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Hyperion Entertainment
Hyperion Entertainment CVBA (formerly Hyperion Entertainment VOF) is a Belgian software company that, in its early years, focused in porting Windows games to Amiga OS, Linux, and Mac OS. In 2001, they accepted a contract by Amiga Incorporated to develop AmigaOS 4 and mainly discontinued their porting business to pursue this development. AmigaOS 4 runs on the AmigaOne systems, Commodore Amiga systems with a Phase5 PowerUP accelerator board, Pegasos II systems and Sam440/Sam460 systems.
Hyperion Entertainment was founded in April 1999 by Ben Hermans and Evert Carton to port PC games to the Amiga. Hans-Joerg Frieden, who had previously worked on the Warp3D library and ports of the games Descent and Abuse, was contracted to be Hyperion's main developer. The company's first project was an Amiga port of Heretic II, released in 2000 to commercial failure. As a result, Hyperion expanded its scope to also include ports for Linux and Mac OS. Later that year, Hyperion ported SiN for Linux, postponing and ultimately cancelling a port of the game to the Amiga due to hardware requirements. An improved version of Heretic II was released for AmigaOS 4 in early 2024.
They also approached Monolith Productions to port their Lithtech engine, culminating in their port of Shogo: Mobile Armor Division for Amiga, Linux, and Mac OS in 2001. The game had not sold as well as had been hoped, most notably on Linux, despite becoming a best seller on Tux Games. Hyperion stated that Linux users were likely to dual boot with Windows to play easily available games rather than purchase more expensive specialised versions years after release. In early 2002, Hyperion introduced the Amiga port of Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War. An improved version for AmigaOS 4 followed in 2010. After id Software released its source code, Hyperion marketed later in 2002 a commercial Amiga port of Quake II. A Linux port of Gorky 17 was developed by Hyperion and published by Linux Game Publishing in 2006, while a version for AmigaOS 4 was released nearly a decade later in 2015.
During work on the Heretic II port, Hyperion Entertainment developers created an OpenGL subset called MiniGL, which sits on top of Warp3D to ease the porting of 3D games. The MiniGL library was released for free to other software developers.
In 2001, Hyperion announced that, after licensing the rights from Amiga, Inc., it would be working on the successor to AmigaOS 3.9 and concentrating its efforts on the development of AmigaOS 4. Hyperion still claimed that it is based upon AmigaOS 3.1 source code and, to a lesser extent certain, AmigaOS 3.9 sources. A quick port of 68k AmigaOS to PowerPC was originally planned, with new features added as development continued. Ben Hermans, writing on Amiga forum Ann.lu, claimed that these sources, along with the source of the PPC kernel WarpOS would be sufficient to provide a version to users within a year, making his now-infamous "change some flags and recompile" comment.[citation needed]
AmigaOS 4.0 was first released to end-users and second-level beta testers in April 2004, with AmigaOS 4.1 following in September 2008. It is currently still in development.[needs update]
In 2004, Hyperion attempted to obtain a licence for an AmigaOS 4 native port of the file manager Directory Opus, which had originally and been developed on the Amiga but for which development had since moved to the Microsoft Windows platform. Talks between Hyperion and GP Software broke down.
The first managing partner of Hyperion, Benjamin Hermans, in the period between the announcement and release of AmigaOS 4, ignited a community controversy by repeatedly claiming that MorphOS, an AmigaOS-like competitor (which had been released in complete form in 2003), was illegal and had on several occasions threatened to take legal action against it either on the grounds that it was parasitic competition to AmigaOS 4, or even that it was actually based on stolen AmigaOS source code. No evidence to support either claim ever became public, nor did any legal action against MorphOS take place; neither prevented such views being repeated in public Amiga forums and mailing lists. This situation was inflamed by ex-Commodore engineer Dave Haynie, who backed up Herman's claims: "If you have seen the Amiga source code, you cannot produce a legally separate work-alike", though again without any direct evidence.
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Hyperion Entertainment AI simulator
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Hyperion Entertainment
Hyperion Entertainment CVBA (formerly Hyperion Entertainment VOF) is a Belgian software company that, in its early years, focused in porting Windows games to Amiga OS, Linux, and Mac OS. In 2001, they accepted a contract by Amiga Incorporated to develop AmigaOS 4 and mainly discontinued their porting business to pursue this development. AmigaOS 4 runs on the AmigaOne systems, Commodore Amiga systems with a Phase5 PowerUP accelerator board, Pegasos II systems and Sam440/Sam460 systems.
Hyperion Entertainment was founded in April 1999 by Ben Hermans and Evert Carton to port PC games to the Amiga. Hans-Joerg Frieden, who had previously worked on the Warp3D library and ports of the games Descent and Abuse, was contracted to be Hyperion's main developer. The company's first project was an Amiga port of Heretic II, released in 2000 to commercial failure. As a result, Hyperion expanded its scope to also include ports for Linux and Mac OS. Later that year, Hyperion ported SiN for Linux, postponing and ultimately cancelling a port of the game to the Amiga due to hardware requirements. An improved version of Heretic II was released for AmigaOS 4 in early 2024.
They also approached Monolith Productions to port their Lithtech engine, culminating in their port of Shogo: Mobile Armor Division for Amiga, Linux, and Mac OS in 2001. The game had not sold as well as had been hoped, most notably on Linux, despite becoming a best seller on Tux Games. Hyperion stated that Linux users were likely to dual boot with Windows to play easily available games rather than purchase more expensive specialised versions years after release. In early 2002, Hyperion introduced the Amiga port of Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War. An improved version for AmigaOS 4 followed in 2010. After id Software released its source code, Hyperion marketed later in 2002 a commercial Amiga port of Quake II. A Linux port of Gorky 17 was developed by Hyperion and published by Linux Game Publishing in 2006, while a version for AmigaOS 4 was released nearly a decade later in 2015.
During work on the Heretic II port, Hyperion Entertainment developers created an OpenGL subset called MiniGL, which sits on top of Warp3D to ease the porting of 3D games. The MiniGL library was released for free to other software developers.
In 2001, Hyperion announced that, after licensing the rights from Amiga, Inc., it would be working on the successor to AmigaOS 3.9 and concentrating its efforts on the development of AmigaOS 4. Hyperion still claimed that it is based upon AmigaOS 3.1 source code and, to a lesser extent certain, AmigaOS 3.9 sources. A quick port of 68k AmigaOS to PowerPC was originally planned, with new features added as development continued. Ben Hermans, writing on Amiga forum Ann.lu, claimed that these sources, along with the source of the PPC kernel WarpOS would be sufficient to provide a version to users within a year, making his now-infamous "change some flags and recompile" comment.[citation needed]
AmigaOS 4.0 was first released to end-users and second-level beta testers in April 2004, with AmigaOS 4.1 following in September 2008. It is currently still in development.[needs update]
In 2004, Hyperion attempted to obtain a licence for an AmigaOS 4 native port of the file manager Directory Opus, which had originally and been developed on the Amiga but for which development had since moved to the Microsoft Windows platform. Talks between Hyperion and GP Software broke down.
The first managing partner of Hyperion, Benjamin Hermans, in the period between the announcement and release of AmigaOS 4, ignited a community controversy by repeatedly claiming that MorphOS, an AmigaOS-like competitor (which had been released in complete form in 2003), was illegal and had on several occasions threatened to take legal action against it either on the grounds that it was parasitic competition to AmigaOS 4, or even that it was actually based on stolen AmigaOS source code. No evidence to support either claim ever became public, nor did any legal action against MorphOS take place; neither prevented such views being repeated in public Amiga forums and mailing lists. This situation was inflamed by ex-Commodore engineer Dave Haynie, who backed up Herman's claims: "If you have seen the Amiga source code, you cannot produce a legally separate work-alike", though again without any direct evidence.