In the 90’s I used Scala Infochannel for fun, and Designer caught my attention as being a possible way forward on Next gen. Amigas. I remember the first time fired up Designer 1.x. To be honest I thought it was a bit limited. Mostly suitable for simple slideshows. Still, I got the feeling that it had great potential.

The following years Airsoft Softwair put a lot of effort improving Designer. Being flooded with feature-requests, Andreas Falkenhahn was always positive and polite with his answers. – “Yes, it should be possible”, “ I can implement it rather quickly” etc. Nothing ever seemed impossible for him, and by each new release Designer got more mature.

It is actually great fun to read the detailed change-list of Hollywood Designer, and see how many requests from different users Andreas Falkenhahn completes. He really is an amazing coder, and we are lucky to have such talent still lingering on our platform.

With the newest version of Designer, the software has become a real beast. I mean beast in a good, positive way. The feature-list is amazing. The plug-in support even more so. The software has moved far beyond for being a tool for creating simple slideshows.

I’m now working on our new Dental Info 6.0. Dental Info a commercial software used by about 1400 dentists in Norway. As an example have started using the new plugin-system in Designer. This way I can create the whole gui using nothing but vector-gfx. Because of this the user can run my software in a small window, or on a 4K-screen, and it will always look perfect.

I’m able to assign different abilities to buttons – from starting pdf-files, doc-files, run custom code, run external exe-programs, show movies. Hollywood is even able to communicate with the three dental journal systems available for dentists in Norway.

I am a dentists myself, and do not have any coding skills. Still, Designer is a tool that lets me use my creativity and find solutions to what I want to achieve. Using the neat graphical userinterface of Designer, I am also able to develop quickly. One click and Designer even compiles a working .exe-file for me to try out.

Well, enough of my ranting. Why am I writing this? Simply to say a big thank you to Andreas and Airsoft Softwair. His software is the reason why I fire up my amiga every day.

I have added some screenshots, this time from my MorphOS-machine (I use both OS4 and MorphOS).

Best regards
Torgeir

/de-lurk

I've always thought Hollywood looked really interesting, but there's simply no way I'd buy it without being able to... try it!

Really, really needs a demo version... I'm speaking from the sadly long-since-moved-to-Windows/Linux camp, but would love to be able to target Amiga platforms too!

As a Monkey user, I had high hopes for AmigaMonkey but it unfortunately stalled over a year ago...

/lurk!

@DruggedBunny

Come to my place (France) and try it on my Sam460

_________________
Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

@elwood

Ha ha, that would be great... but not so practical!

/oops, de-lurk!

@DruggedBunny

Couldnt find it anymore, but there used to be a demoversion for Hollywood available. Maybe he didnt update the demoversion and hence took it off, but maybe someone still has it somewhere?

@Bugala

It's actually the Hollywood programming language and libraries that interest me -- looks very Blitz-like from the screenshots (though I just realised OP was referring to the Designer!).

I want to throw my money at the screen, but without being able to try it out, it's just a no-go for me :(

Even if just the Windows IDE version had a demo, it could bring in more users from that larger market and at least provide an avenue for more ports to Amiga -- decent ports, too, since it's designed for Amiga first and foremost!

@DruggedBunny

there is a demo version for windows only.

@FerruleMedia

Nice user interface. I like the icon shadows.

@lionstorm

Yes, that was what i was fererring to, but i couldnt find from hollywoods website, do you know where it is?

As far as i know, there is no demo version of designer existing.


@DruggedBunny

When comparing to Blitz. hmm..

I woudl compare it like this, based upon my own experience. I started with Amos, Amos felt BASIC kind of language to the core.

BlitzBasic felt something that was still a BASIC language, but that was implementing some C type language things.

And in this row, Hollywood would be next step. It is C-language kind of language, but Hollywood to C is Like AMOS is to BASIC.

Except that Hollywood is much more flexible in that it is not restricted to certain set of commands anymore, as example Hollywood used to be 2D only langauge, but now with new plug in system, there is 3D support as well, was it through OpenGL?


If you however are familiar with programming languages, then telling that it is based upon LUA will tell you a lot. There are some other serious languages based upon LUA existing as well, not just Hollywood.

as example, if i correctly remember, Gamemaker studio is based upon LUA: http://www.yoyogames.com/studio

@FerruleMedia

Its nice to hear about successful buissniss models that use Amiga at its core. :)

@Bugala

Yes, it's more like the modern Blitz languages (BlitzMax/Monkey), as far as I can see, which are much more like C/C++ and others, but with nice readable syntax.

@lionstorm Where is the demo? I've never been able to locate it.

The FerruleMedia applications do look really nice, BTW, meant to say!

@ all

Thanks for all the nice comments! The graphics is done by a professional freelance graphician named Morgan Thomas (located just outside Paris). We are old friends from the demoscene, and it has been great fun working with him on my dentistry oriented projects.

@DruggedBunny

Have you checked the Hollywood forum? http://forums.hollywood-mal.com/
There you can find different examples of hollywood coding. It is also possible to download the manual to take a closer look on how it all works.

As some other members mentioned, there was a windows demo at some point, but i don't know if it is still available. Also, i do not know what limitations it had. Anyway - the full version is about 99 euros, and that is not bad for such a quality product. Where are you from btw (if i may ask)?

I guess you could also send Airsoft an email and ask if the demo is still available?

best regards
Torgeir

On the subject of Hollywood here is a project I am currently working on, for those who haven't already read about it.

http://www.facebook.com/evolveforamigaos

_________________

Well about the games and apps made with Hollywood for example my site now I programming only with Hollywood

@Templario and djrikki

Thanks for sharing! - it is great to see the diversity of software produced using Hollywood! :)

Well done!

Best regards
Torgeir :)

@FerruleMedia

I have done some educational/scientific stuff with Hollywood wich is actually in use at some schools and universities.
http://via.i-networx.de/files.htm
But (not surprisingly) they all use the Windows version and I had a few requests about OS X versions.

_________________
My programs: via.bckrs.de
MorphOS user since V0.4 (2001)

@FerruleMedia

Thanks for sharing this.

I'm curious, are the other 1400 dentists using a PC to drive the application or
are some of them machine running it on an AmigaOS/MOS machine?

Best regards,
Kotler

@Kotler

Hi there!

Dental Info is sold to Windows-machines, due to the fact that it "communicates" to software only available under Windows (Dental Journal systems).

However, we still have users running our infochannel Dental Kanal on real amigas, including my own dental clinic. They are running on Sam440-machines + OS4.1.

Lately we have also sold the infochannel-software as windows executables, since we currently don't have time to do any hardware support (in case the machines running the infochannel breaks down).

best regards
Torgeir

@FerruleMedia



But little pity that the new systems don't run on Sams (anymore) or any Amiga NG OS:es.

Last edited by marko on 07-Oct-2015 at 01:16 AM.

_________________
AmigaOS 4.1 FEu2 on Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM
C128, A500+, A1200, A1200/40, AmigaForever 2008+09+16, 5 x86/x64 boxes
Still waiting (or dreaming) for the Amiga revolution...
m4rko.com/AMIGA