But it’s not easy to explain that an emulation alone cannot overcome a hardware issue. That’s one example for example.
Shane R. Monroe
So these guys that wrote and basically said, you know, I wrote nobody responded to me, you know, or whatever, I don’t
Michael Battilana
know, I’d have to see, you know, sometimes even has a problem. You don’t get a reply within one or two days, you may want to check. So here’s
Shane R. Monroe
your idea would be that, you know, you don’t know that you don’t know the particular issues that were mentioned.
Michael Battilana
Yes, I know about. You mentioned that thread right. And I think I replied in my email at the time I checked the correspondence by that person. I said when we replied within hours I think it was the first time and I think I answered that question in the thread itself now to be honest, I don’t remember but I had checked it so whenever you you bring something to my attention. I have a way to look at it.
Bryan Smith
Well, you know what, you remember it? You did respond and the guy said yeah, you respond, but he was not satisfied satisfied with the response. Yes. And that’s what it all boiled down to. Basically he was like, you suck and then meet the hyphenation caught on Until Cointreau, people suck, because you did not give him the answer he wanted. Even though even though you did, he didn’t say he was like, yeah, they responded, but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
Shane R. Monroe
Do you remember the actual issue what it was? Or did they
Bryan Smith
say he couldn’t get the package different? He was saying that it wouldn’t bring certain things.
Michael Battilana
Yes, no, he had Amiga in a box. I think it was what it was. He was asking technical support from the Ghana box, which we gladly provided even if it wasn’t clearly I was
Shane R. Monroe
given their product. I was asked for support for making a box and when even their product. Oh, so just just for getting just to give an overview so that he understands what the difference between Amiga and Abaqus and Amiga forever is.
Michael Battilana
Amiga in a box is my friend JB in the UK. He’s now in Japan, by the way, it’s from as I see it. Right now, it’s a set of freely available. I mean, you get add ons. The reason why it’s called Amiga in a box is that originally it illegally included Amiga Roman operating system for us, right. And then gateway told them to remove that that’s why it’s called Amiga box right now, it’s not I mean, you’re gonna box. It’s just
Shane R. Monroe
it’s to be in a box,
Michael Battilana
a set of files, which you can get from laminate. And I have to say some people like, what I don’t want to mention names, but some authors of those packages, said, Well, why are you pre installing this without even asking me, I have my own distribution on laminate and I would like that one to be respected. So when we do the same in America forever. First of all, we ask, we get credits, we asked him to check if they like, how would they did you know, we add global icons, and so on. So that’s a lot of work as well. And everything is an interactive process with the developers, even if it’s for a package, which is freely available on laminate. Of course, as you say, you can take things, throw them in an archive and make an oil. That’s not what we do. That was what others do. And that’s what we sometimes have to do technical support for as well. So basically
Bryan Smith
just sum it up, or what happened with that’s what it was, it was it can get Amiga in the box of work with the naked forever, right? And so, instead of, instead of the guy going a million bucks sets, they’re going you guys, right, which was a fair guy does basically beat up
Michael Battilana
on you. But you know, installing a makeup box on Amiga forever is just like installing a mega box on any other Amiga systems. You know, when you buy Omega forever, it comes with a pre installed Amiga OS environment, where you can even easily remove the add ons and get to a very standard environment. It’s like buying a new Amiga. If you have a problem installing Amiga Amiga in a box on a new Amiga number, we’ll issue the same issues you have. But still, you know, we worked with JB and he, when you had more time, he also had special instructions online. We, for example, Workbench three one Amiga box insisted on having that on a floppy disk image, whereas we install it because it didn’t fit on a floppy disk, we install it in in mounted directory, the system partition and still a mega box still asked for the workbench disk. So on our knowledge base, we have an article dealing with that, and we use it. So we explain how to you we added a script to make it forever to create this image, right? So to better support me getting a box, but you know,
Shane R. Monroe
that you can’t make everybody happy? Oh, you can try
Michael Battilana
badly. Now, there are secrets, I think in technical support, which we all wonder why they are not applied by companies who have the money like, Okay, before I answer you, let’s say I’m technical support, I knew the customer was a problem. Before I hit that send button, I should check once more that I really answered your question, because so often it’s just CASE CLOSED issue. And that’s what what they want to do close a case and copy and paste some, some canned answer. And it doesn’t apply to Okay. So it’s very important, for example, I think to to see that the matter has really been addressed and the questions have been asked. But beyond that they are we have Amiga users who have never used a PC, we have received us who have never used an Amiga. And some of these are very, very difficult because they don’t know the difference between a left and a right mouse button and so on. And it really have to guide some users in a way that, okay,
Shane R. Monroe
we’re not getting paid enough to do that.
Michael Battilana
We have a software which costs $1,000 And it has a support contract. Right? And for 2995 Often, you spend a lot of time and just to make the customer happy you even call them back. You know, it’s we try to make the customer happy, but it’s not always possible especially not with our budget and make it forever as a whole In red, I would say, you know, you see me attending these events, like this show, the classic gaming expo. And it doesn’t make any financial sense. It’s okay I visit some other clients in the area, I see old friends, but I don’t even pay the booth if I sell a few CDs So, but still we do it because we enjoy doing it. It’s the passion that that’s driving us Amiga forever 1997 was born because we fed the problems that other Amiga users were having of their amigas falling apart a few custom chips, no spare parts. diverse environment increasingly surrounding the Amiga. So we started using PCs, our media started having problems, we started to have increasing needs or habit of having to work together. And at some point, when there was no more hardware available, we also imported some of our Amiga configuration into PCs. Now. Some people are not considering that Amiga forever users are in large part Amiga users. It’s not that they are just thieves who are destroying the Amiga, as was said, for example, buy some in 1997. It was a very difficult decision then even for Petra, who, you know, at the beginning, emulation petrotech Shankar by me as I am, at the time, it was not easy even for him, but then he, we showed him demos we had him. I even have him repair his windows machine. You know, it’s time you spend together. And you find the time to explain things better than you speak with the emulation developers at the time with Dan Schmidt and Matias Ortman, and others. So I was speaking with patron, Ben Mathias, and we had a developer’s meeting in the same year 97, UAE developers meeting. So all of these people were involved in the process, and they were happy of the outcome. So at the end, we had Petro who was representing us quite well, I think with with Gateway and managed to convince them to accept the contract, as we had it modified at the end, because gateway, you know, also wanted changes and so on. And all of this was difficult because the Amiga, the people who are still left with Amiga are by definition, very active and passionate, and they feel strongly and when you have strong feelings, you have all that diversity all in one place. And, of course, sometimes, it’s a bit noisy, of course. And it’s also one of the reasons why it’s so nice to be in the community because you have so many different voices.
Shane R. Monroe
But yeah, there’s something else that was interesting. A lot of people may not know, you work your company works with the UAE developers, you guys have actually exchanged, you’re not just using their product, which is technically free in your product. You’ve actually your your group has actually worked with them to develop new technologies for you a isn’t that correct?
Michael Battilana
Summary developers contributed specifically to Amiga forever related paths for Amiga forever, right. And this intern went freely into the Amiga into the UAE project. So they were investments made, which went also I wrote a little bit of code and others at quanta, but also there was external work involved, which was paid and it went back into the open source project. We keep working with with the UAE people, we have a very good relationship, even if some people they know work on other projects, but for example, right now, Tony villain, he’s so active has his it’s great what he’s doing and if I could do more, you know, than providing some technical support on some, you know, we are mega developers since the 80s. So we have some materials, which which are useful for him, but if we could do more, we would but it has to be admitted that this is also successful, because if it were not open source, there could not be so many people working on an Amiga emulation, including so many different peripherals and I’m testing so many games and it’s
Shane R. Monroe
the sale but basically the sales you know of Amiga forever are actually helping to continue development on when you ain’t really
Michael Battilana
right now. No, open source developers are not getting any money at all, unless they work on an Amiga forever specific enhancement, a project which is needed. What we do is we provide free CDs to all contributors, all of them all the time. If there’s anything we can get, like lend your machine and old cd dvd CD 32 or technical documentation or send you free developer CDs which we have to buy that’s okay, but there is no budget in Amiga forever as a whole to pay 1000s of dollars.
Shane R. Monroe
Like the first time I ever So this is like version three or four, I think I’ve saw something that was I’ve never seen before in UAE, which was the ability to mount and unmount disks. Inside the Amiga interface. Normally, you’d have to have 12 and change disks that way through the UA interface. But it seemed to me that klanten developed a methodology where you could change those discs inside the MIDI interface that leaving the Amiga virtual machine. Yes, that’s you guys. And you guys don’t need some of that technology back we project right.
Michael Battilana
You know, it’s I don’t want to take such important sounding claims. It’s true that we wrote some code. Well, there’s the UA control, graphical user interface, which is one thing we wrote, We rewrote. And there was an issue about scuzzy and disk change, and so on, where it’s true that there was an exchange of work with a lot of parties involved. You’re up to version six, where we have a new CD file system by Oliver Castle, which we licensed. And that also required changes to fully support the emulation environment. And that, in turn, allowed Tony to make some changes in the way, the UA scuzzy and hard disk emulation work. So yes, it keeps flowing back and forth. We try to keep it professional in the flow of also feedback and backs and developer notes. And that also helps I think,
Shane R. Monroe
let’s talk about let’s talk about the product specifically, there are two versions right downloadable and CD. That’s right. And they’re varying in price. So let’s go and talk about the pricing model and everything. also discuss if you would, the differences between what you get for the download what you get on the CD. Yes.
Michael Battilana
Basically, the CD gives you additional items of historical interest, like the videos, and a broader variety of Amiga ROMs. Other than that, the Amiga pre configured emulation environments with the one three and 3x. They are the same, the pre installed applications, the web browser, the demos and the ready to run one click emulation, that goes straight into Amiga OS, they’re all the same, right?
Shane R. Monroe
So the very casual user, someone who may be interested in maybe seeing what all the hoopla was about definitive, the crown. Yeah. Not necessarily interested in running, you know, Marble Madness only runs on 1.1 ROMs. For example, the real casual user, the download package might be sufficient for their needs. In other words, they don’t get the CD 32 ROMs. On that correct.
Michael Battilana
We provide with this the Amiga forever own In addition, plus pack, which is also downloadable. And we tried to split some additional multimedia and ROM parts, that’s an additional fears at an extra cost 995 more.
Shane R. Monroe
So the download itself is what 9095
Michael Battilana
Full version is 2995 and that
Shane R. Monroe
it can be by download, they have it right that yes, it was done downloading, it’s
Michael Battilana
it’s a 20 megabyte download, and they get all of the things we mentioned.
Shane R. Monroe
And then for the extra 10 bucks, they can download the extra rom so if they
Michael Battilana
lose some mp3 ease with Yes, it’s also you know, some people still are fairly slow connection, and then you know, 20 megabytes already is a big download. So at the end, they still can choose to get the CD version paying only the price difference.
Shane R. Monroe
That’s good. So if they decide to upgrade, you can then get the CD and only pay for it.
Michael Battilana
So the upgrade price is about the difference between the list prices. And then you have shipping which you would have anyway was your way the full version? Sure. Yeah.
Shane R. Monroe
So so they so if they decide that they really get into an Amiga emulation what they want, but they want to go out and get the deathbed vigil videos and all that other stuff. easy upgrade path, not a real problem.
Michael Battilana
You know, I there’s some things we would like to improve on. And that’s an example of the some of our limitations, which are budget limitations, we really only have two hands and it’s what we’re doing. You know, in our company, we shouldn’t even be doing that. We are crazy to just spend days, weeks months, support and everything but we enjoy doing that. For example, when somebody gets Amiga forever and they want the features of the CD but they also want it now they should be able to get the download immediately and have the CD sent right now. We would have to implement our own shopping cart system in such a way that this is possible because the companies we work with they are great companies they are secure they we play security and professionality number one so we pay a bit more to have companies like Digital River. Salah was CDs and the Online Edition. It costs a bit more to us and the customers protected much more than if we did things maybe ourselves with it with our own server and credit card management and everything. So we’d like to delegate delegate this for extra enhanced security. And it’s the same company that IBM load tools and other very large software companies use. But it doesn’t give us the flexibility to do some Amiga specific things we’d like to do, and, but we’re looking at ways to improve that as well. One of
Shane R. Monroe
the things that we hear a lot of feedback, and I think Brian sort of alluded to that earlier in the interview. Some people look at the Amiga as a game machine. They don’t care about the Casa 96. They don’t care about the mosaic web browser. They want to stick the damn disc in and they want to play defender of the crown. That’s all they want to do. They want to play defender the crown they want to play that they want to play the period piece games that everyone said the Amiga rules, evening rules over, have you guys given thought about a very turn key Amiga game slanted package where you could bring up a nice list, you want to play the front of the crown, you click it, you’re planning to enter the crowd?
Michael Battilana
Yes, we have thought about a list like that. For Amiga forever six, where you will notice that we modified the launcher, it’s divided into tabs. One tab has is dedicated to games, some of which are pre installed. And the games and videos and the gallery of historical items. They’re designed in such a way that they’re you can have a scrolling list. So right now you can one click Launch a few games which are pre installed, right? We have spoken with people like the developers of the caps project, which you may be familiar with. What we’re trying to encourage to do, because we don’t have the resources to do it ourselves or try for it, you know, you have 1000s of games, but these games don’t have a configuration that comes with them. Correct. So it
Shane R. Monroe
was sort of like a media site? Well, you know, yeah, I ran the was Yeah, I can’t remember the name of it. I mean, game u.com. I think it was I ran. That’s what half of the things I did were provide configuration files for Pete.
Michael Battilana
So what do you would need is an emulation software independent configuration, because we must not forget that configuration files change over time. They do Amiga forever itself, it doesn’t have only UAE when we make QA, we also support fellow when furlough for example, it’s two emulators actually. So what you would have to do is, in my opinion, for each game, you would say, Okay, this game has a reference system, plus more memory, or minus floppy disks, you know, okay, let’s take the Amiga 500. But with only one floppy disk, because otherwise it doesn’t have to worry, right? Yeah. Oh, it must have like a CD 32 worth an additional eight megabytes of memory. And it would be my opinion, quite simple. With the experience, which you have when you have a database of 1000s of games to be practical, you don’t need to, to overkill and have 1000s of hundreds of lines and commands and everything. I think if you have just one reference configuration, plus or minus a few items, I think that you can do fine old games.
Shane R. Monroe
Let me ask you this. If somebody let’s say somebody listening to the show, big Amiga, not me, because I ain’t got that kind of time. But let’s say that somebody said, you know, I love the media so much. I’m gonna build this database of configurations. We’re gonna go through the effort, we’re going to we’re going to work on it, we’re going to test it, we’re going to make it into a list that you know, we’re going to we will provide you with the information. Would you be willing to implement that into a mega forever?
Michael Battilana
Okay, yes. Not only if you have seen, I mentioned the launcher before. Yeah. Which had this thought of a direct connection to a long list of possible incidents.
Shane R. Monroe
Point. That’s something else that’s new. A lot of people have looked at like three and four. I don’t even think five had that. No. There’s like, you’ve got its own built in online updates. That’s
Michael Battilana
right. That’s very important. We have the Amiga forever launcher, which as a way to one click launch games, but also we have a software manager, which allows you to go online. And if some people made it available, you could access and download uninstalling to the right directory. Both the game and the configuration that’s already in Amiga forever. Now if a site like back to the roots, back to the roots or some other sites, were willing to just with some scripts also create the data, which software manager can read, then Amiga forever users would be able to go online with from From Amiga forever itself from software manager itself, click on back to the roots. I don’t know that maybe they would be grouped by by
Shane R. Monroe
publisher or server, or whatever.
Michael Battilana
Click on a game name name, right click download, right click install. And it wouldn’t be that easy. No, unzip no copy to the proper directory and so on. And that’s already in there. As you said, it just takes somebody to, to make that available. But you see, some, some some of these sites, they have agreements, whereby they cannot bypass the banners they have on the site, there are so many commercial. So they are sponsored, maybe at least the bandwidth, you know, they have to pay for it some way, right? People don’t think about these things, but even a free site, even Amiga forever.com, it has huge bandwidth costs. Sure. That’s why we redesigned it recently, with more text and less graphics, it just had to be done because it was too expensive. These download sites, by definition, since they are download sites, they have to have some banners. And when you start to bypass that, you start wondering, how do I sponsor that? Will Amiga forever software manager? Will it have to host a little banner at the bottom? Maybe? I don’t know how it has to be No, nowadays, we see chat clients and other free software, they all have a little area where they have a banner, maybe that’s one way it could be done. And that’s only for bandwidth.
Shane R. Monroe
Now it’d be willing to open would you be willing to open up your technology. So that let’s say I ran a free site? Yeah. And I could, I could couple in a little package, maybe a dot A MZ file or something that that that your product would use or support, they could download it. And it’s already associated with Amiga forever, that can be brought in, basically launched through software. So you still have to come to my site, you still have to look at my banner, you still have to click through and do whatever, when you get that and you open it and it associates itself with Amiga forever and Amiga forever has problems as installing blah, blah, blah. Could that be done?
Michael Battilana
Yes, it could be done. It could already be done. What do you describe is a bit? Yeah, it has to be worked on also on the website, not on the webmaster side of your site, right? Because on our side, it’s already there. We can just add one entry and software manager, when you can register where you can register a new publisher. I mean, we can advertise you as a publisher, they use the right clicks, and says register publisher, and then you’re in.
Shane R. Monroe
So but instead of having to go into the software manager to get the stuff, you come to my site to get the stuff. Yeah, it would be like it’d be like a Mozilla plugin.
Michael Battilana
It can be done. You know, for example, Windows Media, what they do for some trailers for the movie trailers, is when you download the trailer, you also open my web page, that could be another idea. So it’s not as annoying as completely bypassing something, which is one click and automatic, but it also pleases the, the, the the hosting the or the hosting, advertising or whatever arrangement is in place by opening the website that is meant to be open. Otherwise, yeah, there’s this. It’s a very dynamic thing. But let’s imagine this is science fiction. But let’s imagine that all of these games could be easily downloaded, that there was just one front end to everything, it could be free, it could be commercial, there could be different front ends doing different things on the same framework. It could be that somebody could start complaining because now they start smelling money. Now you have 1000s of games, 1000s of games, people can play them for free. Whereas nowadays, they’re just mad about finding ways to make extra dollars here. And there.
Shane R. Monroe
We were just talking about this in the last interview, you know, we were talking about the fact that Well, you saw you’ve been around here and see what happens when somebody really brings back interest to something, they blood, they sweat, they, you know, they cry, and they spend all this money on bandwidth they give, just get Julian’s amount of their time, they put this beautiful signup the shrine, they make games available. And then as soon as the company that actually has some sort of legitimate claim that they go, ask me for money. And then they turn around and instead of saying, hey, you know, you’ve built this audience, I’m going to now make money on instead of thanking them for sending a cease and desist order.
Michael Battilana
It’s, it’s always a challenge on multiple fronts. I was thinking also about the game companies, you know, now they’re very generous, and they’re making things available for free. I mean, you have these for now, at least for now. And that’s, that’s, I mean, we must we must be very happy that it’s like this now. And let’s hope that more game developers will contribute to this, because you know, they are here the classic gaming shows, projects and people who try to preserve information descriptions about games. But in the Amiga community, people tried to preserve the games themselves, the configurations and everything, that’s a very precious thing I think there are people working on on preserving disk images with the copy protection, just as like if it was meant to be they want every bit of that floppy disk, if it was not standard, they want it preserved. And that’s a lot of work, which requires also proper permissions and so on. So far, the media has been in the very narrow lane of, you know, juggling between being having a low profile, but also venturing into these very ambitious projects with the permission of some very important names now, nowadays, I mean, Electronic Arts, they are they allowed Amiga games to be downloaded for free. I think that’s exceptional. All the
Shane R. Monroe
commercials, I’ve been able to smell enough money. Yeah, but
Michael Battilana
what if? What if? No, it’s interesting.
Shane R. Monroe
Well, what kept you for long enough? Do you? Do you have any last minute things to mention about Amiga forever, that you’d like to that we might have missed her? Oh, it’s
Michael Battilana
been a pleasure to be with you, Shane.
Shane R. Monroe
It’s been very nice. We’ve talked in email for years. But it’s been the first time we actually got
Michael Battilana
to, I wish I could attend more shows like this. But yeah,
Shane R. Monroe
but you’re, you’re you said you’re in Italy, for crying out loud. You know, most of the
Michael Battilana
time, our development I do is there is and for a Classic Gaming Show. As I said, Our budget is very tight and have to subsidize it by by also visiting some other clients. And that’s why I’m here now. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to be here. But Amiga forever seeks really, it has, as you said, there’s a bit of everything. And that is also it creates an identity issue, of course, but there’s a bit for everybody, and much more. I mean, the videos, the history, the culture, all consistent attention to detail, one click runs games, and it’s so refined in version six. I think I had the I have a problem probably explaining all of that. Because the more you go into details, it’s you’re adding complexity to it. But I think you should try it yourself. You will try it yourself. Maybe you can do it better than I can. It’s I think it’s amazing. It made people cry. You know,
Bryan Smith
I like try to please.
Shane R. Monroe
Yeah, of course, I got a copy. You don’t mind if he uses my key, right? No,
Michael Battilana
no, he will get his own one. Oh, very good. So of course,
Shane R. Monroe
I didn’t hook my brother up, did I?
Michael Battilana
Maybe we kind of organized like a raffle or something. For the for you. Oh,
Shane R. Monroe
yeah. Maybe send them on an Amiga scavenger hunt? Yeah, we’re done with those in a while. Something like that, and go find go find all the unique artifacts, we’ll send them to different sites and make them look stuff up. And
Michael Battilana
this one thing I’d like to mention, actually, we have an ongoing project of preserving Amiga videos. We have terabytes of data now. We tried to do the best possible conversion of whatever videotapes people may have with Amiga related content, be it from user groups being from, you know, some TV ads recorded on TV, internal US trade, show things, whatever. We try to preserve that, and we do that at no cost. So you get back a DVD with a professional digital conversion. Then we also of course, try to get the rights to bring that in a future version of Amiga forever. But most important of all, I’d like to stress that these are videos which are fading over time, we had some really terrible things already seen some precious VHS tapes, and I don’t want this to get lost so
Shane R. Monroe
certainly rolling out and yeah, if anybody out there has videotape of Amiga. Now would you accept it in a digital format if they don’t feel like taking their tape and do costs and it’s so variable into capture? I mean, this stuff’s common now. I mean, you can start in their capture definitely and they can get a hold of you and make sure you get that yes,
Michael Battilana
DVD format is best but any other format as well if they can, we can we can discuss this of course by email,
Shane R. Monroe
and you’re looking for pretty much anything Amiga related commercials user group videos. Your kid opening his Amiga on his birthday when you got him for his birthday or something. Just anything like that. Anything that’s
Michael Battilana
interesting as well, because it’s part of the culture you think it is. Yes,
Shane R. Monroe
actually, now that you mentioned I’ve got a couple things on tape. I’ll show I’ll send you the cat would it be great? Yes, some old new tech demos When did you stop camera was running around who can put herself in a new tag those who had days Those were the days
Michael Battilana
and then we have a Blu ray Disc with gigabytes of videos, you know,
Shane R. Monroe
to funny Well, Michael, thanks so much for taking time. I’m away from their booth and not selling games not selling CDs while you’re talking to us and we will it’s been great to finally meet you
Michael Battilana
it’s been my pleasure thank you both of you thank you thank you bye bye