Hollywood 1.9 out
Date 6-Apr-2004 15:43:52
Topic: Software News
| After almost a year of development, Hollywood 1.9 is now available and can be ordered on
the Airsoft Softwair homepage. Hollywood 1.9 is a major update that has a lot of new features.
Hollywood Designer will be released in a few days and can also be ordered now.
About Hollywood:
Hollywood is the Multimedia Application Layer for Amiga(tm) and compatible
operating systems. This means that it offers you a script language together
with advanced functions that allow you to create your own multimedia
applications which range from a simple slideshow to a complex game.
Hollywood is distributed on CD-ROM in a AmigaOS 3 (68k) version, a WarpOS (PowerPC)
and a native MorphOS (PowerPC) version. An AmigaOS 4 version will follow as soon as it
is available.
The big advantage of Hollywood is, that it does all the framework
for you. You do not have to care for example, if your application is going
to run on a ECS, OCS, AGA or RTG system. You do not have to care if the
Workbench screen your application runs on has 16 or 16.7 million colors.
You can concentrate yourself on the important thing which is your application
and not its enviroment.
Hollywood is fully 24 bit enhanced which means that you do not have to
mess around with palettes, remapping and so on. Additionally it is fully
integrated into AmigaOS(tm) and does not rely on a specific custom chip hardware.
Therefore Hollywood does also run on emulations like Amithlon or WinUAE
with amazing speed. Hollywood comes with a GUI that allows to control
the program efficiently and easily.
Using the Hollywood script language, the possibilities are almost unlimited.
The basic version of Hollywood comes with over 230 functions that range
from disk operating system (DOS) functions to functions that allow you to
smoothly scroll animations and graphics on your display. There are also
many functions that allow you to display objects, pictures and texts with
over 150 cool transition effects or scale graphics and animations. You can
also 24-bit fade objects, text and pictures smoothly. With the new
Hollywood layers nothing is impossible: You have full control over the position,
transparency and light settings of every layer which allows you to realise almost
everything!
Hollywood uses the datatypes system to load all graphics, animations and sounds
which allows you to use all formats you have datatypes for. Additionally
it supports unique things like transparent windows which enhance the
look-and-feel of your Workbench screen amazingly. You can use true type fonts,
intellifonts, standard bitmap fonts and even the cool Amiga color fonts with
Hollywood.
Hollywood has an integrated image processor which offers many possibilities
to manipulate graphics in an easy and effective way. You can apply the following
operations to images: Rotate, scale, stretch, lighten, darken, mirror, scale to
gray level, texture, invert, tint, replace colors and mix pictures. With this
extensive scale of operations, Hollywood supports you with everything you
need for modern image processing.
The integrated sound system is fully retargetable through AHI and allows
you to play music modules and sound samples. The sound system includes
support of full channel mixing and master volume effect. You can play
virtually an unlimited number of sounds of any length at the same time.
In 16-bit and with 44.1 kHz of course.
Hollywood is a high-end application that needs some memory to work best.
It uses a special preload system so that all data is
immediately accessible and the play back is incredibly fast. Therefore
it is advised that you have lots of memory (16 megabytes+) and also run a RTG system
like Picasso96 or CyberGraphX.
Hollywood is the absolutely number one choice in Amiga(tm) Multimedia nowadays
and brings the Amiga back to its roots...Multimedia! It comes with a compiler
which can save your applications as stand alone Amiga executables which
may be freely distributed. Additionally every Hollywood version can write executables
for every platform Hollywood supports. So you can use your 68k-version of Hollywood
to create real MorphOS executables and vice versa! This enables you to publish MorphOS
versions of your projects without having MorphOS running! And MorphOS users can
create 68k or WarpOS executables with their version too.
Hollywood is delivered on CD-ROM with over 35 examples that show the
power of it. Additionally there is over 400 kilobyte of documentation which
covers every field of application of Hollywood. To prevent Hollywood from being
pirated, it is not available through resellers (every version is personalized).
Thanks for your understanding.
Although all this may sound a bit complicated to you, it is very easy.
Programming skills are not necessary. They are only of use if you want
to create complex applications but for the normal Hollywood usage, you
do not need them because Hollywood is really easy to handle.
Features:
Graphics:
- Fully 24bit enhanced!
- Support for multiple graphics layers
- Support for layer transparency and light correction
- Transparent windows are possible
- Over 150 transition effects for objects, pictures and texts
- Many high-end transitions like water ripples, strudel, pixel zoom, ...
- Graphics can be scrolled smoothly
- Has an integrated image-processor that supports: Rotation, color inverting, gray scaling,
axis flipping, texturing, mixing and tinting
- Smooth and fast animation play back
- Support for transparent graphics and animations
- Functions for using textures
- Support for datatypes
- Easy animation of objects
- Support for true type, intelli, bitmap and color fonts
- Scaling of graphics is possible
- Off-screen rendering is supported
- Application can open on Workbench or own screen
- Integrated easy Undo system
- Extensive graphics library can draw ellipses, lines, rectangles, polygones, round rectangles, ...
- Frames per second can be limited
- Fully independent from the enviroment e.g. does not matter if user runs Picasso96 or CyberGraphX or AGA or ECS/OCS
Sound:
- Support for audio samples
- Full channel mixing
- Support for music modules
- Volume and pitch of samples can be modified during playback
- Sample size is not limited
- Full Stereo playback in 8 or 16-bit
- Master volume effect
- Absolutely retargetable through AHI
- Timing with music is possible
Script language:
- Variables, arrays and different data types (integer, float, string)
- Conditions and loops can be used
- Easy handling of variables (no initialization, declaration)
- Functions for manipulating strings and doing math operations
- Compiler and linker to convert your script to an executable
- Compiler can create MorphOS, WarpOS and AmigaOS3 executables
- Inbuilt error handler that does all the error handling work for you
- Functions for debugging your script
- Labels that are fully integrated into the user interaction mode
- Plugins can be used to enhance Hollywood's functionality
User interaction:
- Buttons can be defined
- Joystick can be queried
- Hollywood buttons support mouse click and mouse over events
- Keyboard input can be monitored
- System keys can be monitored
- Window events (window is moved, sized, closed etc.) can be monitored with ease
- Easily read whole strings from keyboard
- GUI to control the program with ease
System functions:
- Read from and write to files
- Easily read whole directories into an array
- Various file operations
- Timers can be used (accuracy in milli-seconds!)
- Many functions to handle files and work with them
- Query the Amiga system for information
- Retrieve information about hard disks, memory...
- Enhance your program to use different languages by using Hollywood's locale.library support
- Many time and date functions
Requirements:
- Kickstart 3.0 or MorphOS 1.x
- 68020 CPU
- Graphics board recommended
- 16 megabyte memory recommended
More information, screenshots and order possibility are available on the
Airsoft Softwair homepage.
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